Character Concept Brainstorm with my Girlfriend

[Judd]

All of my girlfriend's high school buddies gamed and she had a kind of shitty experience with D&D, being told her choices were wrong by the DM, etc. etc.

I've run a few games with her, D&D, Burning Wheel and Cat.

This Tuesday I will be meeting with a group of 6, 3 guys and 3 gals to make our swashbuckling pirate cell for Conspiracy of Shadows.  This is my transcript from memory in an attempt to get a character out of her, always a similiar stubborn process with her insisting that she has no ideas until she does.


JA - I don't have any ideas.

Me - You said the same thing when we made up your Cat
PC and you had plenty of good ideas.

JA - No, I don't.

Me - You don't have to play.

JA - I LIKE playing.

Me - ...

JA - I just don't have any ideas.  There's nothing in
my head.

Me - That's okay.  Jeff hasn't e-mailed me a concept
yet.  Every gamer makes up their character in a
different way.  S'okay.

JA - But I don't have any ideas.

Me - Yes, you do.  Youa re just too shy to share them.

What about a character from a book?  Swordspoint, that
is a dark, swashbuckling book that you dig.

JA - But then I'm just playing a character from a book
and Swordspoint characters are all so complicated.
Complicated is hard.

Me - Which character could you grab from Swordspoint.

JA - [sarcasm]I dunno, a self-destructive, suicidal, gay
pirate?[/sarcasm]

Me - Now we're on to something...

Why's he suicidal.

JA - *scrunchy face*  I dunno.  He killed some people.

Me - The game we are playing is a game about
uncovering a dark conspiracy.  Maybe your character
killed people from the conspiracy?

JA - But I don't know what the conspiracy is.

Me - That's okay, neither does anyone else.

JA - He'd killed before, it wasn't his first kill.

Me - Okay, so you had a change of heart of some kind
that turned you against the people wh ordered you to
kill.  Like in Schindler's List when Schindler sees
the little girl's red jacket...what is your
hcaracter's red jacket?

JA - He never had to kill women and children
before...maybe slaves on a plantation.

Me - Burned the joint to the ground too.

JA - AFTER we killed them we burned it.  No idea why.

Me - Then what?

JA - Then he went after the guy who commanded him to
do the killing, tried to kill him.  Tried to kill his
captain.

But then I would have been killed right away, wouldn't
I?

Me - If you drew steel on an officer they might want
to make an example out of you, take you back to port
and have you hanged.  Maybe the pirates saved you from
a hanging.

JA - I tried to kill him and someone caught me.  Then
I got thrown over the edge.

Me - Nice, maybe the captain was your brother or
something.

JA - I dunno, my brother's in the navy too but he
wasn't the captain.  I think the reaction would have
been different if that had been his brother.

Me - Fair enough.  I think that's a good start.

JA - But now I have to PLAY him and he's all
complicated.  Playing a big dumb barbarian or a
vicious orc is easy but this guy's HARD.

Me - You could play a big, dumb, strong person if you
wanted to.

JA - Then I'm just playing the same thing over and
over.

Me - People do it all of the time.

JA - That's poopy.  I dunno.

Me - You really dont' HAVE to play.  No big deal.

JA - I want to but its just hard, there's all of this
pressure.

Me - Pressure to what?

JA - Pressure to be cool.

Me - When have you ever gamed with me and not felt
cool?  The game is working to help us feel cool.

JA - I know but I was gaming with you and Pete and
Lily.  I don't know these people as well.

Me - I'm pretty sure everyone will be supportive.  And
no one has played Conspiracy of Shadows, you will all
be on the same page.

JA - But what if I'm not cool, what if I'm someone
they would like to hang out with bu tI'm just not a
good gamer?

Me - I'm sure you will do fine.

JA - I wish I knew what I had to do and what was going
to happen.

Me - We'll figure all of that out at the table. That's
what playing is.

JA - I know but that's what is scary.

Me - And that's what's fun.

JA - I know but its scary too.

[Ben Lehman]

Thanks.

Every designer should read this.

yrs--
--Ben

[Judd]

Glad its interesting to ya.

What about it grabbed you in particular?

[LordSmerf]

First: Sweet!  Thanks a whole lot for this.  I'm going to point out two things I consider extremely important.  Extremely, extremely, extremely important.

<snip>

This Tuesday I will be meeting with a group of 6, 3 guys and 3 gals to make our swashbuckling pirate cell for Conspiracy of Shadows.  This is my transcript from memory in an attempt to get a character out of her, always a similiar stubborn process with her insisting that she has no ideas until she does.


JA - I don't have any ideas.

Me - You said the same thing when we made up your Cat
PC and you had plenty of good ideas.

JA - No, I don't.

Me - You don't have to play.

JA - I LIKE playing.

Me - ...

JA - I just don't have any ideas.  There's nothing in
my head.

Me - That's okay.  Jeff hasn't e-mailed me a concept
yet.  Every gamer makes up their character in a
different way.  S'okay.

JA - But I don't have any ideas.

Me - Yes, you do.  Youa re just too shy to share them.

What about a character from a book?  Swordspoint, that
is a dark, swashbuckling book that you dig.

<snip>

Here!  This is Constraint at work!  A direction, something to latch on to.  I think (without knowing either of you) that the problem was not so much "you're just too shy to share", but rather "I have tons of cool ideas, but I don't know which ones make sense".  Would a Capt. Jack Sparrow (a la Pirates of the Carribean) be in theme?  That's pirates, and he might fit in a conspiracy setting.  You were asking something close to "imagine something cool", there's no focus, no direction, there's nothing for the mind to grasp onto and say "This is what you're talking about!"

As soon as you gave her something (anything) to use as a focus, "This specific book", she was able to figure out which of her ideas fit what you were looking for.  If you didn't know what you were looking for, and she didn't know what you were looking for, you would have just sat there.  There's got to be some sort of Constraint on the imagination in order to proceed.

<snip>

JA - I want to but its just hard, there's all of this
pressure.

Me - Pressure to what?

JA - Pressure to be cool.

Me - When have you ever gamed with me and not felt
cool?  The game is working to help us feel cool.

JA - I know but I was gaming with you and Pete and
Lily.  I don't know these people as well.

Me - I'm pretty sure everyone will be supportive.  And
no one has played Conspiracy of Shadows, you will all
be on the same page.

JA - But what if I'm not cool, what if I'm someone
they would like to hang out with bu tI'm just not a
good gamer?

Me - I'm sure you will do fine.

JA - I wish I knew what I had to do and what was going
to happen.

Me - We'll figure all of that out at the table. That's
what playing is.

JA - I know but that's what is scary.

Me - And that's what's fun.

JA - I know but its scary too.

This is the other big thing for me: Roleplaying is an aquired/learned skill.  It turns out that there is such a thing as "bad roleplaying".  The good news is that, like any other learned skill, you can get better at it with practice.  When you're in a supportive environment (i.e. a functional play group) you aren't so afraid of making mistakes, and everyone is teaching everyone else.

This is huge to me: roleplaying is a skill, you can do it poorly or you can do it well or you can do it somewhere in the middle.  You can (and do) get better the more you play.

Thomas

[Meguey]

Ditto whan Ben said, plus, I'll answer the question.

The struggle to 'be cool' and the struggle to find a compelling character are very, very real, not only for women who game (hereafter know as WWG), but for any gamer who is new to gaming, new to a certain game, or new to a certain gaming group.  This is the gamer I think more designers should have in mind when they write. Not when they have the idea, but when they sit down to convey the idea to a potential player.  I, too, have had lots of pressure to come up with a 'character', when what I needed was to find a way into the setting in a way that was engading to me, as your girlfriend did.

~Meguey

[Ben Lehman]

Meg --

Yup, except I think its true for anyone who games, and for any creative contributions, not just character creation.

Lessons:

1)  Being creative is scary, and hard, especially in front of other people.
2)  Everyone has good ideas.

yrs--
--Ben

[xenopulse]

3) Good game design and good guidance can help overcome these problems.

[Judd]

I'm glad to hear that others are finding the dialogue useful.  While it was happening and when I wrote what I remembered down, it felt like i was somehow bridging a gap in my head between things I've read on Vincent's site somehow.

But I'm not sure how or why.

I love hearing what my girlfriend things about gaming.

I nearly jumped out of my seat when I showed her the die mechanics to Dogs in the Vineyard and she looked at the dice and said, "So the dice are just currency."

Anyway, neat stuff.

More comments are welcomed.

[Meguey]

Has Vincent mentioned the years of games and mechanics that have been trashed because I couldn't get my mind around them or I felt intimidated by them? I count this reaction from your girlfriend (who's name is??) as huge testimony to the importance of clear, simple mechanics.