There are a lot of different types of role playing games. They all have a few things in common, however. Primary among these are characters. You’ve got to role play something; it’s in the name, after all.
Good Characters
How we each define a good character is dependent on our individual preferences. One gamer’s definition may depend entirely on how much damage the character can do. I don’t especially want to play in his game, but he’s welcome to it.
Personally, here are the guidelines I’ve settled on after years of role playing. The character must…
- fit the game.
- take part in the story.
- be believable.
- have an interesting background.
- have room for growth.
Fit the Game
I’ve written before about how I almost always make my character last. I use this opportunity to tie my character in with the setting, and fill roles (both mechanical and story-oriented) that have been left vacant. My larger purpose in this is to make my character fit the game.
The other great way to accomplish this is to plug your character into the location. Even when I’m not the last one to make a character, I certainly never make one before the GM describes the game. This way, I can root my PC in the setting.
If there’s a town around which the game will center, my character will be from that town. Even if he’s left and come back, he’s background will be inextricably tied to the community. If there’s not a specific location, I would ground the character in what areas and groups are available.
Our recent Dresden Files game was based in Victorian London. While my character had spent the past several years abroad, I made him the best damn Victorian Englishman I could manage. If anything, his travels only served to accentuate his origins.
Take Part in the Story
Being a PC usually means that you have some role in the game’s plot. Some characters, however, play more central parts than others. There are no guarantees, of course, and you can’t expect to always have the spotlight.
You can, however, increase your chances of playing more than a bit part. One of the best ways to do this is to place your character in the story’s path. Integrate pieces of the GM’s game description into your character’s background. Integrate the antagonist into your character’s past somehow.
Next, give the GM plenty of ways to use your character. Leave gaps in his background where the GM can add something plot-related. Give your character goals and vulnerabilities that can be used to pull or push him onward.
To stick with the same example character, Matt had mentioned both Black and White Court vampires in his game concept. The Black Court seemed like the greater threat, and an Englishman hunting Black Court vampires sounded like something right out of Bram Stoker. So, I made Jon’s central motivation a quest to rescue his lost love from a vampire. Though the game couldn’t revolve around that subplot, of course, it allowed Jon to have his moment in the spotlight, and gave Matt both a hook into a PC’s background and a guaranteed lever he could use to move Jon.
Be Believable
As fantastic as the surroundings might be, I do my best to make characters somewhat realistic. Even if she’s got frightening mystical powers, the sorceress is still a person. If she doesn’t behave like one, she won’t seem real.
A character should have likes, dislikes, hopes, and fears. She should have a past, explaining how she came to be the way she is, and plans for the future. If she’s a talented magician, she should also have faults that round out her personality.
Jon was a boy raised on the Romantics’ stories of knights and heroes, a son of privilege who tried to live by “noblesse oblige”. This led him to do crazy things, like joining the French Foreign Legion in a fit of depression, and constantly trying to protect his supernatural friends, who were probably less in danger than he was. He was great with a gun, and at making friends. However, he was also a sappy fool, easily manipulated when people appealed to his image of himself as the hero.
Have an Interesting Background
Characters should have done something interesting in their past. Just about everybody has an interesting story, once you start talking, so it really only makes them more realistic. Having an interesting background will also often introduce conflict that the GM can use to get you into the story.
The next step is to figure out how the character’s interesting background has made them the person they are. We’re all affected by our past, and people who do extraordinary things often seem to have been prepared for those feats by their previous experiences. Kit Carson was prepared for his later work as a scout by running away, and spending years making a living off the land. Genghis Khan was forged by years of keeping his family alive while being hunted by his father’s assassins.
Finally, I’ve found it immensely helpful to include as many of the PCs as possible in my characters’ stories. For one thing, this greatly increases group cohesion. In addition, it makes your character’s story easier to work into the game, because it will involve everybody.
Jon’s combination of social and combat skills were formed by growing up in high society, and running away to the army. I was greatly helped with working everybody else into Jon’s story by the DFRPG/Fate Guest Star mechanic, which accomplishes exactly that. The upshot, however, was that he was tied into several of the other characters.
Have Room for Growth
If you’ve ever read old pulp stories, you know what the absence of character growth feels like. You could put them in about any order, since the main character is just as much a bad-ass in each one, and is rarely changed by the events that unfold. While fun for a while, they end up feeling insubstantial when put together.
All characters should have faults and weaknesses, if only to give them dimension. However, they also give the character areas to improve. Ignorance can be learned away, prejudices can be corrected, and confidence can be gained. In the end, you’re left with a real story.
Sometimes it’s fun to play a bad-ass. When a game is over, though, I rarely remember how impressively we won in a particular conflict. When my character grows from a slave to a sultan, or a hapless Victorian adventurer to a man on a mission, that sticks with me.
Hey, so I am new to the site. You can thank Fred Hicks’ retweet for bringing me here. Yes, I came for the Gaming Paper, but I have bookmarked the site and should be back for more.
I am in total agreement with the reasoning of the post. The question, of course, in my mind is what tools do you use to get through your checklist? Some people are going to do this naturally (and there are a few who might OVER do it, but usually it is all good). Others need to be prompted, so there is where it is handy to fall back on some system or systems it seems to me.
You example is Dresden Files, which, being an Evil Hat/FATE game, provides a lot of support and advice for building the kind of deep character to start out with in character creation.
Currently I am enamored of the structure provided by 13th Age for building character backgrounds in character creation. After a very long hiatus, I am returning to regular gaming with a once a month group (mixed parents and kids) and I decided that 13th Age was the game to start with. We just did character creation. One thing that makes 13th Age a cut above other d20 games for building the kind of characters you champion is that in the Icon system, where you are tied to the big heroes, villains and otherwise power brokers of the world, you are invested in the story and are already generating background stories and future story hooks. Further, with the “skill” system being based on putting points into Backgrounds (like, former Black Dragon Assassin, or Master Pastry Chef, or Survivor of the Battle of Axis) you gain access to a whole set of skills and contacts that further build a back story for the character. Finally, the idea of letting players define One Unique Thing about their character is another brilliant story element. Each character can have some destiny, or mark of greatness, or terrible affliction (and I was surprised how many players wanted to have that kind of disctinction!) that makes them stand out. I was really impressed by how the rules framework helped build a rich story for each character in creation.
But, I was not satisfied. The one thing that many games do poorly (as far as formal systems) but which FATE games tend to do well, is build relationships between the characters into the background. So, taking a page from Spirit of the Century, I had each player come up with an important event in their past, and then other players could “sign on” to say how they had also participated. In SotC this is more structured on paper than it turned out to be at my table, but as Rob Donoghue tweeted to me, it came of the rails in just the right way. In the end, I had an epic backstory that tied all the characters together with a shared history, with many surprising events and daring deeds that I can leverage for even more future stories than just the individual Icons, Backgrounds and Unique Things.
So, my thought here is, when the character back story is not part of the specific development in character creation, what can we do as players and gamemasters to make sure that we hit everything on your checklist? I think one of the things I have learned most from reading gaming blogs (especially Rob Donoghue’s), is that any game system can do any kind of setting, but rules and systems do matter and do shape experience. So, when you have building formal story elements built into the RULES of character creation, you tend to more easily hit the points on your checklist. Where those rules are lacking, I think we all have to work harder to help make sure that everyone arrives at a fully realized (and connected) character.
I guess I would love to see a follow up post on how to port these ideas into systems that were not built with this kind of support in mind. I would guess, one good solution is coming up with the kind of question lists you see in Dungeon World. That could help, though that places a lot on the GM. Anyway, love the blog, hope to see more.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! To be eligible for the contest, could you please make a post in the content thread at https://www.intwischa.com/2013/02/countdown-to-500-our-500th-post-contest/. I will try to reach out to you by email too.
Yep, figured that out right after I posted. Still, it’s about the community, not just the contest (okay, but it is a little about the contest). Will continue to come back and post. Thanks for being so pro-active!
We’re glad to have you here!
Wow. First off, thanks for putting so much thought into that. I hadn’t really considered this from a system perspective. You’re right, though, you could come up with some character generation mechanics to hit these points. I’ve been really impressed with how far the Fate Guest Star mechanic goes toward creating a cohesive group, and the same could be done on a single character level to create a PC that integrates well with the game. I’ll have to put some thought into this.
Also, I haven’t tried 13th Age before, but you’ve got me very intrigued.
[...] Here’s a great checklist for making a new character and introducing it to any classic RPG or RPG story of any kind, be it tabletop or MMORPG. Written by Chase over at Intwischa I found this guide to be very informative without being a long read. The ideas are sound and the guide is one that is sure to bring your roleplaying stories together in a more cohesive and enjoyable way. [...]
Hey guys, just want to let you know we featured this post on our blog as it was a great guide for how to create meaning in a character!
Thanks a lot for the plug. I’m really glad at least one of the ideas worked for you. I’d be curious to hear more about it!