I’ve been trying to settle on a character class for an upcoming D&D game (3.5e), and I’ve been running into some serious option paralysis — there are so many choices that I’ve been completely unable to pick one.
There are a couple of other factors at work here, including my tendency to overthink things and (more importantly) the fact that I don’t have a strong inclination towards a particular class role.
Setting those aside, though, something occurred to me: I don’t think I’ve ever run into option paralysis as a GM.
When I’m GMing, despite having near-infinite options and making choices constantly — both before the game begins, and once it’s rolling — it just feels different in some way.
Partly that’s because few of my individual GMing choices are as critical as choosing a character is for a player (since that’s their most important source of input into the game), and partly it’s because I’m not choosing from a laundry list of options — I’m just brainstorming.
Have you run into option paralysis as a GM? Or have you also found that it doesn’t really come up? (And if so, why?)
Generally, I tend to think as a DM that there will always be time to use all my ideas so I just go with the one that seems coolest at the moment and jot down a note about (or attempt to remember) the rest.
I think the difference between DM and player options is that, as a player, your choices are permanent, long term, and exclusive. Thus, those options mean a lot more than as a DM where you can change things, try new things, and fiddle at will. You can even fiddle with big things like theme sparingly (Yes, I know we’re running a victorian horror campaign, but today’s adventure is about transgender slapstick humor!)
Option paralysis usually strikes me as a GM before I commit to a game. Choosing which system, how to get people excited– that’s where the trouble comes from for me.
While I know that (as a player) specific pitches get me more excited than just a game system, narrowing things to one element can be tough. Is this the campaign where we try the magician’s academy, or should we do one of the other 37 cool ideas I’ve had?
I’ve found that just deciding to start is more important than picking the right thing– as Rick mentioned, you can work around to the other cool ideas in turn.
I’m generally ok with having an idea and then dropping it in favor of something cooler. So I don’t have option paralysis as a GM. I had it all the time as a player in DND trying to figure out how to make my character concept fit into the laundry list of classes. That and the inflexibility of the system were what made me swear off of DND.
It’s also the reason that I started down the arduous path of writing my own system. I won’t do any self promotion here, but I’ve always preferred games that allow you to build your character in the way that you want but are more than just one shot games.
Things like Tri-stat(besm) or even shadowrun or white-wolf (meh, it’s more limited than it would like to say it is) appeal to me more than DND solely in the fact that I can name what my character is and build to that ideal.
I’ve had option paralysis, but (for me, at least) it’s like stage fright… it goes away once you actually get on with the play.
In other words, I tell myself to stop thinking and start doing.
Never had this happen. I just remember some advice I got once in any situation like this “It is better to make a bad decision when a decision is needed than it is not to make a decision at all.” You can always find a way to correct your mistakes.
As ScottM said, choosing a system gives me option paralysis. I find getting started in a new game very difficult. It’s easy to become too bogged down in grandiose planning.
Thus, I allmost allways run the sample adventure included with the new system. This results in my campaign being a series of fun adventures strung together with a thin plot. For various unimportant reasons, that works perfectly for my group.
As a player, I’ve either had a pretty solid idea of where I want a PC to end up, or I’m stubborn enough to try and shoehorn the rules around a concept. In the latter case, I sometimes end up with characters that solidly defy D&D stereotypes, but the system works okay to accommodate them. Option paralysis has never been a problem for me as a player.
As a GM, however, it was—I’d have too much cool stuff to draw from. In the end, I came up with a "three-book" rule—I limited myself to material from the core rulebooks and three other sources.
For a mystic Asian-flavoured campaign, I might pick Oriental Adventures, Magic of Incarnum and Ghostwalk. Or I’d pick three books, say The Book of Hallowed Might, Green Ronin’s Advanced Bestiary and the Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary, and see what I could make out of them.
If I needed anything more, then I’d have to work it up myself. It meant a little more work, and thought, but at least it meant I wasn’t spending all my time going from book to book preparing for a campaign, and didn’t have to carry so many books to and from games.
I improvise. So no, it doesn’t.
By the way, for your character: if you don’t care what role you re, ask your party members what they’re playing and see what needs covering.
T
I found that being a DM fixed my paralysis.
Just play the NPC you would most want the players to meet (and that falls in the level -range etc).
Volia, instant, interesting character.
Easy. Stop playing D&D.
Find a system that allows you to concentrate on the ‘Character’ not the endless stream of rule options.
Once you think it terms of personality first, you’ll focus more on which options reinforce the history of the character.
michael, there’s nothing to say you can’t make characters just like you say with D&D too. Come up with your concept, history, and personality, and work from there. It’s not as difficult as you make it sound. No, the class system isn’t perfectly open-ended and malleable, but for damn near every character concept, there’s a class or combination of classes that will do what you want it to do.
I’m sure this is too late, but play a cleric. You know the party needs a cleric. It’s the dirtiest job in D&D.
I concur with the others here: As a DM, it gets better once the campaign is rolling. I’m not a big fan of published adventures or settings (the last module I ran was Keep on the Borderland, around ’79 or so), and I normally err on the too much background side of things.
Better to start the players in media res and get them fighting and looting.
I’m a big proponent of the concept that “limits are freeing”. Option paralysis is the opposite effect. When I’m in a situation where I have way too many choices, I impose the limits on myself.
For examples, as a GM in a D&D game, I could use any monster I wanted. I don’t like a “monster of the week” campaign, though. So I’ll limit myself to a few monsters as the main foes–maybe 20 for a medium campaign. Only two humanoids? Hmm, I’ll pick goblins and gnolls. Done. That doesn’t mean that I’ve overlimited myself. If I decide later I really need a bugbear, I don’t sweat it. I merely make sure that the bugbears are oddball instead of standard.
The same principle works with any GM choice. To choose is to limit yourself–if nothing else, by rejecting the things you didn’t choose at that moment. But if you want a coherent world, it goes further than that. If the campaign is billed as the PCs work as agents of the king, then the campaign is probably not about happy-go-lucky vagabonds. It might play out as loyal agents of the king, or disgruntled agents of the king, or even rebel former agents of the king–but what comes before limits what comes after.
I think option paralysis mainly occurs because people are afraid that something will get left out that would have been neat. But I nearly always find that making a decision narrows the options down to the point that the next options become more interesting.
I’m fascinated with the idea of having option paralysis before starting up a campaign. It makes sense to me intellectually, but it doesn’t happen that way for me.
On the tangential topic of my current PC, I settled on a druid. The revised, errata’d, re-revised, re-errata’d wild shape stuff makes my brain bleed, but other than that I’m stoked about it. In nearly 20 years of playing D&D, I’ve never tried a druid.
And I got there by backing into it, which would have been the right approach to start with (as was pointed out in these comments): Came up with a concept, fleshed around it. You know, how my favorite characters usually start out. đ
(David M. Jacobs) Incidentally, Martin, having readers stat themselves out as D&D charactersââŹâand justifying their decisionsââŹâmight be an idea for a future TT article, as an exercise in how to break through stereotypes in NPC creation.
Can you expand on this a bit? I think I see what you mean, but I’m not entirely sure.
I think I understand what’s David’s saying. Essentially, having a person stat themselves out tends to draw out how they wish themselves to be as much as it tells about how they actually are. It also tends to show their particular favored archetype, since one common theme in RPGs is players playing characters that are who they WANT to be.
For the ideal comparison, I’d say that it would require 2 sets of character sheets. One would be the player/GM’s vision of themselves, and the other would be one made by the rest of the group as a whole.
I can picture the conversation now:
Player: “I have an Int of 18, obviously.”
Rest of group: “Dude, we gave you a 10, and that was a stretch.” đ
If you don’t like wild shape (and it is complex) take a look at the variant class feature for the druid in player’s handbook 2.
I’ve wrapped my head around the new WS, and I prefer it to the PHB2 alternative (at least in concept — I won’t get WS until next level ;)). Thanks for the pointer, though!