Emergent Characters vs. Bespoke Characters

When people create an RPG character these days, I'd say it's most common for folks to come up with their character concept first, then roll dice & arrange, or assign a standard array, or do point buy to try and 'build' that character. But back in the day, we mostly rolled ability scores first, then figured out what sort of character this one would be. Both have their place, and this post will discuss the merits of both methods.

Last Friday, when I logged on to Discord for our CoC "session 0" (third round), I had a bit of interesting discussion with Richard (the Keeper). Although he's decided CoC is his game that he wants to stick with for most of his gaming, he was reading up on Original D&D, and was curious about some of the methods and the rationale behind the methods in those rules. We will, schedule permitting, get together and just chat about that hopefully some day soon. 

One of the things we did talk about last Friday was relevant to the task at hand. We were generating characters. Richard prefers rolling dice to see what you get, and then crafting a character based on those rolls. I'm partial to that method myself, so we all did that. In the first adventure Richard ran, he just had us use standard array since that speeds up the process and we players were mostly new to the system. My previous Cthulhu experience was under the 3E d20 rules (which didn't really fit the bill). When that adventure was complete, one of the players, Brady, took a turn as Keeper, so we had to make new PCs. Some of the players used the standard array, but Richard and I rolled the dice. This time, Richard is back as Keeper, and everyone tried die rolling. 

Even though we rolled randomly for our abilities, the other three players all had ideas for their character that they modified slightly to the rolls they received. Mostly, though, since CoC is so heavily skill based, the background chosen was more important to their character concept than what abilities they rolled. 

My case was different. I rolled without any real preconception of what the character would be. I had briefly considered trying to remake my old d20 CoC character, a young seminarian convinced that all the eldritch horror was the work of The Devil, but had changed my mind on that before I started rolling. I looked at my scores (pretty poor ones for the most part), and decided that this would be a desk-jockey type analyst for the FBI-like government agency we would be working for on this adventure. He's the stereotypical nerd. Very poor physical stats and appearance (and luck, and power). Lots of 35s. But Education is very good (75 from the roll, bumped up to 84 by lucky die rolls for being in my early 30s), and Dexterity and Intelligence are both around 50. So a weakling, but full of useful skills. I think he'll be fun to play. 

And so, Richard and I spent part of the session discussing the merits of rolling first then crafting the character's class/role and description/personality around those rolls. I'm calling this an Emergent Character. This works best when rolling in order, of course. Any sort of adjustment, including the OD&D through RC version of trading for Prime Requisite, or the BECMI suggestion to swap the highest die roll for the desired PR, move the process closer to the Bespoke Character, where the player comes up with the concept first, then tries to fit the concept around the game rules. 

Honestly, as a veteran gamer, I understand well the allure of the Bespoke PC. Players with experience know what they like, or know what might be a fun new novel challenge for them, and like to come up with concepts first. I often do that myself. Especially in systems where there are point buy abilities, or even point buy skills, this makes sense. If you have to select all of your skills/abilities from a big old list of possibilities (like in WEG d6, GURPS or Palladium games), it speeds things up immensely to have an idea of what you want to play. Yeah, Palladium is technically a class & level system, but with so many sourcebooks and so many skills on top of the copious number of classes to choose from (some with just very minor differences...looking at you, Ninjas & Superspies), it might as well be a carte blanche skill purchase system. 

Class & Level games obviously lend themselves better to a roll-first Emergent Character creation process. And the funny thing is, this method is both better for beginner players who don't really know much about the system, and for experienced veterans who are in for a challenge. The Emergent PC needs to be created on the spot, to reflect the rolls. This makes it easy for a new player. You have them roll, then you can advise them on the best class options for that set of rolls. Granted, sometimes the rolls might be best for a difficult class to play as a newbie, but often jumping into the fire feet first can be a good initiation to the game. And as I mentioned, for the jaded veteran who's tried it all, being able to roll randomly and THEN figure out who this weirdo adventurer is can be both fun and challenging. 

Quite often, when I try to join a new game on RPOL.net, the GM wants players to submit their character concept in advance. This can be hard for me, as I don't always have a concept...or rather, I probably have many potential concepts that I'd like to play. For example, I've been hoping to join a d6 Star Wars game. But if I'm accepted, I'm not sure if I'd like to play a "wandering space cowboy" or a "Jawa scavenger" or a "Guardian of the Whills" type character. All three sound fun to me. Of course, in d6 Star Wars, you don't roll for stats so I could pick any of these that I like. So it makes sense for the GM to vett players by their concept(s) before they're added to the game. Bespoke is the way to go.

In a D&D game, though, most DMs still require potential players to pitch their character before they're allowed to roll the dice. There are a few DMs I play under who will allow a change if the die rolls don't go the way you wanted, but mostly they want you to stick with your concept, even if the rolls don't really allow for that (of course, many want players to use a standard array, or point buy, so you can get your Bespoke PC). Sometimes, the dice fail to cooperate. I pitched an idea for a human paladin Champion of Kord, a consummate athlete turned adventurer. Then the my highest die roll for ability scores was a 14. My other scores were 12, 11, 9, 9, 9. Since this is 5E, I used variant human, and got the 11 up to a 12 and one of the 9s to a 10 so there wouldn't be a penalty, and snagged a feat. So my "amazing athlete" character had a middling Strength (14), just slightly above average Constitution (12), and an average Dexterity (10, because the other 12 went to Charisma), and below average Int and Wis. Not at all the character I'd pitched. 

So I had to rework the idea into a young up-and-coming teen devoted to Kord, hoping to become that amazing athlete some day, rather than having that as the backstory to his adventuring. Honestly, I can't imagine the character giving up adventuring for sports, but that was what the rolls gave me. 

While there is that down-side to Emergent PC creation, Bespoke PCs of course tend to fall prey to either the cookie-cutter effect, or the twinked-out CharOpBoards effect. System mastery tends to suggest certain builds for certain types of characters, and if you have full control (or nearly so) of the character's mechanics, it's easy to just go for the basic builds, and every PC trying to fill a certain niche will look pretty similar to the others in the same niche. And at the extreme end, you get the players trying to find the exploits in the system, designing the "ultimate" PC for whatever purpose, or the game breaking Pun-Pun the Kobold build. 

Both Emergent and Bespoke PCs have their merits and their drawbacks. I tend to prefer the challenge of rolling the dice first and then fitting a character to the rolls. It's annoying to have to come up with all that first, just to have to rework it like my Champion of Kord. But I do also enjoy the dedicated Bespoke PC options in games from time to time. That is also a sort of challenge, trying to create a certain archetype or idea out of the elements allowed for that game.