Out of curiousity, /tg/, I ran into a local GM a year or so ago

>>53340814
I'm sort of in the GM you talked to corner.

I often, more often than not, make the characters my players use. Generally I end up with three groups (as I think on it).

I will make up characters for a campaign designed around the player in question. So if someone likes a certain type of character I build that for them. As a rule I allow lots of changes and development of the character.

The second group of players tend to tell me straight up what they want to play. Type of character, etc. I build the character and, again, allow for a lot of changes as we play and the player gets a better feel for what they want.

The two groups are about equal right now. But in general the second group is the growing group and the first is shrinking (really changing in to the second group).

The third group is the more traditional group - they make their own characters from the ground up. But this is the smallest group by far.

So in any given party I'll have a few of group one and a few of group two, and maybe one from group three.

In all three, again, I allow players to change their characters as they play. Switching skills, abilities, etc. The basic rule is that from outside observation the change can't be obvious. So you can't switch from an elf to a dwarf, but I'd allow someone to switch from specializing in archery to two weapon fighting if they had been using both and found they preferred the other option.

>>53340814
It varies by the players and by the type of game you plan to run. For newbie players, pre-made characters can be immensely helpful. Players with a writing, improv, or role-playing background can usually be counted on to make their own characters (but maybe casually ask about what they're writing or their previous characters as a way of spotting red flags).

Oftentimes, pre-made (or randomized) characters are actually better at thrusting players into actual roleplay. If they're in charge of their own personality and background they're more likely to base it on themselves or just do some perfunctory backstory to justify their boring-ass character*. If you hand them a personality and background, it's unexpected and interesting, and they're more likely to assume it's significant since it game from the person running the game, both of which make it more likely they'll actually roleplay the character.

What you can always do is make a few pre-made characters but let players make their own characters if they so choose. Or they give you a skeleton of a character ("I was thinking of playing a rogue but one who's like super nice and friendly instead of sneaky and selfish, maybe?") and you animate it ("Around town, Evelyn is known as the best brewer of spiced ale around and as the person to call when you lock yourself out of your house.")

*Speshul snowflakes with an eight-page background are the most dramatic and memorable cases but they're very rare.

>>53340925

You're nice and I like you.

>>53341108
Thank you.

>>53340814
I'm still a bit upset a Mod abused their power and tried to force that fake thing on us.

>>53341295
I clicked on this thread to say this. I even caught multiple bans because of it. The faggot mod wrote down my IP banned me for three days and then the second the ban expired he hit me with a second three day ban. Since I couldn't contest it because it was a short ban, I took it to IRC and found out I was one of about five others he did it to and that mod got shit-canned.

Fuck Kromgol and his fake meme status.

>>53342939
It's weird how much stuff happened on this board over the years that nobody talks about.

>>53340814
I usually enjoy it when the GM has pre-made characters. It's fun to make a character from scratch, but it's also fun to start with a statblock and make it your own.

I tend to play games where it is easy and fast to make new characters.
Usually I make the players make their characters together at the start of the first session after explaining the tone and ambient of the game. The time required depends on the game and the players, but if it takes to long to make any real advance the just play the introduction scene.
For now it works really well for me.

>>53341295
>>53342939
what are you talking about?

>>53343673
The character sheet in the OP's image is from a thread where a mod tried to make meme happen. It started with a thread about a guy talking about his recently deceased father and how he found his dad's D&D stuff and had a feels type thread, this part may or may not be legitamate. Then a couple months later someone claiming to me the OP of the first thread returns with scans of his dad's character sheets, the OP image. The oldbeards of /tg/ immediately noticed discrepancies, like ascending AC and the extraordinarily high HP, and starts calling out the OP. Bans are thrown around like beads at Mardi Gras and eventually it comes out that a mod is trying to force a new meme.

>>53343771
Wow.
I somehow missed the conclusion to all that.
I've been thinking it was such a happy story this whole time.
Damn, this is a depressing revelation.

>>53344008
Yeah, I was in both the original thread and the one where OP's pic was posted, but I wasn't aware of the drama surrounding it until several months later.

>>53344354
You missed all the bans that were handed out in the Son of Kromgol thread? There were enough of them and they came quick enough that suptg missed posts during the archiving process.

>>53344607
Yeah, for some reason I clicked on the thread early on but then didn't check back in for the rest of it.

>>53343771
My first thought was "huh, houserules", not "fake".

>>53344008
Likewise.
I figured it was just a melancholy story about a guy connecting with his dead father through old shared hobbies.

As the OP, didn't know at all about that. I posted the image because it was the first "Character sheet" image that I had that I could think of.