Said it in the other thread and I stand by it: there’s no wrong or right answer to this, it all depends on the kind of game and the kind of playerbase. @Autumn gave some specific examples that I agree with above.
I think that one of the most frustrating experiences I’ve had in this hobby was some 20 years ago when I tried rolling into Shadows of Isildur. The application process took at least a week all in all and was highly involved. Since I’d never played a RPI before and really didn’t understand how the game worked, I perma-died a couple days in, and obviously never gave the game another chance. I’d probably do just fine nowadays as someone who knows how RPIs work, but eh.
But in contrast, I’ve played games with lots of PvP mystery features, which heavily rely on players actually filling all those details in so that there’s something for other players to uncover if they want to go digging into your character. I’ve spent weeks in chargen on such games and had absolutely no regrets about it; it’s been an intensely rewarding experience. In fact sometimes I’ve enjoyed creating even more than I’ve enjoyed playing. I treat it as a creative writing exercise, which is why I’m in this hobby anyway.
I have also had lots of fun on games with literally 0 chargen process. A friend of mine once ran a custom tabletop campaign where we didn’t even get to pick our characters’ names or powers or backstories. All of our characters woke up together in a lab, with an assigned number-name and amnesia, and discovered who we were and what powers we had as the game progressed. I would just as happily do something like that again, but it obviously doesn’t work for every setting.
My big chargen gripes aren’t about how long it takes, but when it’s designed in a way that seems arbitrary and frustrating. For instance, I hate having to pick between ten slightly different, identical-sounding options for a skill. Like if I have to choose between whether to put points into Karate, Krav Maga, Kung Fu, Taekwondo and Jiu-Jitsu, and I have no idea how badly that choice is gonna fuck me down the line if I pick wrong, I already hate your game before I’ve started playing. Just let me pick “Martial Arts” as a stat if that’s my concept, and maybe customise it in character notes with the specifics. I’ve seen this justified as “well we don’t want everyone to have the same build”, but idc, it just smells like a newbie trap. The chargen process should be as intuitive as possible, limit any mechanical advantages that a veteran player could have for making more meta choices, and not encourage/require more work than will end up paying off.
On the writing side, this also means not having too many “optional” customisation fields that feel like a requirement if they aren’t, or that are asking for subtle variations of the same thing. For instance, you shouldn’t have textbox for backstory, another for history, another for summary, another for personality, another for quirks, another for hooks. Like … what? I just got finished writing all about how my character’s upbringing in a monastery instilled them with a lot of religious fervour, now you want me to write another paragraph about their personality, and then repeat that in a catchier way for hooks? This could’ve been 1 box. Or, if the description section is broken up into a bunch of different fields so I can describe my face, eyebrows, hair, fingers, toes, butt, all separately, and then also my hoodie, what the hoodie looks like on the floor, what my hoodie looks like with the hood up, and what other people see when I’m putting it on and taking it off … but THEN after I put all that work in, I discover it’s actually some kind of faux pas to have filled everything in, and I should’ve just picked 1 or 2 of these fields … f u, ur community, ur game, this is also a newbie trap. Don’t put these fields there if filling in every single one isn’t an expectation; and ideally, don’t have these fields at all if they add nothing that RP won’t. I mean I can just write, as needed: “Kestrel walks in, bundled up in a loose hoodie. Shivering, she lifts up her French-manicured fingers to pull the hood up over her long, dark hair.”
Other than that, I am happy to take as long as needed to ensure my app is up to the game’s standards/expectations. I don’t see vetting by staff as a hindrance; if they’re willing to make the time for it, I often find it beneficial to get communicating early on about how to ensure the best possible experience with my character for both of us. This is often better than rolling in and discovering only after that your concept doesn’t actually work.
