Never thought of using cards for the assets and complications though think I have the perfect one off to give that a try with.

@Tony Graham – I love that freeform world and character discussion time. It usually doesn’t work for us if there are character sheets and books at hand– they draw our attention too strongly.

The “one dirty little secret” fits cyberpunk perfectly– it sounds like a great twist to fit the genre.

@Martin Ralya – Thanks!

I started a group in the past by having an evening of play before the play for character creation, talking about the setting, voicing ideas, mild role-playing, and basic set-up for the first night of adventure.

The day after that evening, when everything was supposedly in place, I sent out individual emails to the players asking them to tell me one dirty little secret in their character’s background. I was surprised by the range of responses – all of which eventually came into play during the campaign.

The interesting thing is that as far as I know, it was a long time before the players talked about it with each other. The secrets only came out when they began to have repercussions in-game, emerging naturally within the story, and forcing someone to ‘fes up – or not – while everyone else was in the dark trying to figure out what was going on. Two of the players had even assumed they were the only ones I’d sent the email to.

On metagaming:
I’m a big proponent of the theory that metagaming = less interesting role-playing but better wargaming. The trick is always finding the right balance for the players & campaign.

I’m currently finding 4E D&D frustrating because the combat rules, while excellent for a miniature game, are structured to the point of stifling creativity in the action scenes of the game.

For whatever reason, when a player isn’t completely familiar with the rules they are much more likely to blurt out what they want to do or how they choose to respond instead of thinking inside a box, min/maxing, or always doing the most tactically sound thing.

I confess, I’m a fan of all the possibilities that open when creating new characters, regardless of whether or not it’s a new world. Sometimes, creating a new set of characters within the same campaign setting for a one-shot adventure lets the players and the GM rediscover a freshness to the game.

PsiRun looks pretty interesting, though it sounds like it’s more of an improvised or writing of your background by the other players than I what I was talking about, though that’s a similar and equally good idea!

I have not! I’ll have to check that out!

I’ve posted in a bit more detail at my blog: http://droct.vox.com/library/post/amnesiac-rpg-characters.html (and cross posted to my other one: http://droct.livejournal.com/140784.html where there might be a little more discussion (and where people can comment with openID names))

But it boils down to this: What if you had a group start with with amnesia, and they had to figure out their backgrounds, how they got to where they are, and why they’re together, as they went forward. Further, what if players wrote backgrounds for other players so they wouldn’t know their own background?

@LesInk – That’s very much how we did it; we filled out our character sheets minus advantages and complications. Those we wrote on a matched set of color coded 3×5 cards– one for the player, one for the GM.

I’m having a lot of trouble with the same stuff Telas is mentioning. Telas! Please put some thoughts on pixels with your idea.

Which probably leads to a low-mortality setting, where sub-optimal decisions won’t necessarily get you killed. OTOH, low mortality seems to conflict with my “risk = reward” instinct.

Wow, I think I just found my next article…

@Troy E. Taylor – I need to reclaim that viewpoint for my NPCs; too often lately, they’ve been somewhat interesting but doomed to die by the end of the encounter. Hard to get attached, you know?

@Kurt “Telas” Schneider – Is there anything specific that the commenters or I can do to help?