Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen

[Third Eye]

@Yam
Picking up a roster on Arx was like that. Creating an OC was a fairly fiddly process that I gave up on the first time. Arx seemingly wasn’t really optimized for doing that, though, and being steered toward a roster was always kinda working as intended imo. You make your choices.

[helvetica]

@Yam A maximum word count limit for written backgrounds is the way to go. It’s great that you wrote that novel. Please send the link and I will consider purchasing. Summarize who your character is in a reasonable way.

Unrelated to the above opinion, I don’t think Arx should be our metric for OC apps. This is not intended as a critique. There are some things that game runners will be interested in policing, and some things that they aren’t.

[Pavel]

@helvetica said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:

A maximum word count limit for written backgrounds is the way to go.

By the same token, tell me what you want out of a background, so I know what to focus my limited time on writing. Or, better yet, give me a questionnaire to fill in.

[Yam]

@helvetica People do be wanting to write a lot sometimes. I guess there’s a captive audience there, technically. On CoG we had a few folk complaining about the limit and then trying to find ways around it by putting it somewhere else on their profile. As a youth never in my wildest dreams would I have predicted that people actually want to write full novellas for their backgrounds. My goal was generally to get in there and exchange poses with other people.

@Pavel I DO prefer when there’s a little questionnaire provided.

[sao]

@Yam I always want to write a novella. Character creation is basically the only thing I know how to do.

[bear_necessities]

Potentially hot take: you shouldn’t have to write an application to pick up a roster character ever.

There’s a trend in recent Ares games where you just click ‘claim’ on a roster and it generates the password right there for you and I very much appreciate that.

If the issue is that the roster character could presumably be popular and you don’t want to give it to the first come first serve, just put up a lottery system. No application required. “If interested in Sparkle Pony, the Prince of Ponyland, put your name in the hat and we’ll randomly draw in 5 days.” Done.

[somasatori]

I agree with @bear_necessities. not to get all foucault and shit but the application process is a sort of prison, and the prisoner is both the staffer and the player. The main rationale for apps is generally twofold:

1. preventing people from metagaming or powergaming or playing something that’s too powerful
2. keeping characters in a fairly regimented theme

To some extent I feel like the community has largely moved on from the necessity of point #1. General powergaming and being the best combat monster is an extremely unsatisfying thing to play long term and it seems like most of the folks who went that route (at least in WoD) have disappeared.

On the second point, metaplot and strict staff-run plots have been on the outs for something like 10 years now. If you’re introducing PRPs into your setting at all, you’re relinquishing control over your setting to other players. Hell, if you allow other staff to run plots on your game you’re relinquishing control. My argument is that there is, therefore, no need to strictly monitor stats to maintain a theme, especially if you’re running a MUSH that emulates a TTRPG system. The system will inform the fiction and you will get characters that fit your theme because of the point allotment they have. Highly unbalanced social sexpot psychic? they absolutely exist in both WoD and other modern fantasy settings. Combat-focused werewolf who ignores any other skill aside from Hit The Guy? 100% part of any urban, medieval, or other fantasy setting. If someone apps in with these concepts in mind and does an overall bad job because they didn’t understand what they were making, they’ll probably be avoided by the rest of their fellow players because they are genuinely not thematically enjoyable RP, or they’ll find themselves on the short end of a plot that they could never have prepared for.

Put another way: if someone apps into a Mage the Ascension game and has no understanding of how paradigms, practices, and instruments work, nor how to implement them into practical use within the storyline, that will work itself out eventually (and possibly in short order)

[Nonsense]

@Third-Eye said in Web-based CharGen or in-game CharGen:

Even as somebody who still plays on-client a fair amount, I wouldn’t want to do CG in a pure text interface again. It’s just so much easier on web to save things/proof things/edit things.

I second this. I’ll forever be a client-first user, but web chargen has spoiled me forever for the reasons listed above.

[KDraygo]

@MisterBoring Apologies, but because of rising inflation, I have gone completely paperless. You can refer to my geocities site for all the necessary information for my chargen application. Thank you.

[Yam]

@somasatori I get what you’re saying, but it always makes me a bit nervous relying on the court of public opinion/free market of the playerbase to handle an… arguably unthematic app.

The playerbase might’ve known they’d be encountering all kinds of people, but they probably don’t love the weight of social enforcement. Turning people away sucks no matter how steely you are, and if players are openly avoidant, unwilling to use public channels to search for RP, this is a problem. Watch how your very active, very social dynamo player handles a character like this. Watch the energy get drained from their bones as they try and fail to work with this character that probably shouldn’t have seen the light of day.

This tends to happen ANYWAY in situations where the staff is unaware of how someone is RPing their powergamey werewolf, or a little more hands-off in general. I’d strive to work against it, not encourage it, since in my experience someone really dedicated to their twinky character will stubbornly linger on a game far longer than short order. IDEALLY they get bored and leave on their own. It happens! Not always.

Although we might be getting off topic here.