Should Character Creation be at the back of the book

[Floret]

If character creation is to have any sort of "(system) learning by doing" effect, following it along while reading through itis kind of a given necessity.

So if I look at the creation and think "great, what does this all mean?", it fails. And this is what tends to happen for me. Now if I skipped ahead to chargen, that lack of comprehension is on me. If a book threw me into chargen before explaining basic rules? That would be on the book. And not be a mark of good design in my eyes.

Now, I love Apicalypse world's playbooks, but unless I get presented them on a table, with a GM to answer questions (For which setting they are marvellous, and it is what the system recommends to do), looking at them doesn't help me grasp the system. Putting them as early in the book as they are is, I feel, a misplacement.

[Pelle]

Ok let's go with this. Let's say you wanted to learn about bread baking. Do you want your book to start with information about actually baking bread and various techniques and important things to know like what the various ratios are good for, why and when you use salt or oils or water, or do you want the book to start with:
"here's how to grow your own wild yeast starter and mix it, whatever wet ingredients you want to use (chapter 3), whatever dry ingredients you want to use (chapter 4) and knead it (chapter 5) and then put it in the oven at your chosen temperature (chapter 6). Chapters 7, 8 and 9 will go over how different ratios of the wet to dry ingredients get you different bread types, how each ingredient affects the bread type in general and general baking principles respectively"

Remember your goal is to learn about bread baking as a whole. Chapter one being about how to make a sourdough starter, though an important skill is probably not the best place for it, and certainly a recipe before you've even been given the basics might be a bit much. And in fact, if you look at The Fresh Loaf's Handbook you'll notice that they leave the recipes until after they've covered the general information. Heck, just poke around the table of contents on bread baking books on amazon. Almost all of them front load the book with the background and whys and wherefores of bread baking as a whole before presenting you with recipes to start making bread.

Who are you writing the book for, people who want to learn to bake, or people who just wants to bake a bread and need a recipe? For the former I agree with you, and for the latter they can skip to the back for recipies regardless. But should you try to tease the latter into wanting to learn about baking as well, and if so, what is the best approach?

Anyways, IMO the sourdough culture is the heart of bread baking, and it might not be a bad idea to start with that one.

[Satinavian]

Maybe we just have very different experiences then, because most of my players have never liked character creation. Character concept creation, sure, but the actual mechanical process? Most of them would rather farm it out to someone who does like it.

I like character creation. It is a time where the character slowly takes on form, important decisions about him/her are made, concept/backstory is either made or changed to fit the rules and probaly setting. It is the time when a player gets to know the character and the groundwork to identify with him/her later is laid. It is also the time of carefully choosing powers and abilities imagining their later use and building anticipation.

I really hate playing with pregens. I can tolerate it for some getting-to-know-the system one shot introduction at a convention because there really is no time. But even for new systems experiments in my regular groups not being able to use my own characters would make me even less willing to do such an experiment.

Honestly, it's a digital file. Not having bookmarks to relevant sections should be considered a sin. And if 3 pages is all the players need to get started, it should be a separate file. I know my players would be much more receptive to a 3 page PDF than a 300 page one, even if when I sent them the 300 page one I say "just read pages 6-9". I guess that's my point, we don't live in an age of 50 page rule books in black and white and limited distribution choices. We should stop making our designs fit that model and start making them work better for the people using the books. And i'm suggesting one of those "better" options would be putting character creation in a different spot.

That is also your players. I would very much want to read in the real 300 page rulebook instead of some 3 page quickstarter. I probably won't read all 300 pages before the first game. But it is nice to not only be able to read some really basic rules but also look at the deeper rules for things that catch my interest. (And there better be things that catch my interest - if not i might decline trying out the game altogether)

[Max_Killjoy]

I like character creation. It is a time where the character slowly takes on form, important decisions about him/her are made, concept/backstory is either made or changed to fit the rules and probaly setting. It is the time when a player gets to know the character and the groundwork to identify with him/her later is laid. It is also the time of carefully choosing powers and abilities imagining their later use and building anticipation.

Similar experience.

Also touches on why I dislike really simplified systems that abstract everything into a sort of general sameness, or don't allow for distinctions/variations (for example, systems that have just a few characteristics such "physical", which crams strength, agility, endurance, etc, into one thing, not allowing for differentiation between a strong character, an agile character, etc).

I really hate playing with pregens. I can tolerate it for some getting-to-know-the system one shot introduction at a convention because there really is no time. But even for new systems experiments in my regular groups not being able to use my own characters would make me even less willing to do such an experiment.

Same here. I deal with pregens for cons because of time limits, but other than that, NO.

That is also your players. I would very much want to read in the real 300 page rulebook instead of some 3 page quickstarter. I probably won't read all 300 pages before the first game. But it is nice to not only be able to read some really basic rules but also look at the deeper rules for things that catch my interest. (And there better be things that catch my interest - if not i might decline trying out the game altogether)

Same here -- I actually kinda hate "quickstart" rules. Either that tiny ruleset is lacking what I want from a system, or is just missing most of the system that I need to understand before I know if I actually like it.

[Cluedrew]

[...] the existence of this thread is at least partially your fault.

I admit to nothing! Although I am happy to hear that. I will admit to that.

But couldn't having some pre-gen characters give you the same context [as character creation]?

I agree with some other posters that putting pre-gens for play into the rule book... doesn't appeal to me. However if I have some running example characters, or setting characters, I could see providing at least partial character sheets for those. I might have to add more/adjust some example characters.

In my current work I put the character rules right after the system rules and character creation is in there. However it is a fairly minor part after explaining what all the stats are. So I could put character creation later, but I would probably leave the stats and explanations near the front.

For example, building a Quertus-like starting character was, IIRC, best modeled with knowledge +4, resources/contacts +3, magic only +2, etc etc, and some Spellcraft-related skill tricks (aspects?).

Stunts, the skill trick like ones are stunts. Although you would probably have ~"Bookish Academic Wizard" as the high concept for Quertus, which is an aspect. So both.

[ImNotTrevor]

As I said, for some, Chargen is a hook. You want all your potential hooks to happen early, just like how you put all the fishing lines with baited hooks in the water, not just most of them in there while one stays in the boat for after the fish is already in there.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Part of this depends on how intricate character creation is, and how deeply connected and consequential the choices are.

If character creation requires several steps that depend heavily on previous steps, or worse whose results require you to re-do part of a previous step, I'm going to need a lot more explanation of exactly what I'm doing and lots of worked examples.

If there is a big chance of screwing up a character if you don't know all the system details, tell me the details first. If I can basically come in with a supported "high concept" (not all systems have to support all concepts) like "Big angry guy who hits hard and is hard to kill" or "nimble archer" or "magical blaster" or "sneaky investigator", pick what looks good and fits the concept and have a servicable character (even if not the best, but playable), then it doesn't really matter how much I know. I don't really need many examples at all, just a list of categories of things to choose.

Of course, this all requires things to be named well. An ability/skill called "stealth" should make me harder to see/detect/find. For me, it doesn't really matter how much unless it's a trap option. Which I hate. Detest. Abhor. <gets out thesaurus>

Of the two, I strongly prefer the second option. Let me pick what looks good and optimize later. Set the floor pretty high (into playable territory) and then let me do that up front. If I can make a character that doesn't care about magic/super tech/etc, don't make me wade through (or more likely thumb through) a section on those before I can make a character. Modular design is good so I only really have to know the things for my own character, not all the pieces of everyone elses' characters or the other subsystems.

Spoiler: Trap Options

Show

If you're going to include trap options to "test system mastery" or any other such things, please tell me upfront so that I don't waste my money or time on your system. I find that anti-fun.

[Jay R]

I suspect it won't change things as much as you think.

The players who stop reading the book after character creation now will just skip to the character creation rules if they are in the back of the book.

The players who read all the rules once will probably skip to character creation rules first, and then go back to the beginning to see how the character is played.

People like me who skip around throughout character creation will continue to skip around throughout character creation.

There will be exceptions, but in general, I don't think re-editing the rules will change the players' approach all that much.

[Quertus]

Front, back, middle, separate book, doesn't matter. If it's the kind of game where I care about keeping a character alive, I'm going to spend a long time flipping back-and-forth.

Okay, fine, it does matter -- my left thumb is better at controlling number of pages simultaneously flipped than my right is, and English reads left to right, so the bulk of character creation should be at the front. That way my controller digit takes care of the harder job. All my right thumb has to worry about is the one spot I access over and over.

Yay, an actual use case!

I suspect it won't change things as much as you think.

The players who stop reading the book after character creation now will just skip to the character creation rules if they are in the back of the book.

The players who read all the rules once will probably skip to character creation rules first, and then go back to the beginning to see how the character is played.

People like me who skip around throughout character creation will continue to skip around throughout character creation.

There will be exceptions, but in general, I don't think re-editing the rules will change the players' approach all that much.

This. Kinda.

Those of us with experience, who have a "way", will attempt to force the system to conform to our way.

However, the question is still valid for noobs who are not yet set in their ways.

If character creation is to have any sort of "(system) learning by doing" effect, following it along while reading through itis kind of a given necessity.

So if I look at the creation and think "great, what does this all mean?", it fails. And this is what tends to happen for me. Now if I skipped ahead to chargen, that lack of comprehension is on me. If a book threw me into chargen before explaining basic rules? That would be on the book. And not be a mark of good design in my eyes.

So, we're going to make an edible food person. For the head*, you need something round. You can choose between** an orange and a cookie. You choose cookie? Ok, there's things you need to know about decorating a cookie, and attaching a cookie to the body; they are...

Personally, I'm seeing "information as needed" as much more useful and efficient than learning the entirety of how to glaze, decorate, and attach every last type of food to every last possible other type of food, especially when I've got the "all marshmallows, all the time" expansion.

* apparently, gravity works backwards on this world, and you start building at the top?
** more options will come out in expansions. You can be sure of that.

I agree with some other posters that putting pre-gens for play into the rule book... doesn't appeal to me. However if I have some running example characters, or setting characters, I could see providing at least partial character sheets for those. I might have to add more/adjust some example characters.

Wait. What???

Maybe I'm just too grounded of a person (you'll not hear that accusation often), but few things are worse for me than what you just described. Nebulous "sir not appearing in this book took twelve flargs of phleboten for a mere 22 of his Yule - isn't that awesome?" does nothing but waste ink, confuse me, and make me suspect that the designers are idiots and/or on drugs, when the example would be so much clearer and make so much more sense if they'd included the full character sheet for reference.

Stunts, the skill trick like ones are stunts. Although you would probably have ~"Bookish Academic Wizard" as the high concept for Quertus, which is an aspect. So both.

Hahaha, yeah, I never played the system, so it didn't stick as well as I'd thought.

trap option

Trap Options

trap options to "test system mastery"

What you call "trap options", I call "ability to balance the party".

In Warhammer, you could hand me Tzeentch, or the god Emperor himself, and the standard inquisitors would out perform me. Give me 2e D&D, and even my vaunted skills are insufficient to make a character bad enough to keep me from dominating most parties if I go all out. But 3e? Yeah, I can balance to any party I've seen with that range of options.

It'd be nice if they were clearly labeled and sortable by power, though. It's tough trying to learn enough to build a bard/crusader that balances with a dark half-dragon monk with four free LA, if you know nothing about any of those choices.

However, it'd be nice if the simplest, most iconic choices were roughly balanced in power, and it takes a high degree of system mastery to step significantly outside that power range.

[PhoenixPhyre]

What you call "trap options", I call "ability to balance the party".

In Warhammer, you could hand me Tzeentch, or the god Emperor himself, and the standard inquisitors would out perform me. Give me 2e D&D, and even my vaunted skills are insufficient to make a character bad enough to keep me from dominating most parties if I go all out. But 3e? Yeah, I can balance to any party I've seen with that range of options.

It'd be nice if they were clearly labeled and sortable by power, though. It's tough trying to learn enough to build a bard/crusader that balances with a dark half-dragon monk with four free LA, if you know nothing about any of those choices.

However, it'd be nice if the simplest, most iconic choices were roughly balanced in power, and it takes a high degree of system mastery to step significantly outside that power range.

A clearly labeled trap isn't as much of a trap, but it's still a waste of space. I strongly believe that everything there should be functional and roughly balanced. The big problems I have with trap options are:

a) They're labeled as stuff people want. Toughness--who doesn't want to be tough (especially if that's your concept). Instead, it has a huge opportunity cost that at minimum brings your build online later.

b) The attitude of "put it in there so the high-system mastery people can show off their mastery" is toxic. It's the "git gud nub" attitude, baked into the cake.

c) They're usually concentrated in certain archetypes. Crossbows in 3.5--you can take all the feats but you're going to be worse than someone with only minimal feat support and a longbow will be better. Either fix the feats or remove the option entirely.

d) They're noise--even if you know what you're doing, they're in the way and you have to page through them.

If you want balancing, add in optional flaws without giving anything back. Or just flat out hold back. And balancing is only a problem if the system is horribly imbalanced (has a large distance between floors and ceilings) to begin with. So remove that and you don't need trap options. Trap options are only good for balancing if you're already screwed up your game design. And even then, they rarely do a good job of that (since people who know they're there are usually trying to optimize for power, not for un-power).

[Nifft]

Character creation should be on a small PDF linked from the main book.

[Satinavian]

b) The attitude of "put it in there so the high-system mastery people can show off their mastery" is toxic. It's the "git gud nub" attitude, baked into the cake.

I don't think anyone includes trap options for that reason.

Trap options come into existence because authors are not necessarily better at optimizing than the players who choose those trap options later. And because a new system can't rely on play experience and character build options are usually written way before the accompanying challanges and/or any of the high experience content.

But making traps on purpose ? Why would anyone do that. Don't suspect malice when incompetence could explain it as well.

[Max_Killjoy]

A clearly labeled trap isn't as much of a trap, but it's still a waste of space. I strongly believe that everything there should be functional and roughly balanced. The big problems I have with trap options are:

a) They're labeled as stuff people want. Toughness--who doesn't want to be tough (especially if that's your concept). Instead, it has a huge opportunity cost that at minimum brings your build online later.

b) The attitude of "put it in there so the high-system mastery people can show off their mastery" is toxic. It's the "git gud nub" attitude, baked into the cake.

c) They're usually concentrated in certain archetypes. Crossbows in 3.5--you can take all the feats but you're going to be worse than someone with only minimal feat support and a longbow will be better. Either fix the feats or remove the option entirely.

d) They're noise--even if you know what you're doing, they're in the way and you have to page through them.

If you want balancing, add in optional flaws without giving anything back. Or just flat out hold back. And balancing is only a problem if the system is horribly imbalanced (has a large distance between floors and ceilings) to begin with. So remove that and you don't need trap options. Trap options are only good for balancing if you're already screwed up your game design. And even then, they rarely do a good job of that (since people who know they're there are usually trying to optimize for power, not for un-power).

Agreed on each and every count.

"Needing" bad options in order to "balance" means your system is already in deep trouble.

And the solution to "player system skill" imbalance is NOT, is NEVER, "give them a way to make a worse character than other players". That's some Harrison Bergeron level nonsense right there, straight from the Handicapper General. The solution is to avoid systems that require high levels of arcane mastery, and to actually teach the players how the system works.

[Max_Killjoy]

I don't think anyone includes trap options for that reason.

Designers intentionally including them in game design? Probably not.

Customers/users defending them on the grounds that they either enable some sort of "balance the skilled player with a worse character" approach, or that they force players to "master the system" or fail ("git gud nub")? We see both in these forums all the time, let alone elsewhere.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Designers intentionally including them in game design? Probably not.

Customers/users defending them on the grounds that they either enable some sort of "balance the skilled player with a worse character" approach, or that they force players to "master the system" or fail ("git gud nub")? We see both in these forums all the time, let alone elsewhere.

I don't think anyone includes trap options for that reason.

Trap options come into existence because authors are not necessarily better at optimizing than the players who choose those trap options later. And because a new system can't rely on play experience and character build options are usually written way before the accompanying challanges and/or any of the high experience content.

But making traps on purpose ? Why would anyone do that. Don't suspect malice when incompetence could explain it as well.

I've seen quotes from PF developers to that effect in various threads--that they leave options in with a wide variety of powers and utilities to punish out the people with poor system mastery. And I've seen players echoing those approvingly. And that's ugly, in my opinion.

But this is a bit off topic, and more about balancing in general... :shrug:

[Max_Killjoy]

I've seen quotes from PF developers to that effect in various threads--that they leave options in with a wide variety of powers and utilities to punish out the people with poor system mastery. And I've seen players echoing those approvingly. And that's ugly, in my opinion.

But this is a bit off topic, and more about balancing in general... :shrug:

PF comes across as 3.x lovingly turned up to 11, including all the things I don't like about 3.x, so I've avoided it.

I'm surprised that the devs of any system would do that deliberately... but maybe I shouldn't be in this case.

[PhoenixPhyre]

PF comes across as 3.x lovingly turned up to 11, including all the things I don't like about 3.x, so I've avoided it.

I'm surprised that the devs of any system would do that deliberately... but maybe I shouldn't be in this case.

I hope I was misreading those quotes. I'd love to hope that no one is that user-unfriendly, but sadly I've seen real, actual developers (software in this case) that really are that way. And I played way too many MMOs in which it was a major segment of the community that felt that way.

From what I hear, large slices of the MOBA genre (games like League of Legends, etc) are rife with "git gud nub" sentiment. It's usually comes from a competitive, ranked PvP-oriented viewpoint where your team's performance (and you mostly team up with strangers) can drag you down as well.

[Cluedrew]

Maybe I'm just too grounded of a person (you'll not hear that accusation often), but few things are worse for me than what you just described. [...] when the example would be so much clearer and make so much more sense if they'd included the full character sheet for reference.

I'm not even sure what you think I am talking about. I mean it might be a bad idea but I'm not sure what you think the idea is. I'm just talking about if I have an example character in the driving rules that maybe listing out all the interpersonal skill modifiers they have doesn't help the example.

I mean other than giving some ideas about what a certain points total gets you or displaying random build combinations how would that help?

[Quertus]

b) The attitude of "put it in there so the high-system mastery people can show off their mastery" is toxic. It's the "git gud nub" attitude, baked into the cake.

I'll look at the rest of your post later, but this I wanted to respond to immediately. I completely agree. This attitude is toxic.

I mean, I believe in Kai Zen, in improvement. I believe in many types of "git gud nub". I believe people should, in general, want* to get good. But even I find the attitude you describe in this and the next few posts to be madness.

* the fun of Sudoku being contingent upon a lack of system mastery not withstanding

Character creation should be on a small PDF linked from the main book.

The main book should be a large PDF linked - repeatedly - from character creation.

"Needing" bad options in order to "balance" means your system is already in deep trouble.

And the solution to "player system skill" imbalance is NOT, is NEVER, "give them a way to make a worse character than other players".

So, if I'm way better at chess than you, chess has problems? And me spotting you pieces to make the game more balanced is never ever in any way a good idea?

[Max_Killjoy]

So, if I'm way better at chess than you, chess has problems? And me spotting you pieces to make the game more balanced is never ever in any way a good idea?

We're not talking about chess.

RPGs are not chess.

There is no good parallel between RPGs and chess.

[Quertus]

I'm not even sure what you think I am talking about. I mean it might be a bad idea but I'm not sure what you think the idea is. I'm just talking about if I have an example character in the driving rules that maybe listing out all the interpersonal skill modifiers they have doesn't help the example.

I mean other than giving some ideas about what a certain points total gets you or displaying random build combinations how would that help?

I guess I failed my reading comprehension roll. I thought you were talking about examples being good in text, but actually having the sample characters that those examples reference was bad.

[PhoenixPhyre]

We're not talking about chess.

RPGs are not chess.

There is no good parallel between RPGs and chess.

Agreed.

Chess is zero sum competition. Only one person can win, and only if the other person loses. That's the polar opposite of an RPG, where even if players are at odds, they can have mutually compatible goals (along with their opposed ones).

[Quertus]

We're not talking about chess.

RPGs are not chess.

There is no good parallel between RPGs and chess.

Agreed.

Chess is zero sum competition. Only one person can win, and only if the other person loses. That's the polar opposite of an RPG, where even if players are at odds, they can have mutually compatible goals (along with their opposed ones).

You don't like metaphor? Fine.

If I play 2e D&D with balanced characters with most anyone I've ever played with, I will either have to hold back (which is but so much fun), or I will dominate the game.

Otoh, if I play in the Warhammer universe, with balanced characters, I will totally under perform. Of course, I'll likely still under perform if you hand me Tzeentch or the god Emperor himself, so it would probably take multiple characters for me to having the same contribution as one inquisitor.

Is that grounded in RPGs enough for y'all?

[PhoenixPhyre]

You don't like metaphor? Fine.

If I play 2e D&D with balanced characters with most anyone I've ever played with, I will either have to hold back (which is but so much fun), or I will dominate the game.

Otoh, if I play in the Warhammer universe, with balanced characters, I will totally under perform. Of course, I'll likely still under perform if you hand me Tzeentch or the god Emperor himself, so it would probably take multiple characters for me to having the same contribution as one inquisitor.

Is that grounded in RPGs enough for y'all?

I don't see how intentionally taking subpar abilities and "holding back" are materially different. Both are intentionally underperforming.

And you're still thinking in an inherently competitive framework. That's a big part of the problem right there.

[Quertus]

I don't see how intentionally taking subpar abilities and "holding back" are materially different. Both are intentionally underperforming.

You don't? Really?

To you, Babe Ruth gently tapping a baseball is an identical experience to you trying to see just how far you can hit a wiffleball? You'd happily live Bob Parr's secret identity, even when you knew that you could do more to help people? Because that would be substantially the same to you as a young teen pouring their heart into a community service clean-up?

And you're still thinking in an inherently competitive framework. That's a big part of the problem right there.

No, I'm thinking in terms of spotlight sharing. In terms of everyone getting to contribute, and enjoy the game. I'm thinking in terms of everyone having a role to play.

[D+1]

So why do we keep putting character creation at the beginning of the book? Tradition obviously, but I think it's also because of how we think of starting a game. You need to have characters to play a game, but if "the order in which you need things" was the true driver of book order, then the skills and equipment chapters would come even before character creation, and yet they don't. And we frontload these systems with their character creation subsystems, which leads GMs and Players alike to think they need to do this first.

Most game rule books are aimed at teaching the game, either to utter noobs who've never played an RPG, or to those who do already know RPG's but still need to learn to play THIS one differently than the last one. If you start with character creation first then you can be off and actually playing WHILE you're learning the mechanics, rather than first having to master the mechanics and THEN creating a character to finally begin the game with.

There are certainly advantages to knowing more of the game mechanics before creating a character, especially since many choices about character creation have to be made in the blind before you DO know more about the game mechanics, but the approach of, "mechanics first, then character creation," is generally aimed at already experienced players. For teaching the game, "character creation first, then game mechanics," works better for getting players PLAYING. If you don't care about teaching the game then the order in which you present your content can change... but then it doesn't much matter WHAT order things are presented in - and so you come back around to, "May as well present it in an order easier to learn the game."

[dps]

Part of this depends on how intricate character creation is, and how deeply connected and consequential the choices are.

If character creation requires several steps that depend heavily on previous steps, or worse whose results require you to re-do part of a previous step, I'm going to need a lot more explanation of exactly what I'm doing and lots of worked examples.

If there is a big chance of screwing up a character if you don't know all the system details, tell me the details first. If I can basically come in with a supported "high concept" (not all systems have to support all concepts) like "Big angry guy who hits hard and is hard to kill" or "nimble archer" or "magical blaster" or "sneaky investigator", pick what looks good and fits the concept and have a servicable character (even if not the best, but playable), then it doesn't really matter how much I know. I don't really need many examples at all, just a list of categories of things to choose.

Of course, this all requires things to be named well. An ability/skill called "stealth" should make me harder to see/detect/find. For me, it doesn't really matter how much unless it's a trap option. Which I hate. Detest. Abhor. <gets out thesaurus>

Of the two, I strongly prefer the second option. Let me pick what looks good and optimize later. Set the floor pretty high (into playable territory) and then let me do that up front. If I can make a character that doesn't care about magic/super tech/etc, don't make me wade through (or more likely thumb through) a section on those before I can make a character. Modular design is good so I only really have to know the things for my own character, not all the pieces of everyone elses' characters or the other subsystems.

I generally agree. In fact, with many systems, I'd argue it's more fun if you don't always know exactly what you're doing during character creation and end up with sub-optimal (but still playable) characters. With some systems, though, the floor of what a playable character is will be set too high for that approach.

And, there's another issue. There seems to be an implication in this thread that players will understand all of the rules and how the different rules interact once they've read them. In my experience, this is far from the truth. If players are going to have to take time to gain experience with the system in order to learn how the rules actually work, then the "learning all the rules before you create a character" approach isn't going to work in practice.

[FreddyNoNose]

When I DM, CC is done in front of me. I see all the rolls, I work though various rolls they have to make. Documentation goes on, etc.

It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to roll up a character in my game.

[mephnick]

Honestly, any time I introduce a new group to D&D I don't let them make characters. We run a one-shot with premades and then we make characters for a real campaign if they decide to carry on with it.

Character creation is the worst introduction to D&D for new players.

[Nifft]

The main book should be a large PDF linked - repeatedly - from character creation.

Yeah, pretty much.

RPG rules should really be hard-cover wikis.

That'll make the inevitable errata easier to apply as an added bonus.