Zero Information

[Stonubis73]

Has anybody out there ever tryed to play a game in which at character creation the players were given no guidelines about what the story was going to be about? This included whether or not its going to be star/fantasy/plain old champions. If we are to build Super heros or just very skilled normals or if its even going to be set on earth.

 

A few weeks ago me and a buddy of mine had an interesting conversation about how it might be fun to do a campaign where all of us, excluding the poor sucker to run it, were to take a 300 point base and just build whatever kind of character we want. That is, limiting the characters to X DC's, Y Armor, and Z OCV/DCV

 

For another little bit of spice, if we were to actually build sed characters, the players would be forbidden to tell each other about what kinda character the other ones were building so that we couldnt go for the "well rounded" group with your typical brick, projector, rogue.

Which brings a thought to mind... Wouldnt it be awesome to run a campaign with just a ton of glass cannons!!!

[Enforcer84]

Re: Zero Information

 

We did something like that a long time ago. It was kind of bizarre. Fun for a bit - but to tell the truth my group was pretty static. I generally played bricks so everyone kind of knew what I was bringing to the table.

[Stonubis73]

Re: Zero Information

 

I wouldnt doubt that it would be bizarre and if we ever did make characters i would try to make the most obscure character i could just to see how the GM deals with it

[Folded]

Re: Zero Information

 

Many of our campaigns run roughly like that. The Players get a variable amount of information ranging from "We're gonna play Horror on the Orient Express" to "Make a super on x points". Given that we've been playing together since forever (I'm the New Guy, and I've been playing with these guys for 20 years), we trust each other enough to do this. We also don't do much of the 'balanced party' thing. My current Champions/Apocalypse campaign has three MAs, a teleporter, a rifleman and a basic EB.

 

The key is the trust. They all know that I'm going to give them something worth playing, and that we can all figure out ways to address any shortcomings the group as a whole has. Of course, it's also a great way of building trust, in the first place. All in all, I highly recommend this method.

[Escafarc]

Re: Zero Information

 

Yes, Once ran a cross-genre game where I didn't tell each player what kind of game it was going to be. Ended up with a psi-cop, a fantasy style knight, a street level superhero, a special forces soldier, and a occult investgator. They each went thru a solo game which ended in their supposed death and then they all woke up in an strange intra-dimintional city where they were pawns of the city's rulers.

[Fearghus]

Re: Zero Information

 

That just sounds annoying to me. I would not mind starting a game not knowing what other players were playing but I would want setting info. Setting effects the things you spend your points on too drastically to not know anything about it. Nor would I want to GM players in a setting they know nothing about.

[Susano]

Re: Zero Information

 

I just started the Well of the Worlds, in which the players started with normals and were told "you'll get power as the games goes." The kicker is, they don't get to pick specific power sets. All they can do is tell me their PC's hopes, dreams, and desires, and let me go from there.

[Talon]

Re: Zero Information

 

I had a campaign idea, never executed, where the players would merely describe their characters in a paragraph -- nothing specific, just general information about the character. Then, the GM would create the characters and the campaign would start...

 

...and it would be a Watership Down campaign.

[RavenX99]

Re: Zero Information

 

That just sounds annoying to me.

 

I'm with you here. I have enough trouble with players who submit characters that are inappropriate for the campaign even when they've been given adequate information.

[Bodkins Odds]

Re: Zero Information

 

Well, if you were going to do this kind of campaign then you would have to plan for no properly built characters to be inappropriate for the campaign. Unless said characters are simply inappropriate, full stop.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Zero Information

 

I had a campaign idea' date=' never executed, where the players would merely describe their characters in a paragraph -- nothing specific, just general information about the character. Then, the GM would create the characters and the campaign would start...[/quote']

I'm seriously considering making this my default character creation method. Maybe allow the players to make tweaks afterward if it doesn't quite fit what they had in mind, but I swear: give a player a pencil and they either look at you with a bewildered stare or try to write themselves in as emperor of the known worlds....

[Markdoc]

Re: Zero Information

 

I had a campaign idea' date=' never executed, where the players would merely describe their characters in a paragraph -- nothing specific, just general information about the character. Then, the GM would create the characters and the campaign would start...[/quote']

 

I actually did this and ran a game that was very well received. What I did was ask the players to select a tarot card that best represented what they wanted their character to be. The PCs awoke - seperated - in different locations, with amnesia. I designed the character sheets and simply fed all the info to the PCs as we played: they had no character sheets, so they could work out "I'm really strong" not "I am STR 30". After a few solo sessions each, they all got together and they had incentive to stick together because they found they all had some things in common: they all had unnatural powers, they all had awoken at the same time with amnesia and someone was trying to kill or capture them.

 

Alas, I had to fold the game when I started writing my PhD - just didn't have time ....

 

cheers, Mark

[Maccabe]

Re: Zero Information

 

This idea reminds me of a GURPS Time Travel Campaign I was in. We were instructed that we could build characters from any historical period we wanted and those characters would be transported to the "present" where we would become a group and go back in time to fix some problems caused by a rogue time traveler.

We had all sorts of characters; A Cowboy, a middle ages "magic-user", a martial artist Zen master among others.

[Lucius]

Re: Zero Information

 

I actually did this and ran a game that was very well received. What I did was ask the players to select a tarot card that best represented what they wanted their character to be. The PCs awoke - seperated - in different locations, with amnesia. I designed the character sheets and simply fed all the info to the PCs as we played: they had no character sheets, so they could work out "I'm really strong" not "I am STR 30". After a few solo sessions each, they all got together and they had incentive to stick together because they found they all had some things in common: they all had unnatural powers, they all had awoken at the same time with amnesia and someone was trying to kill or capture them.

 

Alas, I had to fold the game when I started writing my PhD - just didn't have time ....

 

cheers, Mark

 

You mean, that WASN'T for your PHD?

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Palindromedary Here Daily

[Fearghus]

Re: Zero Information

 

I had a campaign idea' date=' never executed, where the players would merely describe their characters in a paragraph -- nothing specific, just general information about the character. Then, the GM would create the characters and the campaign would start...[/quote']

 

This is a great way to introduce new players to the system. It is how I was introduced, and it worked really well. I got an idea what the numbers meant and how they related to each other before trying to build my first character. So that when I did build my first character I realized how much Defense I needed vs. how many dice my attacks should be. vs. what my CVs should be to be effective.