Should characters really just be defined by inventory?
If you like it that way, then yes.
Ok, now that we got that out of the way, I played an Into the Odd one-shot some time ago and it left me thinking about the whole "class-as-inventory" thing that a lot of NSR games have going for them, especially the ones inspired by Into the Odd. And you know what? I don't like it.
You see, I am very much in the "don't bring a seventeen-page backstory to your first session" side of the coin, but that doesn't mean I'm in the "you're a sack of stuff looking to find gold in a hole" side either. I want a character to emerge through gameplay, but I need a bit more ground to emerge the character from. There is a charitable interpretation of "well, you can come up with a starting character from the items in their inventory" and I do think it has some merit, but if I'm just playing a one-shot and my character starts with a bunch of dungeon exploration gear and one or two weird things, they are a sack of stuff looking to find gold in a hole and that's it.
And don't get me wrong, I love Into the Odd and think it's one of the most elegantly designed rulesets I've ever played with! However, I believe there must be some agreement between the author and me when the game's successor, Electric Bastionland, came out with its delightful 100 Failed Careers to create characters from. Having backgrounds that don't mechanically restrict your character but add flavor and context to what they have with them is probably one of my favorite ways to do character generation, particularly for one shots. It gives me a mental image, it gives me a base for my funny voice and it gives me additional things to consider in the fiction when making decisions, melding together the design goals of "playing a living character in a living world" with "expressing player skill and collaboratively solving problems".
It's just so charming too! You don't have old clothes and a longbow in the electric city of Bastion because you're a random weirdo picking stuff up from the ground, it's because you are a Backward Legionnaire1, which is a very specific kind of weirdo! Another game that adds background with inventory in a neat way is Nate Treme's Tunnel Goons, which has a short 3d6 lifepath generator for your character. One thing is having a mirror, another is having a mirror because you gathered intel during the war - such a lovely bit of flavor to add to the table.
So yeah, characters defined by inventories become more fun for me if they have that extra background information bundled along with them. A lot of the times, you already know they're a dungeon delver before you start making your imaginary guy. Some tables or simple choices to add some personality and context always feel like a welcome addition to me.
anb
I wish to one day be able to come up with stuff as evocative as Chris McDowall's writings. I flipped through the book to find an example for my post and now I've been thinking about Backward Legionnaires for about an hour.↩