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Originally Posted by Xplo
- Also remember that you're free to forbid disadvantages or even entire characters if they're inappropriate for your game. In this case, you might have looked at the Intolerant dwarf and said "hey, wait, this isn't going to work with the elf in the party!" You could then have pointed out that PCs shouldn't consider each other scum before they've even met and you'd like him to make his character fit with the rest of the party.
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Yes, yes, a million times yes. Before anyone starts getting down and dirty spending character points and scribbling/moving electrons in character design, each player should, in public or in private, sketch out a character concept and motivation with you. If your vision of your world (for example) has Dwarves and Elves as implacable, bitter, irreconcilable enemies, then you need to know whether (a) the group you're doing is not going to work, having half dwarves and half elves, or (b) you better reconfigure your racial templates to make that party unusual, strained ("I'll be dead before I see the Ring in the hands of an Elf!"), but viable.
Also, you want to make sure that advantages, disads, and character archetypes, if any, fit with your world. If you have a society where men are second class citizens and considered valuable property or slaves, it will strain credulity to have seven "freemen" walking around the Capital. Or a mutant one-eyed cripple, who's somehow the Captain of His Majesty's Own Royal Commandos.
Some of these discussions will lead to really cool new plot points; others will head major campaign issues off at the pass. In any case, they're worth having.