Post originally by Patrick Riley at 2003-07-08 10:40:46
Converted from Phorums BB System

<I>Well feats are given to characters as they adventure. Has nothing to do with background and personality.

Skills? ... Doesn't have much to do with background and personality.</I>

You are kidding, right? When you make a character, the skills and abilities you choose are defined by its background. It's personality is reflected in the choices you make.

The game system does not *force* you to create a personality or background--that is always up to the maturity and experience of the player. Everway is better in this way because more emphasis is written into rule book, but the rules do not enforce deep characterization.

<I>"Yep. I'm good at spotting things. Sher am. When I was a kid, I used to go around just spotting stuff. Got reeeeaaal good at it too."</I>

This is just laziness on the part of the player. This can happen in any system, including Everway.

<I>All these tools you speak of are things that happen AFTER the character creation process; they're part of the character building process. The first thing one should do is design a basic character concept -- background, personality, goals, etc. After they've done that, then get to the numbers, and let the concept define where you spend your chargen points.</I>

It may for you, but not for everybody. Personally, I use a mixture. Sometimes I come up with an idea first. Sometimes I get inspiration from the list of disadvantages. Sometimes I start with a concept and layer deeper ideas and concepts as I allocate point and make choices on which abilities to take. Sometimes the character takes 5 minutes--sometimes it takes 5 days to fully form.

<I>Experienced RPGers know better. But a game that generally introduces people to roleplaying should make a better effort at explaining the real nature of roleplaying. That's it not just about smacking down orcs.</I>

This sounds like a rant against D&D rather than praise for Everway. Your posts have painted a picture of powergaming D&D players. However, sophisticated roleplayers can also play D&D and use the character creation process in D&D to create interesting, deep, dynamic characters. These people do not need Everway to make good characters. But all of Everway's elegance and useful tools will be completely lost on powergaming D&D players.

-- Patrick
www.xenongames.com