Also, if you are not a character in the game, that means you wont use the character creation screen which is the main part of the game.

Thing is, take a typical jRPG (SNES-era or later, and excluding Dragon Quest games); let's say, Final Fantasy 5 to be specific. In that game, you are controlling Bartz (Butz in the fan translation), but Bartz isn't meant to be a representation of the player. In fact, I can actually think of one particular spot in the game where he's been kidnapped and you are controlling one of the other characters to try to rescue him. (It's also interesting to note that, while he has his own story, he is probably the least important of the party members in the game; Galuf, Lenna, and Faris are far more important.) Also, the game still has plenty of gameplay; it really isn't a movie. (Some later games (FF7 I'm looking at you) do feel like movies, but the problem isn't inherent to the genre.)

Or, we could take Super Mario World. In this game, you control Mario (or, in 2-player mode, player 2 controls Luigi), and the game clearly looks nothing like a movie. (Of course, no one would reasonably classify this game as an RPG, but that's another story.)

Or we could even look at certain puzzle and action puzzle games. Tetris has no characters at all; are you saying *that* game is a movie?

NO! This is a Baldur's Gate forum. Get it? BALDUR'S GATE.

You do realize that the actual topic being discussed can actually change over the course of a thread? I was really just giving some examples of how a non-movie game doesn't necessarily need to include the player as a character in the game.

(Side note: Apparently, they are actually making a Tetris movie. No idea if it will actually be released, of course.)

Final Baldur's Fantasy Gate 5

What would you think of the obvious counterpart to the mod I propose in the original post: Remove everything after the character creation screen. In other words, you get to create your character, but then the game is over. (You can, of course, start over and create another character.)

Would you consider this mod to be a reasonable idea, or would you consider it absurd? To put it another way, is the character creation screen enough to be a complete game on its own?

Are 4 tires a car on its own? No. But still you cant make a car without them. Just like you cant make a D&D game without character creation.

Actually, in this case the idea behind this topic (and some of the others) is really two fold:
1. To examine what can (and can't) be done with the game engine. In other words, to examine the limits of modding. (This is the whole idea behind my BG2-in-BG1 topic, actually.)
2. As a thought experiment, asking "what if the game were different in this way".

Also, dismantling a game seems like a perfect topic for a forum about said game.

Only to people who don't like the game.

What about Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow Over Mystara? (Or the other D&D arcade game.)

I don’t know about Skyrim, but there is a mod in this vein for Morrowind, that makes Jiub the Nerevarine instead of your character.
I don’t know how it goes, I didn’t try it, but for a game like Morrowind this doesn’t seem out of place. Hey, I actually played Morrowind for years before taking interest in the main quest ;-)

I disagree. I enjoy the Wizardry series, and have no trouble discussing things like the game mechanics and how to put the game into strange states.

(In Wizardry 5 SNES, I recently managed to enter the dungeon with no living party members.)

Coming from a person whose sole aim appears to be how to best cheat or glitch, that doesn't mean a thing.

First, its Jon Irenicus not Don.

Second, if you want a same-sex "romance" in BG, you have to play the Enhanced Editions or "Siege of Dragonspear." Dorn will hit on you no matter what your gender is in BG1:EE and BG2:EE. In BG2:EE, you can only romance Hexxat if you are a female player-character. In "Siege of Dragonspear" Captain Schael Corwin is bisexual and I've heard, although have not personally experienced, the the gnome Glint is only romanceable by a male protagonist.