What goes first: character generation or rules?

[Corone]

If its any help I think we cracked this issue with Victoriana.
We did a 3 page 'system overview' first which introduced the base system, which is most of what you need for Victoriana.
Essentially its what you would write for the first few pages of the rules chapter.
Then we went into character creation and then the rules chapters.

That way we sort of started with character creation but you understood what the numbers meant before you read it.

[Georgedoe]

That might work for me, because I already have a small introductory section in Multi10 describing the basic mechanics. If I left that intact it and then dealt with character creation it would save me from a lot of work.

[Chris Johnstone]

I like the system overview approach too.

I've seen it in a few games and it seems to be a good way to allow players to figure out enough of the basics that they won't feel 'cheated' post-chargen on discovering that things don't work the way they expected.

Chris

[koipond]

I think it depends on the rules too. I mean with Critical! it's going to be a case of the skills you take are highly dependent upon your ability to convince the GM that you can use them in a given situation. The numbers mean something, but they don't mean as much as in a lot of other games where if you go down a certain path it might not work as well as you'd hoped.