World Building: Roots

Barsoom (2)

I said a while ago that I wanted to talk about world building (maybe worldbuilding or world-building, as you prefer). That I do. Doing so seems likely to take more than a couple entries here. This essay is the beginning, written as much for me to explore what I know as for anyone who cares enough to read it. (1)

Generation of the world or universe, the setting, is important to numerous aspects of creating media, from novels to games. Careful design can’t be undervalued. Assumptions should be avoided, while reasoned relationships should take prominence. Aim to build novelty and interest, but include enough of the familiar to build resonance with the audience.

Fiasco, It’s Not

Critical-Hits has run a review of Fiasco and an Origins report that included it, but I’m here to report as a Fiasco player. I played with four other veteran gamers, a few among us industry pros. Logan Bonner got us together and learned the rules with us. For the record, I have read on bits of the Fiasco rules, so this report is purely experiential and relies heavily on my memory of events. I’m also trying out a Chatty DM style post for a change. (Mimicry is flattery, Chatty.)

The Setup

First, we chose the “Tales From Suburbia” Playset. Guided by that, we had to make up characters and their related accouterments. Here’s a sketch of what we came up with.

Toby Grace (Logan Bonner)
The teenage Toby is gaining some fame as YouTube’s Bat’leth Boy, filming and uploading his mad Klingon sword skills. (I liken him to Kazookeylele.) He’s, more or less, a typical teenager, shy, with a part-time job at Max Reginald’s women-only costume shop, the Well-Dressed Lady. He dislikes his stepdad, Gerry. Toby desperately wants to be famous. Although he has no girlfriends, past or present, he’s pretty sure he’s not gay.

Gerald “Gerry” Grace (Derek Guder)
Gerry is a self-loathing gay man who married Toby’s mother, Bethany, for the money and a life of leisure. He drinks way too much, and he acts out of desperation and instinct more than reason. (Read: He’s an idiot.) Toby is the object of Gerry’s idle ire, because Gerry hates himself and suspects Toby, who has never had a girlfriend, is gay.

Alex James (Chris Tulach)
Alex is Gerry’s former lover. Impeccably dressed and groomed, Alex drives a black Cadillac and has all the latest gadgets. Something suggests he doesn’t really need money—maybe he made some cash in the 90s dot-com boom. He wants Gerald Grace out of suburbia and back in his arms, so he has gotten involved in a plot with his cousin Rory James.

Rory James (Chris Sims, me)
Rory is fresh out of the army and the Middle East. He’s a young, ex-military anti-tax Libertarian radical educated by conspiracy rags, first-person shooters, and Fox News. Rory believes not only that certain liberals are leading this nation to ruin, but also that the government is against the people. The IRS is after Rory, who needs money quickly to stay ahead, collect guns, and keep his jacked-up 89 Bronco running. Rory has a single usable grenade.

Max Reginald (Andrew “Doc” Cunningham)
A community activist and local Freemason Worshipful Master, Max Reginald owns a women’s only costume shop (the aforementioned Well-Dressed Lady) in the heart of the historic downtown area of this suburban town. He seems to have a penchant for teenage girls, which he hides behind a mask of overzealous vigilance against pedophiles. He knows Rory James through the local Masonic Lodge.

Other Characters
Here are a few important non-player characters that made their way into the plot.

Bethany Grace: Toby’s mom, who’s dying of cancer. She’s bedridden and lives upstairs in the old Grace house, a historic site on the edge of downtown. She’s also addicted to pain meds.

Randy James: An aging hippy lawyer who lives on the outskirts of town. He works for the Graces, and he’s Rory’s estranged father.

Holly: The teenage grocery checkout girl whom the younger Toby has the hots for.

Mister Bubbles: Rory’s yellow lab, named for the character in Bioshock.

Act One

The movie opens in the morning with Gerry—half naked, and carrying an adult toy like a weapon in his drunken rage—berates Toby while “Bat’leth Boy” meant to be filming his kick-ass moves. Instead, he gets the indelible record of his inebriated stepfather’s tirade. Toby uploads the film. Was it a mistake or fate?

Gerry later sits by Bethany’s bedside, failing to notice she drops a syringe on the floor. He hears a noise and goes to the window. A black Cadillac drives away from across the street. Gerry thinks nothing of it.

Alex drives away from the Grace house, a medical phial rolling on his floorboard. He receives a phone message from Rory and pulls over to catch it. It’s Bat’leth Boy’s latest film, starring Gerry Grace. Then Alex calls Rory, cryptically saying, “It’s done.”

In a rented house bereft of much in the way of furniture, Rory is sitting—barefoot and shirtless, in camouflage pants—at his computer after talking with Alex. Mister Bubbles scratches at the door to herald the coming of the mail and all Rory’s past-due bills. Rory gets the mail and curses at the Mexican gardener across the street.

Meanwhile, Max comes out of his house and notices Alex parked in front, just across the street from a playground. Max confronts Alex, accusing him of “watching the children” because “nobody parks to take a phone call.” Alex drives away. Max notes the pedophile danger for later.

Each of the above represents a player’s first turn, with that player setting up the scene for other players to resolve or resolving a scene others have set up. The outcome is good or bad, success or failure, for your character, resulting in you taking a white (good) or black (bad) six-sided die. In Act One, you give the die to another player. You keep it in Act Two.

Without telling the whole story, the rest of Act One played out. Salient details include Toby finding out Holly likes him. Gerry discovers Randy James is helping Bethany write Gerry out of her will. He doesn’t know James is also working for Max. Rory and Alex are working for Max to ensure Bethany dies shortly after her will is changed. Max alone knows that the Grace house is the final point of a geographic pentagram he is building. He needs to own to property to seal his occult power over the entire historic downtown area.

Tilt, Act Two

Elements of the plot go awry, of course, in what the game calls the Tilt. Randy James, pothead that he is, was lackadaisical in making Bethany’s will official. He hadn’t finished finalizing it by the time Rory and Alex manage to kill Bethany. Gerry finds Bethany dead at the same time he finds the new will. Smart guy that he is, he attempts to eat the document. Max becomes infuriated when he learns Randy James failed, and Rory and Alex were a bit too efficient. Alex discovers that the money envelope Rory provided is stuffed largely with grocery coupons. Toby, it turns out, stole the money from Rory to help Max buy the Grace house.

Like a film that Tarantino directed the first half of and Rodriguez directed the second half of, the character development and interaction degenerated into bloody conflagration by the end. All the main characters, in one way or another, end up in a serious confrontation near the Grace House. Mayhem ensues.

By the end of Act Two, Alex is wounded at the hands of bikers who are helping Max (it’s complicated). Half a dozen bikers are dead or dying. Mister Bubbles has given up the mortal coil, along with Rory’s Bronco, thanks to that grenade mentioned earlier. A flying tire from the exploded Bronco hit Toby’s new girlfriend, Holly. Toby is unconscious on the street, Holly’s d’k tahg next to him, thanks to Rory hitting him with a shotgun butt. Gerry, half-naked again, is bleeding on the street. The Grace House has been blown to cinders. Rory is speeding out of town on a stolen chopper. Max turns into an occult master right before everyone’s eyes.

Aftermath

Each player has a small pile of dice by the end of Act Two. Turns out you use these dice to find out what happens to your character in the end. This was the most confusing and unexpected part of the game to me. See, you roll the dice, subtracting the black form the white. The result determines how well it goes for your character in the end. I expected that my small “white” result to mean a minor victory for my character. Nothing to the contrary prepared me otherwise, but as is common when one is first learning a game, especially without having read the rules for oneself, my expectations were wrong.

It turns out that the closer your result is to zero, black or white, the worse it is for your character. Had we all known that, we might have played differently. We stacked a lot of negative results on Gerry, thinking he’d pay for his idiocy in the end. He didn’t, as you’ll see.

As an aside—reminding readers I’ve read only portions of rules, such as in this preview, because I don’t own the book—I wonder why lots of black  dice result in a positive outcome for the character? It seems counterintuitive to me, the uneducated novice player. Maybe it makes sense for genre reasons or something else, but I still fail to get it.

So I was expecting to tell the story of how Rory rode that stolen Harley, eluding the cops, all the way to Central America. Maybe he spent the rest of his days in Paraguay as an American exile. His views on American politics became irrelevant. Maybe he married a nice mestizo woman and got over himself. But, no!

Instead, my low white result meant Rory fled the scene only to attract the attention of a traffic cop on a motorcycle. Rory took a shot at this “fascist,” and the officer jumped clear of the bike as it flipped and hit Rory’s cycle. Rory died in a blaze of glory, the last thing seen of him being his burning rank patch. Good night, sweet corporal. I like to think life would have been too dismal without Mister Bubbles anyway.

With a similarly low result, Alex died at the end of a Bat’leth in Max’s hands. All the other players got high black or white results. Toby, with Logan’s higher result, goes to physical therapy with Holly, and they later start a costuming company together. Bat’leth Boy becomes famous. Gerry’s wounds cause him to need organ replacements, including his suffering liver. He survives, accepting himself and his stepson, as well as enjoying the provisions of Bethany’s older will. He also sells the Grace house property to Max, who gets away scot-free and completes his pentagram.

After the Aftermath

Fiasco sells itself well and truthfully. We five newbies played a highly entertaining game in about three hours, some of that spent stumbling around the rules clumsily. (The rules aren’t clumsy. We were a little.) The outcome does depend heavily on who you game with, though. It seemed like we all enjoyed the darkly ridiculous nature of our imaginary movie. We were all up to the freeform nature of the roleplaying and storytelling.

Either of these elements might turn some off. For instance, my wife enjoys playing a barbarian in D&D 4e, but she dislikes Coen brothers’ films (okay, she dislikes sad endings, full stop) and is new enough to roleplaying to want some guidance. She’s also not partial to dark stories and foul language. Fiasco is definitely not a game for her or someone like her. Part of the book I did read (“One Last F[edit]ing Thing”) spells this out, which is a fine bit of honesty.

For me, despite my feelings about the resolution system in the aftermath, it was a cool way to spend a few hours with buddies. Fiasco tests your spontaneous imagination and invites you to take chances. It rewards player trust and going with the flow. I can’t help but wonder if it could be a useful tool for honing roleplaying skills for players of other games that have more structure. It could work well as a team-building exercise.

It’s certainly worth a look-see . . . if you have the stones.

Background Check

I’ve talked about investing some emotion in your character and, thereby, the game. As a follow-up, I suggested you seize the game by the horns. The “Play Boldly” article seemed more concrete, more useful, than the first. I thought about it, and I have more to say about giving your character traits and a history that make up a backstory.

Before I start–like I mentioned in “Become Emotional”–you don’t need to invest a huge effort into this task. (See the Short But Stout section.) This is especially true if you’re playing a casual game and/or one that focuses on defeating the bad guys and taking their stuff. Sometimes you’re just at the table for the slaying and the looting, and feeling badass. That’s fine. But if you want a background, or your DM wants you to craft one, just think about a few aspects of your character that pique your interest.

Ask Yourself

I have a lot of warmth in my heart for backgrounds in the D&D game. They’re helpful for character creation, and they offer you a little boon just for bothering to think about where your character comes from. The best ones not only place your character in a game-world context, but they also offer you some questions about your character’s life choices.

You can turn any game element–ability score, race, class, build, power, skill, feat, weapon, item–you choose into an element of character background. You just have to make up the questions. What does this feat say about my character’s training or upbringing? How did my warlock end up in an infernal pact? What does low Charisma say about my character? Why is the desert background my primary choice, and why did I choose +2 to Endurance over +2 to Nature?

Reverse Psychology

When you’re thinking about your character in this way, you’re bound to come up with traits that interest you but have no mechanical connection to your character. You can change that, too, with a little reversal. Turn your personality or story element into an actual D&D background.

Suppose you’ve decided that your character is refined and courteous. You can settle on what made him or her that way by making up a few questions and answers. Then create a background based on this polite manner. If you created it for repeat use, it might look like this:

Well-Mannered
Others see your sophistication, graciousness, and empathy your defining personality traits. What made you this way? Did you take after someone who raised or trained you? Were you schooled in courtesy? Did someone require (at least the appearance of) such manners from you? Do your manners mask any passions or darker parts of your nature?

Associated Skills: Diplomacy, Insight

Crook or Hook

When you start asking yourself questions about this imaginary person you’re creating, consider crafting the answers so you create a few roleplaying hooks and a few character hooks. A roleplaying hook informs you how your character interacts with the world. On the other hand, a character hook tells the DM how the world might interact with your character. Both are valuable, but a few character hooks can go a long way toward helping the DM personalize the game.

Imagine our example well-mannered character grew up in an orphanage and took after the kindly monks who ran the place. This one point offers several possible details about the character. He or she is not only polite (roleplaying hook), but is also connected to an orphanage and its orphans (character hooks), as well as, perhaps, a religion noted for kind monks (roleplaying and character hook). A soft spot for orphans and priests (character and roleplaying hooks) might be part of the character’s personality, too. These details lead naturally to defining a few friends, mentors, or even enemies (character hooks) for the character.

Don’t be afraid to create a few NPCs who are relevant to your character’s life. Such people add depth to the game world and act as character hooks. In so doing, they give you and the DM more toys to add to the game. More toys are more fun.

Making this stuff up should be fun, too. You can probably easily think of more outgrowths of the example. That’s why just a few details like this can make for a rich character background.

A Little Help . . .

You can craft details about your character even without knowing a lot about the game world or your companions. It’s easier if you have help, though. The DM can lend a hand in giving your choices a framework specific to the campaign. Fellow players might assist by playing off your ideas giving you similar fodder from their backgrounds.

This is why it can be good for the group members to create characters in collaboration with each other. You can make sure to fill in background details at the same time you’re filling roles. The personal game of creating your character then becomes a shared experience such as a normal DM session.

Short But Stout

Can I give you a sample from my Dark Sun D&D game? If you prefer not to hear about someone else’s character, skip this part.

My friend Robert, a fine player and DM, as well as head honcho of penandpapergames.com, created a dwarf shaman named Malamac for the campaign. He made some basic choices.

• Malamac’s family was part of a dwarven nomad tribe that eventually settled in the dwarven village of Kled.

• His family has profound ties to the primal power source and ancestor veneration. Malamac learned of the spirits and ancestors primarily from his mother.

• Kled is the site of the excavation of an ancient dwarven city. (This actually part of Kled’s story in the world.) Malamac’s family was deeply involved in this heritage project.

• The templars overseeing Kled destroyed Malamac’s family for blasphemy and heresy. Artifacts discovered in the ancient city suggested the sorcerer kings of Athas are not the immortal god-monarchs they claimed to be. They also indicate the world was not always as it now is. Malamac’s mother spread these “lies.”

• Robert chose the Desert background, and he gave Malamac +2 to Endurance from it.

Expanding on all this, Robert then decided that Malamac, at least for most of his life, possessed not even an inkling of primal power. He grew up ashamed of this lack, thinking he would never amount to much. Malamac, therefore, looked for any excuse to get away from Kled and the source of his shame–his own family. He took regular trading missions to a nearby merchant outpost (Endurance). There, he found love (a woman named Ilyna) and a measure of success. He was on the road when his family fell to the templars. Instead of perishing with his kin, he was captured later, told of his family’s fate, and sold as an arena slave in Tyr. His enemies expected him to die on the arena sands, but a losing battle instead quickened his tie to the ancestors and the spirits of the earth. Then King Kalak of Tyr fell, and all slaves were freed . . .

Malamac’s story has a little more to it involving other characters in my Dark Sun group. However, most of the pertinent details are above. It’s simple yet loaded. With it, Robert told me a lot, such as that he’s interested in the legacy of the ancient dwarves and that Malamac has some great character hooks to explore or exploit.

I’ve used those hooks extensively. Malamac, alongside his comrades, recently put down one of the templars involved in his family’s demise. This was a happy side effect of freeing Kled from that same templar’s black magic. The scenario of opposing that evil templar could have been played without any emotional involvement on the part of the characters. Robert’s short background for Malamac just made it more poignant.

Your background can do the same for you and your gaming group. Here’s hoping this article is clearer on that point. If you found it useful, let me know.

Play Boldly

Following up on my last post, I intend to disparage no one, including my players past and present, but a malaise sets in on me occasionally when I’m playing a D&D game. Players seem lethargic. They don’t respond to the information given to them. Their characters act far different than the intrepid adventurers those characters should and must be.

Players should be as bold in game action as their characters are in the game world. Why? Because it pays off in fun and energy at the table.

I don’t mean that you should be the type of player who opens a closed door in the middle of combat or pushes every shiny, red button. Don’t go your own way at everyone else’s expense, despite what a certain famous D&D-playing author has said to the contrary. That’s jackassery rather than boldness. (Rule X: Don’t be a jackass!)

Instead, decide how the happenings in your game present opportunities for your character. Can you take cooperative actions that also work toward your character’s goals or display your character’s personality? If not, might you help further define the narrative or push the game onward? This can be as simple as making a deal with another character in a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” way. At other times, it’s a no-brainer how your character acts. Although some events in a game might fail to fit your character’s aims, think of how the smaller picture of the current situation might fit into the larger frame.

Whatever you do, don’t be afraid to take actions that make for a great game. Several bits of boldness follow.

Have Fun

Playing a D&D game is all about having fun. If you’re not having fun, say so constructively. Try to help figure out what’s going wrong. Maybe the subject of the game makes you uncomfortable. Perhaps play has bogged down. It could be you just crave some action. If you do say something (again, constructively), the game can be altered to accommodate your desires. A good DM wants you to have fun.

Ask Questions

Whenever you want more information, ask. A detail might be important to you or your character, and that’s fine. The game is about exploration and investigation, as well as fighting and character interaction. If you fail to ask questions, you might not receive some information you want or, worse, need. It’s not the DM’s job to give you every bit of information—sometimes you have to work for the goods. Further, detail should be built based on player interest rather than dumped by the DM in a way that slows the action. The DM is justified in assuming no one’s interested in details if no one asks any questions. By asking, you’re also telling the DM what you’re interested in.

Use Powers, Rituals, and Skills

Be familiar with your character’s abilities, and then use them whenever it seems appropriate. Suitability of use can be defined tactically, like the right spell for the right moment, or by roleplaying, such as how your character reacts to a situation. Most adventures are constructed assuming that a party has particular skills and abilities. If you have those abilities but don’t use them, the game might just go nowhere fast. Think about problems in terms of how your character’s abilities can solve them. It’s not the DM’s job to remind you of a ritual you have or to make sure you use your other abilities wisely. Know then do, bold one.

Have a Hunch

It’s the DM’s job to provide a situation, but few complex situations have clear-cut answers. Maybe you have an idea–it’s out there but it seems like a possibility.  You might just be right, even if evidence suggests otherwise. Sharing your idea is always good for the game. If you have an opinion, then, voice it.

And don’t keep ideas to yourself just because your character might not know. Although your game might vary from mine, I see player discussion as the collective cleverness of the party. It’s fine to roleplay, after out-of-character discussion, that the wizard came up with the idea. It’s also possible that your barbarian just had an amazing flash of insight. (That could even become a permanent and regularly appearing character trait. How does she do it?)

The caveat here is that you avoid using knowledge the party has no way to know, such as verbatim attributes from Monster Manual. In my games, especially, relying on such player knowledge is a sure way to end up in trouble. Instead, use your player knowledge as a reason to use character skills and other abilities. It’s fine to ask for an Arcana check to learn about a monster, even though you, the player, think you already know some of the creature’s attributes. Perhaps it’s even fine to roleplay what your character assumes about a monster from details the DM has given. (“Careful with fire around this beast . . .”) Such roleplaying might even lead the DM to grant a bonus to your skill check.

Ham It Up

We all game to have fun creating a story about a group of awesome characters in fantastic situations. Part of the fun is the personalities of characters and how they interact with their world. As a DM, I use accents, changes in voice, scare tactics, and all sorts of theatrics to get across the situation or person I’m portraying. I do the same with my PCs when I’m on the other side of the table. You can too. Don’t be shy. Only a jackass would ridicule you for increasing the fun. (Rule X.1: Don’t game with jackasses.)

When in a game situation, consider how your character might react. Even if you try to focus on the cooperative alternatives, this can result in actions that seem inappropriate to the situation. Don’t worry about what other players think, unless their characters have a chance to react. (Try not to coach others on their own actions, as well.) Sometimes, however, your portrayal will rub another character the wrong way. This can lead to appropriate drama as long as everyone’s comfortable with that course of play.

A druid I play is very bold with her sense of righteousness and proper authority, and she also refuses to take any crap. She has to back down at times to please or appease her comrades. Her boldness has become part of the way the whole group plays. Something happens, and everyone wonders how she’s going to respond. It adds fun.

In all cases, though, it’s important to distinguish between what your character says in a scene and what you, as a player, are saying at the game table. It’s remarkably easy to become confused. (This is why I, as DM, try to use accents and voice changes when speaking as a non-player character.) One misunderstanding in this vein can send a whole scene awry.

Repeat: Be Bold

It happens that all it takes to get things going in a game is bold action on the part of one or more players through their characters. Player characters are supposed to be heroes, after all. Although the DM does provide the scenario, background characters, and plots, the game requires player (and thereby character) boldness to keep things moving. Like in life, timidity or inaction can be the worst choice. Lack of boldness can leave you with little but regret to nurse your wounds. Regret is a terrible bandage and a bitter medicine.

In a recent game, one player decided her male rogue character was too wounded to go toe-to-toe with the villain. He timidly hid, taking pot shots with shuriken, sans combat advantage. But he could have taken his mace, the clever strike power, and a little boldness to hit that guy dead in his face, with combat advantage, ending the battle dramatically and covering his wounded self in the glory. Instead, he just made me (the DM) sad and seemed a lot more like a punk than the tough guy he really is. Circumstances dictate that this might be the character’s final impression on the game. Double sad.

Don’t play to make others sad. To adhere to this point, you have a simple creed: when in doubt, just do something. Whenever possible, make that something audacious, cooperative, and entertaining. You won’t regret it.

Become Emotional

The psychology of desire and attachment defines our lives in countless ways. This fact is true even in the roleplaying games. Every character you play is an extension of you and the desires you want to fulfill by playing. More elusive, though, is real attachment–emotional connection–to a game’s goings on. Fulfilling player desires is where much of the fun is, and this is something the DM should facilitate. But when circumstances in a game also hit a personal chord, they have more meaning and can create even more fun.

Have you ever noticed how almost every player enjoys the fights in a roleplaying game? That’s because combat has real stakes and real consequences to something valuable to each player–his or her character. The danger to each character strikes that aforementioned personal chord. This is an example of attachment or emotional investment at its simplest in an RPG.

Attachment, and the significance it provides to imaginary events, is hard to pin down. No unaltered publication, such an adventure, can pull it off for you or your fellow tableside explorers. Hooks in such products exist only to help your DM make the connection between a published work’s assumptions and the campaign’s reality. However, even with these tools, your DM can’t create all the necessary emotional involvement. You have to help. And you should, because everyone at your game table will have more fun if you do.

If the roleplaying aspects of a game aren’t as fun and exciting as combat, somebody has failed to make those aspects personally significant. Perhaps you haven’t provided the DM with the tools to create situations you (character or player) care about in more than a superficial way. Define your character meaningfully, and you’re on your way to bringing such game-enhancing situations forth. Even a shiftless, unaligned mercenary has motivations and secrets that can be tapped to enrich a game’s storyline

The 4e Player’s Handbook goes into a little detail on this subject in its second chapter. It aims at inspiring you to describe your character in nonmechanical ways, and it’s right in that you need no complex history or extensive motivations for your character. But like countless other RPG systems, it fails to clearly define why this exercise is necessary. Therefore, your choices can seem arbitrary.

A character’s quirks, appearance, and history can be interesting as a simple narrative that allows you to roleplay consistently. It’s more important, however, to define traits that motivate your character or others in ways that push game’s unfolding tale forward. Such traits should make the story personal and evocative.

Extremes, opposites, and mysteries are good places to start when defining meaningful traits for a character. The most interesting characters in literature and movies have strong attributes with contradictory flaws. Straightforward but potentially significant qualities also work. A noble warrior who hates orcs has difficulty when faced with an orc that displays honor or begs for mercy. An addict might put her addiction before the welfare of others. A thief with a heart of gold can’t just take the treasure and leave suffering in the theft’s wake. An adventurer who values family and friends returns home often and might share the wealth. A strange birthmark might have meaning.

Once you have a few of these traits for a character, simply answer one question for each–why? Does the noble warrior hate orcs because orc raiders slaughtered his or her family (cliché but still useful), or is this hatred based on the teachings of a mentor, religious order, or leader? Is the addict’s addiction someone else’s doing or the result of an addictive personality, or due to accidental exposure? Is the thief kind because of personal suffering or regret for a past deed? Do the ties that bind the family oriented-adventurer come from burdensome duty or genuine affection? (What if he or she is adopted?) Does the birthmark single out the character as a messiah in the campaign, or is the mark just the thing to send a religious fanatic over the edge for one encounter?

Players can (and probably should) work together as a group to come up with a few traits that two or more characters share. Is another character a lover, a sibling, an old friend, or a onetime rival? Could the party share an overarching affiliation or loyalty? Have similar circumstances forced the characters together?

These traits, even simply detailed, should give the DM a springboard from which to weave a tale  that is emotionally motivating to a character (and player) and the party (and players). The DM might, for example, decide that the noble warrior’s mentor is corrupt and deceitful. Clues woven into the game could eventually lead to a momentous confrontation with an unexpected but wholly personalized villain. Perhaps the party, sharing affiliation with the warrior’s religious order, has an interest in seeing such corruption rooted out. Will the warrior be able to confront and destroy a once-trusted teacher? How will the experience change the character? Certainly none of this will happen without some play-enhancing emotional investment.

Such traits also give other players special points of interest to interact with in your character. People are complicated, and groups even more so. Motivations mesh and clash. This give and take can be interesting at the table.

Players and the DM should emphasize the positive aspects of character traits, though. A DM should use them to influence the path of a session or game rather than to force an outcome. Players should use them as a means to facilitate roleplaying, rather than derailing the game with the infamous, “My character wouldn’t do that.” (Maybe not, but what would he or she do when faced with something important to a comrade?)

Molding a character and party to purposely build attachment to the game is a worthwhile task. Doing so allows the DM to reinforce emotional investment by taking cues from player desires expressed as character traits. The game then becomes a shared narrative that is sharply focused on its protagonists, rather than a series of unfortunate events heaped on the shoulders reluctant participants.

More to Come

If I get some interest, shown in the comments, I’ll write more about this from my perspective as a DM, using my recent campaign episodes as examples. I can also expand on player emotional investment in a session rather than just at character creation. Something can be said for using 4e’s background system to create more emotional investment and mechanical benefits, as well.

Feel free to use the comments to critique, as well. Is the essay too long, too impersonal, too whatever. That’s valuable information, so spill it.

Also, I have some interesting mailbag topics. I’m looking for more. Email me.

Check out the new bio, too. Identify the classic AD&D monster and source if you want.