Two different perspectives on character concept

[Celebrim]

For me "Warrior Mage" was just a base. A base that starts with WCID, yes, but a base none the less. Getting there gives me input for WIA.

I'm not sure it does. In fact, I'm certain that in and of itself, "Warrior Mage" tells you nothing important about who you are.

gameprinter and myself have been bashing heads, largely because I think he doesn't get what I'm saying because I'm not sure we actually disagree over anything strongly. One area we agree quite well on is this statement:

A character that is extraverted, boisterous and good humored, aside from diplomacy/charisma emphasis, I can see applying this kind of character to any alignment, any class, any archetype, any additional skills outside of charisma based ones. The rules defining character concept (aside from high charisma) has no affect pro or con in creating an extraverted, boisterous and good humored PC.

I'd actually go further than that. High charisma is not related to extraverted, boisterous, and good humored either. In fact, when thinking about who you are and then discovering that who you are also has low charisma, it could be easy to describe your extraverted, boisterous, good humor as precisely the reason that most people find you annoying and tend to dismiss you as someone who is dismissible as an airhead, a goof, a buffoon, who is lacking in all propriety and trivial. There is no reason necessarily to see low charisma as dour or reticent.

On the other hand, neither do I think WYA and WCYD are completely separable 'apples and oranges' sort of things. I agree that people are likely to see them as wholly separate things, but that's probably as bad as seeing any one aspect of WCYD as implying something about WYA on a one to one and onto basis. That point of view creates a short list of very simplistic stereotypes rather than complex characters. But seeing them as apples and oranges I think creates the idea that there is no need to at some point rectify the two. If anyone really took that idea seriously, it would result in mostly characters you couldn't really believe in. Still, I think the confusion that WYA and WCYD are very tightly intertwined is more common in RPGs than the idea that they have no bearing on each other.

 

[Zhaleskra]

True, in itself "Warrior Mage" tells me only I want to fight, and I want to use magic. Well, given that every World Tree character starts with spells anyway, that's a little bit given. However; the honest way of making a character is so that the base spells are basic household or professional spells.

Where I got ideas about who Zhalèskra is was through the advantages I selected. They assembled building blocks of a background. In my previous version of zir, zie was the grandchild of Steelwings. Having kept that relationship in the new version, I decided to work with it more: performing a trade an ancestor has.

 

[billd91]

The approach I take to characters (and character concept) depends. Sometimes, I reflect on what character classes I haven't played much lately, pick one of those, and make up a character. In those cases, I'm largely looking at what the character can do.

Other times, I come with an idea like an accountant's son who sneaks away to become... an Adventurer *fanfare*. And then I think about what sort of adventurer he would want to be. So there I'm looking at the character's motivations and personality first.

I probably favor the first over the second approach a little bit particularly when I'm not the first player to pitch his character to the GM. In those cases, I often sit back and let everyone get their ideas in and then cover where there are adventuring deficiencies.

 

[Celebrim]

True, in itself "Warrior Mage" tells me only I want to fight, and I want to use magic.

Not even that much. While that is a likely explanation, it's possible that the character has been forced (or feels he's been forced) to learn to fight. And he likewise may feel the same thing about his magic. He could be a 'reluctant warrior'. He might possibly hate himself for what he feels he's become, or for what he does. Or he could see fighting and magic as things he does only as a means to an end, because he loves his country or his lover or his family, and feels he needs to defend them. He could be utterly indifferent to fighting and magic themselves. While internally conflicted characters are an advanced skill, honestly I would expect that most RPers would be reach for those tropes as a first choice, because its precisely those sorts of characters that make for the most interesting protagonists. Instead, you see people who think that if you make a stock character and give him an unrelated mechanical flaw, you've given him 'depth'. Or else you see people that think that Grim Dark is the height of mature characterization.

But I have two fundamental problems with the lack of skill I'm seeing in WYA.

First, I'm see a lot of people who don't think they need to think about WYA. Most of them think they are great RPers. Some of them are at least pretty good. But almost universally, having not thought about WYA deeply, they actually are only playing themselves at the table. Or if not then, they are playing a single persona that they've developed through RP. Sometimes that's plenty entertaining. But it also means that it doesn't matter WCYD or even what the backstory is supposed to be, fundamentally the character is the player and never really becomes more than that. And to a certain extent, that's OK. Sean Connery is still a great actor even though on screen its basically Sean Connery regardless of the role he's playing. But it does mean I don't see a lot of range and I see a lot of players taking characters that they are just unable to bring to life in any meaningful way.

Secondly, I see a lot of people who, to the extent that their RP has any animation at all, it's simply of the most trivial stereotype of the sort of character that they are - the fighter, the paladin, the wizard, the cleric, the rogue. Or for that matter, the Ventrue, the Brujah, the Gangrel. Or the jedi, the smuggler, the wookie, etc. You never actually see any attempt to make depth, and I think this is because they have no template in their mind for what character depth looks like the way they have easy templates for WCYD.

 

[Zhaleskra]

Not even that much. While that is a likely explanation, it's possible that the character has been forced (or feels he's been forced) to learn to fight. And he likewise may feel the same thing about his magic. He could be a 'reluctant warrior'. He might possibly hate himself for what he feels he's become, or for what he does. Or he could see fighting and magic as things he does only as a means to an end, because he loves his country or his lover or his family, and feels he needs to defend them. He could be utterly indifferent to fighting and magic themselves. While internally conflicted characters are an advanced skill, honestly I would expect that most RPers would be reach for those tropes as a first choice, because its precisely those sorts of characters that make for the most interesting protagonists. Instead, you see people who think that if you make a stock character and give him an unrelated mechanical flaw, you've given him 'depth'. Or else you see people that think that Grim Dark is the height of mature characterization.

If nothing else, you've been me hooks for the background. "Love of country?", or city-state in this case, is covered by zir (because Zi Ri don't get a gender choice and are all hermaphrodites) having the "Guard Warrior Experience" advantage. Internal conflict comes more from mechanics in this case, than from conflicting viewpoints, though zie may well have those as well. Zi Ri, who are dragons, are mechanically not built to be warriors. In addition to several negative modifiers, the only armor they can use is shields, and even then when not in flight (levitating is okay) and their weapons a limited to small weapons and their natural weapons. Zhalèskra obviously liked magic enough to risk zir own life to take the "Self-taught Mage" advantage, which in itself, represents frequently casting spontaneous spells during childhood without killing yourself. The city-state I chose, Ovirucci, is close to the the branch's Verticals, so monsters nearby is a given. Smith Experience and Pattern Mage experience I already covered. Zir other advantages are just additional spell advantages.

I haven't mentioned what I chose as zir disadvantages. Fragile Bones, which was kept from the old version, Zhalèskra takes a minimum of 3 damage from Crushing weapons, ramming (because falling is unlikely for a species that can also levitate), and frequently breaks a bone on a Defense botch. The difference this time is this version does not have the Easy to Heal advantage, which wouldn't help for bone repair healing anyway. Actually, I pretty much kept most of the original disadvantages. Snorer: In addition to making noise while sleeping, as a Zi Ri, zie breathes fire when zie snores. Bizzare Practice: I actually don't want to say too much on this one, other than that I can justify zir unusual clothing choice because of the Guard and Smith advantages.

 

[Walter_J]

I want to vote on your poll, but I'm not sure which one to pick. When I come up with a character concept, who a character is and what they do are so closely tied together, I'm not sure I can say which comes first.

 

[was]

I always design characters around an interesting concept first. I deal with skills/powers/abilities later, after I have a concept that I like.

 

[KismetRose]

Sometimes, when I get the rare chance to play, I start with a class or race or other option that I haven't tried yet and then see which personality traits come to me from there. I focus on the system and the type of game I've been told it's going to be first. Then I find a personality concept to match the mechanics concept, and the background will tell me how they mesh (or have failed to complement each other).

Other times, I have a strong personality come to the fore, often with history and related NPCs and everything, and I look for mechanical concepts that will blend well with it. Many times, I pay attention to how that person differs from me and from other personalities I've portrayed in the past. (I try to do something different each time.)

Either way, I strike a middle-ground between what makes sense for the personality and what makes sense for the mechanics so that they remain effective in their role(s) but also remain internally consistent. And either way, I work on both aspects of the character so I have a more complete place to start from and more of an idea of how to actually portray the person.

I started out in Vampire: the Masquerade and was taught that mechanics and personality should reinforce each other and align with each other (at least if you were doing your job as a player). You should be able to explain every dot placed on your sheet not just due to what you want but due to what the character has lived through and practiced. I just took that attitude with me to every other game I've played since.

Sometimes my own habit and expectations have let me down because I've been in games that only want mechanical concepts and have no real room for personalities. Background is treated as superfluous and is never used; rationale isn't just unnecessary, it's discouraged. And such games have seemed to me to be equally imbalanced in their execution, with DMs who were unable to portray a single person or to pull off a single scenario that was based off of anything except mechanics. And it became mechanical in a way and degree that I did not enjoy - but others seemed either equally disengaged but unwilling to say anything or perfectly content with the situation.

I've noticed that more systems are trying to encode personality options with mechanical benefits or drawbacks, in extended ways. Pathfinder has more background options than you can shake a stick at due to this move not just to offer inspiration but to offer mechanical support. Some gamers would like to make more nuanced characters but aren't sure how; background generators offer a familiar format along with many seeds and even incentive to try to build more of a person. Because building well-rounded people can be difficult, especially when gaming options take considerations well beyond the literary. Make no mistake about that.

I think that it is possible to go overboard with presenting personality-building options, to the point that you overwhelm players (particularly new ones). 5-10 pages, perhaps, can give ideas without flooding the readers.

 

[Beleriphon]

I tend to focus on the what you can do. At least at first blush. I find this is largely due to my love of Mutants and Masterminds where what you can do really is the whole point of character creation. It helps that you need to have very well defined concepts for superhero powers in the game since it tends to be pretty heavy on the concept portion due to the modular nature of the effects system. Sometimes the concept very much falls into the the realm of "I want to be Batman" which gives you a basic idea of what the character can do up front, and then needs a reason for why that character exists, but rarely do I come up with a concept of why the character exists and then build the mechanics around that.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Back in the day, most of my characters were thought up in regards to who he was, where he came from, what did he like and dislike, why was he an adventurer. That was in the days when the DMs have time to make homebrews that could adapt to everyone's (less than optimized) characters.

Nowadays, since we pretty much play adventure paths exclusively, we're more concerned with making characters that can survive and advance the plot. Also, since character backstories in Adventure Paths are less important (or even sometimes irrelevant), we tend not to put too much time thinking them up.

I'm trying to get to DM a homebrew again so that we can get back to thinking up "cool" characters instead of going through hundreds of pages of rules to make capable characters. My guidelines for character creation will be focused on story, and then I'll be playing really really loose with the rules. Sure, what everyone's character can do will be important, but I'll try to make it so every player can play exactly the type of character he wants to play, in terms of story and powers.

AR