Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
I played my first session of The Between last night, and this morning I was musing on character and how differently character is created/evinced in different games. I’m not talking about mechanics, although there is some input from mechanics here, but rather about the very conception of the character and how I approached creating character. Because there is a difference here, and I think a rather interesting one. I’m going to talk about two characters, a character of mine from a Blades in the Dark game and a character from a recently started The Between game and look at how I conceived them in different ways because of the different games.
Blades in the Dark follows a fairly conventional process for character where you select a number of background details and craft a short conception of who this character is from them. These then feed into play as XP triggers – if your background or heritage or something important to your character comes up and directs play, you mark XP (and can do so up to twice). If your vice comes up and causes a problem, you mark XP. Like that. So, this background you craft in Blades is going to be critical in play, because play is going to involve it quite often. As such, I when I built this character, I went with short, evocative statements for the creation questions to craft many hooks to grab play. I picked Skovlander as my Heritage because I wanted to play an ex-guerilla from the recent war (which Skovland lost). I picked military because I wanted to reinforce that and to select a set of things I could lean into during play. I picked my rival as a former compatriot in the war that I betrayed and sold out to the enemy. And I formed the belief of this character that the war was a lost cause, better to fight for a good life rather than a cause. All of this was in character creation – I had a handle on some major things that drove this character but I didn’t really have a characterization, yet. I found that in play, as this met the game and evolved, and I found how my character expressed themselves and engaged the fiction. This was complicated by the fact that my character is a slide and leaned hard into the disguises and cons for scores, so the basic “how does this character act as themselves” was complicated. I do not have a silly voice for Mister (the alias of my PC). I don’t have a strong set of mannerisms for them. I do have a very strong sense of what motivates them and so in a given situation I can easily see how to engage that with my choices. Because of this, I don’t find myself doing a lot of 1st person stuff, or spouting dialogue (although this does happen often enough). My first reach for play here is to connect what’s happening to those motivations and considerations – what does my character want? I feel like I know my character very well, and have from the start, but not in characterization, just in motivations. As in, I’m not clear on what Mister sounds like, but I am clear on what Mister wants. I find this interesting.
Now, to contrast Blades with The Between. Here the game tells you to NOT create a backstory. At all. Details of your past will come out, but you create them only when directed to by play (there are things that do this in the game). I could talk about why this is, as there is a reason for it, but it’s not really important to the bits about creating the character for play. In The Between, the playbooks you select has a broad shape of a background baked in. I selected The American (the game is set in London, so this is a distinction) and the playbook tells me I was a scion of a powerful American East Coast family (the game is set in the late 1800’s) that ran away and took up a life in the western frontier. There you were cursed, and have fled that curse to London, but it’s caught up to you. That’s your backstory, but you are not to create any details for this. This created an interesting situation for me – I have to play a character where I don’t have background details, just a general arc, to pull from. I don’t have the usual RPG levers to pull to get to a concept of character. I have a few XP triggers that suggest (like standing out in London society for the wrong reasons), but they’re thin. So, how do I get to character? I went with characterization. Instead of working from a suite of background details that I could share with fellow players and let them do some work in explaining my character (I mean, we share backstories like this to do exactly this in play for most games) I was expressly forbidden from doing this. So, I thought to how movies do character. When you meet a movie character for the first time, there’s no background you can pull from (excepting franchises of course, with previously established characters) as an audience. Instead, you rely on costuming, mannerism, and voice (not just how the character sounds, but word choice and speech patterns) to immediately get a sense of the character. Here, I had The American, from the west. Tropes are easy. I started with a pretty tropey character description – white cowboy hat, leather duster, turquoise bolo and belt, shooting irons, blue jeans, and silver chased boots with spurs. Then I added tanned but not overly worn face, blonde shoulder length hair, and handlebar mustaches. I think almost everyone can see this guy now, so good. Then, I picked a few recent cowboy characters I liked and sorta mashed them together into a voice and set of mannerisms, and ended with a cross between Rooster Cogburn (from True Grit) and Buster Scruggs, in that I sound more like Rooster (and I do this voice, and stayed in it for most of the session because it grounded me to the character) but use the word choices and patterns of Buster – that homey sound and structure, disarming friendliness, but clearly educated pattern of speaking. This character gelled for me immediately. And what I have is a character where I know exactly how they look and sound in play, but I’m not entirely clear on their motivations. Kind of the opposite of my Blades character.
There’s not much of a point here really, just a musing on how two different RPGs led me to consider character in two very different ways and then approach playing these characters in different ways. In Blades, I have a clear sense of motivation, but my mental image of how the character looks and sounds is a tad blurry and in places outright indistinct (like, I do not have a clear image of what Mister looks like outside of his attire). In the other, I have a very clear sense of exactly what this character looks like and how they sound, but I don’t have the motivations or what they want dialed in. To me, and the way I think, this is fascinating and I love the differences.
Blades in the Dark follows a fairly conventional process for character where you select a number of background details and craft a short conception of who this character is from them. These then feed into play as XP triggers – if your background or heritage or something important to your character comes up and directs play, you mark XP (and can do so up to twice). If your vice comes up and causes a problem, you mark XP. Like that. So, this background you craft in Blades is going to be critical in play, because play is going to involve it quite often. As such, I when I built this character, I went with short, evocative statements for the creation questions to craft many hooks to grab play. I picked Skovlander as my Heritage because I wanted to play an ex-guerilla from the recent war (which Skovland lost). I picked military because I wanted to reinforce that and to select a set of things I could lean into during play. I picked my rival as a former compatriot in the war that I betrayed and sold out to the enemy. And I formed the belief of this character that the war was a lost cause, better to fight for a good life rather than a cause. All of this was in character creation – I had a handle on some major things that drove this character but I didn’t really have a characterization, yet. I found that in play, as this met the game and evolved, and I found how my character expressed themselves and engaged the fiction. This was complicated by the fact that my character is a slide and leaned hard into the disguises and cons for scores, so the basic “how does this character act as themselves” was complicated. I do not have a silly voice for Mister (the alias of my PC). I don’t have a strong set of mannerisms for them. I do have a very strong sense of what motivates them and so in a given situation I can easily see how to engage that with my choices. Because of this, I don’t find myself doing a lot of 1st person stuff, or spouting dialogue (although this does happen often enough). My first reach for play here is to connect what’s happening to those motivations and considerations – what does my character want? I feel like I know my character very well, and have from the start, but not in characterization, just in motivations. As in, I’m not clear on what Mister sounds like, but I am clear on what Mister wants. I find this interesting.
Now, to contrast Blades with The Between. Here the game tells you to NOT create a backstory. At all. Details of your past will come out, but you create them only when directed to by play (there are things that do this in the game). I could talk about why this is, as there is a reason for it, but it’s not really important to the bits about creating the character for play. In The Between, the playbooks you select has a broad shape of a background baked in. I selected The American (the game is set in London, so this is a distinction) and the playbook tells me I was a scion of a powerful American East Coast family (the game is set in the late 1800’s) that ran away and took up a life in the western frontier. There you were cursed, and have fled that curse to London, but it’s caught up to you. That’s your backstory, but you are not to create any details for this. This created an interesting situation for me – I have to play a character where I don’t have background details, just a general arc, to pull from. I don’t have the usual RPG levers to pull to get to a concept of character. I have a few XP triggers that suggest (like standing out in London society for the wrong reasons), but they’re thin. So, how do I get to character? I went with characterization. Instead of working from a suite of background details that I could share with fellow players and let them do some work in explaining my character (I mean, we share backstories like this to do exactly this in play for most games) I was expressly forbidden from doing this. So, I thought to how movies do character. When you meet a movie character for the first time, there’s no background you can pull from (excepting franchises of course, with previously established characters) as an audience. Instead, you rely on costuming, mannerism, and voice (not just how the character sounds, but word choice and speech patterns) to immediately get a sense of the character. Here, I had The American, from the west. Tropes are easy. I started with a pretty tropey character description – white cowboy hat, leather duster, turquoise bolo and belt, shooting irons, blue jeans, and silver chased boots with spurs. Then I added tanned but not overly worn face, blonde shoulder length hair, and handlebar mustaches. I think almost everyone can see this guy now, so good. Then, I picked a few recent cowboy characters I liked and sorta mashed them together into a voice and set of mannerisms, and ended with a cross between Rooster Cogburn (from True Grit) and Buster Scruggs, in that I sound more like Rooster (and I do this voice, and stayed in it for most of the session because it grounded me to the character) but use the word choices and patterns of Buster – that homey sound and structure, disarming friendliness, but clearly educated pattern of speaking. This character gelled for me immediately. And what I have is a character where I know exactly how they look and sound in play, but I’m not entirely clear on their motivations. Kind of the opposite of my Blades character.
There’s not much of a point here really, just a musing on how two different RPGs led me to consider character in two very different ways and then approach playing these characters in different ways. In Blades, I have a clear sense of motivation, but my mental image of how the character looks and sounds is a tad blurry and in places outright indistinct (like, I do not have a clear image of what Mister looks like outside of his attire). In the other, I have a very clear sense of exactly what this character looks like and how they sound, but I don’t have the motivations or what they want dialed in. To me, and the way I think, this is fascinating and I love the differences.
