How Do You Feel About Games That Let You Die in Character Creation?

Asked this in the Discord, but I'm interested in a wider response.

What I mean is, there are options in character creation regarding to backstory.
Say, your character has the option to join the military in his backstory. Every tour he does there's a chance of gaining new skills, but there's also a slim chance of dying and having to reroll your character.
Or, with psionics, you have to test yourself to see if you have those powers. 99 times out of 100, you can't move things with your mind, but sometimes it backfires and either hurts your stats or kills you.
it's not like you can't play at all. You just have to reroll your character.
and for a character who rolled bad stats to begin with, those risks could be worth it because for the player even re-rolling would be a good outcome.
My thinking is that it's an interesting way, in theory, to tie a character's backstory into the crunch of the game.
>pic unrelated

Other urls found in this thread:

docs.google.com/document/d/13oYllUP741Nl-F_ejaUXhsi3UMS-sDsaaZSo_cCyseE/edit?usp=sharing
twitter.com/AnonBabble

Depends on how long character creation takes and how often the players will need to roll up new characters. If it's a game where it's kinda rare to die outside of character creation (like heroic fantasy or something), I don't see a problem. If the player has his character die 3 times during char creation only to die 5 minutes into the game, it seems like a bad system.

Character creation I think should be either slow but interesting or flexible but fast.

Huh, that's really interesting. It reminds me of Khephera Publishing's Atlantis: 2nd Age. Character creation was like a Roll Your Own Background system, but it didn't have the chance of dying from what I recall.

I would say if a system incorporated this, I'd appreciate it being at the very beginning. Maybe choose a race before going into the backgrounds, while having an idea of the class you want to be.

For example, choosing backgrounds is about the last thing you do in D&D 5e, after choosing race/class/equipment/assigning skills. It would suck if your character died after all that work but before you actually played that char.

Seems rather pointless, "oops you rolled a three, start over" and would probably get stupidly annoying and loose any novelty after it happened a few times, and probably just hold everything up.

That's why these things are optional.
To use the military service example. You don't have to serve, but for every tour, you're getting more skills. However, you're chance of dying increases over time.
None of these things that can kill you would be mandatory. That would be dumb for sure.

If it's endemic to the game, and "gud rollz" aren't a requirement to succeeding the players will generally shrug it off and start again. Ask most Traveller players.

Also, a character is often entering combat with a non trivial (at least greater than 1%) chance of death, so I'd imagine most would jump on those odds laid out explicitly.

It seems somewhat stupid. You should be rolling for what character you enter a campaign with not characters you could have entered a campaign with.

Your character went to war twice and got a huge stat boost, then he dies in the third war so you make a new character.

Your next character is somewhat crippled in the first war, he keeps entering wars until he dies.

Your third character goes to war four times gets an even larger stat boost and your character creation is finally concluded.

Chance of dying seems like a really bad idea. There is no real punishment for seeking out danger except that you have to make another character sheet. Instead of using metagame punishments where you waste your entire group's time, you could make a system which has rewards and chances of punishment in game terms like becoming a cripple because you got shot in the knee or getting a head injury because you got hit by a sling which means you character has some actual character.

So, exactly Traveller, then? Although Traveller at least had the decency of optionally having the 'death' be actually a career-ending injury.

I'm gonna write up a character creation system for this hypothetical game. Specifics should help us pass judgement.

The only way stupid shit like death on chargen can be helped, is if the new character you're rolling is the reincarnation of the character that just stupidly died.

Perhaps the new character has some token extra XP or a few abilities that are related to their previous incarnation.

I don't like it. It's fun if you're just sitting around rolling characters, seeing what you can get away with without dying but when you have a bunch of people making actual characters it's kind of a waste of time. People might get a chuckle out of it but there's nothing really gained by having a character who never even properly hit the table, who never interacted with anyone or was really RP'd at all.

I'd much rather replace any death events with some other lasting penalty. An enemy gained, permanent reputation damage, maiming. Losing a character before you can even get attached to them is annoying and hey, they might of had some nice rolls, but you're not invested. You don't really care. If they die you might just roll better next time.

But if you're taking risks where failure isn't roll a new character but instead "do I risk taking on a penalty that will follow me throughout the campaign?" That's more of a gamble for the player, and more fertile soil for a GM to create plot from.

Traveler also had the death thing as part of a push your luck system. You risk dying more and more the greedier you are.

This. It was gambling for a stronger character. Dying in your first term? No big whoop. When you've got four good terms under your belt, though, you've got to think hard about whether to go for a fifth and hope for to be assigned piloting duty to get that one more point of pilot skill you really want, or if you should quit now while you're ahead.
It's great fun.

This.
>Here's the character I've been waiting to play.
>Oops, looks like they died in character creation before I got the skills I wanted.
>Good thing this other guy who's totally identical happened to go through the same stuff...
Then again, I'm against rolling for stats as well since I prefer longer term games.

The infinity Rpg gives you chances to die in character creation, but resurrection is a big part of the setting so it's more fluff than anything else.

>tfw I read the free rulebook for infinity and fell in love with the setting but am not a wargamer
>have been hoping there'd be a RPG of it at some point
>just now learning of it
Well shit. How's dying work with characters who likely don't have cubes, like Ariadnans? Or do they just not get the possibility of RIPing before finishing chargen?

docs.google.com/document/d/13oYllUP741Nl-F_ejaUXhsi3UMS-sDsaaZSo_cCyseE/edit?usp=sharing

Here's the framework example I worked up. let me know what you think. It's rough, but it gets the point of what I want to do across.

MechWarrior 3rd edition/Classic Battletech has this, but it's tempered by the fact that characters have Edge (luck, basically), and they can "cheat death" by burning an Edge in character creation. While it sucks that you won't have as high of a starting Edge, it does add some flavor to your character:

You're living on borrowed time, you've cheated death one too many times, and if you don't do something heroic with your life (and all the risk that entails) you're either going to live a life of boring safety, having thrown in the towel (i.e. retired the character), or you're going to die when your luck finally runs out.

For certain kinds of games, this is perfectly fine. Even games that have deadly combat. It makes you more concerned for the character's well being, and might discourage you from starting needless fights.

I worked something similar, "Fate" into my proposal.

Its a little amusing the first time, but after than its just annoying and should be ignored

>Have to waste special shit just to get through character creation
Ew

That sounds like the dumbest shit ever.

If there's a character I want to play, and I've put some work into their backstory and concept, and I roll a 1 at characters creation and they die, all that's gonna happen is my next character will be exactly the same but with a slightly different name. And I will keep rolling for that character until it doesn't die, because that's what I want to run, and there's no reason for me to switch concept because my first attempt 'died' before the game began.

Basically, this idea a shit and would just slow down character creation, or would end up with people playing with concepts they're not really that interested in.

>all of my stats must be the required minimum amount for me to have fun, I don't want to make any interesting choices, and can I have my XP now, rather than later?

In my perspective it depends heavily on how you, the GM and the other players use it.

Dead characters themselves can be used as seeds for plots and character backstory.

Characters who die in character creation do not need to stop being characters. The can be dead siblings, parents, mentors, students, rivals, friends, squad mates, commanders, lost loves and other ended relationships.

How and why they died can be great seeds for character personalities and plots. If they died a hero do people remember them fondly? Or hate them as if they were a villain?

The could also not really be dead or end up being brought back to life, nothing says that a character that "died" in character creation can't come back as the victim of a secret military cyborg resurrection project.

Nice job putting words in my mouth dumb ass.

Why not just a traveler thread, faggot?

>Charget takes 5 minutes
Pure fun
>Chargen takes around full hour
Who the fuck did this shit?!

Maybe because this is not endemic to Traveller, you stupid cunt?

you do chargen once a campaign. Why not make it special?

it seems kinda pointless to me. Nothing is really gained by a character that doesn't properly exist yet dying and time is wasted.

plus the "chances to die" are usually used to safeguard really strong abilites/bonus stuff which again seems like a really crappy way to go about it, as some lucky fucker could roll through character gen and end up as some hypercompetant godman, while average joe who doesn't brute force his way through it ends up comparatively weaker.

But then again i think any character generation system with any random chance in it at all are complete garbage anyway.

What keeps me from rolling a million characters until I get one that survives?

>Nothing is really gained by a character that doesn't properly exist yet dying and time is wasted.
I pointed out things that can be gained in . Time is only wasted if the results are not used.

The fact that it would literally take decades to roll that many characters.

Nothing, if it's only your own time that you're wasting.

It's pretty fucking stupid as a concept, it doesn't bring anything at all to the game and just wastes time.

Well yes, but the mere fact that it exists means that people here will defend it for no other reason than to disagree with you.

I don't see the appeal, but i don't see the appeal in rolling for stats in general, so i might simply not be be the target group.
Because either the results get so homogenised that it's pointless ( roll 4d6, drop the lowest 7 times, drop the lowest of those and assign at will), the characters vary widely in power ( 3d6 down the line, no reassigning, no rerolls) or the stats don't really matter ( Call Of Cthulhu, at least in the current edition).

>None of these things that can kill you would be mandatory.
im pretty sure in Traveller you can just straight up die during any life path

rolling to generate characters is stupid anyway. relying on RNG before teh game even starts is horrible.

>Nothing, if it's only your own time that you're wasting.

Considering it requires a DM to be present (or you could just write in what you wanted), then this is never true so I'm not sure why you posted this.

If the GM is okay with it, his time isn't being wasted either. Plus, his input and approval during the process of character creation can expedite the process of developing hooks for the PC and/or contacts met in that generated backstory.

It can be a sort of person session 0 between the GM and the player.

*personal, rather

I don't mind systems that make you randomly roll for your lifepaths. but I do mind that it suddenly denies you that route.

Mechwarrior 3rd edition did that. In trying to show off how "Exclusive" it was to be a Mechwarrior, a good chunk of the below-par results on the life-path system meant that your character washes out, forcing your to become something else entirely. It might be OK for generating NPCs, but for player characters, no lifepaths system should prevent you from being able to work with your team-mates.

The edition after that tried to remedy that by getting rid of random rolling and making point-buy life modules, but the crunch became that much more intense, especially during the "Select Inventory" bit.

There's three things mitigating that:

1.) You can spend Edge to avoid washing out.
2.) You can buy up your stats to qualify for the life paths you took if you didn't originally have them (they essentially are required minimums for the finished character).
3.) The Classic Battletech RPG Companion has a straight point-buy system where you just buy up the skills and abilities you want, and ignore the life paths altogether. Then you just fill in the blanks for your backstory, like in most other RPGs.

*four

4.) You can also spend Edge to pick your next lifepath rather than the ones listed in the current lifepath you just finished. So, if your current lifepath precludes your becoming an aerospace pilot, you could spend an Edge and become one anyway. This would then likely be written up as a "luck break" in your backstory. You tested well, someone at the academy took an interest in you and submitted your name as a candidate, or maybe by some twist of fate, your paperwork got switched with some other poor bastard, and you did well enough to be inducted, and if the snafu ever was discovered, nothing would come of it aside from some incompetent administrator getting fired.

It doesn't really make sense unless there's some sort of inherent risk to taking the option that lets your character die. You won't be attached to the character, so who cares? The only way I can see it working well is if you end up with a penalty on the next character you generate, otherwise there's no reason to not keep going for the risky path until you get a good character.

If there's a flat chance for your character to die during creation, no matter what, then it's just fucking pointless.

I could also see it as a chance to give bonuses to your end result character. Say the character you're rolling dies in chargen, you're now rolling their offspring, who starts out with X benefit due to their father putting them in a favorable position to learn that thing. But that's still kinda stupid.

Oh old traveler where what you get is ALL random rolls, so. I rolling bad, time to die.
OR New Traveler in that I had some choices in what I get. To me, both are kind of lame mostly due to players end up all powerful or just barely able to do anything at the same table.

As a player who has really bad rolls in general i say fuck it, i might day this session so why the fuck not, make it a blaze of glory if i have to.

I think in the WIP Infinity RPG character creation you can die up to five times, each one in a different way: you can be murdered, die in an accident, even become a minor celebrity because your death became a meme. This is however a setting in which people have access to personality backups called Cubes, so it only results in your "in-born" basic stats being replaced with those of a new Lhost.

That also means your character is pretty lucky (or much older than they look), because estimated waiting time for a new body is nearly 200 years.

Pic related is a character whose motivation is getting enough "resurrection points" from the Church to get one for his girlfriend he accidentally killed.

It is very setting specific, but it fits in the whole "far future with budging post-humanism".

IIRC it's not addressed in the rules thus far. Maybe it will be in the Ariadna splatbook.

That sounds really easily abusable if you put it that way; simply nuke your character until you get good stats.

I'd rather see character background generation NOT kill characters or cost them resources; that's only a nuisance to people who aren't into maximum optimization, and rerolling is barely a hindrance at all to people who ARE trying to make the mechanically perfect character.

I'm not against rolling for things, I just think that the advantages should be fixed, and what you roll for is plot - where your character was that year, a contact gained from this list, a rival gained from this other list. But either way, everyone rolls for three years of background, and collects 100 gold and one skill point at the end of each year. (for example). If you care about that roleplay, you put that skill point in something related to the rolls, and if you don't give a shit then you spend that point where you already planned to, but either way you've got a 3x3 grid of results from that process and it's known to the DM and may result in interesting things happening.

What's the downside of dying though? If you have infinite rerolls then you could very easily just keep trying to make a new character until you get lucky enough to make an OP character.

Actually, the way battletech did it was that using edge in chargen increased your minimum.

So if you use 3 edge at chargen, you needed to end chargen with at least 3 edge as you'd demonstrated that level of luck.

Seems incredibly pointless.

Unless it's some kind of Ghost RPG I don't see what merit this has.