Lost In Translation: Adapting Fictional Characters To Games

There are two ways of rating fictional characters that you want to add to role-playing games (and other types of games as well). These are the functional method and the emotional/perceptual method (for want of a better name).

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What's the difference? The functional depends on what the character can actually do, without regard to what others can do. The emotional/perceptual depends on the character's relation to the rest of the world. In that second method, a very powerful character will be rated as similar to the most powerful characters in the game rules you're using, regardless of what the character can actually do.

An example from my own experience was my introductory D&D adventure through Moria, published in White Dwarf more than 35 years ago. There were no Lord of the Rings (LOTR) movies at that time, but most prospective players had read LOTR. The party of player adventurers were the Fellowship of the Ring. Assuming most players had read LOTR, I let new players play the familiar characters to make it easier for them to understand what was going on. (Keep in mind, RPGs were relatively new at the time; even today there are many millions who have no idea how an RPG works.)

I relied on what the characters could actually do. Consequently, Aragorn was a seventh level ranger with a magic sword (keep in mind this was first edition D&D) and Gandalf was an eighth level cleric with a Ring of Fire and a magic sword. At seventh rangers got an extra attack every other round, and had a lot of hit points with high constitution required (and one extra D8). Gandalf could not raise the dead as a ninth level cleric could, hence the limit to eighth - and even at eighth, the D&D cleric uses a lot more magic than Gandalf. (Gimli and Legolas were fourth fighters, and I gave the hobbits an extra level to second.) If the party included experienced players, they played Gandalf and Aragorn.

Some readers wanted these characters to have sky-high levels because they were so much more powerful than virtually anyone else in Middle-earth. "But they were two of the most powerful figures in the world!" is the emotional/perceptual response. Yes, but it's a world almost entirely lacking in powerful figures, and in magic, compared with the typical FRP world. Imagine Gandalf as a 17th level cleric creating one miracle (in Middle-earth terms) after another. If Gandalf had been anywhere near the level some readers desired, he would have been a god within Middle-earth's low magic setting. Or imagine Aragorn at 16^th level, slaughtering trolls, ogres, giants, wholesale.

So I focused on the functional, believing that the emotional follows in the long run. In this case Aragorn and Gandalf are still very powerful compared with the other characters. The only similarly powerful character involved was the Balrog, which was probably more powerful than either Aragorn or Gandalf just as in the book itself. (Keep in mind the Balrog back then was much less powerful than the Balrog is in D&D now - AC2, 10 hit dice, two good attacks (2-12 and 3-18), needed +3 weapons to hit IIRC.)

So I just avoided the ridiculous, avoided giving far too many choices to the players, and also avoided the problem that Advanced D&D mechanisms broke down when you got much into double-figure levels. It just didn't work anymore.

Functionality is part of modeling, characterized by a term called "correspondence," or less mellifluously "analogousness." My word allowance doesn't let me go into details here, I can only summarize. There are three questions to ask (generalized for all games, not just RPGs):

• Do the actions of the player-controlled characters/assets in the game correspond with what happens in real life (or the fictional reality) we're modeling?
• Does the non-player activity in the game correspond to what happens in the (possibly fictional) reality we're trying to represent?
• Do the strategies a player follows correspond to something in that reality?

Gandalf as a 17th (or more) level cleric will result in No's for all these questions, as will Aragorn at 16th+ level ranger. But at the levels I chose, we can get Yeses.

contributed by Lewis Pulsipher

 

[Sunseeker]

Entirely depends on the system.
A class/level system like D&D? Nah, even at it's most customizeable (3.x) or balanced/re-skinnable (4e), it's unlikely to work well - maybe you'll capture the feel of the character at some level, if everything in the campaign comes together, possibly if you squint at it just right.
An officially-licensed system purpose-built to simulate a specific property? Maybe, if your vision of it matches that of the guy who wrote it closely enough, and the system's not just some slap-dash thing to make it technically an RPG because the RPG license was available relatively cheaply.
A well-researched GURPS worldbook? Again, if your vision is as well-researched and your research led you to the same conclusions.

A highly-customizeable build system, like Hero or a more freeform one like FUDGE/Fate, OTOH, lets you build to /your/ vision of the character in question.

Sure, I'll generally agree with that. I'm not familiar with the system but I understand they're largely more narrative-friendly than D&D.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

I think this is a tricky issue. Page 7 of Gygax's PHB says that

Swords & sorcery best describes what this game is all about . . . <snip>​

If the game doesn't deliver experiences, in play, that in some sense simulate these classic fantasy works, then I think that counts as under-delivery.

The thing is, D&D and RPGs in general, tend to be designed around an ensemble cast of rough equals with relatively defined and necessary niches. However, most of those fictional sources really aren't. Most notably, they feature usually fairly clear and often solo protagonists. I've read most of the famous Appendix N. The stories are well worth seeking out as most are quite good, but the protagonists are really not the kind that are easily buildable with 1E or most RPGs for that matter. They frequently end up being too competent one man bands or maybe duos, possibly with sidekicks. That makes for good fiction, especially short stories, but most people don't really want to play the sidekicks to a protagonist.

D&D ended up being its own fiction. (Sadly, if you ask me, too many modern fantasy novels are clearly written "inspired by my D&D campaign". Check out the old stuff! Some of it is really good.)

I do think it's possible to play small group D&D with a few player-controlled, relatively higher level protagonists beefed up by henchmen who may or may not be player-controlled. I played a whole lot of it for a while and I think it's closer to what the Lake Geneva gang played. We had a lot of intense RP, which I think was probably a bit different. It was pretty cool and definitely had more of the feel of, say, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser.

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Entirely depends on the system.
A highly-customizeable build system, like Hero or a more freeform one like FUDGE/Fate, OTOH, lets you build to /your/ vision of the character in question.

Sure, you can often do pretty well but fiction characters often have a lot of abilities that make them require very high point totals. Furthermore, the game system may "fight" you to some degree, though nowhere like is the case with a class/level system.

 

[pemerton]

The thing is, D&D and RPGs in general, tend to be designed around an ensemble cast of rough equals with relatively defined and necessary niches. However, most of those fictional sources really aren't. Most notably, they feature usually fairly clear and often solo protagonists.

This is one reason why I think superhero comics are a good model for fantasy RPGing.

the protagonists are really not the kind that are easily buildable with 1E or most RPGs for that matter.

I agree that AD&D has trouble building fictional protagonists - its class framework is rather rigid. But I don't think this is true for RPGs in general.

 

[Doug McCrae]

For instance, the XP-for-treasure rule seems, at least in part, intended to imbue PCs with Conan-esque treasure-seeking motivations - the classic stuff of S&S.

The xp-for-treasure rule is weird. You wouldn't think it would be necessary to tie money to personal power in a non-simulationist way. That D&D PCs would pursue wealth for the same reason or reasons everyone in our world does.

The player experience in D&D is strongly defined by its level track. But that is quite divergent from the fiction on which it's based. It's usually only villains, such as Mazirian the Magician, who pursue personal power above all else. Conan, Frodo, John Carter, Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser, Holger Carlsen, Elric, Lovecraft's protagonists, even Cugel the Clever, none of them are trying to level up as their principal goal. So D&D characters are immediately dissociated from their fictional equivalents. Perhaps xp-for-gold is an attempt to haul this back to either something closer to fiction or the real world.

In Playing at the World Jon Peterson considers the rule to be primarily simulationist.

Starting characters cannot command vast fortunes, and an omnipotent wizard cannot languish in penury. Plausibility rules out either of those extremes: affluent weaklings would simply lose their fortunes to impoverished master sorcerers. The story of a successful adventurer is therefore a rags-to-riches story, like many a sword-and-sorcery story arc.

Levels are a natural progression of Chainmail's treatment of wizards (which are divided into four tiers of power), heroes and superheroes (equivalent to four and eight figures respectively). Initially in Arneson's Blackmoor game, a figure became a hero thru acquisition of a magic sword (this also derives from Chainmail). At some point this changed to gaining experience points by spending gold and defeating monsters, basically the same as the system in OD&D.

So the level track came first and xp-for-gold came second, as a replacement or addition to a sort of xp-for-magic swords system.

 

[pemerton]

In Playing at the World Jon Peterson considers the rule to be primarily simulationist.

<snip>

So the level track came first and xp-for-gold came second, as a replacement or addition to a sort of xp-for-magic swords system.

The Peterson analysis seems implausible to me. To the extent that fantasy characters have "rags to riches" arcs (Conan becomes king; Bilbo acquires dragon gold; etc), these are by products of their motivations and character arcs, not the main game.

It oddly makes more sense as an somewhat arbitrary alternative to a prior arbitrary magic sword rule!

(And for what it's worth, my take is that it gives the game a rationale - explore dungeons to collect treasure to power up to explore dungeons etc - which is pretty recognisable. Story and character in any genuine sense are a by-product of this sort of RPGing, rather than the main game.)

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

This is one reason why I think superhero comics are a good model for fantasy RPGing.

Yeah, an ensemble cast title like Avengers or X-Men have relatively similar dynamics, though even there the dynamics are different. a TTRPG is its own thing.

I agree that AD&D has trouble building fictional protagonists - its class framework is rather rigid. But I don't think this is true for RPGs in general.

I have played many others, including games like Champions. Unquestionably of major games AD&D is the most inflexible, especially in its earlier versions (part of its charm, really). However, translating a fictional character is hard, often because they can simply do too much too well. You can see this in licensed titles that have signature characters statted. Just as a for example, Modiphius Conan has built versions of Conan along with a few other signature characters such as Valeria. He's built in the system but is clearly way past "legal" build in terms of point totals. I haven't had the chance to play it yet so I don't know how it feels but whenever I see a character with really dimed abilities it tells me they had to work to build the character. Valeria is much more reasonable. She's solid, but a believable experienced adventurer. Conan is tough because REH clearly wrote those stories with the assumption Conan was telling tall tales so you have unreliable narrator issues and probably shouldn't take things too literally.

I guess, looping back to your original point, the issue is that you have superheroes of quite varying ability levels pushed together in a lot of source fiction. However, most RPGs, in the name of game balance, force characters towards parity and the fact that a fair mechanism in the form of dice rolls puts the brakes on a lot of fiction. I do think modern game mechanics such as the Doom track in Modiphius Conan helps a lot with building the kinds of wildly improbable successes and reversals that a pure dice system lacks, so there is that.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Sure, you can often do pretty well but fiction characters often have a lot of abilities that make them require very high point totals. Furthermore, the game system may "fight" you to some degree, though nowhere like is the case with a class/level system.

Yep, that's back to the OP's issue. You can get a lot more exact in modeling your vision of a fictional character in a point-build system than in a class/level system, but you still have to nail down that vision...

 

[Jay Verkuilen]

Yep, that's back to the OP's issue. You can get a lot more exact in modeling your vision of a fictional character in a point-build system than in a class/level system, but you still have to nail down that vision...

Yeah, figuring out what the vision is is one thing, but the game system often doesn't cooperate. I do think it's one reason why modern games often have mechanisms for extraordinary success above what is just generated by the dice. Willpower (from oWoD and nWoD), bennies from Savage Worlds, chips from Deadlands, Doom and Momentum from Modiphius games, and so on can help avoid having everything just come down to the dice. I think that goes a long way towards making fictional characters not need quite so maxed out abilities. D&D has had that in different times in the form of Action Points (from Eberron) or some of the human abilities, or Lucky and Inspiration in the current edition, but for the most part it's not really been a big part of D&D.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Yeah, figuring out what the vision is is one thing, but the game system often doesn't cooperate. I do think it's one reason why modern games often have mechanisms for extraordinary success above what is just generated by the dice. Willpower (from oWoD and nWoD), bennies from Savage Worlds, chips from Deadlands, Doom and Momentum from Modiphius games, and so on can help avoid having everything just come down to the dice.

Oh, I see what you mean, the resolution systems in play don't cooperate. They might be trying to simulate a character in a setting where the fictional character's story /could/ have happened, but because that story included a number of improbable events, statistically, will likely never happen to a player trying to play that fictional character as a PC.

Mechanics that let the player take 'author stance' and make an event come out like it did/would-have in the fictional character's story can help with that. They shift the game from 'simulationist' to 'narrativist' and, in the case of D&D, get labeled 'dissociated mechanics' and shunned, but they can be very good for making a character concept like that work.

I think that goes a long way towards making fictional characters not need quite so maxed out abilities. D&D has had that in different times in the form of Action Points (Eberon) or some of the human abilities, or Lucky and Inspiration in the current edition

Action points, the E & D of AEDU powers (especially martial powers), healing surges, & the freedom to re-skin fluff text in 4e would also be examples.

but for the most part it's not really been a big part of D&D.

Certainly not of the TSR era of D&D - even when the indie 'new wave' started in the early 90s, 2e didn't pick up on it. 3e had very little in that regard (in addition to plot-coupon-like Action Points in Eberon, it had limited re-skinning of character & equipment, and feats & skills that could be powergamed to the point of delivering certainty while representing chance).

And, of course, hit points & saving throws have always been that sort of mechanic, in D&D. Hps in particular, function in that kind of narrative/'dissociative' way that lets the game model a hero taking insane risks or facing deadly danger improbably often, but surviving.