All Men Are Equal?

There is something to be said for classic gamings penchant for unevan starting characters. Consider the fighter and the wizard, in D&D the fighter traditionally has utility right from the start, he is survivable (if he's clever) and hits hard, whilst the wizard has a knife and probably a single spell. However this evens out later on when the wizard essentially becomes Batman; armed to the teeth with spells and tricks to get themselves out of any situation.

Modern iterations of games, often tending towards standard array or point buy options, have a philosophy that all men are created equal and it is their specializations that make them different.

There are arguements for both choices in terms of character creation and the system I'm tending towards seems to favour a 'level footing' for characters from which their abilities and quirks can be built. However there is the accusation that this method creates cookie-cutter characters a view that certainly has some truth behind it.

So the question becomes how do we differentiate such characters if we are using a 'level playing field'?

We can of course insert any number of systems (defects and personalities for example) to try and breed some differentiation into the system, however all this does is layer more mechanics on top of a system and ultimately just gives more options to a character that will still end up feeling like a stock character.

In older RPGs he random rolling method of character creation prevented this homogenisation of characters and bred a spirit of 'playing with what you have'; the stories of randomly rolled characters who overcame the odds or who failed in humerous ways always seem far more interesting than the uber-slick master swordsman created under a point buy system.

The solution is to enforce random rolling into the system I want to create, however this doesn't sit well as I want my system to be primarily narrative based as opposed to the exploration base of D&D. Perhaps random rolling will be an optional extra stuffed in the appendix, whilst I will include in the other sections a few nudges to get players and GMs thinking in more interesting and expansive ways.

Then again if someone wants to play boring sword master #72 then I guess they will manage it one way or another.