Goodman Games

I absolutely love purple sorcerer's character generator. We've used it to generate several parties for the 0 level funnel with great success. It got me to wondering though, how do you all use the funnel in your games?

We've tried generating four characters per player randomly, 3d6 assigned as they fall, using purple sorcerer's generator. We've also tried everyone generating a character they liked (i.e. picking a background that suited the character they eventually wanted, rolling 3d6 but assigning where they wanted, etc.), but we've found that the random funnel method really is the most enjoyable for us. It just feels so much more organic and "real" in a lot of ways. It also adds a level of unpredictability and creates really memorable characters.

One thing we've started doing is having everyone roll four randomly, and players can then "swap" their four for another player's four if they have a character they really want. Also, if you don't like at least one of your four, you can re-roll and take a fresh sheet of four characters. We've found this works really well for us.

What about you guys? What methods do you use?

I was also curious about how much backstory your players provide to their funnel characters. We've found that of the four randoms rolled, players typically identify the character (or if they're lucky, the two characters) they really like. This one gets a fleshed out backstory, whereas the others are more or less treated as fodder, and the favorite character typically leads them from behind (i.e. no one wants to invest the time into providing a backstory to the rutabega farmer with two 4's for stats and 1 hit point).

What norms have you guys started to fall into when generating a new group?

(I've also noticed how often my players refer to their newbies as "funnel meat," "fodder," and "my next recently deceased PC.")

My group generate (by hand with the truest dice we have available) 3 or 4 characters per player (a total of 16 to 24 PCs) depending on how many players are participating in the game.

We have a customized race & occupation chart that allows us to play in the Wilderlands of High Fantasy setting, along with a d24-based Birth Circumstance chart that determines how the character's Luck modifier affects them (I didn't like the chart that comes in the book).

The only other changes to how their characters are generated, played, or progress that we have made are simple stuff - a different language chart to match the setting we play in, slightly different racial modifications (with less potent effects) to allow for any race to pick any of the 6 classes we use (we don't have dwarf, elf, or halfling classes but we have added in monk and psion)... and each race gets a +1 to a specific ability score (still a max of 18) and each class gets a +1 to one score from a choice of three that the class benefits from the most (still with a max of 18) - rules which we added because we wanted each race to have a "lean" toward a certain type of character, but also wanted it to be more "you can play any stats as any class you want and not have a terrible character" than it already was.

The only time the players "swap" characters is when one player has run out of living PCs, at which point someone with an extra PC chooses one of theirs and hands it over.

As for the amount of personality and backstory... my players are the sort of people that can, and do, come up with loads of story and personality simply by the process of us all sitting down to roll up characters - much more, in fact, than when the same people are given the opportunity to pick-and-choose-build a character of the exact type that they would like to play.

We've rolled the PCs by hand, even knowing about the Purple Sorcerer tool, because it's fun to roll dice We did PC generation step-by-step, everyone at once, before we started play in the first session. Took under an hour.

Backstory: considering we started play immediately after character creation, they had for backstory what they had time to come up with while rolling their PC. Some had nothing, some had a few elements. We usually play with time to prepare detailed backgrounds; I liked that this was more the "come up with it when need arises" approach. During the games, I ask questions about some PCs when it is somewhat relevant. For example, "what does your shaman do in this village?", when the shaman's background could possibly influence what he knew about a story-related event.

TheNobleDrake wrote:to allow for any race to pick any of the 6 classes we use (we don't have dwarf, elf, or halfling classes but we have added in monk and psion)...

TND: would you be willing to share your class build info, if you haven't done so already?

My guys roll them, by hand. Even at demos and conventions, I'll have everyone make 0-level characters at the beginning. It also allows me to teach the particulars. The experienced folks can also help.

I printed out about 5 sheets of Purple Sorceror pregens then had each player pick a whole sheet, no cutting allowed!

Skyscraper wrote:TND: would you be willing to share your class build info, if you haven't done so already?

I plan on doing so once they've been a bit more hammered out at my table - they are kind of rough right now and I am a stickler for quality when it comes to sharing things with others.

TheNobleDrake wrote:

Skyscraper wrote:TND: would you be willing to share your class build info, if you haven't done so already?

I plan on doing so once they've been a bit more hammered out at my table - they are kind of rough right now and I am a stickler for quality when it comes to sharing things with others.

Fair enough, thank you for even considering it! The monk is of particular interest to be because I've introduced them in my story. (Also the druid, while we're here.)

reverenddak wrote:My guys roll them, by hand. Even at demos and conventions, I'll have everyone make 0-level characters at the beginning. It also allows me to teach the particulars. The experienced folks can also help.

Me too.

The Purple Sorcerer autogen thing is really nice, and I play with it all the time, but I think part of the overall game experience is in tossing the bones and building each character by hand.

I allow the PS generator, but in practice everyone likes to roll dice for tabletop games. OTOH, we do use the blank PS sheets to create these characters, so I am still indebted to Jon Marr!