Quertus rambles about… story?

[Quertus]

So, full disclosure, I’m getting too old and senile to write what I really want to say. So, instead, I’ve decided to try to discuss a side topic of what I actually want to discuss, but one I think I can tackle… if I can remember what it is. Oh, right: character. Or story? Or… the relationship between character and story, and the role of background and roleplaying in… sigh. It’s complicated. But potentially easy from a different PoV.

So, for background: despite the fact that I’m great at running Jealously-based characters, there’s only really one thing I’ve consistently felt jealous about irl. Yeah, there’s people who are better than me in many ways, who have abilities or talents or skills or insights or things that I lack… and that’s great! But I’ve always been Jealous of artists, those who can Create. Me? I’ve got all the creativity of an Earthdawn demon.

So I’ve spent decades trying to find some creative outlet that… clicks. And, yeah, I can “create” in RPGs - I can make worlds, and characters, and… but it’s… not what I was looking for.

However, one outlet in particular keeps drawing me back in, keeps saying, “why don’t you try me again?”. Ever since I read the commonly considered horrible campaign journal passing itself as a novel known was the Dragonlance… Chronicles?, I’ve always wanted to be able to write something like that.

But, with all the skill of an Earthdawn Demon, I’ve instead written sanity-endangering scripts worthy of inclusion in a Cthulhu game, rather than anything fit for human consumption. Despite people’s generally negative opinion of that series, it’s been far too high a bar for me to reach.:smallfrown:

Point is, I’ve been reading about writing. And a newfangled idea about writing theory has really rung true to me… and explained some of my take on roleplaying.

That newfangled idea is this: the story only matters in the context of the character. And not just “the character as they are now”, but everything / the key things that led them to be that way. That a neutral writing prompt “Grant is alone on a deserted island with a box” is not only meaningless, but actively detrimental to creating a good story without knowing who Grant is first.

Anyways, this writing idea has led me to think up a… spectrum, I suppose, of… uh… “story preparedness”? Anyway, it looks something like this:
No character, no prompt.
No character, prompt.
Character, prompt.
Character, prompt, response.


The 4th one is what this newfangled theory says one should have before one begins writing. The second is what is generally taught to school children (and in some writing texts).

In writing, the difference would be…
Blank page
Grant is alone on an island, with a box.
Grant is a Black Ops specialist for a covert government agency. He is alone on an island with a box. What is in the box?
Grant is a Black Ops specialist for a covert government agency. He is alone on an island with a box. There is a gun in the box.


Now let’s look at it from an RPG perspective.


<cricket> <cricket>
There’s a castle that wasn’t here yesterday.
There’s a castle that wasn’t here yesterday - what does Quertus do about that?
There’s a castle that wasn’t here yesterday. The plot demands that Quertus [ignore it for now // enter the castle immediately // inform the legal owners of the land about the infringement upon their property rights // whatever]


So, the first is what I believe has been called a “white room”, and has been mistaken by some for Sandbox play.

The second is attempting to roleplay without a character.

The third is Sandbox play.

The fourth is a linear plot.

Amazingly, it’s actually the second one that’s been bothering me - or, rather, bothering me in ways I couldn’t quite express, couldn’t quite put my finger on.

There’s this idea that we can just create the character in play, rather than coming to the table with a character. And it feels to me not unlike trying to write from a neutral prompt, without first thinking about just who is responding to that prompt.

In fact, I tried doing just that: I wrote a story where, in the first chapter, the PCs all have the personality of wet cardboard. The idea being that the players had sat down to play without giving their PCs’ personalities any thought, and let them develop during play.

Now, I “cheated”, in that I, the writer, knew what their personalities would eventually be like before I wrote a single word. But I wrote as though their players didn’t.

Do you think that this sounds like a good opening chapter to a book?

Can you guess, as I at long last now can, why the practice of “meh, the character can always develop a personality later” bugged me from the moment I first heard it?

Anyway, from reading about writing, and applying it to RPGs, I feel that the proper relationship between elements is… Roleplaying comes from Character + Prompt generating a Response.

(I think I’ve finally learned the difference between the words “Plot” and “Story”, too! Not unlike “Strategy” and “Tactics”, they were initially interchangeable in my loose vocabulary.)

A lot of words to say very little? Thoughts?

[Phhase]

Hmm, some interesting notes here. To get everything straight: You're writing a....module? And you were being irked by the fact that the, correct me if I'm wrong, world and NPCs you designed seemed as if they were accomodating for the fact that the player's characters would, at the beginning of the adventure, be nothing but tabula rasa? I've almost understood what you're getting at, just give me a succinct summary and I'll be confident enough to take a whack.

[Quertus]

Hmm, some interesting notes here. To get everything straight: You're writing a....module? And you were being irked by the fact that the, correct me if I'm wrong, world and NPCs you designed seemed as if they were accomodating for the fact that the player's characters would, at the beginning of the adventure, be nothing but tabula rasa? I've almost understood what you're getting at, just give me a succinct summary and I'll be confident enough to take a whack.

Oh, hmmm… those are some interesting points, too. That’s… a very good way to apply what I’ve said. But not the specific examples I apparently failed to communicate.

So, while I may circle back to your ideas when I’ll more awake, I actually wrote (/ am writing / whatever) a spoof novel that, among other things, spoofs the concept of “creating the personality in play” by having the PCs / the “MC” party start in chapter 1 with all the personality of wet cardboard.

I only mentioned this story for the… feels? To help evoke in the reader the same emotional response I had when I first heard the thing that actually irked me: the idea of creating the character’s personality (and background, and…) during play, rather than it existing before play begins.

Oh, and I completely left out (even though it could be inferred) my similar response to Angry declaring that process of inventing the character in play “roleplaying”, when it would more aptly be labeled “character creation”.

But I felt that the root cause of my annoyance at these various related topics was encapsulated by “Roleplaying comes from Character + Prompt, and produces Response”.

It also explains why “determine the desired result, then backfill the cause” or “roll for Diplomacy, then say things that produce that result” don’t jive with “roleplaying”.

Heck, even metagaming to avoid “My Guy”, “it’s what my character would do” would probably be argued to not be roleplaying under this scheme.

Any clearer?

[NichG]

I think what it comes down to for me is more something like...

There's a seed hook or idea or whatever which amounts to 'why am I writing?' or 'why am I playing?', and then other things are determined by seeing what feels to fit appropriately with the structure demanded by that seed.

So if I were going into a premise without a character in mind, that would be equivalent to saying 'in order to accomplish what I'm setting out to do here, the character should be determined by the needs of the premise or those reactions to the premise which best illuminate the aspects of the premise that I'm interested in exploring'. E.g. it would be a declaration of an order of priority. The process would go 'I want to explore the idea of scarcity in the afterlife' -> 'okay, who is going to hit that wall in the most interesting way?' / 'what reaction to encountering the premise seems the most fun, and how would the rest of the character need to be in order to have that reaction make sense?'.

Similarly, if I had a character in mind but no premise or context, I could say 'the premise should be the one in which this character I want to highlight would be the most interesting'.

In general whenever you invent things there will be some order in which you do it. That may involving ping-ponging back and forth touching and retouching elements to make them fit, but you can't really do it all simultaneously. So starting to write without those things decided just means extending that decision process into the writing process and allowing those degrees of freedom to serve the needs and opportunities you discover as you write.

Edit: The reason why this can be particularly helpful for play rather than writing is, things about the premise and setting are hidden from you as a player when you are in the character generation phase. So it can be advantageous to decide whether you want to play a smartaleck wisecracking rogue or a silent assassin stereotype after you've seen whether the setting is wacky or serious, whether honor and insults are matters of life and death or if people respond to things proportionally, etc.

[Quertus]

I think what it comes down to for me is more something like...

There's a seed hook or idea or whatever which amounts to 'why am I writing?' or 'why am I playing?', and then other things are determined by seeing what feels to fit appropriately with the structure demanded by that seed.

So if I were going into a premise without a character in mind, that would be equivalent to saying 'in order to accomplish what I'm setting out to do here, the character should be determined by the needs of the premise or those reactions to the premise which best illuminate the aspects of the premise that I'm interested in exploring'. E.g. it would be a declaration of an order of priority. The process would go 'I want to explore the idea of scarcity in the afterlife' -> 'okay, who is going to hit that wall in the most interesting way?' / 'what reaction to encountering the premise seems the most fun, and how would the rest of the character need to be in order to have that reaction make sense?'.

Similarly, if I had a character in mind but no premise or context, I could say 'the premise should be the one in which this character I want to highlight would be the most interesting'.

In general whenever you invent things there will be some order in which you do it. That may involving ping-ponging back and forth touching and retouching elements to make them fit, but you can't really do it all simultaneously. So starting to write without those things decided just means extending that decision process into the writing process and allowing those degrees of freedom to serve the needs and opportunities you discover as you write.

Edit: The reason why this can be particularly helpful for play rather than writing is, things about the premise and setting are hidden from you as a player when you are in the character generation phase. So it can be advantageous to decide whether you want to play a smartaleck wisecracking rogue or a silent assassin stereotype after you've seen whether the setting is wacky or serious, whether honor and insults are matters of life and death or if people respond to things proportionally, etc.

Sure. The theory of writing I’m currently learning about, that sparked this way of looking at roleplaying, and thus this thread, contends that if you start writing before you flesh out the character, or if you pick “Hitler” as you character, you may find that you are in a suboptimal position to deal with your “most important priority” of discussing scarcity in the afterlife.

However, that’s really all just background, to help explain the topic; thus (if my reading comprehension hasn’t failed me again for the last time), it’s the stuff in your “edit” that actually addresses the meat of the conversation.

And I guess… “hidden information” + “trying to find a character that fits” could be another reason why it might take me multiple characters before I’m ready to play. If I prioritize “roleplaying” in an RPG, then it would make sense that my response would be to place the problem in the bucket labeled “the importance of session 0” or “why hiding certain information is counterproductive”.

Which was kinda my point: I think that this one simple theory helps explain where a lot of my opinions come from.

[noob]

As far as I know in a rpg nobody cares about the characters if they have fun.
So if the players does not care about things like "personality" or "appropriate response as guy x" and wants to describe how their characters run around bumping in walls and putting sandbags on their heads in research of answers and have entirely inconsistent characters that changes randomly depending on the mood of the player, it is fine as long as the players are having fun.
You do not need to play the role of a consistent or logical or interesting character and "I am roleplaying as a guy controlled by a madman that watches for fun what happens when it is controlled to bump in walls" is just fine.

With such mentality then "I will make the character as it goes" is not wrong to do, as long as you are having fun.
As a gm I do often come at the table with nothing prepared at all then make things up at random as the game goes, the players I have do not dislike that.

The second method Quertus mentioned is what is called a dnd module and really it is hard to write dnd modules and I have no clue how dnd module writers do it: real time adjustment is unavailable and you do not know what the characters are, how could it possibly work? I do not know but module writers knows or they would not be writing modules.
Then there is lots of modules that fits category 4, many rpgs have modules with prebuilt characters that have defined motivations and ways of acting.

Essentially rpgs have different mechanics relatively to writing fiction because they seek a different goal: in writing the goal is to make a story(and in a story 99% of the time characters are important, I have seen only one literature movement about "not having characters" in its manifesto but it still had characters), in a rpg, the goal is to have fun which can be done either through the resulting story or just through other exiting things(like the social interactions with the people around or the contemplation of absurd results happening after having thrown dice and so on).

[GloatingSwine]

So, while I may circle back to your ideas when I’ll more awake, I actually wrote (/ am writing / whatever) a spoof novel that, among other things, spoofs the concept of “creating the personality in play” by having the PCs / the “MC” party start in chapter 1 with all the personality of wet cardboard.


Ah, you're writing an Isekai light novel!


I think if people are creating their character's personality in play it's probably because they're not connecting with the narrative/roleplaying aspect of the game. And there can be a lot of reasons for that, they might just not be wired that way but enjoy the social aspect of the game, they might just not be into this particular setting, they might not feel like they know enough about this particular setting to come up with a preexisting personality to fit in it.

I think most RPG systems these days encourage the player to at least have the broad strokes of who their character is and why, but published modules have to be written without that in mind because it doesn't matter how detailed the players' backstory and personality of their character is if you don't know it in advance out of the infinite variety of things they could have picked.

[Quertus]

As far as I know in a rpg nobody cares about the characters if they have fun.
So if the players does not care about things like "personality" or "appropriate response as guy x" and wants to describe how their characters run around bumping in walls and putting sandbags on their heads in research of answers and have entirely inconsistent characters that changes randomly depending on the mood of the player, it is fine as long as the players are having fun.
You do not need to play the role of a consistent or logical or interesting character and "I am roleplaying as a guy controlled by a madman that watches for fun what happens when it is controlled to bump in walls" is just fine.

With such mentality then "I will make the character as it goes" is not wrong to do, as long as you are having fun.
As a gm I do often come at the table with nothing prepared at all then make things up at random as the game goes, the players I have do not dislike that.

The second method Quertus mentioned is what is called a dnd module and really it is hard to write dnd modules and I have no clue how dnd module writers do it: real time adjustment is unavailable and you do not know what the characters are, how could it possibly work? I do not know but module writers knows or they would not be writing modules.
Then there is lots of modules that fits category 4, many rpgs have modules with prebuilt characters that have defined motivations and ways of acting.

Essentially rpgs have different mechanics relatively to writing fiction because they seek a different goal: in writing the goal is to make a story(and in a story 99% of the time characters are important, I have seen only one literature movement about "not having characters" in its manifesto but it still had characters), in a rpg, the goal is to have fun which can be done either through the resulting story or just through other exiting things(like the social interactions with the people around or the contemplation of absurd results happening after having thrown dice and so on).

Sure. Angry even addressed “8 kinds of fun” - not everybody enjoys the same things. But words still have to have meaning for us to communicate, and there’s a difference between (for example) playing an RPG with roleplaying, vs playing it as a war game.

Being able to express and talk about these differences can only be beneficial to the hobby, and to players’ ability to have fun.

I’m not saying it’s BadWrongFun to do - I’m saying it’s wrong to mislabel such behavior “roleplaying”.

Now, modules with prebuilt characters does throw an interesting twist onto things. But, ultimately, since Playgrounders have tried to argue that it’s perfectly in character for Batman to different authors have had different interpretations of even iconic characters like Batman, it’s not unreasonable to expect that such printed characters will have the same “what’s my motivation” problem actors - who actually have their lines scripted for the - run into, but more so.

In other words, I think it is unreasonable to expect different players to play the same unknown PC the same / a prescribed way, given even someone as iconic as Batman, let alone from the paucity of information module prebuilt characters have.


Ah, you're writing an Isekai light novel!

I suppose that’s true. :smallbiggrin:


I think if people are creating their character's personality in play it's probably because they're not connecting with the narrative/roleplaying aspect of the game. And there can be a lot of reasons for that, they might just not be wired that way but enjoy the social aspect of the game, they might just not be into this particular setting, they might not feel like they know enough about this particular setting to come up with a preexisting personality to fit in it.

That’s… quite a lot of dense topics to unpack you’ve managed to squeeze into one short paragraph there!

I will just say that I wouldn’t label “a well-played Jack Sparrow doesn’t fit in Saving Private Ryan” as a failure to connect to the roleplaying level.


I think most RPG systems these days encourage the player to at least have the broad strokes of who their character is and why, but published modules have to be written without that in mind because it doesn't matter how detailed the players' backstory and personality of their character is if you don't know it in advance out of the infinite variety of things they could have picked.

Yes? Or, hmmm…. Does it follow from my theory that one cannot roleplay if the reverse is true, if the character’s personality is known when the scenario is written? Ah, no, it’s only if the response is prescribed that it transitions away from “roleplaying” (to acting).

[Thrudd]

The thing with a writing prompt, is that it leads you to think about all that stuff. You can easily start with the prompt of a nameless guy on an island with a box - the first thing you start thinking about is who this guy is and why he's got a box and what he's trying to do. When you write your first draft, it will be one way, and as you go on writing, you'll come up with new ideas and then go back and revise until there's a character who's well fleshed out (hopefully) and a situation that is compelling and makes sense.

In an RPG, what you have is usually a setting and a set of activities that characters are expected to engage in, and often specific sorts of characters that are allowable.

That's the prompt. Players need to create a character that belongs in the setting and has reasons to engage in the expected game activities. You don't need to have deep introspection about the character's psyche or a detailed life history, you just need them to have the basic motivation required to participate in the game. But as play goes on, they might change their mind sometimes about what this character wants and why they're doing what they're doing. It's completely natural. This is "discovering the character during play". You start out thinking it's just a game about getting loot from the dungeon and becoming rich, but over time as you interact with the other players and NPCs, you develop more of a personality and learn what that character really wants. It's really hard to live in the mind of a character until you've spent a lot of time with them. Players can't be expected to invest that much into a brand new character before the game starts.

Very rarely does a writer write a fully fleshed out and complete character on the first draft- you need to live in their mind for a while, put them in different situations, discover who they are. Players in an RPG are in exactly the same situation. You might think you know who your character is when you create them, but unless you've spend hours and hours writing about them and imagining them in different scenarios and acting as them, you wont' really know who they are, who you want them to be. You can't help but develop them during play.

[Quertus]

The thing with a writing prompt, is that it leads you to think about all that stuff. You can easily start with the prompt of a nameless guy on an island with a box - the first thing you start thinking about is who this guy is and why he's got a box and what he's trying to do. When you write your first draft, it will be one way, and as you go on writing, you'll come up with new ideas and then go back and revise until there's a character who's well fleshed out (hopefully) and a situation that is compelling and makes sense.

In an RPG, what you have is usually a setting and a set of activities that characters are expected to engage in, and often specific sorts of characters that are allowable.

That's the prompt.

Huh. I’ll have to think about this. I’m beginning to suspect that I’ve committed the Fallacy of Four Parts with the word “prompt”. :smallredface:

However, outside Dragonlance, I’m not sure one will find people playing through more than one “draft” of a game, especially with the same characters. So I’m not sure how to apply the concept that a character is rarely characterized in the first draft to an RPG in any way that makes that sound like a good thing.

[Thrudd]

Huh. I’ll have to think about this. I’m beginning to suspect that I’ve committed the Fallacy of Four Parts with the word “prompt”. :smallredface:

However, outside Dragonlance, I’m not sure one will find people playing through more than one “draft” of a game, especially with the same characters. So I’m not sure how to apply the concept that a character is rarely characterized in the first draft to an RPG in any way that makes that sound like a good thing.

Thing is, if you write a story about the campaign after the fact, the way you describe the characters might not match what was really in the player's head at the time. Maybe you will write them as having changed over the course of their adventures, or maybe you will project the way they eventually evolved back into earlier parts of the campaign. Actual play rarely to never can be expected to turn out like a polished story. It's going to look like a first draft. The fun is in the playing, moment to moment, rather than what it's going to look like on reflection afterwards.

[Phhase]

Alright, I get it now. We're just irritated by backfilling story andf character from mechanics. And to be frank, yeah, I agree, it's not what I'd call Roleplaying, it's more like Role-justification. Guess it comes down to to you choose your "Role" or do you allow your role to be chosen? It's hardly wrongfun to do it one way or the other, but I agree in my dislike of of the latter. It makes more sense to me to, you know, create a character with character, complete with motivations, background, convictions, and mannerisms. Then see how that interacts with what happens in the world. I can easily see only asking for a persuasion check if what a character's said could go one way or the other as far as the response, if they say something perfectly sensible that's a compelling argument, and the opposing party is not possessed of irrational hatred or contrarianism towards the player character, I see no issue in not calling for a check at all.

I guess you could call it Top-down rolyplaying (Role branches out into and creates play) rather than Bottom-up roleplaying (nitty-gritty mechanics of play percolate into forming your Role)?

And if there's something prewritten that kinda-sorta expects the PCs to be a specific sort of person...well, it alright to shift it a bit! All the better to make it feel like a real adventure with real charterers rather than a movie set full of cardboard cutouts.

[NichG]

Huh. I’ll have to think about this. I’m beginning to suspect that I’ve committed the Fallacy of Four Parts with the word “prompt”. :smallredface:

However, outside Dragonlance, I’m not sure one will find people playing through more than one “draft” of a game, especially with the same characters. So I’m not sure how to apply the concept that a character is rarely characterized in the first draft to an RPG in any way that makes that sound like a good thing.

The most freedom you'd have would be if at any point you can non-linearly hop around the work and make edits and revisions. So that's sort of like the best case scenario as far as 'making something where all the pieces fit' but the worst case scenario in terms of labor required.

The least freedom would be if you had to pre-determine everything at the start, like if you just gave the GM a script of how your character behaves and the GM played the game using that script and told you what happened. Minimum redundant work, but also a high probability that something will go wrong and you can't step in to make changes.

In between, you can have the idea of something where you have a budget of decisions which are yours to make. Once you've spent a decision, you can't revert it, but you can choose when to make each decision. The upside of this is no backtracking, so you're around the same level of work required as the predetermine everything scenario. Plus you also get to use your remaining choices to course-correct based on things you learn only in the process of play/writing/etc.

For example, lets say you have a campaign where at some point in the campaign there just happens to be a really great opportunity to become a lich risk-free. This wasn't something the GM planned in advance, its just how the events of the campaign went. If everyone had predetermined their characters strictly, maybe none of the characters would find lichdom potentially appealing or interesting, so that opportunity would just pass. Realistic, but maybe not the most interesting thing to do with those circumstances. On the other hand, if you say 'okay, I'm not going to pre-determine my character's beliefs about undeath until it matters' then you can make the choice then and there what would be the most interesting course for the campaign or story to follow.

[Jay R]

My experience is that when players sit down without giving their characters any thought, the character isn’t a blank slate, but an unconscious set of assumptions – usually who the player is, or (more likely) who he thinks he is, or who he wishes he could be.

I had a friend with no interest in role-playing. That didn’t mean his PCs had no character. It meant that they were all warriors with intense courage and loyalty to the party, with more interest in battle tactics than magic, and a quiet demeanor – because that’s who Glen wanted to play.

People don’t create the PC’s character in play; they show us the character in play.

Bear Bryant once said, “Football doesn’t build character; it reveals it.” Similarly, playing doesn’t build the PC’s character; it reveals it.

Yes, over time, a PC’s character might change, in response to what happens. But even then, the player decided on the change, and then played it out – whether he realized it or not.

[GloatingSwine]

That’s… quite a lot of dense topics to unpack you’ve managed to squeeze into one short paragraph there!

I will just say that I wouldn’t label “a well-played Jack Sparrow doesn’t fit in Saving Private Ryan” as a failure to connect to the roleplaying level.


But is a failure to connect to the tone and setting. (A well-played Jack Sparrow in Kelly's Heroes however, that's just Oddball....)



Yes? Or, hmmm…. Does it follow from my theory that one cannot roleplay if the reverse is true, if the character’s personality is known when the scenario is written? Ah, no, it’s only if the response is prescribed that it transitions away from “roleplaying” (to acting).

No, I don't think so. Because personalities can be challenged, changed, or reaffirmed by stories. Where the character starts isn't necessarily where they'll stay. When the scenario is written the writer only knows where the character starts, not where they'll end up.

RPG players may not want their characters to change, but that can still be a good story if they get to be who they are as hard as they can. (see: Dragonball, Superman).

[False God]

Step 2 is, IMO, essentially self-insert. There is always a character, at a bare minimum, it's yourself. In lieu of a "other" character (who is in at least some ways not you) the prompt is effectively asking the reader/player how they would respond.

"Characters" that don't have characterization, are just a set of tools to allow the player to interact with the gameworld. While a character who is separate from the player does this as well, they also bind the player to act "in character" or in a manner than they would personally. A "character" with no characterization doesn't do this second function. They allow the player to flow through them and interact with the prompt/gameworld a bit more directly.

So yes, I would agree with your conclusion that without a character who is at least in some ways separate from the player, there is no rolepaying, there's just playing.

Which BTW, is fine when it's clear that's the premise. Take the isekai genre, it's basically step 2. You could pretend to be your character when you get into the world(if you even had one), but you don't have to be. You are simply limited by the rules the character operates under (system, class, race, etc...) on how you interact with the world.

[Tanarii]

My experience is that when players sit down without giving their characters any thought, the character isn’t a blank slate, but an unconscious set of assumptions – usually who the player is, or (more likely) who he thinks he is, or who he wishes he could be.
Agreed. Almost all characters are "who I (the player) think I am / who I wish I am, plus X". It's just a matter of how convoluted and complicated X is.

I am a fan of systems that request or require the player think of a reasonable amount of X though. Some even give XP-equivalents or some game rule effect for acting on X.

Also, unless the game system (or GM if the system assumes it is on them) has the equivalent of "you all meet in a tavern" ready to go, a little thought about why they are in position at the start of an adventure isn't amiss.

[noob]

Step 2 is, IMO, essentially self-insert. There is always a character, at a bare minimum, it's yourself. In lieu of a "other" character (who is in at least some ways not you) the prompt is effectively asking the reader/player how they would respond.

Is it a self insert to say "this character is a puppet to foreign forces in another world doing absurd stuff for the entertainment of multiple persons around a table with paper"?

[Jay R]

I am a fan of systems that request or require the player think of a reasonable amount of X though. Some even give XP-equivalents or some game rule effect for acting on X.

Oh, I sympathize. I used to feel that way too. When asked about his PC, Glen would always say, "He's a fighter who likes to hit things." Once, I got frustrated with that, and required at least a 3x5 card worth of character description and backstory. Glen gave me some version of:

Forlong grew up in a village where his favorite pastime was to watch the town guards at practice. He always wanted to be a warrior who could protect his friends and family. He considers his sword to be his closest friend, and he is always very careful about keeping it sharp and in good shape.

I read that, and never insisted on a backstory or character description again (although I prefer to have them). I’m quite sure that if I had required a five-page backstory, he could have handed me five pages that boiled down to “He’s a fighter who likes to hit things.”

But he was more interested in how to flank the orcs than he was in "character development". But that's actually deeper immersion. When the orcs attack, the hypothetical person I'm simulating ought to be more interested in how to flank the orcs than in character development.

That way isn't for me; I want to have a more specific character. But Glen was always playing a role, and it was always somebody that my character was glad to have at his side when the fight started. Once I realized that his way was good for him, and wasn't bad for me, I was able to calm down a lot.

One of my "Rules for DMs is:

25. A backstory is like a sword. Some characters are incomplete without one, and others wouldn't use one even if they had it.

a. If a player has a backstory, use it. It’s a great start to add a new dimension or idea to the game. But use it her way, to develop the character the way she wants it to go.
b. Use of the backstory in the adventure should always feel like the DM’s creation has been modified to fit the player’s creation, not vice versa.

[False God]

Is it a self insert to say "this character is a puppet to foreign forces in another world doing absurd stuff for the entertainment of multiple persons around a table with paper"?

Self-insert with some extra steps, sure. There are multiple ways to get to self-insert gameplay.

[noob]

Self-insert with some extra steps, sure. There are multiple ways to get to self-insert gameplay.

But it is the case of most tabletop rpg characters (the only thing that might vary is the absurd part and the for fun part, if we allow to skip those two parts it becomes 100%).
So most tabletop rpg characters are self insert according to your vision.

[Black Jester]

Point is, I’ve been reading about writing. And a newfangled idea about writing theory has really rung true to me… and explained some of my take on roleplaying.

That newfangled idea is this: the story only matters in the context of the character. And not just “the character as they are now”, but everything / the key things that led them to be that way. That a neutral writing prompt “Grant is alone on a deserted island with a box” is not only meaningless, but actively detrimental to creating a good story without knowing who Grant is first.

Anyways, this writing idea has led me to think up a… spectrum, I suppose, of… uh… “story preparedness”? Anyway, it looks something like this:
No character, no prompt.
No character, prompt.
Character, prompt.
Character, prompt, response.


The 4th one is what this newfangled theory says one should have before one begins writing. The second is what is generally taught to school children (and in some writing texts).

In writing, the difference would be…
Blank page
Grant is alone on an island, with a box.
Grant is a Black Ops specialist for a covert government agency. He is alone on an island with a box. What is in the box?
Grant is a Black Ops specialist for a covert government agency. He is alone on an island with a box. There is a gun in the box.

[...]

There’s this idea that we can just create the character in play, rather than coming to the table with a character. And it feels to me not unlike trying to write from a neutral prompt, without first thinking about just who is responding to that prompt.



Contrapoint:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

No characters, no plot, still an intriguing story. Simply because it leaves stuff open for interpretation.
It is a typical element of simplistic literature that it has no trust in the reader and needs to spell everything out. That is not good writing. It is not necessarily bad, either, especially when it comes to speculative fiction and you need to explain how magic works or how we are going to communicate with aliens/angels/the distant past, but it isn’t necessary. There is an economics of words and there are things that the reader simply doesn’t need to know and are better off not knowing. You can enjoy Star Wars and understand why the Death Star is such a threat, because you see what it does and it is literally named the Death Star. You don’t need to understand how it works, what the economic dimensions of its creation were and how much of a challenge it was to engineer a planetoid-sized space station, because Star Wars isn’t that kind of story.
Besides, it is better to leave some stuff open to interpretation than to present a bad explanation or show how little you know about a topic, in my experience. In short fiction, very little details about the focus characters can be an intentional, beneficial approach, allowing the reader to identify more strongly with the protagonist.

From an RPG perspective, I don’t think it is productive or even healthy to focus solely on the characters. The universe doesn’t have a centre, so it can’t be you. A world should feel as if it continues to exist even when the players aren’t watching, because that generates the most precious element of any world building process: verisimilitude. A world with laws and foundations that you can’t believe in, or refuse to believe in, because they are stupid, offensive, or just plain arbitrary will never be very engaging.

Likewise, from the other side, a character should exist outside of the confinements of the adventures. Reducing a character to the abilities they have creates lifeless, dull things that are not just boring to play, but it is also very boring to play with, and this is just not very nice to your fellow players. Boring, uninspired characters add very little to the game after all and one dull character contributes so little flavour that it diminishes the game for everyone.
Sure, it is your character and therefore you should decide how to play it, but in any group activity your decisions do not only affect you and you still owe it to your fellow players to make the game entertaining.

[Martin Greywolf]

Can you guess, as I at long last now can, why the practice of “meh, the character can always develop a personality later” bugged me from the moment I first heard it?

A lot of words to say very little? Thoughts?

Your first mistake was, I think, expecting roleplaying from a roleplaying game. Because the truth is, there are very few TTRPGs (let's focus on those and ignore other RPG types to make this discussion of bearable length) that actually have roleplaying as a part of them - DnD, the most popular one, barely pays lip service to it.

That doesn't mean that you can't roleplay in DnD, you absolutely can, as is demonstrated empirically by all the people doing it. What I mean by that is that DnD doesn't give you any framework to support that roleplaying, and that matters a lot when it comes to people who want to get into roleplaying.

Because the truth is, roleplaying is hard. It's a skill you need to learn how to do, and what DnD is doing is the equivalent of handing you a sword and saying "sharp end goes into the enemy, figure it out". Sure, that is almost always how you use a sword, but there's a reason most swordfighting manuals from 400 years ago have about a hundred pages. Which is why turning to the player and saying "make me a good backstory for your characters" doesn't work, and why writing adventures in a vacuum is very difficult from this point of view - you have no framework to even start communicating, so you need to establish it yourself.

For a TTRPG that does roleplaying, let's look at FATE - it has 5 aspects, which are short, punchy ways to describe who your PC is. The advice the system gives is to attach descriptive language to them, don't say "I fight with sword good", say why and how you fight with sword good, e.g. "Studies the sword to reach inner peace". Of those 5 aspects, one is the High concept, one is Trouble and three are for fleshing the character out.

High concept is almost the same thing as a class, but instead of "warlock", you need to make it say "Sold his soul for power to never be enslaved again". Trouble is something your character struggles with, let's go with an example of the most stereotypical "Turned to alcohol after his squad was wiped out". The remaining three can be anything you want, but the FATE rulebook basically says that you should create the character with other PCs and these three can be based around the first meeting your PCs had.

Important caveat: aspects can change. It's not really important how right now, but character development is reflected in aspects, aspects don't serve as a way to lock you down into a given personality forever.

Point is, if you were writing a module for FATE, you can make a quick chapter on what some of your PCs aspects should be at the start. And you can do it because FATE gives you a framework for communicating about the necessary building blocks of roleplaying. Compare that to DnD backgrounds, which are "eh, figure it out and pick some skills and gear to go with them", and you can see the difference.

And now, for a final blow, consider someone completely new to TTRPGs, trying to come up with a backstory. Where do you even start? How do you do it? The game doesn't help you with it, and feinitely doesn't help you roleplay that character - if anything, it hinders you, because its main focus is combat as a tactical puzzle, so you have to keep a whole bunch of not-character-related-info in mind.

[GloatingSwine]

Mechanical impact of roleplaying in D&D is basically summed up as "eh, the DM can figure it out".

[Easy e]

I will counter you Quertus by saying that most players do not even know their own personality, values, and drives; so how are they ever going to be able to create a well-rounded fictional, role-playing character?

As people the players are often still a mystery to themselves, and barely even know their own motivations beyond their basest ones? Perhaps expecting fully developed characters at session 0 or even 1 is too tall of an ask for most people?

[SimonMoon6]

Here is a general story-telling tip summarized from stuff I've read:

You should start with "what does the character want" and then follow that up with "what is preventing them from getting what they want".

So, if you tell me "Grant is a Black Ops specialist for a covert government agency. He is alone on an island with a box. There is a gun in the box," I think you haven't really started the story. You've set up the background details, the name of the protagonist and the setting, but you haven't talked about the character's desires.

Does Grant want to kill himself? If so, then he would want to use the gun. But is the gun out of bullets? That's the thing that's frustrating his desire.

Does Grant want to kill Enemy X? If so, what is frustrating him would be his location on the island. So, he needs to get off the island. But how can he get off the island with just a gun? He can't. So, he tries to shoot some trees (because he's a stupid PC and PCs think that's how damage works in a game) to make a raft. And that would fail, so then he continues to be frustrated, thus continuing the plot.

If you're saying "There’s a castle that wasn’t here yesterday. The plot demands that Quertus [ignore it for now // enter the castle immediately // inform the legal owners of the land about the infringement upon their property rights // whatever", my response would be that until you know the motivation of the main character, you don't have a plot. It should not be the *plot* that determines what the main character will do. It should be the character himself who motivates the story.

If the main character's desire has nothing to do with the castle, he will probably ignore it. That's not an interesting story, but the story would then presumably follow the main character's actual desire (maybe he's collecting jellyfish by the seaside).

If the main character is a generic adventurer with little motivation except "adventure make me strong", he would probably investigate the castle. (But what keeps him from accomplishing this goal? The giant moat? The invisible force field around the castle? His own incompetence? The cyborg pterodactyl demons flying overhead? Or just generic monsters guarding generic treasure chests?)

And so forth.

A plot is determined by motivation first, followed by the frustrations that prevent the character from accomplishing his goals, the things that the character must overcome.

[Black Jester]

Your first mistake was, I think, expecting roleplaying from a roleplaying game.

You’re right. You shouldn’t expect it, you should demand it and ostracise every member of your gaming group who fails to deliver.


Because the truth is, there are very few TTRPGs (let's focus on those and ignore other RPG types to make this discussion of bearable length) that actually have roleplaying as a part of them - DnD, the most popular one, barely pays lip service to it.

You need literally no rule support whatsoever to roleplay. You need some basic human interaction skills, an idea what character you are playing and the will to do so. People who fail to interact with a roleplaying game as a roleplaying activity don’t do so because it is hard, but because they couldn’t be bothered.

How you get the character you are playing is your choice in the end, but the idea that you can’t play a horny lass interested in falconry, crocheting and supporting her found family members with whom she travels through ruined cities looking for treasure without having traits noted on a character sheet that reads “sex positive”, “bird enthusiast”, “good at needlework” and “loyalty (friends and team mates)”, is about as silly as the idea that the abilities of your character are limited to those explicitly listed on your character sheet, either: “Oh no, I don’t have an “escape the trap of watery death” spell/skill, I guess I die now.”



Because the truth is, roleplaying is hard. It's a skill you need to learn how to do, and what DnD is doing is the equivalent of handing you a sword and saying "sharp end goes into the enemy, figure it out". Sure, that is almost always how you use a sword, but there's a reason most swordfighting manuals from 400 years ago have about a hundred pages. Which is why turning to the player and saying "make me a good backstory for your characters" doesn't work, and why writing adventures in a vacuum is very difficult from this point of view - you have no framework to even start communicating, so you need to establish it yourself.

No. Basic roleplaying is embarrassingly easy. A four year old who shouts” I am a lion”, while roaring and climbing on the monkey bars is roleplaying. It is not a question of “Can you do it?” but “Do you want to do it?” If the answer is yes, congratulations, the rest is easy. Talk in first person, interact with your fellow players through the mask of the characters, keep your hands away from your phone and your genitals for three to five hours and cut out as much non-game related chatter as possible. What is supposedly difficult about that? If you don’t want to do it, leave, you are wasting everybody’s time, including your own.

What you actually find difficult might be acting, and while that is an essential part of a roleplaying game, it also one with a low, low threshold within the confinements and privacy of a circle of other roleplayers. Yeah sure, you can be better or worse about it, but, that again, isn’t so much a question of skill, but of dedication. If you put in some effort, attention and empathy, you are going to be fine. Players who fail these essentials usually don’t do it because they can’t, but because they won’t. even. try.


For a TTRPG that does roleplaying, let's look at FATE - it has 5 aspects, which are short, punchy ways to describe who your PC is. The advice the system gives is to attach descriptive language to them, don't say "I fight with sword good", say why and how you fight with sword good, e.g. "Studies the sword to reach inner peace". Of those 5 aspects, one is the High concept, one is Trouble and three are for fleshing the character out.
[...] Compare that to DnD backgrounds, which are "eh, figure it out and pick some skills and gear to go with them", and you can see the difference.

Fate is a worse game at supporting the creation of a role than D&D. It has a significantly larger margin of potential characters and settings than the relatively narrow focus of D&D on dungeon crawling and monster slaying, but the predetermined role descriptors hard coded in D&D offer a relative strong sense of identity, with only a few add-ons. Alignment isn’t a good instrument, but the question how your character would define themselves within its framework, and why they think this label applies to them is actually a decent step to form a character.

“I am a half-elf rogue from the streets of Athkatla, growing up as an Urchin in the slums of the city of gold, I learnt to be fast, and quick witted, becoming a good thief. I don’t care about the laws made by the prelates and the guilds and the whoever uses these as a weapon to control those they see beneath them, by I never steal from those who need it more than me (chaotic good).”
It isn’t much, but it works well enough, especially in the framework of the typical D&D game.

Fate on the other hand greatly rewards wishy-washy vagueness when formulating the traits to a degree that you are actually getting punished by the game for using strong identifiers. Since aspects only measure as a binary (you either get the bonus to your role, or you don’t), the best aspects are those that are very open to interpretation so that they can be applied as often as possible. This is the opposite of a strong characterization, which favours clear, distinct traits.

Take for comparison a look at GURPS, which isn’t a perfect game by a long shot, but is very good at creating characters as complete unique individuals with distinct abilities, traits, preferences and hindrances, because these are all clearly defined and interconnecting the mechanical and the content layer of the game. Instead of the vagueness of Fate, Gurps’ advantages and disadvantages are clearly defined, creating distinct characters with very specific roles. So, yeah, the Gurps character would have traits like lechery, the quirk likes crotcheting, the perk good with birds and a Sense of Duty (Comrades in arms) disadvantage. These aren't necessary, of course, but they make sure that you will play your character according to plan, because the game (ort its arbiter, the GM) will make you do so.

Fate characters play all the same while having different labels (while finding loopholes why of course at least one of your traits apply to any dice roll), while Gurps creates characters who play, act and grow in widely unique directions. However, that comes at the price of a very front-loaded gaming experience, but it will give you a character with a very strong sense of identity.

Both attempts are, in the end, superfluous, because chances are, if you are into roleplaying as an activity, you probably enjoy it enough to try to be good at it. After all, if you do something with joy, you should do it with enough effort to get good at at it, and that means you don't need anything but your desireto play a thirsty lady with a pet hawk and a set of needles who is a really reliable friend (and/or maybe a bit clingy), because that's what you want to play.


And now, for a final blow, consider someone completely new to TTRPGs, trying to come up with a backstory. Where do you even start? How do you do it? The game doesn't help you with it, and feinitely doesn't help you roleplay that character - if anything, it hinders you, because its main focus is combat as a tactical puzzle, so you have to keep a whole bunch of not-character-related-info in mind.

Who expects a new player, or any player to come up with a character of their own? Character creation is as much of a team effort as playing the game (at least for characters supposed to be used in actual play. There is a subset of “players” who are the RPG equivalent of model train enthusiasts, more interested in building characters in a white room scenario, often employing heavy min-maxing strategies, than in any social interaction). Abandoning the player to create a character on their own in a void without any guidance is akin to abandon any idea of actually running the game.

Also, there is a perfect game for introducing new players. It's called Beyond the Wall (https://www.flatlandgames.com/btw/), and it is a thing of beauty. Yes, it is not “real” D&D, but actually nothing not written by Arneson or Gygax actually deserves to be considered as such anyway, so who cares? In Beyond the Wall, you get a basic concept (the reformed bully, the nobleman’s wild daughter, the halfling vagabond etc.), a few randomly created events in your past based around very essential questions (“who are your parents?”, ”who is your best friend, besides the other PCs?” etc.), a small interaction with one other PC (which interlocks the character backgrounds of all PCs) and in the end you get a neat character backstory and a simple yet effective character for a faery tale adventure game. I have literally run games for pupils around the age of 10 to 14 for almost a decade, most of them new to any RPG, and I have never found a game that introduces new players more thoroughly and enjoyable to RPGs in general. I know the playbook approach isn't all original, but I have yet to meet any player, kid or adult, who didn't love it. It cuts a lot of fat from the D&D engine (who needs more than three classes anyway?),but in its core, it is the same game, and since it is widely compatible to most OSR stuff, you will never run ut of inspirational material.

[Quertus]

Wow. So many ideas, it’s hard to know where to start.

Multiple people have brought up the idea of revealing a character, or revealing a character as opposed to creating or Changing them. I think I’m generally a fan of that mindset. And I… I kinda understand that many schools of thought in writing are all about Changing the character. And… even once I get past the wording, to accept “add to” (like “add a new strategy”) or “subtract from” (like, “remove their crippling fear of X”) as valid “Changes”, I still recoil from the notion, given how many Stories I’ve consumed (books, movies, whatever) where this Change seemed in service is some Message that the reader/viewer was being bludgeoned with - often, IMO, that the Story would have been better without. So I’m just as happy with a story revealing a character than one changing the character.

But, even though I have a reaction to it in Stories, I’m not sure that I know how to translate that to RPGs. I mean, I know that I don’t care how sublime the metaphor of the surface layer is nonsense; ie, if the only way the Story works is if the Consumer is actively viewing the underlying metaphor, then I think it’s poor world building, and a poor story. But… what would it mean for an RPG to reveal instead of change a character?

——-

Another thing multiple people have touched on is what a “blank slate” character looks like in practice. And, sure, there’s some default set of attributes and thought processes that players will default to when playing a blank slate. These need not be identical to one another - the same player may play thieves as “greedy” and elves as “arrogant”, for example. Or they may have a larger superset that they pull from through arcane means beyond the kin of mortal men to divine (ie, seemingly at random). But, yeah, most players just play as themselves / their view of themselves / their desires / their view of a generic character (of that type).

However, IME, there’s this notion of “memorable”, which manifests in two ways. One, the player will attempt to avoid any memorable characterization until they know what they want to play. Two, anything that the group remembers about the character, the player decides that that must be who the character is. Any of that sound even remotely familiar to anyone?

So, yeah, I guess it depends on the player as to just how blank a “blank slate” will actually be, with “me” or “me, but” probably being more common than actual milk sop blandness.

——-

And I think multiple people have at least touched on the generally nonlinear nature of writing. I’m not sure what a nonlinear RPG would look like, but it sounds entertaining.

——-

EDIT: would it make sense to rename this thread, “comparing and contrasting writing to RPGs”?

[SimonMoon6]

I’m not sure what a nonlinear RPG would look like, but it sounds entertaining.


I once had an idea for something that I'll just throw out here:

The setting starts in the Stone Age. The PCs are members of a small clan and there is an enemy clan that is their main rival. Then "something" happens (possibly a strange meteor crash lands) and the members of the two clans all get one form of immortality or another. Some people have ordinary immortality (you can't die, always heal from injuries, never aging). Some people have a reincarnation form of immortality (after dying, their memories inhabit the body of a newly born infant). Some have a "take over the body of one of their descendants" form of immortality. Each has their own pros and cons (if you're just plain immortal, enemies know what you look like in each century and ordinary people get suspicious if you stay in one place too long, but you don't have to worry about ever having a new body). Random reincarnation gives you the ability to stay under the radar, so enemies won't know who you are, but you have to start all over from scratch in your new body. Descendant-immortality means that you have to have descendants (or you'll die for good), but you can generally keep your wealth (by inheriting from yourself) without ordinary people being suspicious; enemies might not know who you are, but a determined enemy might figure it out.

Anyway, the game will play out in different centuries. Being cavemen for a few adventures is fine, but then, let's have a story in ancient Egypt or the Renaissance or the 20th century or the 24th century. But we don't have to go in linear order. An adventure might have the PCs meet a "new" enemy in the 20th century, only for the adventure to go back to the Stone Age, as you "remember" how things worked out back then and "remember" what grievances the characters have with each other. And then, perhaps you go forward to the last time the PCs saw the character, perhaps in ancient Greece or the Wild West or whatever. And then, back to the 20th century, where the enemy is now seeking revenge after all these years...

This wouldn't work in a level-based system like D&D but would be more suited to a game with minimal character advancement, like GURPs or a superhero game.

[False God]

But it is the case of most tabletop rpg characters (the only thing that might vary is the absurd part and the for fun part, if we allow to skip those two parts it becomes 100%).
So most tabletop rpg characters are self insert according to your vision.

No. I was fairly clear that your character having different thoughts, desires, motivations "agency" than the player are what differentiates an independent character from a self-insert character. All characters have some elements of their creator in them, but it is the degree of difference that separates the two.

Besides, I don't see what the problem is. It's not a judgement on one being better, more fun or anything else. It's just different playstyles. I know a lot of folks enjoy self-insert. I know a lot of folks who like to make characters entirely distinct from themselves.

[noob]

No. I was fairly clear that your character having different thoughts, desires, motivations "agency" than the player are what differentiates an independent character from a self-insert character. All characters have some elements of their creator in them, but it is the degree of difference that separates the two.

Besides, I don't see what the problem is. It's not a judgement on one being better, more fun or anything else. It's just different playstyles. I know a lot of folks enjoy self-insert. I know a lot of folks who like to make characters entirely distinct from themselves.

The playstyle I mentioned make your character more different from you than making your character have a personality.
Unless you are a puppet controlled by distant forces that makes you behave in an absurd way.
No ttrpgs character have thoughts, none have desires, none have motivations, you are talking about fictional constructs used by men around tables to decide actions to pick for their characters.
Your ttrpg character can not have fictional thought different from your real thoughts unless controlled by a player other than you for the simple reason that for you to assign a thought to a character you need to think it.
You defined self insert in such a way that nothing else than self insert could exist then imagined things that are physically impossible and defined those as what was not being self insert.

Unless you can describe your character as thinking about dogs without yourself thinking about dogs, your goal is impossible.

The furthest character you can do from yourself is what I described: grouping at a table with multiple different people and deciding absurd actions for a puppet to do, this makes a character that is entirely different from humans, it does not even have fictional traits like thoughts, desires or motivations, by not having even the fiction of them it is more different from you than any fictional characters you would make with the system you described.

If we use difference relatively to yourself as roleplaying then the only form of roleplaying is grouping at a table with multiple different people and deciding absurd actions for a puppet to do because else the character will inevitably have the same fictional thoughts as your own thoughts due to the requirement for describing a thought to think it.

Unless you think the pinnacle of roleplaying is copying text from internet without reading it because it is the only way to make a character do fictional actions more different from your own than the group at a table, decide absurd actions I mentioned.

[Quertus]

@SimonMoon6 - if you meet your nemesis in the 20th century, does it remove your agency to have defeated their Immortality (killed all their descendants, sealed them inside a statue of Venus, whatever) in Ancient Greece?

[Quertus]

One thing that may have been lost / that may not have been clear about the opening post is that what was under discussion was “what is needed before you begin?”. That is, do you begin writing about Grant on the island when all you know is that he has a box, or do you need to know who Grant is or what’s in the box first? Do you need to know how the PCs will respond to “suddenly, castle!”, or even who the PCs are before you begin playing?

And… I should add that, while I don’t think it’s appropriate to call it “roleplaying” rather than the “character creation” it actually is, I *have* been in games where the players started with such a neutral Prompt, no characters until they began play.

[noob]

One thing that may have been lost / that may not have been clear about the opening post is that what was under discussion was “what is needed before you begin?”. That is, do you begin writing about Grant on the island when all you know is that he has a box, or do you need to know who Grant is or what’s in the box first? Do you need to know how the PCs will respond to “suddenly, castle!”, or even who the PCs are before you begin playing?

And… I should add that, while I don’t think it’s appropriate to call it “roleplaying” rather than the “character creation” it actually is, I *have* been in games where the players started with such a neutral Prompt, no characters until they began play.

When writing you do not need any preparation work if you are fast enough at making stuff up in real time and do not care about consistency(look at very high budget movie plots: often characters will behave in a non internally consistent way because the screen writers are in a rush and can not check they are making something vaguely coherent one of such movies is interstellar)

[Jay R]

And… I should add that, while I don’t think it’s appropriate to call it “roleplaying” rather than the “character creation” it actually is, I *have* been in games where the players started with such a neutral Prompt, no characters until they began play.

i suspect that that isn't true, that they have some vague notion of who the character is even before play.

But even if they actually had no idea who the character is before play, they still have to form one in order to play his or her first action.

"I run away from the box."
"I open the box"
"I search the box for traps."
"I look around to see if anybody else is watching us before examining the box."
"I try to talk somebody else into opening the box."
"I throw the box into the ocean."
"I don't know what to do."

Each of these statements was motivated by some idea about who the PC is.

When writing, you'll use a similar sentence, but in the third person. Either way, a decision about one tiny aspect of the character creation preceded the statement and determined what the statement would be.

[NichG]

One thing that may have been lost / that may not have been clear about the opening post is that what was under discussion was “what is needed before you begin?”. That is, do you begin writing about Grant on the island when all you know is that he has a box, or do you need to know who Grant is or what’s in the box first? Do you need to know how the PCs will respond to “suddenly, castle!”, or even who the PCs are before you begin playing?

And… I should add that, while I don’t think it’s appropriate to call it “roleplaying” rather than the “character creation” it actually is, I *have* been in games where the players started with such a neutral Prompt, no characters until they began play.

One way I've heard this described which might make more sense is, you might begin writing in order to find out what's in the box. The act of taking a broad idea to a more concrete form (specific sentences, paragraphs, etc) shows you things you could not have seen well by looking at the story purely at the abstract pre-decision level.

Another angle to think about would be, why make character special in this way? One could equally well say 'you need to know what is going to happen in Chapter 17 before you decide what kind of personality Grant should have'. From the perspective of writing process, I don't think that would be any less valid than starting with Grant's personality and then writing to find out what happens.

[Thrudd]

One thing that may have been lost / that may not have been clear about the opening post is that what was under discussion was “what is needed before you begin?”. That is, do you begin writing about Grant on the island when all you know is that he has a box, or do you need to know who Grant is or what’s in the box first? Do you need to know how the PCs will respond to “suddenly, castle!”, or even who the PCs are before you begin playing?

And… I should add that, while I don’t think it’s appropriate to call it “roleplaying” rather than the “character creation” it actually is, I *have* been in games where the players started with such a neutral Prompt, no characters until they began play.

I would say reasonable minimum prompts for character creation (assuming you want players proactively engaging in the game rather than being led purely through narrative fiat) would be:

- setting information covering the starting area of the game and general character knowledge

- expected general activities for the campaign. This might be defined and obvious by the system you are using (like D&D, that explicitly says characters are adventurers who will be engaging in combat), but it's still best not to assume anything about your players. It helps if you have a more specific premise than "anything allowed by the rules"- ie. explorers on long travels through the wilderness searching for lost cities, a government's special ops team being sent on covert missions, traveling Witcher-like mercenaries that are hired to kill monsters and bad guys threatening communities, etc. Note, this only has to be how it starts, not locking the GM and players into only doing one thing forever. It helps for players to have an idea what will be bringing their characters together and to help them conceive of their life/professional goals.

- basic background and personality prompts: following off the previous point, ask players why their character is willing to do the things the game will ask them to do. Why do you want to be an adventurer, explorer, etc.? What do you want to achieve? What is most important to you, money, power, knowledge, status, etc. Give examples and acceptable suggestions. Some systems have this baked into character creation, like 5e's character traits are a pretty good way to do this, but I'd still explicitly ask the questions and ask them to describe those things themselves so that they actually have to think about it beyond just rolling a die and writing down a sentence. Again - only a starting point, nobody should be expected to be locked into something forever, they are allowed to change (preferably in an organic matter in response to events in the game).

Of course, you can't force players to act/take on the personality of a fictional character. Some people are only interested in the game parts of the RPG, and will just follow along until it's time for a battle. When you prompt them for background, they give the minimum basic answers, and that needs to be acceptable, unless you have a large pool of applicants for your game and are going to choose based on how much thought they put into a character background- which, I think, is not a super common situation. Requiring that players write a short story about their character prior to the game is not reasonable in most situations. Just make sure you ask enough questions at the start so they know what their character is supposed to do and will fit in with the party and the premise of the game.

The most malleable part of a character is probably their personality. Whatever traits the player might choose at the start, character personality is going to be filtered through their own, the whole "it's just me + X" situation, and a lot of time the "X" will only appear sporadically during play, or be forgotten altogether. Even those who attempt to portray a personality significantly different from their own will likely shift over time. The longer they play in the group, their original vision of the character's mannerisms and behavior might change- they might find a niche in the group and develop new quirks based on play, they might find their original vision doesn't quite mesh with the setting and decide to shift how they act to fit in better, they might get tired of doing a silly voice or a mannerism and decide to tone it down, or vice versa, find a voice they like and start doing it all the time.

If you were to read back the campaign from the beginning as if it were a story, you might say the character was written inconsistently or wasn't properly conceived. You can't hold the RPG players to the standards of a character that would belong in a story that has gone through multiple revisions to correct all those problems. Perhaps, only after the same character has been played through several campaigns, could you expect a player to have that strong of a conception of a character, and be able to portray them consistently. So, if we want to compare the RPG medium to writing a story, it would work best if you have the same players playing the same characters for a very long time. The first campaign might be like the first draft of the character. Through subsequent campaigns, the character becomes more and more refined, until the player has habituated their quirks and mannerisms and knows what they would think and feel about any situation. Unlike refining a story, the same players don't replay events in an RPG. It is like writing first drafts of several different stories, except you keep the same characters - so the characters might get better and better with each story, but no individual story can be improved after the first draft.
Except, most of the time, people don't play the same characters in campaign after campaign. Usually they start all over, wanting to try new things. So pretty much everyone's characters are going to be in "first draft" form, in every campaign.

[Easy e]

If you want to start writing, the first thing you should do is..... start writing.

The editing process is what makes something worth reading.

[SimonMoon6]

@SimonMoon6 - if you meet your nemesis in the 20th century, does it remove your agency to have defeated their Immortality (killed all their descendants, sealed them inside a statue of Venus, whatever) in Ancient Greece?

Well, if you sealed them in statue of Venus in ancient Greece, they are going to be royally pissed at you when an archeologist frees them in the 19th century, giving them a hundred years to plot against you before the 20th century rolls around. (Or if you guard the statue and keep it in your home, what a shame that one of the hired help accidentally broke the statue when trying to dust it.)

And it's very hard to kill off all the descendants of an NPC in ancient times (you can't Google all of his relatives). You can kill a ton of them but there are probably more. And even if you think you killed Scipio III, you may have only killed his look-alike Publius.

I mean, actually with people who have lived since the Stone Age, an NPC could easily have produced so many children that virtually everyone alive could be considered a descendant. But more distant descendants would theoretically be more difficult to take over (in ways that I haven't thoroughly detailed... there would be an extra loss of some sort of "points", maybe sanity points or "Hero Points" or "determination points" or "story points" or something), so it would be an incredible inconvenience if you've killed all his 4th century BC descendants, but there might be more descendants from previous centuries still out there. You still would've gained an advantage in his loss of (something), but it might be hard to perma-kill a given enemy.

You can frustrate an enemy and ruin his plans, but it's very hard to keep an immortal down. You might ruin his life for centuries, but eventually, he may come back...

... or maybe the 20th century antagonist was just somebody who looked like the defeated foe, carrying on his work in his name. :)

[Alcore]

Ah, you're writing an Isekai light novel!

I was thinking, after reading it, that he was going to go one step further; no people being displaced. Imagine it if you just came into being at the door to a dungeon. You clear it and it felt good; like you were born for it :smallwink:


Now imagine walking into the village and seeing all the people with families, lives and names.

"Who am I?" This imaginary person might say...

[noob]

I was thinking, after reading it, that he was going to go one step further; no people being displaced. Imagine it if you just came into being at the door to a dungeon. You clear it and it felt good; like you were born for it :smallwink:





That is if you do not dies in the dungeon shortly after being born due to having been made next to the tomb of annihilation.


Now imagine walking into the village and seeing all the people with families, lives and names. "Who am I?" This imaginary person might say...
Or you might just shoot at them, how could you know they were not just more monsters?

[Cluedrew]

I think it is entirely reasonable to include things that are not just role-playing in a role-playing games. Historitically the genre was built around a player facing dungeon crawling game, and I don't enjoy that but some people seem to adore that.

And more than that, building out a character is pretty closely tied to playing them. Even in Lady Blackbird*, a system where character creation is replaced with character selection, probably ends up with very different views of the same characters. In fact the best argument for "a character is never truly finished" is Quertus, not the character, the forum goer who started this very thread. They have told stories of how they played a single character over multiple campaigns to drag the character through as many different situations. A character is pretty much a mental construct, so what is truly unknown about them doesn't exist so exploring a character and building them are pretty much the same thing. And boy can they be explored.

* Which I've never played so all this is second hand, sorry for any mistakes.


Or you might just shoot at them, how could you know they were not just more monsters?Did you have anything in mine for this beyond the shock value.

[noob]

I think it is entirely reasonable to include things that are not just role-playing in a role-playing games. Historitically the genre was built around a player facing dungeon crawling game, and I don't enjoy that but some people seem to adore that.

And more than that, building out a character is pretty closely tied to playing them. Even in Lady Blackbird*, a system where character creation is replaced with character selection, probably ends up with very different views of the same characters. In fact the best argument for "a character is never truly finished" is Quertus, not the character, the forum goer who started this very thread. They have told stories of how they played a single character over multiple campaigns to drag the character through as many different situations. A character is pretty much a mental construct, so what is truly unknown about them doesn't exist so exploring a character and building them are pretty much the same thing. And boy can they be explored.

* Which I've never played so all this is second hand, sorry for any mistakes.

Did you have anything in mind for this beyond the shock value.
I did not have any shock value in mind at all.
The idea was that knowing what to kill and spare is something learned and that they would learn how to be part of civilisation entirely from scratch.

[Cluedrew]

My experience is that when players sit down without giving their characters any thought, the character isn’t a blank slate, but an unconscious set of assumptions – usually who the player is, or (more likely) who he thinks he is, or who he wishes he could be.I agree with the unconscious set of assumptions, but in my experience they also tend to be drawn from their view of the generic hero. Especially in a game with such established archetypes as D&D.

To noob: I don't quite follow but it certainly sounds to be more than shock value. The shadow of child murder might be a bit of a downer though.

[kyoryu]

For a TTRPG that does roleplaying, let's look at FATE - it has 5 aspects, which are short, punchy ways to describe who your PC is. The advice the system gives is to attach descriptive language to them, don't say "I fight with sword good", say why and how you fight with sword good, e.g. "Studies the sword to reach inner peace". Of those 5 aspects, one is the High concept, one is Trouble and three are for fleshing the character out.

High concept is almost the same thing as a class, but instead of "warlock", you need to make it say "Sold his soul for power to never be enslaved again". Trouble is something your character struggles with, let's go with an example of the most stereotypical "Turned to alcohol after his squad was wiped out". The remaining three can be anything you want, but the FATE rulebook basically says that you should create the character with other PCs and these three can be based around the first meeting your PCs had.

Important caveat: aspects can change. It's not really important how right now, but character development is reflected in aspects, aspects don't serve as a way to lock you down into a given personality forever.

Point is, if you were writing a module for FATE, you can make a quick chapter on what some of your PCs aspects should be at the start. And you can do it because FATE gives you a framework for communicating about the necessary building blocks of roleplaying. Compare that to DnD backgrounds, which are "eh, figure it out and pick some skills and gear to go with them", and you can see the difference.

Interestingly enough, the "quick character generation of Fate", which is standard in some Fate builds (like Fate Accelerated) avoids this. In that, you start with your "high concept" (which is often a lot like "race/class" with maybe an adjective attached), a max skill, and... you fill the rest in via play.

In practice, i think this is how "backgroundless" play works - you really start with some general thrust to the character, and then from there see what the reactions feel like, which then feeds into your concept of the character. This is how TV shows work, from the audience perspective. The first episode or so you get very broad strokes, and they get filled in over time.

[Catullus64]

What you're describing is a deeply character-centric approach to storytelling. It seems like a solid approach, but it's a mistake to try to apply it too broadly. Things like Plot, Character, Setting, and Ideas are mutually defining of one another, and I'm always going to be skeptical of any writing doctrine that gives absolute priority to one of them in the creative process. It seems to me like an attempt to turn taste into rules.

I feel as though I frequently encounter a significant bias towards character-driven stories in both writing advice and literary criticism (and rejection letters, but who's bitter?), and the assumption that character-driven stories are in fact the only good stories. Aristotle considered plot superior to character, and criticized tragedies that were about one character but were haphazardly plotted. Myself, I'm far more interested as a writer in language, atmosphere, and the sense of time and place. Characters and plot are mostly there as vehicles for the exploration of these things; so constructing stories first and foremost around character would be a mistake for the kind of stories I want to tell.

I think good writing is usually that which knows clearly what aspects are the most important to it, and gives proportional weight to those elements. Character-driven stories need resolutions that stem from the character's traits, conflicts, and development over the course of the story. Plot-driven stories need resolutions that are carefully consistent with the stated events and facts that have gone before. Setting-driven stories need resolutions that capture the underlying reality or changing reality of the setting. Idea-driven stories need resolutions that coherently express a central idea or set of ideas. Some writers are virtuosic enough that they can give great attention to all of these things, but most I think would be well served by prioritizing.

And, because it's fun to make lists, here's a list of types of stories which I think benefit most from focus on different aspects of story:

Character-driven: Slice-of-life, crime drama, romantic comedy, Classical tragedy, slasher horror.
Plot-Driven: Heroic fantasy, heist movies, murder mysteries, Classical comedy, superhero fiction.
Setting-Driven: High fantasy, Secondary-world science fiction, Urban fantasy, Gothic horror.
Idea-Driven: Primary-world science fiction, Cosmic horror, political drama, disaster movies.

[kyoryu]

In a lot of cases, character and plot intertwine.

A good example of this might be the first half of the first season of Buffy. A lot of monster of the week stuff - but the specific monsters also highlighted something about the characters that were being focused on.

Externalizing internal conflicts is a great way of combining plot- and character-driven stories. The only trick when doing something like this is that you have to make sure that the story and conflicts work on both levels.

Zack Snyder's greatest issue, repeatedly, is that he tries to make things that are idea-focused movies, but fails to really give good info on what the idea is, and also doesn't write them in a way that the surface-level plot makes sense if you don't get the idea that he's exploring. Conversely, the original Matrix both explored a set of interesting ideas, and worked on a surface-level plot basis as well, even if you didn't pick up on the other themes.