The Gentleman's Agreement

[ariasderros]

How many people here are familiar with the articles in the Vampire Players Guide about character creation and not doing things like making a "lone-wolf badass"?

[Halinn]

Ours would go something like this:

1. The power ceiling in 3.5 does not exist; it is completely possible to build a character that is infinitely powerful.

Wrong. A lot of things in the Pun-Pun repertoire is still only nigh-infinite.

[InnaBinder]

I believe these agreements are the backbone of any RPG group or game.  The ones I most commonly seemto use are roughly: 

Make a character that is appropriate to the campaign.  If it's a campaign inspired by Tolkien, make a Tolkienesque character.  If it's a superhero campaign, make one that is appropriate to that.  Don't feel unduly stifled by that, but if you've agreed to play campaign X, then you've signed on the dotted line.  If you don't want to, then don't agree to play campaign X. 

Build to power level X, more or less.  The group should establish what the appropriate power level for a given game is.  Mine tends to be straightforward Druid, i.e., anything you could do with a Druid without looking at any handbooks or using more than half your brain, or a solid decently-built Warblade.  But, whatever that level is, stick more or less to it.  I don't really care how you get there:  I'm indifferent between an uber cracked out Paladin or Fighter and a straightforward Conjurer, so long as you stick pretty close to guidelines the group has agreed upon. 

Know what's on your character sheet.  You're responsible for those mechanics with a minimum of book flipping.

I congratulate you, without irony, on being able to find players who want to make characters as a group and otherwise follow these guidelines.

[ariasderros]

I believe these agreements are the backbone of any RPG group or game.  The ones I most commonly seemto use are roughly: 

Make a character that is appropriate to the campaign.  If it's a campaign inspired by Tolkien, make a Tolkienesque character.  If it's a superhero campaign, make one that is appropriate to that.  Don't feel unduly stifled by that, but if you've agreed to play campaign X, then you've signed on the dotted line.  If you don't want to, then don't agree to play campaign X. 

Build to power level X, more or less.  The group should establish what the appropriate power level for a given game is.  Mine tends to be straightforward Druid, i.e., anything you could do with a Druid without looking at any handbooks or using more than half your brain, or a solid decently-built Warblade.  But, whatever that level is, stick more or less to it.  I don't really care how you get there:  I'm indifferent between an uber cracked out Paladin or Fighter and a straightforward Conjurer, so long as you stick pretty close to guidelines the group has agreed upon. 

Know what's on your character sheet.  You're responsible for those mechanics with a minimum of book flipping.

I congratulate you, without irony, on being able to find players who want to make characters as a group and otherwise follow these guidelines.

hell, even I have 2/5. One doesn't follow the last one, one doesn't follow the first (but isn't that bad about it), and one doesn't follow the second.

[Unbeliever]

Thanks.  I'll be sure to link my players to this.  We number about ... 8, 10 maybe, counting my friends back from my hometown whom I only play during the holidays with.  We do try. 

[veekie]

I believe these agreements are the backbone of any RPG group or game.  The ones I most commonly seemto use are roughly: 

Make a character that is appropriate to the campaign.  If it's a campaign inspired by Tolkien, make a Tolkienesque character.  If it's a superhero campaign, make one that is appropriate to that.  Don't feel unduly stifled by that, but if you've agreed to play campaign X, then you've signed on the dotted line.  If you don't want to, then don't agree to play campaign X. 

Build to power level X, more or less.  The group should establish what the appropriate power level for a given game is.  Mine tends to be straightforward Druid, i.e., anything you could do with a Druid without looking at any handbooks or using more than half your brain, or a solid decently-built Warblade.  But, whatever that level is, stick more or less to it.  I don't really care how you get there:  I'm indifferent between an uber cracked out Paladin or Fighter and a straightforward Conjurer, so long as you stick pretty close to guidelines the group has agreed upon. 

Know what's on your character sheet.  You're responsible for those mechanics with a minimum of book flipping.

I congratulate you, without irony, on being able to find players who want to make characters as a group and otherwise follow these guidelines.

Well, its not too hard to find players who follow MOST of the guidelines(some have concepts above player competency), but as a group they can make up for each others flaws if they are reasonable human beings.

Or I guess they could react catastrophically to make the bad things worse.

[cvar]

We're all here to have fun.  It's not fun for the DM if you ruin the game, it's not fun for the players if you LULSORANDOM them, it's not fun for you if the DM arbitrarily ruins your character.

This seems to get most of the bases covered.  Anything more specific than that will be up to whomever is running the game since we rotate DMs to prevent burnout, but all of us work from that basic agreement.

[Tempest]

We've only got a few:

No unreasonable powergaming
Don't make the game unfun for the others
Respect your fellow players

These might seem obvious to some, but you'd be surprised how often we've enforced them

[Unbeliever]

I find what is essentially the "golden rule" version of the Gentleman's Agreement usually lacks content, though.  It's hard, for instance, to determine what qualifies as "unreasonable" powergaming.  Hence my marginally more specific guidelines.

[ariasderros]

I find what is essentially the "golden rule" version of the Gentleman's Agreement usually lacks content, though.  It's hard, for instance, to determine what qualifies as "unreasonable" powergaming.  Hence my marginally more specific guidelines.

+1
Though for power level, generally that defaults to what some call the "golden rule of D&D": don't do anything you wouldn't want the DM to.
Basically, Mirror of Opposition, which doesn't allow any kind of defense against, is the ultimate arbiter of "are you too strong?".