Character creation and development

[Brian]

"Character creation and development" OR "I'm ready for my closeup, Mr. Deville" OR "What do you MEAN by 'I don't play well with others'?"

Creating a well-rounded, well-researched, well-explored, and otherwise developed character.  Sometimes good, sometimes bad.  I'm sorry to put my GMing cap on in the Player's forum, but there's a few quick notes from the GM's perspective that should go here, too.  As a GM, in my last campaign (the Apocylpse scenario), I got varying amounts of research/effort from my players on their backstories.

One of them was the Mokole Warden (were-dragon) with a 5 page background explaining how his clutch had fallen to the Wyrm and he'd rescued a pair of Mokole eggs from a tainted warrior-caste dragon, thus winning some small amount of respect among a foreign nest.  It was well written, the character was extemely well explored, every single skill and background -- hell, every point on the character sheet! -- was somehow worked into the backstory to explain why/how it was all gotten.

It was so well done from the player that as the GM I just said, "Well, I see 5 plot hooks right there.  Let's go!"

Another was the Gurahl Forest Guardian.  Warrior-caste were-bear.  His background was, "I live in Canada, but have five dots of brawl (specialized in Martial Arts) because my father is Japanese.  Also, I'm six feet tall."

I ended up spending about six hours working with this player to try and really develop his backstory, explain how his ancestry came into being, trying to work his skills into his background....

And in the end, he had the two plot-hooks I wrote into his background for him when the game began.

As it turned out, the Mokole ended up getting a lot more action-scenes in the game (both in and out of combat), simply because the character was well reasoned, and there was never a point where the player didn't know what the character would do in response to something.  By contrast, the Gurahl ended up only taking action when I specifically directed a thing/NPC at him to fight/talk.  I suppose it's just that lack of effort throughout elicits lack of reward throughout....  But at the same time, it becomes clear that creating a well rounded character is, if not integral, certainly a major element of making sure you can actively participate in the game (Rokugan dungeon-crawls tend not to need Courtisans, but who'd make that mistake?  Well, the second time, anyway).  

Especially if someone else will take all the screen-time away because you didn't put together a complete character.  This, BTW, puts pressure on the GM to come up with stuff for you, as opposed to just taking the hook other players are already offering....

What tips can anyone offer on creating a character to play well with others?  Is this something that only comes with experience, or are there tricks to the trade?

On the flip-side, how do you make sure your character is complete without being too complex to evolve, or making sure s/he's not too 'busy', and doesn't distract from the other PCs?

[Bjorn]

One of my favourite tactics is the good old-fashioned mystery background.  The character history of my favourite PCs have all been fairly short, often no more than a paragraph or two, but include some sort of open question: "He doesn't age, and doesn't know why," or the standard classic, "His family disappeared under mysterious circumstances."

You need to fill it out a bit more than that, but the real key is: don't have any answers to the mystery.  Leave it up to the GM.  That gives the GM a chance to make the plot hooks of your character and that of others mesh properly, as well as making it more likely that your plot hook will actually get used.

What is much more important, I think, is to have a fully-fleshed out personality.  What are the character's motivations?  His preferred approach to problems?  His biases and prejudices?  I don't really have a method for coming up with this, and I suspect neither do most people.  You start to build a character, and either a personality develops for him, or it doesn't, and you start over.

Having said that, avoid being a prima donna.  Sure, everybody wants a chance to be a dark, go-it-himself loner, but nobody wants to work with a guy like that.  Take the time to ask yourself: is my character going to just end up creating hassles and arguments for all the other characters?  Thinking about other players and other characters in the course of your own character creation is a vital step.

[Carthrat]

Character generation.. I feel it should happen as much during a game as much out of it. It's all very well to write a five-page background and lay out every detail of a character, but I find it more fun to write something fairly loose; a few details on his past, a few on his personality, etc. and wing it through situations that my sheet doesn't provide an immediate answer for.

I actually read it somewhere in a D&D book; 'It's better to flesh out your character in game than in a sheet.', and I really do agree.

As far as plot hooks go.. well, that's why you *do* have your character write out some details. The mystery backgroud is really handy for that, definately, but with a little inventiveness, I think most backgrounds can work for most plots, assuming the PC's aren't wildly different from each other in terms of alignment and worldview.

[Edward]

I think some people are afraid of putting plot hooks in their backstory, because previous GMs have abused them.  Others don't really care about character, they've just built Buttkicker the 42nd, and if he dies they bring in Buttkicker the 43rd.

Personally, I like putting plothooks in my backstory (disadvantages can be good for this, too).   Under a good GM this can mean more screen time for my character.

And a background should explain the character's skills, advantages, whatever, but some people can get bogged down the details.

I like this for some advice on character creation, even though it's written with comic books in mind.

1) What's my character want?

This is probably the most important.  What are the character's goals?  The Punisher and Batman have basically the same origin story, yet their goals are different.

The PCs answer here can also be a cue for GMs.  If the PCs goal(s) involve staying home and avoiding danger, that's probably a cue that this character isn't cut out for adventuring.

It also gives a chance to see if any of the PCs have conflicting goals, which can be a good or bad thing depending on the specific indivuduals and genre.

2) What do I like about them?

Even the villains in good stories have some positive attributes.   And I'm not just referring to personal ability to kick butt.   This can also be a good way of screening bad PC concepts.  At least, I'd be worried if the player said what they liked best about the PC was they were tough enough to kill all the other characters.

3) What do I dislike about them?

Heroes have flaws and perfect characters are boring.  Sherlock Holmes was a genius, but he also had an ego, and even he didn't succeed all the time.  Flaws can also lead to situations where the PC needs the other PCs, providing another reason for them to work together.

Of course, some people use this as an excuse to be obnoxious.  Legolas and Gimli style bickering is acceptable.  Playing someone that loathes another PC merely for existing is not.

[Dracos]

Being rather a minimalist as those who've heard me talk/seen me write characters when I don't go system crazy...

I think it is a mistake to directly associate 'long, [strikethrough]well thought out[/strikethrough] background' with 'well rounded character'.

I'm actually of the belief that in most games, similar to reality, the backstory doesn't matter that much.  Yes, there can be cases where it is representative of truly thinking out the character.  Yes, there are many games in which a prolonged backstory is appropriate.

I just really haven't played in many myself.  In fact, I think I can count the number of ones where I have on one hand, and almost always the same benefits that are achieved by backstory can be achieved by clever interaction of the GM and Player.

That said...  a few thoughts.

For one, I think Bjorn puts it very well on what is the most critical part.  The essence.  I've been meaning to write on it for a while and Olg was given the task of bugging me (cursed being too distracted to do it).  I call it the aspect of 'being' the character.  When you step into the role at the very beginning and then begin to react AS the character would.  This can be written or just mentally put in (it's usually a good idea to write thoughts on these anyway since, after all, there can be character traits that are good for the GM to know).  While this shouldn't be randomly generated, a good written conveying of it can be only a couple paragraphs.  When I think of most good books, shakespeare for instance, the aspects of the character necessary to tell the tale largely are personality.  Yeah, it's important where Macbeth stands relative in the power structure, but maybe four sentences would be necessary to cover the backstory in such a character.

Backstory is more written, in other words, for atmosphere and just the enjoyment of writing by the player, in my opinion.

And...wow, that's an excellent article, Edward.

For a second thing, I think play style has a lot to do with it.  I could take that Mokule you talked about and hand it to player 2 in your story and I would bet that, after a few sessions, it would've derived right back to how he was playing Gurahl.  After a few sessions in, the backstory and background matter less (with a few notable exceptions of hooks and special connections) then how you've played the character out and how you are playing it out.  Moreso since a background is a few pages and an average game spans hundreds and hundreds, either in spoken or written text.  In effect, if a player hasn't concluded how they are going to be a character, the odds are really good they'll just end up looking down at a short list of points that they've listed in their pre-writeup and being stunned when it isn't covered there.

Thirdly, I think it really is the onus of the GM to encourage folks to consider where there player has been and what they've been doing 'last' after making sure the core is worked out.  It's a mistake I've made repeatedly in the past considering that the effort to work out a backstory correlates at all with actually mentally stepping into the role of a character.  Often, the length of it tends to correspond to anything but it, that the player has focused solely on a single scene or event or set of events and concluded 'that defines' the character.

Dracos
Meanders.

[Dracos]

Character generation.. I feel it should happen as much during a game as much out of it. It's all very well to write a five-page background and lay out every detail of a character, but I find it more fun to write something fairly loose; a few details on his past, a few on his personality, etc. and wing it through situations that my sheet doesn't provide an immediate answer for.

I actually read it somewhere in a D&D book; 'It's better to flesh out your character in game than in a sheet.', and I really do agree.

As far as plot hooks go.. well, that's why you *do* have your character write out some details. The mystery backgroud is really handy for that, definately, but with a little inventiveness, I think most backgrounds can work for most plots, assuming the PC's aren't wildly different from each other in terms of alignment and worldview.

I seem to recall in the last game I played under ye, that pretty much the entire set of hooks that were used came from my initial two paragraph description =P

Of course, my backstory was not particularly great anyway.

Dracos
*teases*

[Carthrat]

In the game I'm playing with you now, I havn't even *got*  a plot hook.

(Zing!)

[Dracos]

That's what you think.

=D

Dracos