Story or Sheet?

[Helegond]

Hi to all narrators out there...

Well, this is the catch. Do your characters do the story first, then make the character sheet based upon it, or do they do the character sheet and later the story, to fit it?

I was wondering, since all my players in my chronicle did their stories first...

Cheers,

Helegond

[Ineti]

A little bit of both. Some of my players come up with a fairly detailed history then build the character to match, and some roughly sketch out the charater's history and go from there.

We've also just created characters and built up the history as we go.

[Grimbeorn]

For LotR, its been a bit of both, for the simple fact that few of my players have the background knowledge of middle earth that myself, or my sister does (who is a player in the game). So i got people to come up with character ideas, and i gave them a number of suggestions on how that sort of character could fit into middle earth.

So say one of my players wanted to play a human warrior, armed and armour heavily. I suggested either a nobles guard, or a member of the army of gondor.

Normally i want a reasonable background idea for RP before we do characters, as it gives me ideas what flaws, advantages and what the character should be like before the sheet gets done.

[Captain Novaes]

It depends on the player, really. Most of my players have hectic work schedules, so don't have plenty of time to craft an elaborate story. What I do is talk via icq with them and help to create a sketch of a story. Sometimes I myself work up the sheet.

Then there's the fact that not everyone is a Tolkien reader in my group. Most have only seen the movies (which is just fine with me), but it takes a long time for me to explain a bit of the earlier history of Middle-earth.

There was a funny moment just last week... one of the "uninitiated" players wanted to make a Dwarf character and he went on to suggest how he wanted to play an champion of some church who has been betrayed by the high-priest so he would become sort of an Avenger... I interrupted him and went: OK, that's fine, but this is really impossible to do in Middle-earth. See, there are no churches...