Character Creation Challenge: Post Mortem

 

Image courtesy of TardisCaptain's Blog of Holding

Well, that was certainly a month. 

I got it done, in that I posted 31 characters for 31 games I wasn't particularly familiar with, all within 31 days, and I never fell more than a day behind at any point during the challenge. So, achievement unlocked.

But what did I learn from it? One of my goals was to make a better acquaintance with all of these games I had sitting around in my closet and on my hard drive. How did I do on that count? Not so well, I think. There was a decided If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium quality to my 31-days-31-games plan, racing from system to system without a lot of time to process what I'd just done. In a lot of cases, possibly most of them, I never got much past the character generation rules to get a feel for the game as a whole. (For instance, despite spending what must have been a dozen hours creating a character for Universe, I find that I still have very little idea of how the game is actually played. And although that's the most obvious example, it's far from the only one.)

Not surprisingly, I think the games I learned the most about were those with simpler rules systems: Wushu, Barbarians of Lemuria, Soap, Princess of the Universe. There were also a few games where earlier I'd spent some time really grappling with the rulebook, and doing the challenge helped me understand the game better: Legends of the Wulin, My Life with Master, and Capes are probably the best examples. Coyote and Crow might also fit into this category, but its release was late in 2021 and I hadn't got far into my first reading before I decided to include it in the project, so it's not quite something I picked up anew after laying aside months or years ago.

So which games, if any, am I more excited about now than I was at the beginning of the challenge? Not many, to be honest. The big surprise on that count is Barbarians of Lemuria; despite my reservations about the setting (which are pretty easily remedied, I think), I found the system really appealing--simple, but flexible and with enough moving parts to feel like different characters will play differently. Wushu also rose a little in my estimation, though I wasn't quite as impressed by it; I like both its similarities to and its differences from Risus (a system I've played quite a lot of), and I'm curious to see how it plays at the table (or on the Discord server, these days). (In both cases I was working from free-download versions and have since purchased expanded PDF editions.) On the flip side, I don't think any of the games turned out to be disappointments; then again, I don't think I went into the project with the kind of expectations that were likely to be disappointed. 

There were some games that I approached with an interest in playing that didn't dim after the character-creation experience: Capes, Coyote and Crow, Lancer, Legends of the Wulin, The Well. And then there are the games where I may have been in the right mental space to play them when I bought or downloaded them, but not so much these days, in particular Unknown Armies and My Life with Master, and making a character had little to do with the change in interest. But most of the games I used for this project were just games I had lying around and hadn't done much if anything with yet--stuff that I'd received as gifts (Universe), or as part of a PDF bundle (Colonial Gothic), or that I'd bought used because they were inexpensive and seemed kind of interesting (Soap).

As far as the characters themselves are concerned, well, I suppose it's to be expected that some would stick with me more than others. Time spent on creation was less a factor than whether a particular concept grabbed me (though time spent creating backstory was much more significant than time spent on calculating characteristics or spending character points), and of course characters created later in the month also have a certain advantage in claiming memory space. If I had to pick five favorites, I'd most likely go with these (in no particular order):

Big Lu, amiable lunkhead with a heart as big as his muscles, for Legends of the Wulin. Big Lu wasn't even my original character concept for this game, but he just sort of showed up. And he was perfect--for me, anyhow.*

Zara the Cutlass, farm girl turned dancer turned pirate turned mercenary, for Barbarians of Lemuria. I like the way the career system in BoL provides a quick method for building backstory, and I think I'd have a lot of fun playing this character.

Taga, smartass detective, for Coyote and Crow. I just think this would be a fun character to play in the very cool setting the Coyote and Crow designers gave us.

Cornelia Vane, scheming second-tier heel, for Soap. I don't know that I actually want to play the game, but something about this character just jelled and I'm very pleased with her and the little world I put her in.**

Dr. Daniels, time-traveling brain in a jar, for Timewatch. It's really the "brain in a jar" thing. No other reason, I just really like the idea of playing a brain in a jar.

I think there was a definite cost to undertaking the challenge. Not necessarily a large one, but a cost. I didn't quite let this project take over my life for the month, but I feel as though it came close. It bled into my work time, my family time, my housework time, and my gaming time; and it almost completely ate up my exercise time. I was thinking about it almost constantly--what's tomorrow's game? what sort of character do I want to make? what will I have time for? when will I fit in Ars Magica/Legends of the Wulin/Universe? how should I answer these character background questions? I think that better planning and a more measured approach might have helped me balance the challenge with the rest of my life--but then again, it's entirely possible that it would have sucked up nearly as much of my attention anyhow, as a New Thing with a Built-In Deadline is wont to do. (Certainly I saw Parkinson's Law strike me more than once last month, as games that should have required only an hour or two ballooned into five- or six-hour projects because I felt I had time to research details that I wouldn't have done with more complex systems.)

So, what now? I plan on taking the challenge up again next year, though within a more manageable set of boundaries. Until then, I'll post occasionally but less frequently; I have some other gaming-related stuff floating around that I've hoped to find a home for, and this is as good a place to put it as any. Until then, thanks for reading.

 

*I'm no wuxia expert, but Lu seems kind of simple by the standards of the genre, where AFAICT complex webs of relationships and motivations are more the norm.
**Also, I'm still inordinately tickled by the name "Mason Carpenter."