@LesInk – With regard to your second point, I actually should have been clearer. In my group, there’s generally a substantial lag between character creation and the first session — so creating session one concurrently with character creation isn’t real-time at all.

Doing it in real time, though…that WOULD be interesting. There are indie systems out there that I think would be a lot better for that sort of approach than most mainstream games.

I suspect it could work very well if you were upfront about wanting everyone to get a chance to play first, but still expect background ties and depth before the game goes on. It could be tricky to phrase, but setting expectations seems like the only part you’d really need to get right.

I have found through repeated backfires that the first sessions will be learning experiences for everyone, and it’s usually best to keep things simple.

I have tended to ask for a short character BIO in the past (via e-mail), and then had the player’s decide if and how they knew each other. It requires “buy in” from the players though or it won’t work. I’m fortunate to mostly have players that will buy in and make some effort at the start. I know that it has provided for many game enhancing moments in our campaign.

And yes… Primetime Adventures is ripe with ideas that can carry over into more traditional game systems. I especially like the spotlight and episode structure of that game.

The problem with creating long involved backgrounds is that you may force your players to take on characters that may or may not work based on a ‘fun aspect’. Even if you spend considerable time writing up the details with that single player, it might not work as well with the next player. By having a ‘jam’ session, the group quickly can act/react to other player choices. Assuming everyone gets to voice their ideas adequately, everyone should end up being the star in a team AND everyone else knows the roles of that team. Cool, very cool.

The second negative-turned-positive point was the idea of creating the initial adventure on the fly while the character generation is occurring. Man, talk about pressure. But the key here is that Marin’s group is suggesting we do a ‘trial’ session (maybe ‘pilot’ is too strong of a word). Just like the characters are going through a trial, so is the campaign world. Heck, you might get more open responses from the players, “Hey! this campaign world sucks, can you change X to be more Y?” Let’s face it, better to kill off a bad idea in one night than to let it linger a slow death. And, in the end, even though the adventure is being created on the fly, as GM, you probably already had some adjustable ideas you wanted to present anyway.

All in all, this smacks a bit of Primetime Adventures (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primetime_Adventures) — something I have wanted our group to try.

I find that a kickstart helps people’s minds settle on character concepts, too. A loose “uh, I’m a ranger… from some elf city” or “I’m a Nosferatu research scientist” quickly gets fleshed out as a player gets used to their character’s skills and special abilities in a big action sequence.

Once the dust has settled, we decide whether or not the session is canonical. If so, it can either be a preview, or it can be considered a “flash-forward” to a space between games yet-to-come.

Then I go to my normal routine of “OK, I need everybody to give me 3 plot hooks for their character” and I set to work dreaming up stories/adventures.