IronAngel wrote: This seems to be a fairly common way to start a faction, to be honest: recruit buddies OOC to make new characters together. It works sometimes, but more often than not it just results in short-lived alts. It isn't called "alternate beginnings" but it is essentially just that, player-driven.
I find it more successful, in general, to have people create characters they're really inspired to play, and then find ways of bringing them together. Instead of exhorting people to create, say, a bunch of pirate characters or new goblins or an exiled tribe of Tuigan warriors to play together, you're more likely to keep people around if you connect with existing characters and find ways of incorporating them into your RP.
That said, alternate beginnings can offer a nice change of pace, and if that's your thing, go for it. Just saying, it has been done and it isn't a magical formula that always works very well.
I agree with your basic premise. I'm torn on the issue of whether peer-sponsored character creation is a 'good' thing, considering we have an entire stickied thread dedicated to the faults of having multiple alts. By the same token, I can only imagine that it is far easier to garner interest from the beginning of a career than trying to recruit those who are already there.
(I'd like to point out my own hypocrisy here, since I'm the same person who wrote "Don't have lower-level members? Get some, for the love of Ao!")
That said, and I mean no offense by this, I would consider a very open biographical field to be a much better process than strengthening confines. As in, the 'restrictions/prerequisites' section is perhaps one item long, if that. The real barrier is circumstance - where are you, how did you end up there, and where are you going? A stellar Alternate Beginnings is going to feel like a campaign within a campaign, or perhaps a campaign within a very fleshed-out setting. The real difference, in the case of a player-driven story, is that the DM is either not present or on the sidelines, allowing the players to set their goals and personas as a team.
This shouldn't exclude a thematic basis, though. In fact, I should think that providing some sort of unifying theme would make it easier to make a coherent story. I don't envy the party that contains incredibly exclusionary characters as a general rule, though obviously anything can work if the roleplaying is there.
I suppose I could have shortened this post by simply noting that extremes in either approach should be balanced, couldn't I?
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