Apathy Games

Your Mother is a Whore and Other Character Archetypes

Last Friday I issued a challenge to call comers.  The result of which I would write about anything and relate it to gaming.  I’m going to keep the comments open for a week before closing them down.  So get in and send me whatever you got!

In Sins of our Fathers I discussed the implications of our parents on our lives and specifically those on our characters.  When the challenge to write, “Your mother is a whore” came it got me thinking about characters that come from the streets or from impoverished areas and how they might become adventurers.

Common Thug

Tossed out shortly after the day they were born.  Growing up to be a bully he quickly outgrows everyone in the orphanage and shows a taste for terror.  He takes to adventuring to garner riches and become powerful so he can never feel neglected and lost again.  He shows no mercy in combat, is cross, and naturally distrustful.  He trusts no one and prefers his own company.

The Man of the Cloth

A child born of the streets his mother a common street walker, but she brought him up believing.  He took to his faith like no other.  Feeling called upon to spread the word and right the wrongs of the street.  A character with this background would likely cling to those around him, studying deep into religious texts and likely being quite scholarly in his own way.  He would be careful who they trusted but when granting the trust would do so completely.  His word is his bond.  He takes to adventuring to help people and spends his riches bettering those around him.

Hooker with a Heart of Gold

Walking in her mother’s footsteps this sex worker this girl is as innocent as they come.  She also happens to be well trained in the art of kicking butt.  Life on the streets is hard she’s done what she’s had to do to survive.  Now that she’s managed to escape she’s not going back.  This strong lass has taken to adventuring as a means of escape and no way in hell is she going back.

In each of these examples all the characters start in the same place but end up in vastly different areas.  Partly in the way their parents treat them and partly how the world has treated them.  Just because your mother is a whore doesn’t mean you can’t be an interesting character with a story to tell.

Sins of our Fathers

Whether we like to admit it or not, our parents played a large role in forming us into the people we are today. Sons look to their fathers and daughters to their mothers. So why is it that we almost consistently put no thought into family when designing our characters? Why do we omit that glaring fact in our characters history? Even if we’ve gone to the trouble of putting some names on paper, how do we breathe some life into these people?

Pick Some Traits

Your characters’ parents have likely influenced them on some base level. Personally my father is a frugal man and instilled these values into me to the point of annoying my fiancée regularly about money. What traits does your character have that can be traced back to his roots?

Consider the Upbringing

I’ve heard loads of stories from people that were brought up in various churches. Their parents made them go every Sunday and were deeply religious people. These stories tend to come out one of two ways; the person is now vehemently opposed to everything even remotely religious, or is a stronger member of their faith. Was there a ritual your character had while growing up that they remember well? How does that affect them?

Sliding along the Axis

Always consider the upbringing of a character when choosing their alignment or general disposition. If, for example, you’re playing an evil character, what in their life may have caused them to choose the paths that they did? While we are talking about parents, they aren’t always to blame. Other family members have just as strong of an influence on us as our parents.

Have you ever designed a character with their family history in mind? What was the result of your work?

Your first Spin of the Character Wheel

While you don’t want to build your whole character at once, you should give the wheel a quick, cursory revolution before you start play. The reason to do this is in a cursory fashion is that none of the details should be set in stone. While the order of the wheel is designed so that early categories readily influence later ones, during the first pass the whole character in malleable. New ideas you come up with later in the wheel can contradict earlier choices, which you can change to match.

Significant Details

Every good author knows not to bombard a reader with large amounts of superfluous description. It puts the reader to sleep and detracts from the story. Instead, it is best to present only the significant details, and leave everything else out.

The same holds true for your character. Comming up with pages of information that will never have an effect on the game is a fruitless effort. It is better, particularly on your first pass, to concentrate on creating one or two details for each category that you want to effect the story. These will be your go-to details. You’ll use them to describe your character to other players, to directly influence the character’s actions, and to provide the game master with plot hooks for adventure building.

Example of Significant Details:

Concept: Korinthus Talwin is an adventuring noble who has sought a life in the wilds and dungeons of the world to escape his oppressive family who has members in every major city.

Description: Fair appearance and soft skin. Looks like he’s spent his whole life coddled.

Motivation: Afraid to go into any trade city for fear that he’ll run into family.

Motivation: Gambling Addiction

Background: Member of the noble Talwin family.

Background: Lost his ancestral home in a gambling binge.

Attitude: Sneers at the poor and destitute.

Attitude: Loves opulence. Only buys the highest quality gear.

Relationship: Geron Talwin, Father. Korinthus is hiding from his father, who would make an example of him to the rest of the family.

Relationship: Mak, Friend. The gnome who snuck him out of town in the first place. He said he was going to join Korinthus, but never appeared.

As you can see, these details are just small pieces of information, but they tell a lot about the character, and provide a number of hooks for the game master to use. And better yet, the whole process only took me a few minutes.

A Note on Secrets

It’s often tempting to make a character more interesting to yourself by giving him a secret, but many players then spend the entire game trying to keep the secret from the other players and feel violated if the game master exposes them.

This behavior is anathema to the entire nature of tabletop roleplaying and characterization. If a character is going to have a secret,is must affect the game in a positive way. In essence, your character’s secret is a significant detail that provides the game master an adventure hook, and is useless if it isn’t exposed at some point. You should work with your game master as to how you would like the secret to effect the story.

Write Down Your Details

In addition to filling out any relevant sections of your character sheet, make a list of significant details collected from all categories and give it to your game master so he can use them. If your sheet doesn’t provide space for these details, make sure you write them down for yourself as well.

Continue Indefinitely

Your character, like the campaign, is not complete until you stop playing. Keep moving around the wheel a little at a time. Character advancement is a great time to do a little more work. You’re already having to make mechanical choices, so you may as well take a spin around the wheel, adding to the character and considering how the character may have chanced.

Make sure you go over your significant details occasionally. If any of them have been used as hooks, and probably won’t be again, then it’s time to come up with new ones. You never want your character to run out of interesting ways of landing in trouble.

Introducing the Character Wheel

Character creation is an ongoing process that, like any art, resists too much structure. Nevertheless, it benefits from a guidelines and process. What follows is a development tool that will help you grow a character alongside your campaign. It’s called the Character Wheel.

The Basics

The Character Wheel is a simple metaphor. The wheel’s hub are both your character’s core concept and the image you hold of them in your head. All other aspects of the character are spokes that revolve around, and are informed by, the hub.

The wheel itself never stops turning, because character development never ends, but also to provide a convenient order of operations when considering aspects of your character. As you play the game, you just keep moving around the wheel, adding to your character.

Finally, the wheel is a reference. Every has aspects of their character that they develop more easily than the others, but this can make the character’s wheel unbalanced. This isn’t terrible, by any means, but it points out weaker aspects that deserve attention.

As the Wheel Turns

Alright, Mr. Carlsen. You’ve beaten me over the head with a metaphor, but how does it actually work?

Fair enough. As this is an introduction, I won’t dive deep into the details yet; the individual parts of the wheel will each get more dedicated development, but what follows is an overview.

First, you must establish goals. You need to consider what you wish to accomplish with the character prior to anything else. Establishing goals and guidelines prevents you from creating a character that doesn’t fit the campaign, or that doesn’t work with the party.

Second, come up with a character concept. Your concept is a short description of the character. Your elevator pitch, no longer than a few sentences.

Third, develop an image of the character in your mind. This includes tone, atmosphere, emotions, actions, sounds, smells, and anything that adds to that intangible feeling you have of a character. Everything that follows is an attempt to capture and define that image.

Finally, once you have a concept and image, you can start working your way around the wheel. You start with one category, develop some ideas within it, then move on to the next. The spokes, or categories, are arranged in an order so that what you develop in one will most readily influence what follows. But this order is what works best for me, so rearrange it at will.

• Description: This category includes physical description, interesting marks, accents, behaviors, and mannerisms. Essentially, all the things that someone might notice about the character.
• Motivations: Goals, fears, dreams. That which drives a character to act.
• Background: The events and places that have influenced the character, including history, education, and hometown.
• Attitudes: Characters have opinions on everything. Record them for posterity.
• Relationships: These are the people who have influence on the character.
• Mechanics: The game rules. These come last because they feel more natural if they are influenced by the other categories.

That’s it for the basic outline, and is probably enough that you’re already considering how to use it. Tomorrow I’ll start digging into the meat of the process, so stay tuned. In the meantime, I’m interested in what character creation systems you have most enjoyed. Let me know in the comments.

Why I Write In-Character Fiction

When I started roleplaying I was never one to write in-character fiction. The thought never really occurred to me. I create a story for the character by playing him; why do the extra work? It wasn’t until I started playing a character named Theodore that writing character fiction even came to me. Paul and I had come up with a build point system for D&D 3.0/3.5 and were in the process of changing over the characters we were playing to the new system. Seeing the chance to do a bit of munchkin-ing I set about giving my cleric a high spot and sneak attack. Then I thought to myself, “Why would this character have these abilities?” That was the moment the character became a real person instead of stats on a page.

I came up with a flurry of ideas and a detailed background story explaining everything about the character: how he was a bodyguard before almost dying during an assassination attempt, and how he turned to his god for healing. These things would have never happened through normal roleplay. To craft a great character requires more time then just sitting at the table playing; a little thought must be put into it.

Think of Them as Real People

It may sound weird to some people, but hey we are roleplayers right? To get the best roleplaying experience, we need to embody the character in such a way that we think of them as real. Why are they taking those edges or raising that die? What have they been doing for that to make sense? Character advancement became much easier once I started considering these questions. I didn’t take spells that I wanted but the ones Theodore would choose, given what he knew of the road ahead.

Share the Story

Hillary is known amongst our group for coming up with some of the most intricate backstories for her characters, but the problem is that most of them involve something that must be hidden. I vividly remember her venting her frustration at no one taking interest in the back story that she had written, but then lamented that she hadn’t given any one any reason to be interested. Don’t make this mistake. If you write great in character fiction, give your fellow players a reason to know about it. Share a story around the campfire. Or perhaps when gearing up at the local shop, let slip a bit of history about your character. Likely the other players will respond in kind.

What I Learned

The more time and energy you spend on a character the more you grow to love them. The emotional investment is a paid off through every up and down your character has. I played Theodore from level 7 to 27, and it wasn’t until the epic levels that all of it began to pay off. In the end, when Theodore ascended to godhood, I found myself a bit sad. The person I had helped create had flown the nest only to be remembered in fond memories.

What is your favorite character story, or how did it change the character for you?

Introducing a New Player – Ask His Opinions

The new player’s first session with the new group has concluded, and everyone is packing up to go home. Here’s how to finish up his first session:

• Ask Questions. This is the time to ask to the player what he thought about the game. You’ll want to know what he liked, what he didn’t like, and if he has any questions.
• Compliment him. If you’re a player, you should compliment him on what he did well, but avoid any criticism, as this is his first session. Point out any good roleplaying he did, or mention how quickly he understood the rules. Anything to make the newcomer feel good.
• Offer him a book. Now that he’s played a session he may want to read up on the game. Offer him a core rulebook to borrow, but don’t make him take it. After the second or third session, you should make reading the rules be mandatory, but not right away.
• Socialize Afterward. Just like you did before the session, it’s a good idea to wind down from the game and just hang out an talk. The newcomer should be more comfortable now, and you just did something together so you have something new to talk about. This is just good for the relationships of your players.

This concludes our first Apathy University, missed some posts? Check it out from the beginning here.

On a Side Note: How to talk Out-of-Character

Character voice is the most important tool in a roleplayer’s arsenal. Their speech patterns and vocabulary help create the character at the table, but what happens when you want a snack? How can you signify you are no longer talking as Grognar, mighty chief of the half-orc tribe, but as you the player?

Simple, take your index and middle finger, and place them gently next to your temple.

This now signifies to the rest of the table that you are speaking out-of-character. Hence forth, until you remove your fingers from your temple, anything you say is out of character.

This technique allows for further immersion into the game because everything you say is what your character is saying. The action of speaking out of character reminds everyone at the table that anything else is in character. Since we started using this at our table we have found that people are apt to speak in character more often, and interactions between characters become more commonplace. The Game Master may use this to further his immersion, as he may restrict himself to responding only to what characters specifically say or do, tracking the conversation and narrating appropriately. This rule may also be applied to the GM, as anytime he speaks without using the gesture he is speaking for any present NPC’s. This will force him to focus on his own roleplaying and immersion, as well as that of the players.

Personally I have found this method brings me to a blurry line where players seem to become the character, fully embracing their characters actions and mannerisms, and have become disrupted when players choose to speak out-of-character.

This rule should be enforced to taste, as some of you may be more hardcore about it than others.

How do you signify out-of-character speech?

Everyone Should Play an Obnoxious Character

Because it provides players with an opportunity to be someone other than themselves, role-playing can be a powerful educational experience, teaching us many valuable social skills. Which is particularly useful, considering that the majority of us grew up as socially inept geeks.

Over the years, I’ve seen numerous players make friends and become happier in life because of role-playing, and through that I have come to a conclusion: everyone should play an verbal, eccentric, and obnoxious character at least once.

Why? Because fear is a powerful enemy (I’m sure someone said that), and the role-playing environment is a prime opportunity to face that fear of acting out in relative safety. Once a player has done it there, it should help reduce anxiety in the rest of their life.

That, and everyone has a little demon in them that is just dying to be let out. We all want to be a jerk sometimes, and it can be refreshing to get it out of our system.

Of course, I still firmly believe that anyone who plays an obnoxious character gets what they deserve when the rest of the players chastise them, and if they make of habit of playing such characters, they should probably be shot. But that’s only fair.

Developing a Backstory

The bar, the campfire, there are plenty of places in roleplaying games to tell stories within stories. Fleshing out a characters background helps delve deeper into the psyche and allow for greater understanding of this person. But how does one get started?

Start with keeping your idea for the story simple, and short. Although people may be interested in hearing the story they are not going to want to listen to a player drone on and on about something their character did. Try to keep it to less than 3 minutes as any more time and you might be hogging the spotlight.

Keep the story personal to your character, maybe a story of how they started adventuring? Or someone the character looked up to as a child that strongly influenced who they became when they grew up? Do they have a special weapon or item that is important to them that they carry around constantly, what’s that story?

Consider what this story is telling about the character, how is it showing deeper flaws or lighting up interesting side bits about your character? Are you adding to the overall mythos of the story and the world you are playing in?

Once the story is in place how do you build it into the campaign as not to make it feel forced? The easiest way is to tell the GM you have a story you’d like to share with the group and let it come naturally into a planned down time. The GM at this point can prompt you by painting the scene around you allowing a sub-story to naturally flow into the feel of the game. The other would be to ask specific questions of the characters from one character to another. This can lead also lead to an organic story time amongst the characters while in between events that the GM has planned.

Keeping a couple of simple stories at your disposal about your character to share when the time will not only help you tell stories but will help you deepen the character.

How do you get started in writing a character story?

Naming Your Character

The most immediately noticeable and commonly used aspect to any character is its name. Your character’s name will stick with you for an entire campaign, so it should be meaningful. Some people have a very difficult time choosing a quality character name, while others don’t even try.

Names come from somewhere. Figure this out, and the rest is easier.

Luckily, most fantasy core handbooks, such as the Iron Kingdoms Character Guide and Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, include a list of appropriate names that take much of the work out of it. But this is insufficient for a richly developed character. For that, you must ask yourself a few more questions.

• Why did the character’s parents choose this name? – Parents always have a reason for choosing a name, even if it’s just that they liked the sound of it. But usually the choice is more significant, such as naming their child after a relative, friend, or other significant person.
• Does the character go by their given name? – They may not, but then you must know why not, what name they do go by, and how they came by that name.
• What about nicknames? – Most people have several labels placed on them throughout their life. Choose some, and how they got them, though you may find it easier to figure out the source of a nickname first, and allowing that to determine the name chosen. This will create more natural nicknames.
• Should your character have a surname? – Yes. Your character’s surname connects them to a family, or their family’s profession, depending upon the setting. These are very important pieces of your character’s history, and should not be ignored.

These simple questions will do two things. Firstly, they will give your character some all-important depth, and more importantly, you will have a character name that you won’t be ashamed to tell other characters.

What is the best character name you’ve come up with, and why?