Player characters: The three vital elements

[Doug McCrae]

This idea just occurred to me, it's far from fully formed. I'm just throwing it out for discussion. The three most important elements of a player character.

1. What can he do? Usually defined by the stats on the sheet. Rpgs handle this fairly well.
2. Why does he do? What's his motivation? Why does he go into dungeons or do other dangerous things?
3. Why does he associate with the other PCs? Why does the party stick together?

I feel that #2 and #3 have been severely lacking from most rpg sessions I've been involved in, including those I've run myself. The PCs have little, if any motivation. They're incredibly good at kicking ass, but we don't know why they do it. They seem to have little reason to stick with the other PCs who are often pretty unpleasant people. The PCs don't seem to actually like one another.

 

[renau1g]

Hmmmm my group's PC's are usually friends at least, sometimes family, so they usually have reason to stick together. We spend at least one session, usually more time individually, setting up the PC's (and not from a mechanical perspective) so we understand why they do what they're doing. Something as simple as greed is fine, some people want to go do dangerous stuff because they're good at ass-kicking and it pays much, much better than being a guard.

I'd definitely recommend that when you do character creation, maybe mandate where the campaign is starting, and give some bonuses for PC's that either a) are from the area and have ties to it (whether that's just a contact here or there that can feed them some info or a bonus to skills in town, whatever), or b) already know each other and can find a reason to be together.

 

[Doug McCrae]

Hmmmm my group's PC's are usually friends at least, sometimes family, so they usually have reason to stick together. We spend at least one session, usually more time individually, setting up the PC's (and not from a mechanical perspective) so we understand why they do what they're doing.

I can see the drawback here, if a PC dies it's a major problem. You pretty much have to ban death, like Hong, and use other types of failure - mission fails, bad guys get to do what they were trying to do, loss of gear, imprisoned, death of friendly NPCs, etc.

 

[FireLance]

Maybe it's because I game with friends, but #3 is usually not a problem in our group. Since the characters are generally co-operative and affable (with each other at least) the issue of why the party sticks together generally doesn't come up.

I try to address #2 in the first session of each campaign. Usually I will either ask each player to provide a motivation for his PC (as I did in my current Eberron campaign) or I will supply one via DM fiat (in a previous campaign, all the PCs were asked to help a mutual friend). After that, the outcome of the first adventure will usually provide sufficient reason for the PCs to continue adventuring and to adventure together.

For example, in the previous campaign, the PCs helped their mutual friend to recover proof of his identity, which enabled him to inherit a large sum of money. With that money, he set up an organization dedicated to fighting evil and righting wrongs, with the PCs as charter members. In the current campaign, the PCs recovered a magical crystal shard in an area which was plagued by drought, and soon heard rumors of other areas experiencing strange weather phenomena.

 

[renau1g]

I can see the drawback here, if a PC dies it's a major problem. You pretty much have to ban death, like Hong, and use other types of failure - mission fails, bad guys get to do what they were trying to do, loss of gear, imprisoned, death of friendly NPCs, etc.

Actually, you're right it is a major problem, but that's the point of a PC death right? I'm not a DM who enjoys killing PC's and can count on one hand the number of times a PC has died (despite my best attempts). Those deaths have all been memorable and if anything provide even further reason for the PC's to go forward. If the BBEG kills one of the PC's the group has every reason to go after it.

Also, it allows PC's to have a side-quest to have to go on a planar adventure to retrieve the soul of the dead PC if they wish him brought back to life.

Raise Dead/Reincarnate/Resurrection don't exist in my games.

 

[Umbran]

I don't think #2 and #3 are at all separate. I think they are pretty strongly linked, and normally both are handled in a metagame fashion - they do it because we're playing the game, and if they don't, there's no game.

 

[Evilhalfling]

these are definatly questions that need to be addressed in each game.

That first session or pregame work is important. As a DM you can ask players to write up thier backgrounds/motivations, and have a group discussion about why they are adventuring. Im just starting up a new game and im trying to encourage this in my players. At the same time they are trying to figure out who is going to play what role.

The last game I started, more or less failed at this. One player changed his characters two days before the first session, and sent me 2 lines of background. Approximately "somebody killed my parents, and I have been rangering in the woods ever since"

The first session I told them that they were all visiting the town librarian, and helped them work out why. The librarian hired them to clean his basement (im a traditionalist)
The second session they were all investigating thier own problems, but kept running into each other at the good/cheap tavern in town. Over two weeks of downtime, they got used to talking over their problems, and of course it turned out the answers were all connected. This adventure was based completly on the backgrounds that the players had given me.

By the time they were kidnapped, almost sacrificed, freed by the missing half-sister of one PC, avenged 3 dead parents, and fled town to avoid offical reprisals - they were pretty much bonded for life.

My rule of thumb is that there is more than one way for a character to react to his adventuring companions, play out the one where you don't act like a d**k. Maybe the lone-wolf actually begains to feel like a member of a group, and likes it. Maybe the paladin decides to lead by example rather than lectures... discussing it out of character helps.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Imxp, #2 varies a lot. I think the guy who writes a 12 page backstory has his PC's motivations pretty well figured out. And at lower levels, at least, the default "kill things and take their stuff" is actually a fairly decent rationale for adventuring. At higher levels, PC motives I think naturally work themselves out in the game, even if they're not terribly "deep": Seek revenge. Find my father. Wine and wenches. Get rich. Seize the throne. Stay alive.

The "why" behind the party is much stickier, imxp. At lower levels, it kind of makes sense: there is strength in numbers, so in the absence of other better reasons, there's always the mutual protection angle. But this breaks down especially at higher levels, when the PCs are more or less self-sufficient and have developed all sorts of personal reasons to do what they do-- personal reasons that don't necessarily mesh with those of their colleagues. At this point, they're possibly only adventuring together, as Umbran said, because there's no game otherwise!

I like ElMahdi's approach of having the PCs define why they are together; this is what I do, as well. I'm now thinking I might take it a step further and ask the players to re-examine this every time they level across a "tier boundary" (ie, cross from 3e Gritty (5) to Heroic (6), or 4e's Heroic to Paragon, then Paragon to Epic), or even every level or two. At level 1, it's "Why is the party together?". At the next tier, it's "Why is the party still together?" and maybe "What does the party want to accomplish?" It might even be helpful to map this out (like a UML diagram or similar). At a minimum, this informal Q&A forces the players to think about their characters in the greater context of the party.

Mechanically, I don't know what could be done to make the party more directly relevant to the game, although I get the impression that (for combat at least) 4e does a little of this already. A few ideas off the top of the head:
- A group Reputation/Notoriety mechanic?
- Party synergies that kick in only when they're all together, and get better the longer they stick with each other?
- XP bonuses for team work?
- A separate "character sheet" for the party itself that grants some sort of perks to individual players the "healthier" the party is?

 

[I'm A Banana]

2 and 3 are much more important in games with a strong storyline than in other kinds of games.

So, try here for the player and here for the DM.

I'll note that if character death is a present consequence, this kind of stuff doesn't pay off as much as it would otherwise. In a sim game, this kind of stuff might arise out of play and interaction (the longer you last, the more you have); in a gamist game, this kind of stuff is entirely irrelevant (unless there's a mechanical way to measure inter-character relationships).

But yeah, FFZ has a pretty solid starting point for all of these.