Nevertheless. There are many a time I use specific arrangements and/or values of numbers to reinforce a story. I cannot do so, however, when I am given rolls and instructed "Those are your numbers! Fill out your sheet, we start the game for real in ten minutes! I'ma go get a beer before we start, have fun ladies!" Or rather, I can, but at that point I'm playing a sheet with nothing but mechanics on it that I have no attachment to and no reason to continue with save to continue playing. That sheet has only the loosest, foggiest idea of any sort of background or anchoring to the world, and it will never have a better idea because the DM has chosen to exclude that phase of character creation.
Why would you play that way then? Part of Session 0 has always been character creation. Then you have a week before session 1 to write your backstory and get to know that character.
We always had a session 0 whenever possible, we just didn’t call it that back in the ‘90s. We called it “character creation” back then, but the first time I heard d anyone mention session 0 I knew exactly what they were talking about.
After four years of playing D&D I now think I would be comfortable with rolling stats down the line and creating a character with them, but I would have hated that as a new player.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
We always had a session 0 whenever possible, we just didn’t call it that back in the ‘90s. We called it “character creation” back then, but the first time I heard d anyone mention session 0 I knew exactly what they were talking about.
Yeah but now it's less about character creation and more about table etiquette. You are kinda expected that on S0 you will touch such subjects like phobias, preferences, likes and dislikes, who brings what food, how late is acceptable whether or not you can play drunk or stoned and all that.
I've seen some charts even where people can actually assign colors to various themes of the game (whether they would absolutely love it, be ok with or completely against it).
After that you touch upon house rules, homebrew, setting rules and then last but not least MAYBE character creation.
We always had a session 0 whenever possible, we just didn’t call it that back in the ‘90s. We called it “character creation” back then, but the first time I heard d anyone mention session 0 I knew exactly what they were talking about.
Yeah but now it's less about character creation and more about table etiquette. You are kinda expected that on S0 you will touch such subjects like phobias, preferences, likes and dislikes, who brings what food, how late is acceptable whether or not you can play drunk or stoned and all that.
I've seen some charts even where people can actually assign colors to various themes of the game (whether they would absolutely love it, be ok with or completely against it).
After that you touch upon house rules, homebrew, setting rules and then last but not least MAYBE character creation.
If your playing with strangers. If you’re playing with friends then one should already know most of that stuff.
We always had a session 0 whenever possible, we just didn’t call it that back in the ‘90s. We called it “character creation” back then, but the first time I heard d anyone mention session 0 I knew exactly what they were talking about.
Yeah but now it's less about character creation and more about table etiquette. You are kinda expected that on S0 you will touch such subjects like phobias, preferences, likes and dislikes, who brings what food, how late is acceptable whether or not you can play drunk or stoned and all that.
I've seen some charts even where people can actually assign colors to various themes of the game (whether they would absolutely love it, be ok with or completely against it).
After that you touch upon house rules, homebrew, setting rules and then last but not least MAYBE character creation.
If your playing with strangers. If you’re playing with friends then one should already know most of that stuff.
That is an assumption that I KNOW has gotten people in trouble. It's always good to check.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
We always had a session 0 whenever possible, we just didn’t call it that back in the ‘90s. We called it “character creation” back then, but the first time I heard d anyone mention session 0 I knew exactly what they were talking about.
Yeah but now it's less about character creation and more about table etiquette. You are kinda expected that on S0 you will touch such subjects like phobias, preferences, likes and dislikes, who brings what food, how late is acceptable whether or not you can play drunk or stoned and all that.
I've seen some charts even where people can actually assign colors to various themes of the game (whether they would absolutely love it, be ok with or completely against it).
After that you touch upon house rules, homebrew, setting rules and then last but not least MAYBE character creation.
If your playing with strangers. If you’re playing with friends then one should already know most of that stuff.
That is an assumption that I KNOW has gotten people in trouble. It's always good to check.
After 15+ years playing with the same people, if one still needs to check this stuff then one should start taking motes.
We always had a session 0 whenever possible, we just didn’t call it that back in the ‘90s. We called it “character creation” back then, but the first time I heard d anyone mention session 0 I knew exactly what they were talking about.
Yeah but now it's less about character creation and more about table etiquette. You are kinda expected that on S0 you will touch such subjects like phobias, preferences, likes and dislikes, who brings what food, how late is acceptable whether or not you can play drunk or stoned and all that.
I've seen some charts even where people can actually assign colors to various themes of the game (whether they would absolutely love it, be ok with or completely against it).
After that you touch upon house rules, homebrew, setting rules and then last but not least MAYBE character creation.
If your playing with strangers. If you’re playing with friends then one should already know most of that stuff.
That is an assumption that I KNOW has gotten people in trouble. It's always good to check.
After 15+ years playing with the same people, if one still needs to check this stuff then one should start taking motes.
Well yeah, obviously if you play with them that long that it's a non issue. My players are new to D&D though they are not strangers to me - it's actually my brother and his wife and while I know them pretty well, a S0 like that is still required because I had almost zero knowledge of their preference in the context of a D&D game.
"Do you prefer a RP heavy or a combat heavy campaign" or "are you guys comfortable roleplaying a romance scene between each other with me in the room behind a DM screen" are not really questions that come up OUTSIDE of a D&D game even amongs family xDD
As for 'vetting rolls', I more meant that the DM has to find time to meet with each individual player to observe their roll. That is nothing for some groups, but finding time for everyone to meet can be an annoying impediment for busier groups. Many DMs I've seen have also espoused a sharp resentment for having to 'babysit' the character creation process - they want PCs to come to the table with sheets ready to go, not have to spend an entire four-hour session in Character Workshop.
I've been trying to avoid personal anecdotes as they have an unfortunate tendency to derail threads around here, but ...
If we are sharing personal anecdotes though, I'm going to have to point out that in my experience as DM only a vanishingly small number of characters have ever been submitted to me without some kind of prior consultation first. Players ask about exceptions to table rules, or what the campaign is going to be like (though usually that's the first thing I tell them about when bringing up the subject of a new campaign) or about some background thing that really needs to be handled in agreement with the DM, or they're not sure about how something works, or they think I might be reluctant to have a character type they really want to play in my campaign, or they want to check they're on the right track before putting too much effort in, or any of a dozen other things. I don't think I've ever had to babysit character creation (though I usually do some coaching if the player is an absolute newbie, but that's precisely to make sure things go smoothly and not run into a four hour ordeal).
Going from telling the players we're starting things anew to being ready for that first real session in orderly fashion is largely a matter of organisation and communication. Getting to see players roll their stats doesn't have to be an ordeal.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Fetishizing Gygax's words has no real impact on 5e. The man is dead. Yes, he's the Father of D&D, but fifty years later the game has changed. If one wishes for their D&D to be a hardcore roguelike dungeon crawler with no plot to speak of, characters whose lifespans are measured in minutes at best and players who go through thirty sheets a session, then by all means do so. However, it's foolhardy to assume this is the standard mode of play desired by everyone these days. And Gygax's utter nonsense about how players should never be allowed to know the rules of the game can rot in the dirt. That was, is, and always will be a mistake, and I don't care how hard Gygax stood by it. I said it before and I'll say it again: DMs are neither kings nor deities.
Roguelike games are popular, yes. They appeal very strongly to a certain player demographic, and that player demographic is also unfortunately prone to arrogance due to roguelike games' perceived difficulty. The idea that one is a "better player" if they can play what they're dealt instead of playing a curated character they created and are invested in is deeply false. Even if it wasn't, no one truly cares about the 'difficulty' of playing the game. People care whether the game they're playing is fun. Some people find it more fun to be given a bad character by complete randomization and see how far that character gets before it dies. Some people find it more fun to create a bespoke character they can follow for as long as the game allows it to live. neither set of fun is wrong, but mixing your methods doesn't work for either set.
Fetishizing Gygax's words has no real impact on 5e. The man is dead. Yes, he's the Father of D&D, but fifty years later the game has changed. If one wishes for their D&D to be a hardcore roguelike dungeon crawler with no plot to speak of, characters whose lifespans are measured in minutes at best and players who go through thirty sheets a session, then by all means do so. However, it's foolhardy to assume this is the standard mode of play desired by everyone these days. And Gygax's utter nonsense about how players should never be allowed to know the rules of the game can rot in the dirt. That was, is, and always will be a mistake, and I don't care how hard Gygax stood by it. I said it before and I'll say it again: DMs are neither kings nor deities.
Roguelike games are popular, yes. They appeal very strongly to a certain player demographic, and that player demographic is also unfortunately prone to arrogance due to roguelike games' perceived difficulty. The idea that one is a "better player" if they can play what they're dealt instead of playing a curated character they created and are invested in is deeply false. Even if it wasn't, no one truly cares about the 'difficulty' of playing the game. People care whether the game they're playing is fun. Some people find it more fun to be given a bad character by complete randomization and see how far that character gets before it dies. Some people find it more fun to create a bespoke character they can follow for as long as the game allows it to live. neither set of fun is wrong, but mixing your methods doesn't work for either set.
Why do you always assume that anything other than your “bespoke” ideal will by default be a “bad character?!?” Why is there never any allowance in your supposition for a perfectly fine character that may just be different than what you would have otherwise created for yourself? It’s frankly getting a little insulting.
We always had a session 0 whenever possible, we just didn’t call it that back in the ‘90s. We called it “character creation” back then, but the first time I heard d anyone mention session 0 I knew exactly what they were talking about.
Same. When I started in 81 we had a get together specifically to make characters. That was just the norm for us.
We always had a session 0 whenever possible, we just didn’t call it that back in the ‘90s. We called it “character creation” back then, but the first time I heard d anyone mention session 0 I knew exactly what they were talking about.
Same. When I started in 81 we had a get together specifically to make characters. That was just the norm for us.
Yeah, and all that other stuff tended to get worked out in the process.
I enjoy the point buy system, but really miss more randomness between different attributes, but also perhaps between characters in the same campaign. I tend to roll like shit when it matters though, so I would definitely end up with the village idiot if I ever were to do stat rolling in a campaign lol.
It happens. Most DMs I know of who roll will at least let you swap to standard if you roll poorly. As a DM, I also look for areas of struggle to give PCs a boost anyway. So a magic item that boosts Str might come up in a campaign full of Dex or Cha builds and only one Barbarian with low Strength as an example.
It happens. Most DMs I know of who roll will at least let you swap to standard if you roll poorly. As a DM, I also look for areas of struggle to give PCs a boost anyway. So a magic item that boosts Str might come up in a campaign full of Dex or Cha builds and only one Barbarian with low Strength as an example.
This is another reason why I'm not really concerned with how good or bad rolled stat arrays turn out. There are so many things you can do to mitigate this, in whatever direction necessary. It can be frustrating for players if their character has clearly inferior numbers compared to some of the others in the party, sure, but for me as DM? Doesn't really make things harder if players have exceptionally high or low stats, so why would I care beyond the players being happy?
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I believe these were some of the additional methods of generating ability scores in the AD&D DMG. We used 3d6 in order but toward the end of our playing days we did some 4d6kh in order. We never tried any of these but they were there as an option.
Method I:
All scores are recorded and arranged in the order the player desires. 4d6 are rolled, and the lowest die (or one of the lower) is discarded.
Method II:
All scores are recorded and arranged as in Method I. 3d6 are rolled 12 times and the highest 6 scores are retained.
Method III:
Scores rolled are according to each ability category, in order, STRENGTH, INTELLIGENCE, WISDOM, DEXTERITY, CONSTITUTION, CHARISMA. 3d6 are rolled 6 times for each ability, and the highest score in each category is retained for that category.
Method IV:
3d6 are rolled sufficient times to generate the 6 ability scores, in order, for 12 characters. The player then selects the single set of scores which he or she finds most desirable and these scores are noted on the character record sheet.
I’m fine rolling stats and will play whatever I end up with. But I also have dozens of characters I’ve made on DDB using standard array and point buy. And Tasha’s option to rearrange bonuses. I’m fine with any of the methods as long as I get to play.
No one way is good or bad, better or worse. As long as you can have fun do what you like.
There are several methods of generating randomness with a fixed pool. For example, take 18 cards numbered 1-6 (3 times) and deal them out, three per stat. This produces stats in the range 3-18, averaging 10.5 (the same as 3d6), but will always produce an ability total of 63; adjusting the number of each card lets you change the range. I don't terribly recommend a method that is that simple because 18/14/14/8/6/3 is a lot better than 11/11/11/10/10/10 even though they're both 63 points, but more complex variants can work.
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I guarantee they didn’t float seed ideas for season 1, they had already started with Pathfinder and then converted to 5e partway through.
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Why would you play that way then? Part of Session 0 has always been character creation. Then you have a week before session 1 to write your backstory and get to know that character.
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We always had a session 0 whenever possible, we just didn’t call it that back in the ‘90s. We called it “character creation” back then, but the first time I heard d anyone mention session 0 I knew exactly what they were talking about.
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After four years of playing D&D I now think I would be comfortable with rolling stats down the line and creating a character with them, but I would have hated that as a new player.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Yeah but now it's less about character creation and more about table etiquette. You are kinda expected that on S0 you will touch such subjects like phobias, preferences, likes and dislikes, who brings what food, how late is acceptable whether or not you can play drunk or stoned and all that.
I've seen some charts even where people can actually assign colors to various themes of the game (whether they would absolutely love it, be ok with or completely against it).
After that you touch upon house rules, homebrew, setting rules and then last but not least MAYBE character creation.
If your playing with strangers. If you’re playing with friends then one should already know most of that stuff.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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That is an assumption that I KNOW has gotten people in trouble. It's always good to check.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
After 15+ years playing with the same people, if one still needs to check this stuff then one should start taking motes.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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Well yeah, obviously if you play with them that long that it's a non issue. My players are new to D&D though they are not strangers to me - it's actually my brother and his wife and while I know them pretty well, a S0 like that is still required because I had almost zero knowledge of their preference in the context of a D&D game.
"Do you prefer a RP heavy or a combat heavy campaign" or "are you guys comfortable roleplaying a romance scene between each other with me in the room behind a DM screen" are not really questions that come up OUTSIDE of a D&D game even amongs family xDD
If we are sharing personal anecdotes though, I'm going to have to point out that in my experience as DM only a vanishingly small number of characters have ever been submitted to me without some kind of prior consultation first. Players ask about exceptions to table rules, or what the campaign is going to be like (though usually that's the first thing I tell them about when bringing up the subject of a new campaign) or about some background thing that really needs to be handled in agreement with the DM, or they're not sure about how something works, or they think I might be reluctant to have a character type they really want to play in my campaign, or they want to check they're on the right track before putting too much effort in, or any of a dozen other things. I don't think I've ever had to babysit character creation (though I usually do some coaching if the player is an absolute newbie, but that's precisely to make sure things go smoothly and not run into a four hour ordeal).
Going from telling the players we're starting things anew to being ready for that first real session in orderly fashion is largely a matter of organisation and communication. Getting to see players roll their stats doesn't have to be an ordeal.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Fetishizing Gygax's words has no real impact on 5e. The man is dead. Yes, he's the Father of D&D, but fifty years later the game has changed. If one wishes for their D&D to be a hardcore roguelike dungeon crawler with no plot to speak of, characters whose lifespans are measured in minutes at best and players who go through thirty sheets a session, then by all means do so. However, it's foolhardy to assume this is the standard mode of play desired by everyone these days. And Gygax's utter nonsense about how players should never be allowed to know the rules of the game can rot in the dirt. That was, is, and always will be a mistake, and I don't care how hard Gygax stood by it. I said it before and I'll say it again: DMs are neither kings nor deities.
Roguelike games are popular, yes. They appeal very strongly to a certain player demographic, and that player demographic is also unfortunately prone to arrogance due to roguelike games' perceived difficulty. The idea that one is a "better player" if they can play what they're dealt instead of playing a curated character they created and are invested in is deeply false. Even if it wasn't, no one truly cares about the 'difficulty' of playing the game. People care whether the game they're playing is fun. Some people find it more fun to be given a bad character by complete randomization and see how far that character gets before it dies. Some people find it more fun to create a bespoke character they can follow for as long as the game allows it to live. neither set of fun is wrong, but mixing your methods doesn't work for either set.
Please do not contact or message me.
Why do you always assume that anything other than your “bespoke” ideal will by default be a “bad character?!?” Why is there never any allowance in your supposition for a perfectly fine character that may just be different than what you would have otherwise created for yourself? It’s frankly getting a little insulting.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
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Same. When I started in 81 we had a get together specifically to make characters. That was just the norm for us.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Yeah, and all that other stuff tended to get worked out in the process.
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I enjoy the point buy system, but really miss more randomness between different attributes, but also perhaps between characters in the same campaign. I tend to roll like shit when it matters though, so I would definitely end up with the village idiot if I ever were to do stat rolling in a campaign lol.
Altrazin Aghanes - Wizard/Fighter
Varpulis Windhowl - Fighter
Skolson Demjon - Cleric/Fighter
It happens. Most DMs I know of who roll will at least let you swap to standard if you roll poorly. As a DM, I also look for areas of struggle to give PCs a boost anyway. So a magic item that boosts Str might come up in a campaign full of Dex or Cha builds and only one Barbarian with low Strength as an example.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
This is another reason why I'm not really concerned with how good or bad rolled stat arrays turn out. There are so many things you can do to mitigate this, in whatever direction necessary. It can be frustrating for players if their character has clearly inferior numbers compared to some of the others in the party, sure, but for me as DM? Doesn't really make things harder if players have exceptionally high or low stats, so why would I care beyond the players being happy?
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
I believe these were some of the additional methods of generating ability scores in the AD&D DMG. We used 3d6 in order but toward the end of our playing days we did some 4d6kh in order. We never tried any of these but they were there as an option.
I’m fine rolling stats and will play whatever I end up with. But I also have dozens of characters I’ve made on DDB using standard array and point buy. And Tasha’s option to rearrange bonuses. I’m fine with any of the methods as long as I get to play.
No one way is good or bad, better or worse. As long as you can have fun do what you like.
EZD6 by DM Scotty
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/397599/EZD6-Core-Rulebook?
There are several methods of generating randomness with a fixed pool. For example, take 18 cards numbered 1-6 (3 times) and deal them out, three per stat. This produces stats in the range 3-18, averaging 10.5 (the same as 3d6), but will always produce an ability total of 63; adjusting the number of each card lets you change the range. I don't terribly recommend a method that is that simple because 18/14/14/8/6/3 is a lot better than 11/11/11/10/10/10 even though they're both 63 points, but more complex variants can work.