Emergent Chargen: What has worked well for you?

#1

The idea here is that instead of making a player completely define the character upfront, you build the character as you go. For example, you don’t choose your Thief’s Moves in DW until you actually need one. Why would you want this? This can be great in oneshots in that it saves time up front, and also, it makes sure that the player won’t choose a move that they will never get to use!

I’ve seen this also used with Drives, Flags, etc. so that the game is not held up while a player thinks it through. Coming up with good ones can take a bit, so putting this off until it becomes relevant again helps keep things going.

What else have people seen work well? What hasn’t worked well?

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#2

This thought has passed through my mind before as I have always gravitated towards “hybrid” characters. Shadow of the Demon Lord has a path system in which you choose a path every three levels and there are no prerequisites for picking a path, so you could be a Warrior-Warlock-Chronomancer if you so desired. While your mixture may not be optimized for a ‘trad’ game like SotDL, it is an interesting take on character design.

As far as doing that on skill/talent level, the only game I can think of is Roll For Shoes in which the characters gain various skills based on things they attempt to do during the adventure.

I think it would be enjoyable to have a system like that folded into a game. Characters would be a blank slate at the beginning but could create skills (or choose from a list) based on the actions they performed in the narrative.

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#3

Yeah, this is what playing Blades in the Dark is very much about.

The book literally says:

In Blades, “character creation” lasts for the whole series of play.

And the entire game is really build around this take. It is surprisingly introspective that way… with two out three xp-triggers being about what we’ve seen and learned about their beliefs, ambitions, history and faults that we reflect on at the end of a session with the respective player in authority.

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#4

Ditto for Blades in the Dark giving emergent character generation.

The traumas that characters acquire can create very different narrative avenues and organic character arcs that more often than not lead to interesting conflicts and satisfying conclusions.

Also the ways characters acquire special abilities. Similar to other PbtA games, players tend to seek a narrative justification for their newfound talents or knowledge, which means that the character are changing and adapting over time.

Also, the harm system in The Sprawl is great. The way characters can lose body parts and thus be forced to acquire cyberware to compensate, which gives further complications to the story if the surgery doesn’t go well.

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#5

I’ve experimented pretty successfully with it with Dungeon World (inspired by @SidneyIcarus) ; getting players to pick their stats as they are needed. It’s pretty fun - especially in that helps with characterisation. Questions like is this character strong - are they stronger than they are wise; are asked in relation to events occuring in the story.

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#6

interesting topic. I don’t know if this is the exact same thing, but in Trophy, a game I have been playing a lot of lately, you don’t define your character’s backstory or connections to other characters in the beginning. You just start playing and then use questions posed throughout the game to discover who the character is. It’s great! Very cinematic, very “in the moment.” (Jesse designed the game, in part, based on how I run ttrpgs, so naturally it’s a winner for me, haha).

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#7

I’m very interested in this because I’ve been contemplating designing something in this space. Although I love character gen, it always frustrates me how long it can take, so that you sometimes get no scenes at all in session 1.

The bit I want to back-load in this way is relationships. I’d much rather discover these through a prelude/flashback style scene than just through asking a question.

I dunno, in some ways this might mean taking longer to get to the meat of play, but it is something I’d like to try. I haven’t seen it done before to my knowledge.

Only actual game I can think of that explicitly back-loads character gen is Immortal: the Invisible War, where you get Memory Points you can spend on remembering a skill you once possessed, before you disguised yourself as a mortal and lost your memories. I really liked that.

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#8

I found that it helps in letting people ease up into a new game system they are not used to. I found this possible way to start playing with barebones characters in Fate.

After thinking about it, it made sense, because you can’t expect people to start putting things onto a character sheet without a good explanation on what goes where. And doing it on the fly with a skill based system worked pretty well.

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#9

We have a game of trophy lined up for the start of next week so I’ll be really interested to see how it plays out with that mechanic.

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#10

I think this is kinda what Ironsworn does, but I’ve only browsed it so far. The events in play seem to shape your PC the way a lifepath character creation system would.

Maybe someone familiar with it can speak about it?

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#11

This is a very common ethos in the OSR. I would sometimes start sessions without naming my characters, taking things to an extreme perhaps. Characters develop personality through play. Interactions with the world. Bad dice roles. Great dice rolls.

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#12

Whitehack is built this way. During character generation you name your character’s species, affiliations, special abilities, and magical powers but you figure out what that means during play, usually in negotiation between player and GM.

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#13

Thanks for the responses, everyone! I haven’t played Trophy yet, so I’ll have to check it out, @jasoncordova. I’ll be curious to hear how ot goes for toy, @BeckyA if you’re keeping emergent chargen in mind as you play.

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#14

As I re-read things, it might be the case that that was just how I ran it. It’s not actually in the rules that you don’t build any backstory beforehand. I have spoken to Jesse about it in the past, though, and I know that is how it is supposed to go. If Ead tries get you to do a bunch of backstory beforehand, you can tell him Jesse and I said to stop, haha.

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#15

I’ll make sure he plays by the oral as well as the written rules :wink:

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#16

Aha! Emergent play culture in its early stages in Trophy

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#17

The Skeletons is basically emergent chargen as a self-contained game, and really great.

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#18

For the Queen is about emergent character generation, really. You start with a blank slate, beyond: “You have been trusted to accompany the Queen” there is nothing. Every question reveals a little more about your character, and I truly love that.

I’d like to see that with Fiasco, maybe? Just create the playset and don’t flesh anything out. Just go!

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#19

That’s so true, about FtQ! Half the time I end up wanting to burn up the characters at the end of the game.

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#20

Yes! I love it when the dice rolls define the character. My partner played a teenager Paladin in a Dungeon World game I ran that just failed again and again and again; becoming the laughing stock of the rest of the party; poor little guy. When they finally started succeeding it was all in the context of the early failures. So good.

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