Examining character generation

There are many views on which system has the superior method for creating characters, to fully understand the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches we must start by acknowledging the two main categories. I elect to start by dividing systems by their use of a stochastic seed or a deterministic seed.

By a deterministic seed we mean that each character is given a specific amount of points to distribute, that is to say each character gets an even starting point though differently distributed based on the players choices. The advantage of this system is generally that no player is superior to another and your group has an understanding of what they get and how they can effectively distribute their skills as to the requirements they foresee as being vital for their string of adventures. The weakness of such systems is mostly that characters feel like they are made in a mold, in real life we don’t all start out with the same pool from which to pick. Character feel unreal and thus are also harder to identify for players. An excellent example of this type of system is White Wolf’ classic World of Darkness games such as Vampire or Mage.

By a stochastic seed we mean that each characters attributes are determined with an element of randomness. Typically you would assign each attribute using dice rather than a predetermined pool, this gives characters defined strenghts and weaknesses. They feel like real people. The downside is generally that given this random distribution you can end up with a group consisting of characters from across the spectrum. This tends to focus attention and thus gametime on the superior characters. It is challenging to play a character with serious weaknesses, but it gives you subject matter to craft your background with and it often ends up making your character feel real. In the end though such characters are more likely to die especially in uncoordinated groups. A system that uses this method is AD&D where every attribute is determined by a 3D6 roll giving a range of 3-18 (thus a mean range can be defined as 9-12).

A group consisting on mainly new players might be best off with a deterministic type system but there is a lot to be said for stochastic systems and their ability to make players think in new and unexpected directions and letting them play with the hand they are dealt. Often players in my experience have more fun with characters who are more random and are forced out of their shell. This especially comes from the fact that players are given constraints and cannot thus come to the table with a character in mind as that character often cannot be made to ffit in the framework they have been given.

An expanded example from Call of Cthulhu

In Call all players are generated stochastically, each attribute is rolled and numbers cannot be exchanged or altered. Additionally a characters education level is determined this way as well as their yearly income. Where the latter comes in handy is typically if a character that is otherwise predisposed to one income. Say the character has high physical stats but otherwise average or below average stats, yet his income is unreasonably high – this calls for an explanation, e.g. is he a bodyguard and his income might be a result of blackmailing his employeer? There are a million interesting, funny, dangerous explainations for such things waiting to happen if you let them.

Already one sees that such random distributions calls for quick thinking to create background and create a vivid character with whom the player can relate.

As a gamemaster CoC has the additional beauty that the story hook is incredibly effortless to get going alraedy from the character generation point. Say your plot revolves around a missing girl, normally you would have to have some contrived “you all meet in a tavern” type setup to let characters meet and motivation is always problematic, players should feel a desire to go on your quest not just run along with it because the plot obviously says so and general GM pity.

As you present the setting, and let players roll up their characters ask that one or more characters have a connection to this girl. Describe her in a few details. Often during such a generation setting players will start getting ideas, they will brainstorm and form natural bonds between their characters and the hook will make itself without feeling forced.

I once ran a CoC scenerio with that very “missing girl” plotline set in the roaring 20’s (never mess with the classics), as the players rolled up characters they all had unreasonably high incomes regardless of their other stats and quickly they decided that they were part of a Boston crime family and the girl was a beloved niece of the Don. Something I would have never thought off, it gave a whole series of exciting little subplots to explore and the players had to deal with being outside the law as well. Already there the foundation of not only beloved characters were laid but also a cohesive group with it’s own dynamic and power structure.

Example character: Paulus Im Magus

Of all the character I have written over the years I think Paulus is my favorite, he contains some wonderful conflicts that translated into great roleplaying. At his core he is a true believer who drowns his doubts by any means, he loaths himself and finds himself unworthy of life, unsuited for the world he thinks he is creating, he dreams of finally being allowedto pay pennance. He knows he is being played like a puppet and yet continues out of duty hoping that soon he will be allowed to suffer in the netherworld for the deeds he has done. Paulus’ particular brand of insanity is best suited for a talented player who manages a descent into madness with wonderful subtly.

This is yet again a midlevel AD&D style character, Paulus is an inquistion mage with all the trappings. He is loaded up with magic to shock and awe his victims not to mention torture them. As he works by night more impressive feats such as wall of fire are favorites but also just a subtle knock on the door, which ever the most frightening to his subject. One special skill he has acquired that needs mentioning is his Paulus’ personal hell spell. He has devised a means of extracting a persons worst possible fears and exposing his mind to it ceaselessly without redeemtion through death. This is intended to break peoples will but also drains Paulus immensely from the sheer terror of seeing, hearing and more importantly repeatedly imagining and feeling what he is subjecting his victims to.

Paulus Im Magus

“A mind troubled by doubt cannot focus on the course to victory.”

- Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

“No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.”

- Plato (427 BC – 347 BC), Dialogues, Apology

“Life is a just a mirror, and what you see out there, you must first see inside of you.”

- Wally ‘Famous’ Amos (1936 – )

There isn’t room for certain people in this world, this utopia to whose birth I have given my life cannot contain people like me. What land of bliss would allow people whose hands are soiled with blood and whose will is dictated by necessity?

I make men confess their sins – I do not do take any pleasure in it, no man should take pleasure in taking life but is it my job, I do it for the common good.

An doubting apostle, I have taken to drowning my humanity in herbs. They slow my mind, makes me forget the horror in the eyes of my victims… there are so many of them. But I am not allow peace before people like me are no longer needed. I am a bad soul.

I have done things that would make you shiver, seen things that make even me tremble. Heard truths uttered during torture that only the true believer can resist. If one night you find me outside your door, throw yourself on your sword, spare yourself.. it is the best for the both of us.

No man deserves the fate I give bring, to be sent to eternity begging for death, release of their pain. No man except me.

My name bares an honor to which I am not worthy, given to me for reasons that should not exist, the only honorable thing would be to slip quietly into death but it will not be allowed me.

The herbs keeps me from asking questions like why – instead I focus on how and how long it will take me to break your will. There was a time when truth mattered, today it all drowns in the nothingness that is my life. There once was a Paulus, now there is but a shell. I am a weapon of necessity, that is all.

Duty calls, the gods be willing let it be my last.

Example character: Amras Oronar

Occasionally I find it beneficial to write a character for one of my players, often if their previous characters have died and we need a smooth transition to new ones. I don’t however want to give them a full blown blueprint of the person, just a taste for the player to fill out and expand. I tend to use a style of character writing that includes quotation and bits of the mindset of the character rather than a lengthy family line and descriptions of loved ones. I find this approach to give a more concise view at the core of the character, while maintaining ample room to play and experience the role. Before attempting this approach, be sure you have a firm grasp of the player you intend the character to be played by, you have play to his strenghts and weakness while maintaining a firm challenge for him to experience. Failing to do so will lead to a poor experience for everyone involved.

This example is an outcast elfish assassin of royal bloodline, intended as an 8-9 level AD&D campaign. Amras is intended to be a person both blinded by his goals and overshadowing belief that any means necessary is excusable so long as he reaches his goal, a man who has increasingly lost touch with reality and the motivation behind his descent into madness. All the while maintaning fierce pride. In time he will be faced with hard choices, he has forsaken his family, what is sacred, he has rented himself out to the unworthy. His journey in life is dark one, filled with blood and self righteousness and ultimately a discovery of what he has become, what he has done. Amras is a man capable of great evil but also a cunning player of the game, he might not know which side he is on anymore or what the fight is really about but he knows how to stay alive and get the job done.

Amras Oronar

“The first condition of immortality is death,”

Stanislaw J. Lee (1909 – 1966), “Unkempt Thoughts”

“Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.”

- Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)

“Glory built on selfish principles is shame and guilt.”

- William Cowper (1731 – 1800)

Death never serves a purpose for anyone but those who embrace it and sees it’s possibilities. Your death will be my bread, your soul the path I must wander to gain what is rightfully mine. Some might call me a fanatic but what lies in that word but the will to do what is necessary? Yes I am a fanatic, a violent sociopath even, it is the truth, but when the last thing you gaze upon in your pitiful life is my blade and I use your death for my futherance, who is the strongest?

I am merciful in my superiority, I could end your life in an orgy of pain but I elect a quiet death for you, a good death – better that you deserve. You are but a mere human, a pathetic creature who has gained power merely as a result of your races lack of selfcontrol, to drown the earth in your own filth and your spawn is no way to treat what the old gods gave to us to keep sacred.

I have the will to sacrifice everything, even my own father, to whom I owe my life. My race banished me for my actions, what is this but more evidence that power is worthless in the hands of yes men and collaborators. He was in the way and whatever my personal feelings dictated I had to end his breath. He would have destroyed our society, given the world to unclean, unworthy humans, his potent soul could open the gate to the heavens and bring back the old gods to life and glory once again. Restore the balance and the pride of our people.

That was how it resounded in every fiber of my being then. Perhaps I have been staring into the abyss for to long, once there was virtuous motivation for the bloodshed. I am afraid that now the killing itself has become my motivation and gone are the thoughts of a greater good. I feel nothing for those slain, I have coluded with my sworn enemy to satisfy my bloodlust but who is using who? They know not of what brews deep inside my mind. I am nothing to them but a blindly loyal assassin, a means of disposing their petty secrets and consealing their dirty deeds. There is much they do not know, least of all of the souls who now live inside my ruby. What do they care, I fulfilled my orders and grabbed a little on the side as additional payment.

I live in the borderlands between madness and will, both strengths which will drag me into the abyss in time. My life is a constant race towards a target which has always been just beyond the horizon.

What is one more life?

A story from the trenches: There are four of us

Occasionally, something funny and unexpected comes out of a roleplaying session. Today I shall recount one such tale for you all. At the time my group consisted of four players and we were doing a modern horror story set in the Delta Green setting for Call of Cthulhu.

When we enter the story, our brave heros are fighting against what seems to be the overpowering might of a government conspiracy with it’s center of a current operation focused on a small airport in the middle of nowhere. Being the generally desperate and destructive types (I have no idea where they get that behaviour from, they are such nice young people otherwise) they decide that they want to blow the airport to kingdom come using a home made ammonium nitrate bomb, Timothy MvVeigh style. Yes already here the plan is getting a bit out of control but it would not be the first time insanity was displayed in a CoC setting so lets roll with that thought.

Now they are perfectly aware that this place might have video cameras of some sort and driving up in a stolen trunk with explosives, regardless of the outcome might possibly raise their placing on the wanted list just a tad. After all they were planning the biggest case of domestic terror in probably a decade. So they brood over this back and forth trying to figure out a way to do this and come up with the idea to disguise themselves really well. When absentmindedly comes from one player the epic words:

“hrrmmm there are four of us… aren’t there four of those teletubbies?”

From that moment history was made, but as if this sentence alone wasn’t enough after renting the costumes it occurs to them, with heavy proding from their kind GM (me), that there might not be that many rentals of these specific costumes and that they used their credit card to pay for them.. in a store which had video cameras plastered all over the place. Given those factors it would probably not take the FBI long to get their photos plastered all over the news and cause general disruption and unpleasantness in their otherwise perfectly ordinary life of crime and fighting evil. Not however willing to let their brilliant and funny disguise idea go they then decide to stage a series of robberies to get every teletubby costume in town so that nobody might pin this on them specifically… no you did hear that right.

Hilarity ensued.

The destructive power of magic

This is really the essence of the name of this blog, the problem of magic. Take your average group, you have a fighter, a theif, a cleric and a wizard. In your standard AD&D style fantasy adventure tradition holds that wizards are weak creatures who die when looked at wrong and their powers are weak, at least at first. However there comes a point after which characters can be really heroic, typically after level 8 or thereabouts. This is also when the wizard turns into Superman and his follows are mere ants in comparison. His magic hits with near certainty, does far more damage than a swordsman at the same level, whereas a fighter needs typically multiple rounds to hit anything let alone do damage, he is at the frontline and takes those hits like a man. This all while the mage sits back somewhere and hurles balls of flaming firey doom at the opponents without harm.

As the wizard is typically played by the more intelligent players in the group, they also become the leaders. This means that instantly you are as a gamemaster faced with the decoupling of the rest of your group unless you are careful and let the adventure play for their strenghts. To make matters worse around this general level the XP curve tips heavily in favor of the wizard, to advance he requires less XP than most other characters. In short, he becomes the all consuming powerhouse of your group.

This tends to lead to several problems, aside making story telling hard since the wizard generally will thrumph his way to dominance of decisions, you now also as a gamemater have to conceive more clever stories that take into account the loopholes magic presents.

Take this common example, in the past to get into the kings castle (the unofficial way to pay him a visit while he sleeps and leave the gift of a dagger in his throat) your theif would probably climb the wall while others create a distraction.. Soon though your wizard can just teleport his way behind that sucker and do the deed. Adventure cut short by several hours and fun ratio limited to zero for eveyone else in the group.. potentially. Saying there is a magic protective shield around the castle seems like such a weak excuse that players tend to take it as being the GMs way of putting those unfair restrictions on them limiting their abilities to force them to be dragged around the adventure his way. This is not desireable either.

Magic in my experience, in any system is poorly conceieved and balanced. It is like real life, if anyone really had superpowers like this why would he want to run around with mere ants. The only real alternative in balancing things out seems to be putting restriction on magic somehow or making every player a wizard such as is done in White Wolfs excellent Mage (one of my personal favorites). In the latter mages tend to be rather under powered when compared to the opposition and magic in that even when it works it attracts the undo attention of the paradox spirits who shall swiftly act against the players to restore reality to it’s rightful balance makes it less of a factor (also a little less fun, no raining death and destruction upon the world unpunished).

To recount a story from an old Mage game, one of the characters had been put in an asylum and deprived of his cherished object with which he channels his magic thus also his means of escape. The other player frantically spend a night planning a daring escape, hours in to elaborate planning and many entertaining suggestions on how to get around the problem of getting their buddy back without getting into to much trouble with the law.. one player slaps his forehead and exclaims: “doh… we know magic”. He then proceeded to open a portal through which the imprisoned mage was able to escape undetected. Granted he did no longer have his magic focus but he was alive and able to fight another day.

Surely there would have been so muh more fun (read: disaster) to be had in executing their daring plan but once they realised they could use their magic the big problem became instantly managable. This illustrates that as a gamemaster one has to be very careful in crafting stories where magic users might have challenges, without encumbering the other players.

In the end I tend to recommend, even as a person who loves playing a mage, that you pawn your wand when you can. It is hard to balance a team when one person is a superhero and it is wise to remember that. It also puts new illogical twists into story planning and should be approached with care. Magic is fun but dangeorus, new and old players should be aware of this.

balancing rules and playing

Which takes presidence, the rules or the storytelling, this is an age old argument. My personal leanings aside I would say that this depends heavily. If you are a new group with little experience the rules exist as a framework to play within and I would recommend starting with a game with simple easily remembered rules such as Call of Cthulhu or one of the White Wolf games such as Vampire. These are well understood games which have been out there for a while, many people know them and can help you to better understand the details. The rules are simple enough for everyone to follow along with. There are games with this simplistic approach to roleplaying available for nearly every type of story you might want to share. Best of all would be to get an experienced player to handle the first few games and show you the ropes.

When you have gotten accustomed to rules and gain a bit of experience with roleplaying you will surely, regardless of the game you picked to start with, have hit your head against the rules at some point. Most often this happens when combat begins, most games require a complicated set of dice rolls followed by adjustments for character skills and weapons, then actions are declared in reverse chronological order. This is as slow as it sounds, and some people prefer it like this as it adds a dimension that takes full advantage of their characters stats and equipment. It also has a highly tactical element to it that shouldn’t be dismissed easily. I call this the combat conflict.

In short the conflict here is that combat in the game world is supposed to be swift, in your face and confusing. The rules tends to rob the in game reality of this aspect and slows down the story. A simple combat might easily take up half your game session just keeping track of rolls, tables and positions.

It is up to each group to find the balance they prefer, personally I tend to strip combat of nearly all it’s rules and rely on systems like a simple dice roll to determine order, placement on the battle field is often laid out with dice on the table and various reference points indicated with handy items such as coins. As each player gets his turn I count down from 5, if the player has not issued an action within that time the turn is lost due to battle confusion. Best guesses determine how far people can move in an action, who is within range and so on. This creates very dynamic exciting combat which is pleasing for my group and myself. Graphic explainations of the resulting action is good fun as well, especially my players seem to enjoy hearing the happenings of botched rolls and horrid misses. This system is not without flaws but it has served me well for many years and tends to fit well to the style I like.

There is naturally a problem if your group considers of people favoring radically different approaches, e.g. I once had a player in my group who knew every D&D 3.5 edition book cover to cover. He would invoke obscure rules and while he was an excellent player otherwise who came up with great ideas for problem solving his dependence on the written word clashed so heavily with the rest of the groups desire to experience as uninterupted storytelling as possible that we had to ask him to find another group to play with. This is a hard problem to solve, the outsider might be a very good friend and it is sometimes hard to explain this difference. My proposal to this is as follows:

• Always at the start of the campaign and when introducing new player to the group explain your approach to rules. This way the players aren’t caught by surprise when a rule they expected to invoke is overwritten for storytelling reasons.
• When rules are discarded or overwritten, be fair, I know some people think gm stands for god mode but acting as such turns the experience into a dictatorship. Under such conditions nobody has fun, not even you, being god to zero players isn’t as satisfying as being friendly with four or five.
• If you are going to take advantages away from the players, tip the scales in their favor slightly and reward them when they do good roleplaying. Remember the outcome you are looking for when trading off the protective realm of rules is more engaging roleplaying and when you see it, it is a success for everyone.
• Should a player start invoking rules left and right, take him aside after the game or in a convenient break and talk calmly with him about his expectations of the game and the groups general approach. Don’t start a loud debate over the table or let the other players start arguing with the person. If this happens take a time out and have as calm a debate as possible on the subject, but try not to let it consume your game time, people are there to play and have fun not to debate.

The same goes the other way for a rule dependent group, take steps to let players know this and try to avoid problems with players of a different nature. If the chasm is to wide to bridge help this player find a new home and try to part as friends.

Another place where rules tend to interfere with storytelling is with the introduction of stats to give characters attributes or skills the players don’t possess in real life. I think systems such as the otherwise splendid Call of Cthulhu which has things like persuade and fast talk are good examples of this problem. These are skills a character either has or doesn’t have, if the player can talk his way out of a situation then it is my experience that in 99% of cases the right approach is to play the situation out rather than letting dice sway a non-player character into accepting a subpar explaination.

My advice here is to strike such skills or rules out of existance entirely and let the story trumph them. It will lead to a better flowing story and players will be encouraged to roleplay, seek out new avenues and generally try harder.

However dice are easy, story is hard. A new group with little experience might want to use the rules to the letter at first and slowly phase them out as the become bothersome or better yet confidence builds to roleplay more.

The purpose of this blog

In real life I am David, a geek with interests in computing, books and many other subjects. I suffer from Tourette’s syndrome and in spite of all my social awkwardness I have managed to get engaged to a wonderful woman.

This blog is about none of that, this blog is about what goes on when my friends come over and the door is closed. Those sacred hours we spend together in the world of our collective imagination, when the roleplayers meet and share a couple of hours in another world, when the dinner table becomes foreign lands, where dice are the difference between life or death.

I have been involved with roleplaying now for some 16 years now, at least the 10 of them spend nearly full time as a gamemaster. In the course of that time I have been fortunate enough to get paid to teach others, and years of entertaining others and myself has given me wealth of good ideas on how to improve the roleplaying experience. I plan to spend time on this blog sharing my experiences, ideas and contemptations on how to be a better player, a better gm and a better team.

Strap in adventurers and keep that D10 handy.

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