Simple Vs Complex Character creation

It all depends on what type of game you are making. If you are making a tactical combat game some basic simplifications like classes and levels both speed up play and make system balance much more practical. If you are making a free flowing narrative framework for collaborative storytelling a complicated and rigid character creation system is just going to get in the way.

On the other hand, if you are attempting to make a detailed world simulating engine, character creation and progression may benefit from using the same level of structured detail found elsewhere in the game. Ars Magica, for example, is mostly devoted to tracking character and world development over decades or centuries while allowing players to periodically drop into their world and interact with it in character. Its certainly not the sort of game everyone would enjoy, but it definitely has a niche.

For me there are 2 factors that describe whether a process like character creation is complex: the number of choices you have to make and the amount of options you have for each choice (I sometimes call these vertical and horizontal complexity). A process tends to get complex quickly if both of these numbers are high.

There are many valid reasons why you would want complexity in character creation. It allows to give more depth to characters (vertical) but also makes it easier to distinguish characters (horizontal). It also helps replayability a lot if there are many options to explore each time.

I think people enjoy and seek out a certain level of chunkiness to character creation. One of the biggest reasons DnD is so ubiquitous is because people get enamored with creating characters for the game. Despite all the things people complain about with feats, rolling for stats, stat organization, skills, etc etc, the whole product taps into something that people can really enjoy. Another game worth mentioning on the topic of character creation is Traveller. Traveller's character creation is basically a life simulator mini-game that includes death as an outcome. Once you get through it, you do have a pretty complete person to roleplay with.

Both of these games have plenty of areas where they could simplify and streamline the process, but I think a common reason people don't simplify the things they make might be to try and hit an ideal level of meatiness to the system. Its an intuitive decision more than a deliberate one.

There are two kinds of complexity in character creation.

One of them is giving players a lot of decision points. A lot of skills/attributes that require distributing points between them, a lot of special abilities to choose from, a lot of equipment that may be bought at character creation.

While this is time-consuming and requires careful balancing, being able to express many character concepts in a mechanically meaningful way and fine-tune them to player's liking is a good thing. Games that are very simple on this axis are often accused of feeling the same no matter what character one plays. So that is something where a compromise is necessary between different valuable traits of the game - one that must fit the overall design goals.

The other kind of character creation complexity is the algorithmic one. It's all the parts that offer no choices, but require referencing rules, checking tables, calculating and writing things down. That's the part that makes players want to have a character creation software.

This type of complexity is, in my opinion, purely negative and should be avoided. Secondary stats and modifiers calculated from other stats, requirements that limit the availability of specific abilities based on other abilities or stat values and so on complicate the character creation process without adding any significant value.

Characters must be capable of what the game demands. They represent what the game makes possible and considers important.

Producing viable characters dictates the process.

It can be fun. Why?

I think part of that is that it's infinitely easier to create a character than to play a character. To play, you need a GM and 2-7 other people gathered together all at the same time. To create a character you just need you. Having a bit of complexity, or a lot of complexity for the right game, can make that more fun.

Certain forms of complexity can also be used as a mechanical way to create backstories. A career/life path system, like in WOIN where you plot out the first five careers of your life, gaining specific mechanical bits for each one, gives you a big chunk of the story of the character. If you were to simplify that and just look at the end result, you'd have to make all that up.

Then, there's just the fun factor. Some people like it. Character creation doesn't need to be a means to an end just like conflict resolution doesn't need to be a means to an end.

I think the Cortex marvel game had the most interesting approach to character creation; make whatever you want. There aren't any notable limits or guidelines, because the larger (more powerful) dice are less likely to generate meta currency. Sure, you can make a team up with Thor and Daredevil. Daredevil is more likely to get the plot points. Thor is more likely to knock someone out. It's balanced regardless of character composition.

On the other hand, the life path system in the Infinity rpg really is a minigame of its own. You have two options; make a selection from each table, or get life points you can use to upgrade your character, choose something from a table, or reroll on the tables. Rolling through the different parts of creation gives your character a backstory with events that lead to your current status as a space spy. Regardless of the roles, you end up choosing careers that determine the bulk of what you are capable of, with extra bonuses and penalties depending on your origin story and faction.

Both are extremely well done approaches from the opposite ends of character design.

The general upsides I see to "minigame" character creation is you start knowing your character better, and also have some potential story hooks or "in jokes" to move the story forward, and you may have fleshed out the traditionally boring scene of how the party met.

I've seen lots of people commenting on the "game" part of character creation, but no comments as to what character creation can mean for players.

To the kind of player that I am (and the people who play with me) character building is part of a bonding experience with this new entity you're going to inhabit during play. It is as much generative as it is exploratory, as you flesh out small details and feel for the character you're going for.

Of course a lot of it happens as the player is creating his background, which is a narrative effort. And there are lots of systems where creating a character sheet is a very complex engine of minmaxing, which has it's own merit and fuction, but for a different type of gameplay. It might end up getting in the way of both play - because it feels more mechanical than playful (ludic) - and of roleplay - because it is detatched.

That said, game design is often a balancing act. In this case, I personally aim for complex enough to support the experience and give a sense of immersion, simple enough as to not get in the way of the other fun parts.

BUT, as has been noted by otheres here in this thread, it needs to resonate with the experience you're planning. If you're going for procgen and meat grinder oldschool, a more fleshed out character creation is a painful thing.

Streamlining an RPG is hard. Some designers just aren’t good at it.

It depends what type of gamer culture you're trying to build, whether you encourage "lonely fun".

lot of things have been mentioned already, but adding another view on it.

while it depends on the game, there is a benefit with tactical combat games, to have a simplified character creation, especially if the GM can recreate NPCs quickly using that system for use in the game.

there is also the lethality of the game, where a complex character creation might make players invest, loosing a PC and being forced to go through it again, is not tempting, so if the game has high lethality, chargen should not be complex.

Personally, i prefere something in between. But the mechanical aspect of the character creation can be quite simple, but the fluff part about chargen should bring out the details of the characters and tell a story about who and what the PCs are, not just the numbers on the character sheet.

I think it really depends on what the characters need to do and how the players are meant to have fun. D&D is a game about a party of murder hobos killing things and it's character creation reflects that. The vast majority of the features and abilities are meant for killing things, not asking questions. Some systems have more options for diplomacy. GURPS has more options for everything. And some are simple and focus on storytelling more that number crunching. I think few people like character creation for the math, but rather enjoy telling stories about the characters they create. It's more fun when a system gives you a good framework for building interesting characters and their backstories. I've seen a few complex systems that don't take into account what players will actually be doing. Almost as if the writers put too much thought into world building and making characters that fit the setting without giving much thought to what to do after character creation.