RT being GMless, there isn't anyone who'll focus on asking me questions about my character, which, were the facilitator to do it, would still make the pretty high demand of players to come up with something on the spot. That method of "Tell me: What IS an Elf?", dragging a setting out of the players, was kind of eye opening when I learned about Dungeon World in 2014, but seems lazy and outdated to me now. The same of course applies to the kind of communal, brainstormed setting and characters envisioned by RT. In my experience playing the game with a lot of different people, put on the spot like that, character creation takes too long and what folks (myself very much included) will come up with is usually more on the generic side despite all the ostensible freedom. To clarify: As in most roleplaying games, these characters become more interesting and nuanced over time, so it's not that the game doesn't work, but that the blank slate setup just asks too much of the players.
Next we choose or roll a motivation and three pieces of gear. Easy, but quite bland again (except for some nice corporation names). I roll Lust for motivation, for gear a Datsun shotgun, a Heinkel coupé and Zonite hallucinogens. Interim: Compare all this to modern OSR mini-classes (http://character.totalpartykill.ca/troika/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_LYqZ6vSDM) or this generator for fantasy cyberware (http://lizardmandiaries.blogspot.com/2018/10/automated-fantasypunk-augmentation.html) and despair (or rejoice, I guess).
I go on to quickly determine my stats, Ready 3 Willing 3 Able 6, and then I get to the exciting and also most challenging part about character creation in RT: Conditions and Yasmin's Goal. Conditions are really, really cool (I wrote a long article about them in German: https://tearlessretina.blogspot.com/2018/10/remember-tomorrow-conditions.html) and, for a change, something about creating a RT character that is super sharp. They're a mechanical representation of a character's fictional situation. I pick (I sometimes roll, too, which isn't RAW) one positive and one negative condition for my character. Here, I feel, it's easy to get to the fiction, because the conditions are quite specific and come with questions. For Yasmin I go with Impaired (NCon) - likely high on the hallucinogens - and Financed (PCon), because, based on what I know now, I imagine her as a gambling woman, living out of her car, who just made a big win. I could even go further and use conditions I didn't choose to flesh out Yasmin's situation. Armed (PCon) is always an interesting one there for example, because seeing I rolled up a shotgun for Yasmin, why wouldn't she count as Armed? Maybe she can't get at the weapon right now, maybe she's at a place where having a gun wouldn't be an advantage in a fight? What's demanding about conditions, though, and has occasionally been a problem, is that I have to keep in mind that they're transitory. Characters in RT drift in and out of situations quickly. If my character is Loved (PCon) because of this deep, years-long relationship and I spend that in the first scene, I have to explain what losing the condition means fictionally, if I'm not to bullshit. So if I make a condition based on a super stable-seeming fictional circumstance, I have to be prepared to tear the latter down (or stick to the condition for as long as possible, which I have done in some games). Conditions make people think about the fiction, but in a constrained and productive way.
Finally, I have to come up with a goal for Yasmin. Something she wants to achieve in the fiction. What I've seen a lot here is people being very vague. My character wants to earn a lot of money. But how? My character wants to flee the city. But why and from whom? Being vague can be interesting if a character has low Willing for example and will maybe explore more than being decisive about what they're after. But it also makes things more difficult, because mechanical progress towards a goal necessitates fictional progress and knowing what a character does to get where. It's suggested to tie the goal to a character's motivation and to make goals neither instantly achievable nor impossible to achieve. Not much help here. I've written another article including some best practices on goals (in German again): https://tearlessretina.blogspot.com/2018/10/remember-tomorrow-ziele.html. For Yasmin I go with chasing an eclectic clique of electric high rollers, looking for the ultimate thrill. Once more: Ostensible freedom.
Bringing new characters and factions in during play follows the same procedure, but is much easier because everyone pulls from a moving and living game world or fiction. That also applies to the initial factions, who are created after the player characters have had their Introduction scene.
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