Starting characters

While reading post about player empowerment by LJ user ad1066, a friend-of-a-friend, I got to thinking about some recent discussion on the Fudge List about the abilities of starting characters.

I've run into exactly the problem he describes in his post, and that's having a really great character concept that just doesn't fit the game system's (and by default, the GM's) idea of what starting characters should be like.

It's all well and good for the GM to decide that the PCs are going to be teenagers with no real abilities… it's easy to design characters for that, or say, "No, thank you, but that just doesn't appeal." But the D&D problem is not one of the GM deciding, but one of the GM not making any decision at all, but just taking the default starting parameters of the game system without much thought at all.

Thing is, D&D gives you the feeling that it's about mighty heroes… yet starts you out as wimpling nobodies. True, it won't take terribly long to advance to the "mighty hero" stage, which is another problem in itself, but when you envision a character with a background of extensive experience and reasonable heroic capabilities, what D&D gives you can really clash.

So outside of a single stint with D&D3 at the urging of friends (in which I again experienced exactly the above problem), it's been years since I've played a game system that didn't let me start with a character that fits what the game seems to promise. That is, if the setting is apparently about hot-shot space rangers, I expect to play a character who is a hot-shot space ranger. Not a character that's going to be a hot-shot space ranger some day, if he survives.

Just what makes a good starting character? I've got my ideas, but you'll have to wait awhile for me to sort them out and write them down.