How do you run a character generation session, especially with a newbie?

[Poppyseed45]

I have this case where, probably in 2-3 months, I'll be running a different game (currently running D&D 5e now) and my plan is to pitch some kind of GURPS game (so, still figuring out the setting, but I've ideas). Anyway, the thing is, I'm very much enamored of doing group character generation; lets us all get on the same page of how the game will be, how the characters fit together as a group, etc etc. I did it with a previous Reign game, and after that the current 5e game, and it's worked really well.

The thing is, we have a newbie in the 5e game. She's totally new to RPGs, she's played two whole sessions so far (but enjoyed them greatly) and will be around for the next campaign I'm sure. I REALLY want to run GURPS, but I want to make character generation as smooth as I can. We have her, the newbie, and there's another player in the group that has very little...tolerance, for character generation (which is hilarious, since he wants deep characterization and lots of perks and what not, but doesn't want to do the work to get them!; another rant for another day).

In any case, how can I make character generation in GURPS as painless as possible? Like, in terms of what happens on game day and we do this as a group. Of course I have one copy of Characters, and I have the pdf of GURPS Basic Set. One guy will have a laptop handy so that's no worry, but the couple (characterization guy and newbie girl) don't have any devices except phones. I'll have my tablet to use as well.

How can this work? Obviously, I can do templates, and that'll cut some work (but again, them seeing the templates will be harder, since there aren't exactly enough devices). That lets me "pre-generate" most of the character. But what else? Folks?

[trooper6]

Here's how I'd do it, considering your situation.

A few weeks before the D&D game ends I'd talk up the next game, the setting, some info about it...set them to buy into the concept.

Then two weeks before the game ends, I'd send them a one page descriptor of the campaign and the sort of characters that would be appropriate.

On the last day of the D&D campaign, after the session is over, after you've decompressed a bit, I'd have a quasi character generations session--but no books. Just have them talk about concepts. See if people want to play siblings...basically get them to talk through their concepts...and take lots of notes.

Then when you are home alone, go through all the books about right down the options and ideas that seem relevant to that idea. The advantages, discs, skills, etc. Don't make the character for the player...but pre-think all the work.

Then meet each player individually and go through character creation with them. Show them how to build a character, show them the things that seem to describe what they wanted, work with them to make the character. For the newbie, take the character creation process as an opportunity to teach her a few of the rules. If you like, you can do a little individual encounter for them to get a sense of how things work and get to know their character a bit...then let them do some adjustments based on how that went.

Then you all meet up for the first session after all the characters are done.

[Phantasm]

The one thing I do before any character generation begins is start laying out the world and genre expectations. A few questions I ask myself are:

1. Is it going to be heavy combat or light?
2. How big are social traits going to be?
3. What are the genre conventions/tropes that I expect to enforce, lampshade, invert, or subvert? Which ones are going to go against the game I'm trying to run?
4. How cinematic is the game, and which cinematic switches are in play?
5. Are there any character concepts I won't permit?

After that, I begin to think about points. Sometimes - as in my current GURPS Rifts game and a possible superhero game I was thinking of running - I'll base the point value on the character concept pitched at me. Obviously, a Dungeon Fantasy, Action, After the End, or Monster Hunters game will have different concepts, and potentially different point values.

After all of that, I start listening to concepts. The first session in a tabletop, or a few weeks before the first session online, I don't even bring up points or builds; I simply ask the potential players what their concepts are. Of course during this time I'm taking notes to help them build their characters, but I don't want chargenning to even start before the concepts are solidified.

This process doesn't always work; I've had people beg me for point values so they can start crafting their characters long before I've gotten to the group "what are your concepts?" stage. But I don't think that'll be a problem for your group.

I've had players that don't like templates, and others that think that you really shouldn't deviate from the templates. (Most of the latter are coming from That Other Game, though, used to class-based systems. The worst was one guy - I call him Putz online - whose entire concept was "first edition halfling", and didn't seem to understand that I had never played first-edition D&D to know what in the Nine Hells he was talking about. Not to mention it sounded really one-dimensional.) In your case, I think you should discuss character concepts with the group, then hand out a few templates to the new girl and Mr. Low Tolerance with various options for customization that can fit their concepts. A "Here's what your concept needs in order to work, now pick three items from Column A, two to four from Column B, and four from Column C, plus the five Quirks to round out the character. Oh, here's my recommendations, but feel free to pick others if you think they'd fit better." Be sure to explain the oddball or very similar cases (like the difference between Honesty and Truthfulness, for example).


This help?

[Gollum]

Sorry if this post is a bit long but introducing new players to GURPS is one of my specialty. I’m not saying that I am one of the best to do it. Not at all! But I just did it a lot of times and every time I did it, players had fun ... So, I suppose I’m quite good. And I’ve got some hints that can be helpful ...

Trooper6 is right. The key words with newbies in GURPS character creation is "help" and "ordinary terms". Help them. Help them to describe what they want in ordinary terms and make the translation in GURPS terms for them. Even with those who are used to other roleplaying games!

Indeed, GURPS character creation can be a nightmare for newcomers. Not because it is harder than in any other roleplaying games, but just because it offers so many possibilities that it is more complex to choose your abilities, and especially to make the right choices which will really get you what you want.

Look at the thread How important are basic attributes compared to skills? Not the whole thread, of course; just the first post. It begins with a player who created a character which wasn’t able to do what he supposed he was: throwing televisions and whiskey bottles to hit a zombie…

Other roleplaying games are easier. Especially D&D. You choose a race, then a class, and it automatically gives you a lot of abilities which will be helpful during the game. GURPS doesn’t. Once you chose your basic attributes, you have nothing but skin and bones and if these attributes are not very high (when you play in a "realistic" campaign, for instance), they don’t give you defaults high enough to be able to do what you want.

Without the appropriate skill, a DX 11 character who throw a ball without taking time to aim, for instance, has only 25% chance to hit a human size target at 2 yards!

So, when I run a game with newcomers, I help them a lot. For every step. I ask them to describe their character in ordinary terms. Then, I convert these ordinary terms in GURPS abilities. I don’t let them choose abilities in a list. I just ask them what they want, give them some examples when they do hesitate, and choose the stats for them - with their approval, of course.

This is very important with beginners. Because, there are a lot of traps. Not because GURPS author did a bad work. To the contrary. They did and go on doing an amazing work! There are a lot of traps because GURPS is generic and universal. Which means that you can play in any universe, but also in any genre (harshly realistic, realistic, cinematic, crazily heroic, super-heroic, and so on). And GURPS is designed to make all that possible with the same set of rules. So, attributes scores and skill levels don’t always have the same meaning. It all depends on the campaign.

Let’s suppose that a player wants a strong character. What does mean "strong"? In a realistic modern day adventure, 12 is very strong. 13 and 14 are exceptional. So, 14 perfectly fits for someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, it is not strong enough for Conan the Barbarian. Because Conan lives in a fantasy heroic world. Then, for him, it will be at minimum 17 or 18. Likewise for a cinematic genius, IQ 18 is fine. It gives all mental skills (even the hardest ones) at level 12 or better for free. Which is a professional level! But that is no problem, because cinematic geniuses like Walter Bishop (in Fringe TV series) or Walter O’Brian (In Scorpion TV series) know how to do everything, often better than true professionals. But in a realistic campaign, it doesn’t fit at all. Einstein was brilliant, of course, but he wasn’t as good as a professional in every possible mental skill …

Attribute levels depend on the campaign, and a beginner absolutely cannot know that. So, when you let him describe what he wants in ordinary terms (I want a guy as strong as Schwarzenegger or as bright as Einstein), it is a better ideay to find for him the right numbers, those which will really fit to the precise kind of game you want to run.

Likewise, lists of advantages, disadvantages and skills are huge. And beginners are often lost. Even if you give them shorter lists without all what doesn’t fit to your game world.

Sometimes, new players tend to forget things that they would have needed. See Dr Kromm's list of "Everyman" skill for that.

Some other times, they choose things that they don’t really want during the game. Truthfulness is a good example here. A beginner often believes that it is a little disadvantage, with no real consequence. And 5 points is very tempting: it is more than +1 to one skill. Now, in GURPS, mental disadvantage are not just personality traits; they are true mental problems! Someone with Truthfulness is not just someone who doesn’t like lying; it is someone who most often cannot do it, even when he should. Newcomers ignore that. Here again, asking them what they want in ordinary terms will solve this kind of problem. "I want a character who doesn’t like lying – OK, that’s just a perk. 1 character point."

I never used templates. I find that they really speed up the game when players are used to the system: they take the template they want and easily fine tune it as they want ... Now, with a newbie, the main problems remains. "And if I take Truthfulness, do I have 5 points more to spend somewhere else? – Yes, but do you really want to play someone who isn’t able to lie even when he should?" Furthermore, looking at template sheets can be frightening. There are a lot of numbers, abbreviations, square brackets … Explaining newcomers each stat, step by step, as you fill the character sheet with them, is far much less repellent.

My last hint would be: take all your time. There is nothing more frustrating than a game in which you suddenly realize that your character is not at all what you supposed he was.

If your players want to start fast, give them pregenerated characters to choose. It eliminates the possible frustration because they won't have created the character they will chose. So, learning to know him or her during play will be normal.

Oh! A last hint ... Try to write your character sheets without abbreviations!

"Fast-Draw (Knife) (E) DX+1 [2]-14" is unreadable for a newbie. He will constantly ask you what means "E", "DX", if his level is "+1", "2" or "14" … Something like: "Fast-Draw (Knife), Easy skill, Dexterity+1, 14 [2]", with the [2] more little than the 14, is much more understandable, even if it takes a bit more space on the sheet.

[Snoman314]

If you haven't already, you might consider checking out How to be a GURPS GM, it contains a couple of pages of advice on this topic. That said, some of that advice is the same as presented here.

I definitely agree with the opinions given so far, that doing this in one step probably isn't the best way. To avoid getting lost in all the options, and experiencing analysis paralysis as a result, it's important to have a solid character concept at the start. Trooper and Phantasm are spot-on that you need to brief the players on the setting and campaign first. Then the players can develop ideas for characters, and last of all start filling out character sheets.

Another thing that isn't strictly GURPS specific, but I think will help, is thinking about the group as a whole. As espoused by the likes of Fear the Boot, and as the Mook says in How To Be A GURPS GM, the game will go better if the PCs are all part of a team at the start of the game. If the players start discussing ideas for their characters in a group context, then two things usually happen: You get more interesting characters, and you get characters more likely to make for a fun game together as a group.

There's some good advice in this thread already. My own advice would be much the same as trooper's, with some additions and slight changes.
- Prime the pump weeks in advance, get players thinking about cool character ideas.
- have a pre-campaign session where players discuss their character concepts. You might find the Character Creation Walkthrough PDF on the Mook's website useful. It's basically a system-less questionnaire to get the player to fully articulate their character concept.
- I too would then do most of the work without the players. Create some almost complete characters that achieve the player's intent as described in the the previous session. Leave a some customisation options open - a bit like a template, but in simpler language. Kinda like Phantasm said:

... pick three items from Column A, two to four from Column B, and four from Column C, plus the five Quirks to round out the character. Oh, here's my recommendations, but feel free to pick others if you think they'd fit better.

- The difference being, I wouldn't give new players templates from the books, (the formatting can be quite hard to understand at first) but a distilled summary of options for them to choose from, as Gollum stressed: in plain language.
- Lastly I'd finalise all the characters with all the players present, just prior to the first game. I'm a big believer in keeping all the players in the loop on all the characters, to help with group cohesion between the PCs. If you've done the groundwork on the initial character sheets, in line with the player's requests from the character concept session and questionnaire, finalising the last few options on the character shouldn't take long.

I like the idea of going from there to the game in medias res, with a small inconsequential encounter, not necessarily combat, to let the players try out the key mechanics of their characters immediately. That way if it's not what they had in mind you find out straight away, and can tweak before the next game.

[Poppyseed45]

Wow! Everyone here is awesome! Thank you all for the advice! I'll use these as my notes then on the process, and I think that gives me a pretty good direction to be pointed in.

[whswhs]

I ran one just six days ago, with two newbies, one who had played only 3/e, and two who knew 4/e rather well.

I started out asking the players what brought their characters together and how long they'd known each other, and encouraged them to pick concepts that dovetailed. Then I handed out lists of variant character build options. I primarily worked with the newbies after that. The single hardest thing for them to get, I think, was the concept that you have both (a) a level of a stat or skill and (b) a point cost for the stat or skill. Once they got that, they were able to start choosing things. Their characters were a little simple by GURPS standards—one of them was clearly the muscle, with high scores on all physical stats, but IQ 8—but I think they'll both be playable.

Discussing character concepts and team goals strikes me as the really vital step, whether your players are neos or old hands.

[shawnhcorey]

Templates!

Templates are GURPS version of classes. Put together a set of templates for your world. A soldier, a doctor, a rogue. These will give your players ideas for their characters. There are lists of templates in this thread over in the GURPS Resources forum.

And unused templates aren't wasted; they can be used for NPCs. :)

[CraigM]

How I do it:

1) Ask them to tell me what sort of character they want to play, in plain English terms.

2) If they can't think of anything, or want something inappropriate for the setting, tell them a bit about the world and make some suggestions. If they wanted something inappropriate, try to find a suitable analog; e.g. a warrior-wizard with appropriate spells for the player who wants to be a Jedi in a fantasy campaign, etc.

3) Once they've settled on what they want, I go off and make up a PC that fits their description.

4) Show them the character I made, explain any special abilities or exceptional skills it might have, give them a basic idea of how stats and skills work.

5) Ask them what they want to change about the character. They can change anything they want, within the point budget; no argument from the GM, it's their character.

6) Make those changes, show the revised character to the player, ask them if there's anything else they want changed.

7) Repeat step 6 until they're happy with it.

That's how I did for all of the PCs in the game at https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/possibl...rpg-game/83289 & https://bbs.boingboing.net/t/gurps-b...e-thread/83574

The players there were all experienced roleplayers but GURPS novices. Seems to be working well so far.

[trooper6]

I want to say that it has been important to me NOT to make the characters for my players in their absence. I never present them a done character for them to adjust. I will 100% pre-plan ideas based on character concept, so much so that I *could* make the character myself, but I don't.

Why? Because a) it often makes the player feel less ownership over the character and b) it is a missed opportunity to teach the player GURPS rules in th context of character creation.

Let's say I've told the players we are playing a city based noir inspired fantasy game that focuses on the underbelly of the capital. And a player tells me they want to play the tavern singer homme fatale. They want him to be smooth and seductive, a face sort of character. So I do my pre-research and get some ideas for appropriate advantages/disadvantages/skills.

Then we sit down and I start. I say...
So GURPS is a point based game and you get 150 points to buy whatever you want. The first thing to think about are Attributes. (Here I explain the four attributes and that what they do). I explain that they might want the spend between 80-100cp on attributes...and we go through it.

Then I explain Advantages and say they could spend up 50 points on those...I point out the Talent Smooth Operator; I explain Charisma, I explain Voice.

After that is done I explain Disadvantages and how they can give you more points. I point out Lecherousness and maybe Enemy...Compulsive Carousing. We talk about it.

After the Disads are done, we talk skills. I point out the usual sorts of skills you'd expect. And then we go through that.

The we get equip and we are done...the player feels like they made their own character and they've learned some of how GURPS works.