Nah, you don’t have to write out a of the Lifepaths. The method you described later on seems to be a pretty good starting place. My thoughts go more toward emphasizing collaboration and focus like I mentioned earlier: “Post Apoc Fantasy Magical Mutations - what do you all want to play!?”
“I want to play an Elven Wizard trying desperately to find a cure for his people’s decay.”
“Oh, that’s cool! I feel like that could go in a Lich-y direction.”
“Totally!”
“Awesome! So, is studying magic a normal thing for Elves, or is that something this character is doing independently?”
“I don’t know, I figured the Elves studied magic. You’re the GM.”
“If I could cut in, I was thinking of playing a human knight, but I was thinking that all of the stocks are probably still pretty integrated; they all come from the same people, right?”
“Oh, yeah, so if anyone is studying magic, elves seem like they should be able to study it too, at least. So the Lifepaths probably all share the same Settings - with maybe some specialized subsettings - you’d probably just take Born Elf if you wanted to play an Elf.”
And so on until our collaborative world-building does the work for us.
Ah, yeah! See, we’re clearly running into some cultural differences, what with you having family, work, and stuff and me being an unemployed atemporal loner.
It misses so little to be (almost) universal that is seems to me a bit of a waste
Anyway I can go with the modifications I proposed before and write my own custom character burning system.
Not everyone is supposed to have the exact same tastes.
Uh… I didn’t imply that in my message. Please do not pervert my words into saying something I didn’t
I didn’t make any assumption on your lifestyle and never judged anyone.
