About those RPGs which asks you questions in char. creation

[Nash]

Do you know those old RPGs where they ask you a bunch of questions and as a result, tries to suggest a character build that best fits your answers? I've always wondered how do those work, internally. I mean, what's going on behind the scenes that'll determine what character it ends up suggesting for you. Anyone happens to know?

Asking for friend I'd like to implement something like it in my game but I have no idea how to approach it.

[dpJudas]

Usually its just a simple questionnaire with scores for each answer:

What is your favorite color?

Pink = +15 int +30 female, Blue = +5 str +20 male, Yellow = +coward trait

Continue like that for all the questions and you got some rating. Possibly mix it with some dices, mix it all up, and voila! Character generated!

[wildweasel]

Ultima 4's works by process of elimination. It starts with the eight Virtues, and while it at first randomly chooses which set to show you first, I believe it handles it tournament-bracket style, and whichever one "wins" assigns you the class associated with it. Choosing "Sacrifice" every time is basically hard-mode. =P

[Mikk-]

It probably works similar to those Buzzfeed "What kind of toasted bagel are you?" type personailty quizzes.

[Matt]

It probably works similar to those Buzzfeed "What kind of toasted bagel are you?" type personailty quizzes.

With the same appeal, I find.

[insightguy]

Just do what Fallout 3 (sort of) did, give a quiz that recommends them the play-style, but allow them to pick any of the other classes should they choose to do so, It's annoying to a player to be locked into a single class/play-style from an arbitrary quiz

And to know what the quiz should contain, unless we know what the play-styles or classes are, we can only guess how it should work.

[NeuralStunner]

Just do what Fallout 3 (sort of) did, give a quiz that recommends them the play-style, but allow them to pick any of the other classes should they choose to do so, It's annoying to a player to be locked into a single class/play-style from an arbitrary quiz

Morrowind did this ~6 years before. Unfortunately it was pretty much always the best option because many of the birthsigns were useless.

And to know what the quiz should contain, unless we know what the play-styles or classes are, we can only guess how it should work.

If this is an alternative to "choose your own", no you shouldn't be too transparent about what does what. Let there be some mystique. (Not that someone won't figure it out eventually.)

The opening questionnaire in Dragon Quest 3 always fascinated me. It's more than just questions, which is pretty cool.

[Viscra Maelstrom]

it's somewhat annoying in the early entries of the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series, because you have to answer a quiz in order to choose what Pokemon you'll turn into. what makes it annoying is that the selection of questions you get is somewhat randomized, so if you're looking to get a particular Pokemon chosen, you have to hope you get the right string of questions so you can get the right number of points tallied into what you want to become. some Pokemon are even genderlocked too, so you can only be a female Eevee or male Meowth for example.

to rub it in further, after you're done getting your character chosen, you can just... choose who your partner should be, with no fuss. yeah.