Making Characters: The Procedure

So a few weeks ago, I mentioned that my wife and I were starting a character generation project in part as an experiment and in part because it may be useful to me if and when I get my own game off the ground.

Over the last few weeks, I have assembled a long list of games that I own that I'd like to include in the project. I also put the games into a number of groups based on the theme, including a "miscellaneous" group for games that like anything else. I also picked games that Stephanie has not played (which really only eliminated d20 games, 4E, and a small handful of one-shot games we've played)

I won't share the list of games with you, as it's pretty long. And it keeps growing:

"Oh! Mutant City Blues! I'd forgotten I owned this one!"

 "Hey, sweetie, I just found World Action and Adventure at the used book store."

(Both true stories, BTW)

Either way, Stephanie will create a character using only the core book(s) for the game (with one or two exceptions, which I'll highlight in the appropriate post).

I also went through and created a questionnaire for her to fill in as she makes the characters. The questionnaire is pretty well set:

Which game is this for?

What was your character concept going into generation?

Did you feel like character generation captured the flavor of the setting? Did this influence your decision-making process during character generation?

How much control did you feel like you had during character generation?

Did the game help you make the character you wanted, or did it feel like you were fighting the game?

Do you like the character you ended up with?

Do you think your character fits your concept?

Do you feel like your character would be effective and/or useful in a game?

Was there anything in particular that you struggled with mechanically?

Did anything run more smoothly than you had expected?

What changes would you have made to the character generation process?

Did anything leap out at you as obviously broken or unbalanced?

What led you to choose this game as the next one to make a character for?

How would you compare your experience with this game to your experience with other games?

Would you be willing to play this character in a campaign?

Does this character make you want to play this game?

Do you have any other questions, comments, etc.?

Once she's done with a character, I'll scan the sheet and upload it to Flickr. I'll then go through the questionnaire, and will cut-and-paste her answers. I'll also ask any follow-up questions which occur to me at that time.

And then I'll post it here.

I hope it's a sufficiently interesting project for you. I'm really looking forward to this.

If you have any games you'd like to add to the list or questions you think I missed in the questionaire, please feel free to leave a comment here (or e-mail me).

By the way, she's chosen her first two games: Fvlminata and All Flesh Must Be Eaten. I'll let you know when she's done and will try to let you know what games are coming up.