Character Wheel: Relationships

Written by Jeff Carlsen on 2010/07/08 – 00:00 -

It has taken a some time, considerable thought, and a little bit of effort, but here is the final entry in the Character Wheel series. As promised, in the coming weeks I will compile all these various posts, edit and refine them, and put them out as a PDF so you can make better use of them.

By now, your character has a complex set of Attitudes and Motivations. You can describe him down to the mole on his left shoulder, and you know how he celebrated his sixth birthday. But do you know who was there?

A character doesn’t grow in a vacuum. He’s influenced by the people around him. As such, you need to take some time to think about his important relationships.

Apathy Games – Character Wheel Sheet

6 Page PDF

This Character Sheet includes sections for every part of the Character Wheel.  It is system agnostic, so feel free to use it with any character for any game.

It’s Who You Know

Relationships are complex things, and people have a lot of them. A hugely tremendous number, really. In part, they define us. In a game, a character’s relationships are powerful motivations, tinged with deep-rooted attitudes. Each has it’s own history. To a certain level, every relationship a character has is practically a character biography in and of itself.

It would be ridiculous to keep track of all, or even a significant fraction of it, so I’ve designed the relationships section to expand gracefully.

Significant Details

Every character should have a few people in their lives that will dramatically effect the game and create subplots. Perhaps your character has a serious conflict with another party member that will have to be resolved. Maybe he’s earned himself a powerful enemy. Or, it could be that he simply has dependents that he has to provide for, always draining into his personal wealth.

Write these details down and share them with your Game Master so that he may use them against you. Appropriately, that is.

Contacts & NPCs

Contacts are people who can provide some service for the character. Some games have a specific mechanism for earning valuable contacts. Others develop these organically. When starting a character, you’ll want to talk to the Game Master about any contacts you want to start with.

As the game progresses, your character will meet a variety of NPCs. Any that seem useful of significant to you should be noted down, along with their usual Location, and any other useful notes. I’ve provided check-boxes on the sheet, as well, to designate if they are an Enemy or an Ally.

Significant Locations

While these aren’t relationships, it’s convenient to track significant locations in the same space as you track NPCs, since the two are often related.

Party Members

The other members of your party are your most immediate relationships, and the ones that deserve the most thought.

Fill in the character’s name, and where you might find them when they aren’t adventuring with you. Also note down a quick description of the character. Lastly, determine the type of relationship your character has with them, and what opinions he holds.

You should talk with the other players when developing these relationships, so you can all work together to make party interactions the most fulfilling. You don’t have to, of course, and you should never feel that you have to build your character’s attitudes according to the whims of other players. Still, a little discussion as to the nature of various party member relationships and how they might progress can be valuable.

Filling out this sheet can also be a valuable tool to separate player from character. We, as players, have relationships with each of the other players at the table and opinions about them as well. If we don’t think about it, we’ll often let those relationships and opinions cross over into the game as is. There isn’t anything wrong with that, most of the time, but it’s a missed opportunity for roleplaying. Plus, some players get frustrated when they develop a new and distinct character, but all the players treat him exactly the same as all his other characters.

Family & Other Relationships

There really is no end to how many relationships a character can have. It’s certainly worth taking some time to come up with a family for your character. Is it a traditional family, or is something strange or broken about it? Is your character married? Divorced or widowed? Maybe he has children who have grown up, or who are young and have been left with a crazy aunt. And, of course, he probably has siblings. Siblings make great NPCs for a variety of purposes.

After considering your character’s family, consider giving him a few friends, teachers, distant family members, or rivals. Anything to spice things up.

Like everything on the wheel, don’t develop this all at once, but feel free to add people as time goes by. These relationships make a character far more interesting.

Wrapping Up

That’s it for the entire Character Wheel. The next step is to start over again and keep going around forever, or until the character dies, you die, or you stop playing.

The Character Wheel has been a fun intellectual effort for me, building upon and organizing ideas I’ve used for a very long time. I certainly hope it’s useful for you. If you have any feedback, I really want to hear it. Maybe it’s just too much, and you want something simpler. Maybe it’s not enough and you think I’ve missed something. Maybe it’s just perfect how it is, and you want to award me the Nobel prize for game design. Whatever it is, I want to hear it. Enjoy.


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Character Wheel: Attitudes

Written by Jeff Carlsen on 2010/06/23 – 02:30 -

If Motivations describe what your character does, Attitudes describe what he says when he does it. Attitudes are the core of roleplaying, and are deeply tied to motivations.

This is where a character gets spunk, and where it becomes interesting at the table.  Other players don’t care as much about your character’s Background or Motivations as you do, but they will certainly respond to a well crafted attitude.

Apathy Games – Character Wheel Sheet

6 Page PDF

This Character Sheet includes sections for every part of the Character Wheel.  It is system agnostic, so feel free to use it with any character for any game.

I’ve Had Just About Enough Lip Out Of You

People don’t behave in just one way all the time. They react to things. Your character shouldn’t either. He should have a variety of opinions and reactions to various situations, and behave differently when experiencing various emotions.

Significant Details

As far as Attitudes go, the significant ones are those that are likely to land your character in trouble. “I get excited around fuzzy animals” isn’t a significant detail unless you’re addicted to fuzzy animals and also allergic. Instead, focus on things like, “I can’t help but spit in the face of authority figures.” That one will affect the story.

Simple Details

For Attitudes, I’ve included a seven axis alignment chart. This chart has been very successful in the past because it really only takes minute to fill out, but forces you to think about the character in several dimensions.

The various axis are as follows:

Introverted ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Extroverted

Selfish ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Charitable

Individualist ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Collectivist

Emotional ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Rational

Gentle ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Abrasive

Leader ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Follower

Libertarian ○ ○ ○ ○ ○ Authoritarian

A note about the difference between the Individualist/Collectivist axis and the Libertarian/Authoritarian axis. While they are very similar, the former is aimed at how your character behaves, whereas the latter is more about how he believes society should be structured. It’s entirely possible to have someone who works only for others but believes that no man should have control over others, or to have a man who works only for himself and believes that all men should be controlled.

Situational Personalities

People behave differently in various situations. These are called personas, but I’ve chosen the more obvious Situation Personalities to describe them.

The most common persona is the one used around the Party Members, as this will be the one played ninety percent of the time. Take some time to consider how you want to play this, and then revisit it after you’ve played a few sessions. If you wish it to, this entry can help prevent you from always playing the same character.

Personas also change when your character is surrounded by various social situations, including Family, Close Friends, Lovers, Large Groups, or when he is Alone. He may also act differently when in Dangerous Situations than he does when in Professional or Unfamiliar Situations.

Handling Emotions

Emotions are complicated things, and they can have a wide effect on different people. Here is where you decide how you handle each of them. You’ll notice that each emotion here lines up with an Emotional Trigger under the Motivations section. Use this for your convenience.

Take some time to consider how your character reacts to Anger, Depression, Envy, Fear, Joy, and Lust. Make them interesting. Include any vices or rituals he may engage in.

Lastly, decide upon the character’s Pervasive Emotional State. Is he usually angry or afraid? Maybe he does casual meditation to keep calm.

Handling Life

Similar to handling emotions, some people have difficulty handling Stress, Loss, or Guilt. With your game likely being combat centric, these situations will occur regularly and might trigger the emotions listed above.

Personal Quote

This is where you can try to sum up your character’s general attitude in a single quote. Your elevator pitch, so to speak. Try to have fun with is.


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Character Wheel: Background

Written by Jeff Carlsen on 2010/06/18 – 22:28 -

When most players think about character development, they think about background first.  Sometimes, it’s all they ever really consider.  I think that it’s actually the least important aspect of the Character Wheel, but it does have value in helping guide and inform your choices elsewhere on the wheel.

First, before we go any further, make sure you have a copy of the Character Wheel Sheet, so you can follow along.

Apathy Games – Character Wheel Sheet

6 Page PDF

This Character Sheet includes sections for every part of the Character Wheel.  It is system agnostic, so feel free to use it with any character for any game.

Hey, Good Lookin’.  Where you from?

A character’s background includes where he came from, what events have occured during his life, and how he got to be where he is today.

Significant Details

The mistake many roleplayer’s make is giving their character’s too much history for their power level.  While a character should certainly have some interesting things in their past, these should be things that can have an effect on the story going forward.  All your character’s history doesn’t matter if it has no impact on the game.  Thus, you should start by picking a handful of things that will come back to haunt your character.

Simple Details

In some regards, these questions could go on forever, but there’s only so much space or time.  Instead, I’ve included the things that are significant moments to most people.  These include your Hometown, Greatest Success and Failure, First Job, and stuff about First Lovers.  Feel free to think of your own questions as well.  Additionally, there are a few questions about things that may never have happened to your character, but if so would have a dramatic impact, such as committing a crime and saving someone’s life.

Strangely, perhaps, I’ve included your character’s First Kill as something that expected to have happened.  That’s because most roleplaying games are violent by nature.  This may say something terrible about all of us, but I’ll leave that for another topic.

Complex Details

As you go over these five sections, there are three basic questions you should ask yourself:

  1. Where did my character come from?
  2. How did my character learn his skills?
  3. Why did my character decide to become X? (Where X is whatever the setting assumes your character is, Adventurer, Hero, Criminal, Revolutionary, etc.)

I didn’t include these exact questions on the sheet, but you’ll notice that they align pretty closely with the sections Childhood, Scholastic, and Professional.  Those words simply take up less space and convey the same idea.  The questions above are meant to guide you in makeing decisions.

I’ve also included Romantic history and Accomplishments & Awards.  The impact of these depends on the setting, but both provide opportunities for adventure.

Momentous Occasions

These are the moments in your character’s life that are still remembered to this day.  Some are Jovial, some are Tragic, and some are Inspirational or Life Changing.  Don’t fill all of this out yet.  Most of these should occur during the game.

That does it for Background.  Tune in next week when we cover Attitudes.


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Character Wheel: Motivations

Written by Jeff Carlsen on 2010/06/11 – 00:00 -

A character’s personality is split into two parts: Attitudes and Motivations. Of these, the latter is the most important to a roleplaying game. A motivation is anything that drives your character to act. They can be external or internal. A poisonous snake can be an external motivation, but we’re not overly concerned with these right now. Those are provided by the game master, and are more directly related to attitudes. Instead, we’ll going to think about internal motivations–those that come from the character’s own twisted mind.

First, before we go any further, make sure you have a copy of the Character Wheel Sheet, so you can follow along.

Apathy Games – Character Wheel Sheet

6 Page PDF

This Character Sheet includes sections for every part of the Character Wheel.  It is system agnostic, so feel free to use it with any character for any game.

Director, what’s my motivation?

Significant Details are critical under this category. Choose a handful of powerful motivators you want constantly considered by the Game Master during adventure planning.

As before, look over this section of the sheet for inspiration. At least one of your significant details should be a goal, and another should be a belief. There is a lot of power in both.

Emotional Triggers

I lied a bit about not concerning yourself with external motivations, but for good reason. If you look next to Emotional Triggers, under Attitudes, you see a nearly identical list called Handling Emotions. These two really do go hand in hand. Whereas Handling Emotions is where you’ll eventually describe how your character behaves when he feels a particular emotion, Emotional Triggers are things that readily inspire the emotion in the first place. Think of these as consistent external motivations, if you like.

List some things that inspire Anger, Depression, Envy, Fear, Joy, and Lust.

Fears and Insecurities

At first glance this seems like a redundant section, but it serves a different purpose. Whereas above you listed things that cause fear, this is where you should write down things your character is always afraid of. These are far more pervasive. In the case of phobias, these are stronger than a mere fear, and are irrational by definition. The way a character reacts to a phobia should be stronger than the way they react to fear.

General Fears are the sorts of things that should keep your character up at night. Perhaps it’s fear for loved ones or maybe fear of the unknown.

Insecurities are more subtle. Perhaps your character doesn’t like his body, or is afraid he’s going to let his team-mates down. Insecurities should eat at the character, and show up a little bit at a time.

Loves and Passions

If fear causes a character to run away, Loves and Passions draw him in. These can be Callings, which are things your character loves doing, or Interests, which are things he likes to learn about, study, or just be surrounded by.

Obsessions are a stronger form of love, and should have a dramatic effect of the character, whereas Pet Peeves are things that simply irritate.

Vices, though, deserve serious attention. Vices may be bad things for players to have, but they’re fantastic for a character. They add flavor and charm, and can be a blast to play. Maybe your character smoke pipes, or is an alcoholic. Maybe he just spends a little too much time at brothels. The sky’s the limit when it comes to lewd behavior.

Character Goals

Nothing if more important than having goals for your character. Simply put, this is your way of directly affecting the story in your campaign. Your character’s goals will cause him to seek adventure. If they don’t, then you need more goals.

I’ve broken goals up into categories. Personal Goals are the kinds of things your character wishes to change about himself. These could be about personality or lifestyle–a desire to get over some fear, or to stop a particular vice. The others are pretty self-explanatory: Career, Projects, Family, and Relationships.

Belief Systems

Your character believes things. Some of these beliefs are so closely held that they color everything the character does. His Religion is more than just what god he prays too, but how closely he follow religious edicts and how much he sees the divine in the world around him. Philosophies are merely things he believes about human behavior. These are closely related to and inform his Political Views. Lastly, most characters have Superstitions such as never wearing green into battle because it’s bad luck or never lighting a fire using pine because the spirits don’t like it.

That basically covers Motivations. Certainly there are others you may think of. If you do, let me know. In the meantime, next week I’ll go over Background.


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Character Wheel: Description

Written by Jeff Carlsen on 2010/06/03 – 00:00 -

As was foretold, the Character Wheel has returned to us. This time I begin a series of posts going over each hub of the wheel in gruesome detail. In addition, I have rebuilt the Character Wheel sheet. It is now completely system agnostic, and has just a touch of color. Check it out, as I’m quite proud of it.

Apathy Games – Character Wheel Sheet

6 Page PDF

This Character Sheet includes sections for every part of the Character Wheel.  It is system agnostic, so feel free to use it with any character for any game.

Can you describe the perpetrator?

Let us start by going over Significant Details. These details are supposed to have an effect on the game; you want the Game Master to utilize these during adventure design.

Look over this section of the sheet for inspiration. Perhaps you have a distinctive tattoo that will cause conflicts. Perhaps your love of a particular drink will eventually become unhealthy. Or, maybe, the ultimate piece of your car emblem collection has been discovered, and it’s a race to discover it. Essentially, consider how some of the entries could be used in an adventure, and build a detail from there.

Simple Details

The simple details for description are rather obvious: Tattoos, Piercings, Scars, Birthmarks, Oddities, Allergies, Health, and Fitness. Only a couple explanations are in order. First, Health is what your doctor would judge, whereas Fitness is something your personal trainer would keep track of. Lastly, Oddities are simply distinctive character features that don’t fit elsewhere.

Complex Details

Complex Details consist of the following: Physical, Clothing, Lifestyle, Home Furnishings, Home Life, Hobbies, Collections, and Habits.

These deserve a little more attention, or have more than one entry. They can consist of complete sentences, or simple lists. Whatever you desire is alright. Of them, the most valuable is probably Habits. These will come up in a game fairly often.

Hobbies and Collections are fun, and I think every character should have a few. The difference it subtle, because most collections are hobbies, but it made sense to separate them so that your knife collection isn’t in the same list as your micro-brew operation.

Tastes

Tastes fall into the following categories: Food & Drink, Art & Architecture, Entertainment, The Opposite Sex, Colors, Favorite Places, Other, and Eccentricities.

These could also fit comfortably under Attitudes or Motivations, but they’re less about personality and more akin to simple descriptive features. Under each of the above categories, you should list your favorite and least favorite items, as well as anything else the character might feel passionate about.

Lastly, take a look at Eccentricities. These can be very oddball things about your character. Maybe he has a penchant for painting everything red, even though he hates it, because it’s what he’s always done. Maybe he always eats his dinner from the inside out. Maybe he has to read twelve pages before he can sleep. I’m sure you can come up with better ones.

That’s it for today. We’ll be bringing you the rest soon, so you have been warned.


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Return of the Character Wheel

Written by Jeff Carlsen on 2010/05/26 – 00:00 -

Before I start, I want to thank you for the feedback we’ve been receiving.  If you have not yet had a chance to, please leave us a comment in our feedback post.

It’s been a while since I discussed the Character Wheel.  Obviously, you’ve been waiting in frustration for more of my genius, but I wanted to give the concept time to bounce around in my head so it could truly be the ultimate character creation tool.  If you’re not familiar with the concept, please check out the introduction and first spin posts.

What we’ve covered so far is enough to generate significant details in each of the six categories.  In the next few weeks, I will be covering each category in detail, as well as providing a character sheet to supplement this process.  You can already check out a rough draft by downloading the sheet [.pdf] I provided in our 100th post.

One thing you’ll notice, looking at the sheet, is that it doesn’t follow the exact order of the wheel: Description, Motivations, Background, Attitudes, Relationships, Mechanics.  This is because that order, while useful for creation, isn’t practical for reference.  The truth is, these categories are entwined with one another in a way that makes complete separation impossible.

Instead, the categories are grouped where sensible.  Description and History are both part of the character’s Biography, and Motivations and Attitudes are both entwined under personality.  Relationships, on the other hand, span multiple pages and include a family tree (which, to be completely honest, is quite silly.  I only created it for fun, and because I can never remember how to determine the different kinds of cousins).

But, on to the exciting bits!  I’ve come up with something new!  You already know what Significant Details are.  What about everything else?  Well, they now get separated into Simple Details and Complex Details.  I know, I know.  It’s more complication.  But let me explain.  Simple details are like your Height and Weight.  These things can be quickly filled in, whereas complex details require thought and complete sentences.  In my thinking, each of the categories (excluding Mechanics) should have a handful of simple details to help launch a character.  They don’t take long, so they give you a feeling of accomplishment when you fill them in.

The complex details take time to fill in and evolve with your character, both as you take additional passes around the wheel and as the game progresses.

That’s all the new stuff for now.  I hate to make you wait for more, but it’ll be worth it.  After I’ve completed the posts and new sheet, I’ll put them together as a nice PDF that you can use at the table.  What you can do in the intervening time is assist me with feedback.  If I’m missing something, let me know.  If I’m being confusing, poke at me.  Gently, though.  My ego bruises easily, and then I start flame wars on Wikipedia.  It isn’t pretty.


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Your first Spin of the Character Wheel

Written by Jeff Carlsen on 2010/02/04 – 00:00 -

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.


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Introducing the Character Wheel

Written by Jeff Carlsen on 2010/02/03 – 00:00 -

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.


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