It seems to me that character generation systems ultimately are limiters; they are designed to be limiters.  In every case, they have the function of establishing the minimums and maximums for characteristics of a player character.

  Dice-based and other randomized systems do this essentially by determining the possible range for each ability.  In a well-designed system of that sort, player characters will predominantly be better than the average bear, as it were, and the degree of difference between them will be sufficient to make play interesting without causing one character to dominate every situation.

  Point-based systems, in the main, achieve the same outcome by limiting the total power that can be purchased for a character, and allowing the player to spread that power in whatever generalist or specialist manner is desired.  In most such games it pays to be a specialist, because there aren’t enough points to be “good at everything” and being “above average at everything” doesn’t play well.  Thus the differences between characters arise from the choices made to prioritize one aspect over another, because prioritizing is essential .  I have more than once played characters who were generalists, whose objective was to be at least competent at everything and then to get better at everything over time.  In a point-based system (indeed, in almost any game) there always is the temptation to create the superb generalist, the jack-of-all-trades who could do everything, and do everything well, the character we only meet in fiction, such as The Great Leslie (in The Great Race) or The Dread Pirate Roberts (in The Princess Bride).  The limitation of points prevents this character from being created, and so prevents one player from dominating the game because his character can do it all.

  Ability pool systems are similar.  If everything the characters need to know how to do is dropped into a pool and then divided among the players equitably, you again prevent anyone from dominating the game.  You can’t have something if someone else has it.  Some call this niche protection.  This is a particular sort of play balance that in essence means that whatever your character’s strengths are, they will matter in play because they are relevant and no one else has them.  Generalist characters are the enemy of niche protection; on the other hand, if niche protection is pressed too far, the loss of one character can cripple the group.

  Even modern “narrativist” character creation games have these built-in limiters.  A game will often say something like, “give your character five descriptors”, and think that this has eliminated the limitations.  What it has done is shifted the limits to those descriptors.  I can now use those descriptors either as a generalist or as a specialist.  If I use them for specialization, I’m going to be very good in a limited area; if I spread them out, I’m going to be adequate in more things.

  At first blush, Multiverser would seem to have ignored all of these limiters.  The rules start with the idea of creating yourself as a character, and thus the limitation for most characters is whether they adequately and accurately define the players.  If you declare yourself equal to an Olympic medalist as a swimmer, the referee might well challenge you to provide some sort of evidence that you’re that good, whereas if you merely say that you’ve got professional training as a life guard and were a member of the swim team in college you’ll probably get professional, but not expert, level in this.  But then, the rules allow you to play the not I character as well.  At this point, the player is imagining what he wants to be.  If he takes a character from elsewhere, such as playing James Bond or Luke Skywalker or My elf fighter/magic-user from the D&D game we use to play, the limitations carry over from there.  But if he merely says, this is my character idea, it could be absolutely anything, and there are no mechanical limits on that.  Yet there is a subjective limit included:  the player has to clear his character with the referee.  Personally I can barely imagine a character I wouldn’t approve; but then, I can always bring the level of the game up to match the level of the character.  Multiverser’s design is freeform; that is, character creation is about defining the character in game terms, not about creating the character through game mechanics.  As it’s usually played as an I-game, it comes down to trying to represent yourself as accurately as possible in the game; but in those cases where you are playing someone else (or the referee is creating non-player characters) it is the same process:  understand who the character is, then put him on paper as you’ve imagined him.

  I would like to look more deeply at other methods of character generation.  Random systems and point-based systems both have much to commend them, and much that is problematic.  This week, though, we’ll just expand on this notion of freeform character generation by looking at another way to do it.

  Have each player take a piece of paper and write up a character concept.  He should include the name of the character, any description he thinks important, and an idea of who the character is including what kinds of abilities he has without reference to system mechanics .  Thus for Flash Gordon’s Dr. Zarkov, we might write

Brilliant scientist whose theories put him a bit outside traditional scientific circles and thus forced him to develop skills in a vast array of technologies in order to continue his work building equipment to explore space.

  For Flash himself, it would read

All-American football player in the handsome hero mold with plenty of physical prowess coupled with an intuitive sense of strategy, but not a lot of emphasis on education.

  To stay with this group, Dale Arden could say

Stunning college beauty with strong moral principles and the will power to stick to them against all odds, with an inner strength that keeps her going.

  Now once those papers are written, everyone passes his paper to the player on his left.  That player reads over the paper and considers, if I had to translate this character into game terms, how would I do it?  He converts the character to game stats, and gives it back to the player who wrote the concept.  Obviously the Zarkov character will have a high intelligence and a lot of appropriate skills in the sciences and technologies, and the Gordon character will have high strength, agility, stamina, and maybe personal skills.  At no point did we require a die roll or a point count.  Everyone gets the character he wants, within the ordinary expectations of the game.  The evaluation on what makes a balanced character for the game ahead is determined by one of the other players, whose interests are in having fun and making sure all of the characters are good members of the team, including the one he hopes to play.

  We’ll have more to say about character generation systems, and ideas for improving on them; but not this week, and not next week.  After all, that would go against what we always say.

  Next week, something different.

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M.  Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc.  His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.