Mini games in Character Creation

[Wannabe writer]

A themed one perhaps a little inspired by Traveller and full of setting theme and history? Does anyone know if this a successful idea or know any free games with this contained therein?

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Could you clarify a bit on what you mean?

I know of life-path tables in Mekton, where you roll for interesting events in your history. You can start as a rookie who gets experience twice as fast, but starts with fewer skills and not much background, or go the veteran route where you get a bunch of extra skills, but may also run into tragedies.

Some Palladium Books games have tables of attitudes, so you can roll and randomly find a character's opinion on aliens or magic, or other major setting elements.

The World of Darkness games encourage the GM to run a one-on-one prolog with each player to establish their character before adding in the template for whatever supernatural creature they are going to be.

Twilight 2000 also had some pretty extensive background tables.

This idea of games in character creation seems a bit counter-intuitive. With random roll characters (ie D&D) you need to figure out how to play the character you get and compensate for their weaknesses. With point buy systems, you can roleplay exactly what you want to. So where would this idea of games fit in that continuum?

Don't take that last question as me scoffing at the idea, I'd love to hear more about it if you've got something in the works.

[Abstract Machine]

I'm a big believer in what White Wolf called 'the prelude'.

Rolling year-by-year what happens to a character before joined-up play also tends to work well.

I've experimented with collective prologues too - i.e. two or more of the players - but this can complicate rather than simplify matters, particularly if you're suffering under the delusion that it will encourage your players to work together more effectively.

[Onix]

It would be interesting to have a kind of board game of character creation. The players sit around the table and play for better characters. Maybe a player could reinforce his position but become more distant from the other player characters. Maybe players that build in more ties to other PCs get bonuses. Maybe during that process you encounter a prisoner's dilemma kind of game where if both players are on the up and up, they both get a small bonus, but if you double cross the other player you get a bigger bonus. The situations would have to be low priority according to the game so it doesn't tear apart the group before it's even started.

Maybe something like both players take the "dating" situation. You can choose loyal or cheating. If both choose loyal, you get some morale and social bonuses. If one chooses loyal and the other cheating, the cheater gets a skill that makes them good at sneaking. If both cheat, neither gets anything.

Get a bunch of situations like that together, and then have options for safer solo choices but that isolate the PC from the others. Or possibly add plot hooks to the character. You get something like 10 picks, and then you have strongly built backstories and an interesting game to make characters with.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

An odd idea that just occurred to me - Blackjack for special abilities.

Each card is assigned a super power/magic spell/capability in addition to its normal value. If you bust and go over 21 the margin of failure is how many points of drawbacks or stat penalties are acquired. Otherwise, it is a question of how sub-optimal are you willing to stay.

[Evil Scientist]

[Evil Scientist]