column: Nerdery #32, Characters, not Cardboard

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

reference: http://www.timewastersguide.com/view.php?id=1258

[JenaRey]

There are some very good character generation books out there that list a lot of possibilities for things that happened in the character's past and such.  One of the ones that is popular in my gaming group has you roll on various tables for a random background.  We've found that doing two or three rolls can often lead in a direction that sprouts into something well worth developing.

Nice article.  

~J

[Entsuropi]

I hate random dice during character creation. I find it annoying to, for example, decide to make a character who is a stoic desert warrior, firm in his beliefs but extremely supersticious, the kind of guy with conan style muscles. And then end up with Intelligence being considerably higher than strength. That just makes the job of creating a character concept first much harder - I can't be certain that the stats will be what I need to make a concept both realistic and interesting to play.

The counter arguement is usually along the lines that random dice will create oddities that will force me to have a more rounded character, but i'm of the opinion that i'm perfectly capable of that sort of thing myself. I already do work in stuff that doesn't immediately apply to the character, and then work out why he has them, so I don't need some damn polyhedrals to tell me that.

The most potentially annoying system I've come across is my GM's homebrew system, where you roll for your characters childhood and past.

[JenaRey]

I think it really works both ways.  For some people having the help of the random dicing or the stats really helps generate ideas.  For others the ideas come first and then you work the stats to them.  I find, for me, that system makes a big difference.  I tend to make my backgrounds for WoD type games and then stats, for DnD I like the stats first.  So lots of different strokes for different folks depending on where personal inspiration comes from.

[42]

I think another factor is how much experience one has with getting to know others of various backgrounds.

[Nessa]

And how widely one reads.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

and how into the campaign you are at the start.

One really neat idea I've used in a campaign to get all the characters a nice little bit of personality was to ask them which actor did they see playing their character. Since it was WEG d6 Star Wars I forbid any actor actually in the series already (for minor characters at least) so bizarre concepts started coming out Samuel L Jackson as the smuggler (hey it was before the Prequels and after pulp fiction... what can I say. Geena Davis as the young Senatorial, Robert Guillome as the Failed Jedi etc.

Choosing actors gives you not only an appearence to go off of, but a timber and a meter that are hard to divorce from the person playing the role. We know Sam Elliot plays grizzled cowboys and Leonardo Dicaprio is perminantly young. It really helps.
Now that Lord of the Rings is out, and Hollywood has embraced the fantasy film its not an embarassment to be a kinght or an elf, or a dwarf and , you dont need actual midgets and dwarfs to play hobbits and such.

If you apply this to D&D it provides an out for the player who just wants to play and not stress about the details. Because honestly if they don't have a lot of background its because they see the game in a different light than you. To them details of their characters past dont matter, because their character is a 2 armed orc hunting machine, and a tough scary one at that. Sometimes they just like to default to their own personality for a game of hack and slash. It just depends on how people play. I have never found, beyond a throw away game anyone who was happy to roll up a personality, I say this because most of those personalities never get played.  

Finally a lot of ambiguous characters get created because the players dont know anything about their campaign. GM's need to tell people more than just "uh, your from this nation and this place is bad and this place is good, oh and there are orc's and stuff." Tell them more than you normally would about their setting, ask them who they want to play and why. If they still want to play Thrugg the barbarian figure out a way to make that fun and exciting. As a GM you have lots of power to define who the character is.

Take Thrugg for example.
Is the game set in the High Middle Ages?
Or Antiquity?
Or a fantastic magical earth?
Then you can say
1. Thrugg comes from a backward village in the North, he started raiding because his clan cant support all the people it has now. He came south in a Dragon ship with a warband of strong Thruggee warriors and decided to settle taking a native wife. Now the natives want Thrugg (a legendary warrior) to hunt a Drake thats eating all their cows.
2. Thrugg is the son of a Barbarian king fostered in a Roman Familiys house as part of a Hostage exchange (common for the Romans) He has learned Latin, though he doesnt read it well, and learned about the wealth and proseperity of Rome. Roman Politics and intrigue happen.
3. Thrugg is a Horseman, he comes from the far west, his people were destroyed by a powerful wizard, and he must avenge them or they will haunt him forever.

Those things are easier to figure out with good campaign directions.

[Lieutenant Kije]

While I haven't had extensive experience rollplaying, I agree very much with the article, 42!  I'm currently playing a fighter, which if I just played for the game aspects I imagine would be extremely boring.  But I've given him an extensive set of goals that make it really fun.  We're even playing a series of  encounter-heavy modules, and I still find that I'm having fun, all because of the background and goals I decided to give the character.

[The Holy Saint, Grand High Poobah, Master of Monkeys, Ehlers]

I find Fighters and Rogues to be the two most interesting classes, actually, because there's so little built into the class concept to force you into a direction.

anyway, I despise random background generation. This is why Warhammer FRPG is hard for me to get into.

I chose what to do with my time. I chose what skills to develop. It makes a little more sense in a fantasy game, I'll admit, but as your typical fantasy game doesn't have a feudal system (at least, not a true one like Medieval Europe), the people have much more choice over what they chose to go and do.

[JenaRey]

I'm not fond of random background generation where you have no choice of what to keep or not.  I do think rolling random background traits to get ideas from can be very useful though.  It's like coming up with names for a character, a good friend of mine has a huge scrabble di that has letters all over it.  She rolls it for a starting letter, but if that starting letter still doesn't approve, rolls it again.  I think the random factor is much more appropriate as an idea generator than anything that has to be set in stone in character background.

Equally important, in my mind, is the use and misuse of cliche.  Several years back I put together a LARP event and those participating, mostly males between the ages of 16 and 25, were asked to fill out a character questionairre so the storyline of the LARP could be personalized to their backgrounds.  NEVER have I seen so many characters that were orphaned, raised by some kind of animal, and care for nothing but gold and willing women.  Mind you, I'm not really sure some of these folks had any idea what to do with a willing woman, but they were sure their characters did.  I was also rather concerned about the local animal population if they thought taking a loud, helpless human infant into their pack, pride, gaggle, whatever, was a good idea.  No wonder so many of these animal families got slaughtered, leaving the characters angry and antisocial.

For RPGs my general rule is to come up with a personality, work that with the stats and then bring in one or two good hooks which can either be used just by the GM as a plot device, or something to come up in the line of play.  One of the more amusing characters I've seen in a recent RPG is an assasin for hire - not so rare, but the reason she kills people for money....paying college tuition at Cornell university, talk about an interesting summer job.

~J

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

One of the more amusing characters I've seen in a recent RPG is an assasin for hire - not so rare, but the reason she kills people for money....paying college tuition at Cornell university, talk about an interesting summer job.

Meh, thats so 10 years ago!

[Fellfrosch]

That's a very cool idea, though.

[Mad Dr Jeffe]

now if she also delivered pizza.

[JenaRey]

Heh...she works as a GTA in her spare time.  Delievering pizza is greasy, messy work.

[Prometheus]

And you have to show up on time when it's your shift, which is just messy for those scheduled assassinations.