I ran a game a while back involving the descendants of the last generation's heroes, a mercenary/privateering company. The Players created their characters, and I created their ancestors and inherited gear from there. Turn over on RPoL being what it is, sometimes, the game faded out when I ran out of descendants.

My thought here was to create the first generation. I've a list of their accomplishments (the notable ones, anyhow) and certain specific tools/magic items they acquired, etc. And, of course, who they were and what classes they followed.

My question is: If I create the 8 parents as PCs would anyone be interested in a game where the characters are provided by the DM and selected by the players from a list of what's still free.

On the plus side, Player attrition won't matter as much, simply because the characters will stay the same. On the down side, the ability to customize will be limited.

To be sure of reaching certain benchmarks for each character, the game would start at 3rd level (paths predetermined). The setting would be a fantasy Earth setting, Europe centric, with Africa, and , especially, North Africa,readily available. Assorted myths and time periods would be Frankensteined together to make a working (in my opinion, anyhow) whole.

So..is there any interest in this sort of thing?

I'm definitely interested!

I'm tentatively interested. When you say customization is limited, how limited are we talking about? I'm cool with the pregen'd stats and paths, but will we be able to pick our own feats/ASIs at appropriate levels or be allowed to multiclass?

In reply to GammaBear (msg # 3):

When it comes time to level, you'll have control of that, but multi-classing might need a discussion, depending on the character and alternate class choice.

If the party barbarian suddenly decides to become a wizard, for instance, I might have an issue, and warlocks would need to establish a connection to their patron, and most patrons would be forbidden for reasons I would hope were obvious.

Unfortunately, I can't really be definitive on the subject of multi-classing. It'll be case by case.

However, I should point out: If you're going in with the intention of changing a character from what it is to what you want it to be, you may be missing the point of the game. It's better just to pick out a character that suits what you want to play already.

No, that's cool and the MCing totally makes sense. Basically, my real concern was that we weren't essentially going to be playing your characters with you telling us how to play them. I don't know how often it happens, but I have seen GMs do the pregen thing then fuss at players for playing the character "wrong."

So far, this sounds interesting. I hope you get enough support.

In reply to GammaBear (msg # 5):

Oh, they aren't really my characters. That's the thing. I have to create them to meet certain pre established benchmarks from the other game, but ti was other folks that set most of that up as part of their family trees.

Those benchmarks are Race, Class, Path, and Background. So multi-classing to a different Class and, eventually, Path are specific issues. And, of course, if we lose a player, the departing player will have already determined certain background based choices, which further constricts later players of the same character a bit. But that can probably be worked around.

It's having a character do a 180 into something totally different that's the issue, and just that, really.

Mind you, setting considerations still apply, and erudite and well read barbarians are rarely appropriate, so if the other players need a dictionary to figure out what your half human barbarian is saying, then you probably are not playing the character correctly. And then, of course, I'd say something.

I would be interested, I'm all about the roleplay!

Sounds interesting, count me as a prospect.

Sounds pretty interesting.

Ok,we may have enough interest. I'll give it a shot. The Game Forum is up: link to another game