The late, lamented Eric Wujcik classically used a 'character auction' as a means of inserting stress into the character generation process.
To put it one way, he wasn't fond of the way that a character is under no stress during the time that his player writes his background, whereas in the real world we're under stress all the time and we're always making tradeoffs in our lives with our limited time and abilities. The character auction forces that stress into the generation process.
Ooh. Point. Ok, I stand corrected; Everway wasn't the first formalized group character creation system I encountered; Amber was. But I think Amber's system is almost the exact opposite of Everway's system (and of group pitch sessions), although it can result in some of the same results. Rather than focus on drawing connections between the characters and becoming invested in one another's characters through shared creation (even if Everway's shared creation is primarily in the form of questions), it focuses on the competition for central positions and competitive investment (e.g., who's going to end up with the smallest amount of Bad Stuff, or even Good Stuff). The auction -can- help players differentiate one anothers' characters and avoid schtick dilution, but the emphasis on secrecy makes it hard to call it "shared" character creation.
Word! We used to just spend a whole session working on the characters, especially when we were playing CoC. You know what's extra fun is when the GM adds a special extra "surprise" element to the character -- like a special heirloom, a lost relative who could reappear, or a previously unlocked inner gift. If I were GM-ing these days, that's what I would do to make it feel less "player vs. GM" and more about the GM leading the player into the story. It's sort of an appetizer to the game itself.
This is somewhat similar to something I have long said: Part of what separates experienced from inexperienced game designers is learning to listen to what players say they want and hearing what they really want :-)
stepping aside from chargen for a moment, I see you're doing anthropology. Maybe you already know about what Bourdieu identified as (paraphrasing) the opacity of mastery - if so, yeah, that. if not... well, I find it useful as an idea.
If a player is encountering the rules for the first time they're likely to ask a bunch of questions you can use as a designer. If, however, they're in a position where they can make meaningful tactical decisions in dialogue with the rules then they're likely not only not to say what they're doing, but to be unable to say what they're doing, since they're processing somewhere higher up than the level of game mechanics. Then they'll tell you about chargen (if at all) only through play, if and when their decisions pay off and they're satisfied rather than surprised.
Re character creation -- extended group character creation -- and by extension, the pitch session, is hugely important tech that only really came into its own last decade (although the first formalized group character creation session I know of was Everway, it didn't do the kind of "full game consensus pitch" that Prime Time Adventure and The Shadows of Yesterday do, which can really get the group on the same page).
It's not necessary to get everyone into the same depth of creation as everyone else. But getting everyone invested in the premise of the game and in one another's characters can make a huge difference on the quality of play.
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To put it one way, he wasn't fond of the way that a character is under no stress during the time that his player writes his background, whereas in the real world we're under stress all the time and we're always making tradeoffs in our lives with our limited time and abilities. The character auction forces that stress into the generation process.
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Word! We used to just spend a whole session working on the characters, especially when we were playing CoC. You know what's extra fun is when the GM adds a special extra "surprise" element to the character -- like a special heirloom, a lost relative who could reappear, or a previously unlocked inner gift. If I were GM-ing these days, that's what I would do to make it feel less "player vs. GM" and more about the GM leading the player into the story. It's sort of an appetizer to the game itself.
Reply
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If a player is encountering the rules for the first time they're likely to ask a bunch of questions you can use as a designer. If, however, they're in a position where they can make meaningful tactical decisions in dialogue with the rules then they're likely not only not to say what they're doing, but to be unable to say what they're doing, since they're processing somewhere higher up than the level of game mechanics. Then they'll tell you about chargen (if at all) only through play, if and when their decisions pay off and they're satisfied rather than surprised.
In short, yeah. I feel for you.
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It's not necessary to get everyone into the same depth of creation as everyone else. But getting everyone invested in the premise of the game and in one another's characters can make a huge difference on the quality of play.
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