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Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws
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<blockquote data-quote="Don Durito" data-source="post: 8130328" data-attributes="member: 6687260"><p>In terms of helping people come up with characters to play I think something like the backgrounds in 13th Age or Barbarians of Lemuria is more useful. In those games they're used as skills, but even if it's just something to write down it's more useful then bonds and flaws and the like.</p><p></p><p>Something like: </p><p>- Small village farmer</p><p>-Drudge slave for 6 years</p><p>- Pit-fighter</p><p></p><p>Gives a player more to work with. I think it's a mistake to work from the inside out. Get the basic life background down in succint details and the inner stuff will work itself out. In the above example it naturally leads you to start thinking "hey, I was enslaved as a kid - what happened to my parents - maybe I want revenge" and "my guy has been a slave most of his life, maybe he's not comfortable with freedom". </p><p></p><p>A lot of players (including myself) take a few sessions to really feel our way around a character and things like personality traits written down in advance are not much help there.</p><p></p><p>It might work better if after three sessions or so, you asked the other players to try and identify the traits of the player's characters - but I'm not convinced there's much to be gained from codification.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Don Durito, post: 8130328, member: 6687260"] In terms of helping people come up with characters to play I think something like the backgrounds in 13th Age or Barbarians of Lemuria is more useful. In those games they're used as skills, but even if it's just something to write down it's more useful then bonds and flaws and the like. Something like: - Small village farmer -Drudge slave for 6 years - Pit-fighter Gives a player more to work with. I think it's a mistake to work from the inside out. Get the basic life background down in succint details and the inner stuff will work itself out. In the above example it naturally leads you to start thinking "hey, I was enslaved as a kid - what happened to my parents - maybe I want revenge" and "my guy has been a slave most of his life, maybe he's not comfortable with freedom". A lot of players (including myself) take a few sessions to really feel our way around a character and things like personality traits written down in advance are not much help there. It might work better if after three sessions or so, you asked the other players to try and identify the traits of the player's characters - but I'm not convinced there's much to be gained from codification. [/QUOTE]
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