I find a life path system is handy, it gets my players thinking about “who am I” from the start. it’s particularly good for beginner RPers or people not used to the setting
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A few days ago, I ran our Session 0 for character generation, and we used the lifepath system, and that went great. I haven’t told them there’s an online character generator yet, but when I will, I’m sure they’ll have fun using it.
That’s probably why I don’t see it in a favorable light; all of my players interested in STA have extensive knowledge of Star Trek and can form characters without paint-by-number steps.
My players also would rather just play that use a generator. They don’t find making characters before play to be fun.
Different groups different preferences.
That’s why it is good that there are multiple options for the character creation.
Your group, or even individual players, can choose the one that works best for them without being forced down a (life)path. 
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There are limitations and advantages for both. With lifepath you get more potential variety of discipline scores. With creation in play, you have the potential of picking up talent combinations that aren’t possible via lifepath due to not meeting the prerequisites at the time that you select the talent.
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First: The topic derailed significantly. If one of the mods reads this: Is it possible to separate the thread? That’d be very nice, thank you!
And regarding the lifepath vs. creation in play:
I’ve been a ‘Trekkie’ for decades and I’ve played RPGs for decades, so I would, too, claim to have extensive knowledge of Star Trek and lots of experience in roleplaying games. I would prefer the lifepath system at least for my first games. First, because of the reasons @BrianDavion mentioned. Second, because I am not familiar with the rules and would probably miss lots of situations to introduce a good new side of a character, represented by another step down the creation-in-play method.
So, I think that the correlation of extensive knowledge/experience and preference of the creation in play method can’t be generalised.
But to everyone their own.
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Personal preference: I prefer the lifepath system simply because I’ve played all the previous iterations of this setting - and they all use something similar (FASA’s version got quite detailed!).
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The Lifepath system is one of the things that drew me to the game in general - someone who’s been a Trekkie my entire 35+ year life with an encyclopedic knowledge of Trek lore. Not because I need it to make a character – I’ve been writing fiction my whole life, too, and playing Trek PbEM sims since 1995 – but because it encourages characters to be more than just a bunch of stats on a page.
Stat-based character construction and play is one of the things that turns me off about most of the “classic” TTRPG games, and the “classic” gamer mindset, so I appreciate Lifepath, the same way I appreciate character creation in FATE-based games. It’s narrative oriented, not stat oriented. Encourages actual roleplay instead of minmaxing. That’s not to say that other, more “crunchy” systems are bad, just that it’s not my preference and my personal experience in play groups using those systems has largely been negative because of the kind of players that were involved, who only wanted hack-and-slash instead of actual character and storytelling. If Lifepath helps draw in the kind of players I enjoy sitting at a table with, I’m all for it, even if I don’t need it myself.
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No, it really doesn’t. Any system can be gamed, and the same people that want to just look at “stats on a page” will use the lifepath to produce just that.
A min-maxer will find a way regardless. You could put them in Glorantha and they would try to min-max. They are almost irrelevant for life path vs point build.
For others the ability to develop a back story during character creation that might lead to unexpected character points is a useful option.
So for some it is useful and for others it is not.
It isn’t a binary good/bad. It depends on the player which is best.
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You’re absolutely right. Min-maxers will do what they do. But in my games, the lifepath system has helped ALL of my players (two groups of 5 players each) to flesh out their characters and feel like they have a better idea of who their character is.
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I said “encourages,” not “prevents anything else.” You don’t like it. You don’t find it useful. We get that. There are plenty of people – every bit as experienced a player, or GM, or Trekkie as you – who do. That’s ok. Both are okay.
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Do you get it? I don’t think that you do. The path doesn’t encourage anything of the sort. It encourages using dice rolls to randomly come up with a character. Or, you ignore the dice rolls and pick from a menu of prepared options. I say just order off menu and go with the creation in play method if you want to encourage open-ended creativity. With word count being a limitation to what goes into the book, a lot of extra stuff could have been put in instead of a menu of things intelligent players & GMs could come up with on their own.
Don’t be a condescending jerk.
It encourages that stuff for you. To you. For many others, though, it does quite the opposite. My 13-year-old (at the time) daughter, for instance, appreciated the guidance and took great delight in coming up with backstory for the life events she (not the dice) chose for her character.
I’ve been gaming for 40 years, and dig the system a great deal. Lots of material to riff off and inspire me.
You don’t like it. That’s just fine. But don’t presume for a moment thst yours is the only way, and don’t denigrate those who do things another way.
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Lifepath generation helped our group a lot. We have two novices to RPGs (for one it is their first game ever!), one relatively new, and myself (I have gamed for more than 30 years and played almost every system imaginable).
This system made it so that the less-experienced players could put together interesting character backgrounds based on suggestions from the book. I didn’t need that, but it did encourage me to move away from my pre-planned concept into something more interesting and organic.
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Don’t be a condescending jerk.
It’s not his first time drinking from that trough.
Tangentially: does this forum support personal blacklists?
B.
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You may not calling names but you write in a style that suggests that you and only are right and all others are wrong. If that’s not the behavior of a jerk …
Lifepaths are a great concept especially for those who do not have a plan what the background of their character should be. And it is a very old concept used by some of the oldest RPGs like Empire of the Petal Throne or Traveller on which BTW FASA’s Star Trek RPG was partially based.
Unlike Traveller which forced the players to use the dice you can still decide not to use the dice and choose what you think will fit into your character concept. The lifepath gives you a way to explain how your character got his abilities, skills, traits and values, which in my opinion is always better than just generating a bunch of character stats and letting the player explain them. This may lead to character histories not mirrored in their stats or extremely one side characters with no explanation why they are experts in just one skill but not proficient in all others. In my opinion the concept of Lifepaths discourages minmaxing, powergaming and munchkin characters, because it 's result will always be a more or less well round but always realistic character.
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Folks: it’s not worth fighting over this.
Some people like it, some do not. Neither approach is superior to the other, each has its advantages.
In my experience, this place is remarkably friendly, but if you carry on insulting each other, directly or otherwise, one of the mods will turn up and start doing something unpleasant.
Just live with it, move on, and save the in-fightng for social media.
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Ok folks, let’s stop the personal attacks. We offer two ways to make characters because we know not everyone will like one or the other. Both sides are valid. Please stop the fighting.
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