This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
I call shenannigans.
A) I've never heard of the title phrase before.
B) The 'strength, constitution, etc.' stats and the oblique reference to random character generation ('honest rolls') imply that it's referring to just one specific game...
C) ...but even Dungeons And Dragons hasn't encouraged random generation for twenty years!
D) It's not at all clear who playing such a character is 'brave', nor why a GM would 'live for' it.
Is This A Trope Or Just Something From The Authors Gaming Table?
Fast Eddie: Please sit down. The following will be a shock. There are persons yet alive who roll characters via The Real Rules. These persons are crusty old people interested in the storytelling aspects of RPG. They use terms you may not hear on a daily basis. Get over it.
Ninjacrat: Are you going to explain what randomly-generated characters have to do with 'storytelling', or is this a fun guessing game?
Beyond that, is there any sense in which this page isn't self-indulgent 'let met tell you about my character' twaddle? Random Character Generation would be a trope. This is... not.
LO Rd: I'm in favor of this trope, if only because I find its name and description amazingly hilarious. PS: what Fast Eddie implies with randomly-generated characters improving the storytelling aspect is that it prevents players from Min-Maxing their characters for a Dungeon Crawler experience, and the element of unpredictability forces them to be creative in the ways they enjoy their game.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: I believe this can be clarified and cleaned up. Let me give it a shot. [Later] I hope this clarifies what an Honest Rolls character actually is.
Meta Four: I think this should be kept.
Abu Dhabi: At least in the medium of the internet, I know that offering to run a game with generation like that is bound to draw players who like that sort of thing, even if it's for nostalgia value. I've been running a game like that for three years now, and barring one player, I'm the youngest participant by ten years!
Possibly the article should mention the other pitfall of making one of these - the very real problem that one player will roll up a someone freakishly overpowered. Once, in Dark Heresy I was witness to a character with all attributes over 35 and 3 over 40 - said character was better than everyone else, even at their individual specialties. In many ways this is worse, as it means the group as a whole suffers.
