How involved is your character generation process?

[Kage2020]

I was thinking about my general, somewhat involved, approach to character generation in RPG games that I run and wondered what other people do?  For example, my standard process is to get people to submit a character and then, if successful (this assumes that it is an open game), work with them to create a character specific to the story arc in question.  As a process this takes probably at least a week or so on a forum.

What do you do?

Kage

[Dragonlover]

D&D:- Spend several weeks coming up with characters that are actually playable in the rules, dither over which one to play, and then settle it with a dice roll/gut feeling before we start doing the sheets.

Mage:- I only have one character, and he basically started out as me with Spheres, cos I had sod all idea if I was actually going to enjoy the game.

Dark Heresy:- I've only run it so far, but I just said to everyone 'Roll up any character you want at Rank 3, Stu is Rank 4 because he's the Inquisitor' and then waited to field equipment requests and rules queries.

As a rule, our group never actually worries about the plot the GM has cooked up, and as long as no character is flagrantly broken, the GM's don't worry what the characters look like, beyond the occasional tweaking of an encounter idea to accomodate for the lack of a skill set.

Character generation tends to take two sessions, and the fact that a certain game is happening will be announced a good two or three weeks before character creation starts, to give everyone plenty of thinking time.

Dragonlover