Anyone that has followed along with my RPG postings knows that I am a big supporter of systems which happen at the table, everything from character generation to world generation – right there between all the players.

Consistent with that, I tend to prefer games which completely of creating complex backstories away from the table. That's not a thing that is a conscious aversion from me because I really do enjoy the lonely fun of making characters – the couple of posts where I do so in great detail would make me a liar if I said that I was against it. But there is that smidgen of magic that happens when people are bouncing ideas for characters off of one another at the table and it's the first time that they've heard those ideas.

There is a little electric spark that you can't get anywhere else. For me, that's a big deal. As the guy who has pretty much always been stuck being the GM, it's a great opportunity when I can drop that whole role and sit down with other people at the table knowing that we can all play the game together.

I have given significant consideration to designing a game in which the entire point of play is to design the characters. That is the multiple session, multiple player, and possibly even designed for play-by-post goal of the whole thing. The endgame would come when the character is what would commonly be thought of as "ready to play."

Needless to say, I haven't quite put together all the bits for that yet. I'm not even sure there's a demand. But it would be interesting, and I like interesting.

The purest example of "creation and play" that I can think of is probably A Penny for My Thoughts, which starts everyone at the table playing an amnesiac who have all taken an experimental drug which causes their memories to slowly return in response to questions – but the memories of a given character don't return to that character, they've come to someone else at the table. Gameplay then becomes going through a series of guided questions where at critical junctures you offer the choice of two possibilities which represent different memories to people at the table. There is a very minor resource allocation mechanic in there as well, but the biggest part is you asking others about yourself, and accepting the answers are given – and not always will those answers be things that you love, but you have to role with and integrate the answers that you get.

It's a great convention game. No prep. Gameplay happens just by reading the book to the other people at the table because it's structured like a guided meditation experiment in a psychological facility. And by the end of the session you feel like you have learned how these people came to be in the situations that they are, why they are, and even what the next step for them as individuals is.

Don't ask too many questions about my Sailor Moon variant. It's probably for the best