Beneath the surface of character

[Afrodyte]

When it comes to creating and playing campaigns, there are a lot of threads about setting, mechanics, and player dynamics, but relatively few dedicated to what is supposed to be the focus of the campaign: characters. I suppose it's because so much of what's offered in gaming materials is so elementary. The things that are not remedial and pedantic tend to be too academic to be useful in actual play. I created this thread to try to rectify that. This thread is not about easy answers or quick fixes. I am interested in developing tools and techniques to expand and enrich player and GM understanding and portrayal of character.

The general trend I noticed is that character creation methods in D&D (and most RPGs) mirrors the bottom-up method of world creation. You figure out all the little details (attributes, class, skills, feats, alignment, deities, history, personality, etc.) of your character and then try to determine what the true essence of the character is.

Here on this thread I bring up an idea that is more like the top-down approach to world creation. First determine what really makes a character tick and develop everything else from there. One of the things I found that players and GMs can do to make this clear is to answer three questions for their characters: What, How, and Why. What does the character want? How did this desire come into being? Why does the character feel s/he needs the thing sought? Figuring out these things provides the following: a goal, essential backstory, and emotional stakes.

Rather than trying to discuss the merits of this method, I'm interested in talking about how it affects the portrayal of characters. Specifically, I'm intrigued by the possibilities of using this method to develop strategies of character portrayal. How would or do you use the information provided from the inside-out method to portray (not just create) a character? What are some examples of how you would or have done this? Does creating a character inside-out (goals, significant events, needs then backstory, personality, stats) have an effect on the portrayal of character? If so, what is it? How does this differ in short-term and long-term play from doing things outside-in?

 

[S'mon]

The 3e PHB clearly advocates a bottom-up approach to character creation, with personality tacked on after race, class et al are defined. This can lead to very shallow 'playing piece' characters, fine for dungeon-bash but otherwise lacking.
I think as GM one is often better to to take the top-down approach, at least when creating major characters - decide who they are personality-wise, then assign stats to match. So I decide the King's background, personality & motivations, with stats (if needed to interact w PCs) coming last. Bottom-up for NPCs has some value if you use a random generator - eg if Jamis Buck's generator gives your aristocrat CHA 20, it's worth thinking about what such a forceful personality would be like. But too many random NPCs I think creates a sterile feel; usually better to start with personality & work from there.

 

[Afrodyte]

bump.

Example snipped to prevent distraction from the important point.

 

[monboesen]

I think (and have played with several) that many players don't really want to get into such character depths. In my experience about a third of the players I have known care mostly about personal power, killing things and taking their stuff.

When faced with moral questions and roleplaying opportunities they get confused and indesicive.

There is nothing wrong with that, its just another style of playing. Some have likened it to playing video games.

 

[fusangite]

I think there are real problems with centring the character on backstory and making personality and behaviour a consequence thereof. First of all, this suggests a kind of lay determinist developmental psychology approach to character. In the real world, developmental psychology is not what it was when Freudianism still dominated the mental health landscape. We now have genetic determinist theories, cognition-based theories, etc.

One of the things that I find annoying in the standard backstory-based character creation in which so many players engage is that they assume that in order to explain why their character is weird or prejudiced or whatever, there has to be some trauma in their past to explain it. Most of the people on this board are weird and/or prejudiced (me included) and most of us didn't need any dramatic past trauma to make us this way.

So, my assumption is that people will define what kind of person their character is and then will work together with the GM to generate a backstory supportive of this nature. However, that backstory does not need to answer this "why" question any more than any of our individual "backgrounds" explain why we are the way we are in real life.

 

[AOS]

Yikes! Hmmm I can't imagine not playing a charecter where I don't try and portray him/her in a 'real as I can' way.

At the moment as I have mentioned before I'm just about to start on a D&D (3.5) game, and as such I'm working my way though the player's handbook doing a couple of trial charecters who will probably never be used. For each of these used beings I have thought about looks, personality and their background story.

Why do this? It's a fun way of looking at the abiltiy rolls and resulting bits! (sorry if the terms used aren't correct....it's the first time I have tried this! )

AOS

 

[Henry]

Generally speaking, when I create a character, I tend to think in terms of stereotypes or archetypes; for instance, I want to play a Hard-drinking and hard-cursing dwarf, or a foppish human swashbuckler, or a halfling druid, quiet like a church mouse but becomes Hell on Wheels when her animals are threatened. Then I take what levels, feats, etc. best fit the character. I don't think too much more in-depth unless it comes up in-game.

Occasionally, I pick something that goes COMPLETELY against type. Right now, I'm playing a Gungan Jedi. First reaction by players is, "kill him!" Second reaction is, "how does this character fit into the game?"

My thought process is: Is he a typical Gungan? Is he stereotyped by the people he meets? Is it instead that he's ing BRILLIANT, along Ph.D. level, and uses the stereotype to put people at a disadvantage? Did he come from back-woods Naboo, is still a very cultured and eloquently Basic-speaking individual, and occasionally lapses into "Jar Jar" speech when he's stressed or threatened? In any event, I liked the concept because it's the LAST thing people expect, and I wanted to explore the idea of making a much-maligned alien species with a dubious origin an actual valuable member of the team. I assigned his stats with this in mind; he's not a "Jedi combat monster", but he's not supposed to be.

 

[The Shaman]

First, something I don’t see mentioned very often in threads on character creation is that the same principles apply to non-player characters – a GM interested in creating a memorable villain, rival, mentor, or ally should probably consider the same factors as players do for their characters. It seems counter-productive to create a world with 3D adventurers and 2D neighbors and scoundrels – more on that in a moment.

Second, I think fusangite brings up an important point that bears repeating –

I think there are real problems with centring the character on backstory and making personality and behaviour a consequence thereof. First of all, this suggests a kind of lay determinist developmental psychology approach to character...One of the things that I find annoying in the standard backstory-based character creation in which so many players engage is that they assume that in order to explain why their character is weird or prejudiced or whatever, there has to be some trauma in their past to explain it. Most of the people on this board are weird and/or prejudiced (me included) and most of us didn't need any dramatic past trauma to make us this way.

I would like to see this included on every page of every book or article that deals with RPG character creation.

For once I would like to see a character with a passionate hatred of orcs who’s never actually seen an orc, let alone had her village burned down and her family killed by them. I would like to see a character with a happy, prosperous childhood who becomes an adventurer because it’s fun and exciting, or to test himself against challenges, not because of some obsession born of a dark and stormy past.

As a GM I like to see characters grow over the course of a campaign. Too much backstory, especially one in which the character’s present motivations are based on past traumatic events, acts as a straight-jacket that prevents the character from responding to the events of the campaign: the character is forever reacting in response to past, pre-game ordeals instead of acting on the trials faced in the campaign present.

There’s a practical element to backstory to consider: I was presented a four-page character history for a 1st-level rogue, and on a lark I calculated the amount of experience the character would’ve accrued if all of the events of the backstory took place – it would’ve put her rogue at 4th-level closing in on fifth. Most player characters are young, with limited life experience (though certainly more than their peers among the larger society, which is represented by the difference in classes and abilities of PCs compared to most NPCs) – these characters begin adventuring during important formative years for their personalities, ambitions, and so on, and personally as a GM I would like to see more players attempt to role-play this process than indulging teenage angst as their raison d’etre.

In practice in the campaigns I run, I’m less concerned with character backstory and more concerned with character goals: where does the character see herself in five years? ten years? From this I hope to see the player role-play achieving those goals, acting on ambition, reacting to success and failure, developing new goals in response to the events of the game.

As I mentioned before I think non-player characters should be prepared the same way as player characters – for the GM this can be a prohibitive task, however. For practical reasons a broad-brush approach is necessary for all but the most elite NPCs. That’s not necessarily a bad thing however, for either NPCs or PCs. A broad-bush approach avoids the straight-jacket that results from the determinist thinking that fusangite described while providing salient details necessary to role-play interactions with other characters and response to in-game events. The key, IMHO, is that the broad brush-stroke should be a starting point for characterization, not an end-point – “crawling through dungeons, killing monsters, and taking their stuff,” is not an unreasonable place to begin, but hopefully the player will be inspired to guide the character into deeper water over time.

For example, for my Foreign Legion d20 Modern game, I created character sketches for twenty-nine (!) members of the PC’s platoon. Each character starts with an identical stat block based on rank: légionnaire, légionnaire 1ere classe, caporal share a stat block, caporal-chef, sergent, sous-lieutenant share a stat block, and so on. Each character also gets about a half-dozen lines of descriptive text: birthplace, family, past experience, motivation for joining the Legion, personality quirks, and significant goals. I use this information to guide my interactions with the adventurers and the events of the game, but those interactions and events are ultimately more important to playing the NPC over the course of the campaign than my broad-brush initial description.

For the most significant NPCs, I do invest more detail, a page or two that helps me deepen the characterization, about the same level of specificity I would develop for a player character. In the aforementioned Foreign Legion game, I created detailed backgrounds and goals for the CO of the player characters’ company and the regimental intelligence officer – the tension between these two characters will create situations in which the player characters will have to make hard choices with respect to duty, loyalty, and personal responsibility, the aspects of the campaign that will (hopefully) separate it from a simple war-game like Squad Leader.

Finally (and please forgive me for this long post – if you’ve read this far, I thank you!), for PCs and major NPCs I develop my characterization before I develop the stats – the mechanics exist for me to create the character and are ultimately secondary in consideration. After I create the mechanical expression of the character, I may tweak background, personality, and ambitions a bit, as sometimes the mechanics do act as inspiration – I don’t take an all-or-nothing approach, but I do prefer to emphasize the character before the mechanics.

 

[maddman75]

For me, the most important thing about a character is their 'hook'. This is whatever it is that makes them interesting and fun to roleplay. It could be a character that is a battle-scarred warrior who seeks glory and honor in combat. Then something like half-orc barbarian comes naturally. Or a mother-hen figure, looking after the PCs. This could be a cleric of a nature-goddess. The class, race, skills, feats all derive from this principle - how can I make this character's hook happen?

Background then becomes less important. I actually prefer only a brief outline, that way I can fill in details later on. Maybe this could be codified somehow for all your players? Give them a typical 'background questionaire', but they don't have to fill it all in at once. Have them enter one thing in as they continue to play. This way the background and the way the PC acts in play will be much more likely to match up.

Background serves two purposes IMO. First, they provide the player with RP guide, as discussed above. But also they give the DM plot hooks to motivate the PCs. For me, its not enough to have the group go on some mission. I want them to *care* about the mission! I want them to be angry at the villian, to be nervous when he's about to strike, and joyous when he's finally defeated. That is the payoff.

 

[S'mon]

Re backstory - I'm of the "personality is good - Backstory is nice, but Develop in Play is Best" approach. As GM I find the ideal new-PC backstory is about 1/2 a page of A4 (12 point Times New Roman), possibly less for a level 1 D&D PC, going to a full page for a highly character-based RPG. More than 1 page is a big WARNING sign IME.

For NPCs, I think the 'hook' is best - a single-line description that captures the essence of the character:

"Osric the Usurper - once a powerful king, now he's aged, his powers fading..." is about right.