Narrative Character Creation

[Ryan Macklin]

Hello,

This is my first post here.  I've been lurking for a short time now.  I had the pleasure of meeting a few of you fine folks at GenCon, and some of you said I should poke my head in here.  So poke I shall.  But enough small talk.  I come here with a problem and I believe (and hope) that some here can help me out.  I'm not sure if 'First Thoughts' is the right place to post this, but I hope that folks will cut me some slack as I learn the social construct that is The Forge.

I've been experiencing a serious disconnect in my RPG experiences lately.  Specifically, I'm having a problem with how games to character creation.  Or maybe it's with how *I* do character creation in some games.

Last week, I started an Unknown Armies campaign for seven players with a character generation session.  This was a typical character creation session, where players came to the table with some vague ideas (and a couple with more concrete ideas that ended up getting modified) and poured over books, asking me questions along the way.  After five hours we had seven characters, but I was very disappointed by the whole process.

For a couple nights, I couldn't put my finger on it.  There was one person who was a bit edgy, and seven people is a lot of people to deal with when they're all asking you questions, throwing ideas at you, etc.  Even so, I felt there was something even more that was lacking from the session.

Then I contrasted that to my experience a year ago, when I ran a UA campaign that started off with three players coming over to my place for a character creation session, not knowing what we were going to be playing.  After reading Robin Laws' "Yes, But..." Page XX article[1], I got the idea to try a character creation session where the players had no knowledge of the game beforehand, and in effect defined it during that first session.  I decided to take it in another direction, as I wasn't sure how my players would take a fully "Yes, But..." campaign opener.

After the food was ordered, I looked at all the players and said, "You're somewhere bright, so bright in fact that you cannot see.  The lights start to dim down, and you find yourself standing before a mirror.  Tell me what you see."

The players began to describe their physical appearance, one at a time, as I noted it down on index cards.  After two or three sentences, I would move on to the next player.  This went around for several rounds, where they started talking about their personalities, their family & friends, jobs, homes, etc.

After I filled up both sides of an index card for each player, I handed the cards to them.  Then I described the place they were in: a mirrored hall that seemed to go on forever, with every surface in the hall reflective and no obvious source of light.  They spent the next hour roleplaying, asking my questions (to which I always responded with "Yes, but..."), trying to figure out how they got in this mess, who the other characters were, and how to get out of this place.  When the characters started to make personal connections with one another (some positive, some not), I then presented exits for them, one at a time (still with the "Yes, but..." in mind).

Only then did I bring out the UA book & character sheets.  The rest of the evening was spent turning those characters they made and fleshed out into elements on their character sheet.  This campaign turned into the best experience I've ever had in an RPG, and I credit part of that to the character creation and the sense of buy-in it gave my players.

To contrast these two experiences, the former was like spending five hours setting up a board game I wouldn't be playing for another couple weeks; the latter was getting to play a game right out of the box, with only a short pause to do some additional setup.

This sort of "narrative character creation" is something I find myself much more interested in these days.  I'm using the idea as part of a personal horror game I'm working on, and would like to hear about other games that use it.

I'm still collecting my thoughts on that personal horror game, which I described to some folks at GenCon as a "Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Yog-Sothoth" idea.  I plan on posting them up once I have them penned down.  Unfortunately, moving from one day job to another while getting ready to move tends to eat up one's free time.

Thank you.

[1] Laws, Robin.  Page XX: "Yes, But...The Scenario" http://www.dyingearth.com/pagexxseptember.htm

[iago]

You're basically hitting on the idea that character creation which presents itself as storytelling in and of itself -- and perhaps even uses the system a little, to help introduce people to it -- is a good thing.  You're right -- and this is one of the design patterns that particularly excites me in gaming.  Fate's hinted at it here and there, with some of its phase stuff, but there are other games that take it head-on.

Dogs in the Vineyard is the classic example by this point.  Character creation ends with an initiation scene where your character plays out a conflict based on a statement from the player, e.g., "I hope that my mentor doesn't die when he pulls the demon out of me." Gets the players into contact with the system, and hits story right in the nose ASAP after sitting down to start the creation process.

Agon does this as well; after character creation, each character has the opportunity to call one other character out in a contest of their choosing; the winner walks away with an oath owed to him by the loser.  This gets the basic challenge mechanic in front of players, and establishes backstory and a relationship web among the PCs.  That's gold.

Spirit of the Century's presenting a "character creation on the fly" method as one of the ways to create characters -- basically allowing you to start playing immediately, and figure out everything about your character as you play; essentially, "Play Now!" And it also has our longer-standing idea of a lifepath-style explorative "phased" character creation method, which builds towards characters forming relationship webs.  Good stuff, we think.

It's a broad design pattern with a lot of fun, different implementations.  Definitely worth "frankensteining" for your own game purposes.

[iago]

Something I just realized.  You stated at your opener that you had "a problem" that you needed help with... but by the end it sounds like you have a solution, not a problem.  Can you be more explicit about what the difficulties are that you're seeking help with?

[Ryan Macklin]

Something I just realized.  You stated at your opener that you had "a problem" that you needed help with... but by the end it sounds like you have a solution, not a problem.  Can you be more explicit about what the difficulties are that you're seeking help with?

You're right.  What started off with me describing a problem ended up in me describing my solution to said problem.  I suppose what I'm looking for is how other people have treated the subject.

I like how Dogs in the Vineyard puts playing the game itself as an element of character creation.  In fact, when I talk to people about Dogs, I site that as one of the many brilliant elements of the game.  But most of the character creation is more "on paper" than narrative, even as free form as it is.  I don't mean this in any way as a slight against it -- I'm just hoping to clarify what I'm talking about.

Agon is on my "must buy after my finances recover" list, and I'm eagerly awaiting Spirit of the Century (in fact, I'm cursing the fact that I won't have enough money to pre-order a hardback copy).  I have read through FATE, and I think I like how it handles lifepath generation, but I haven't played with it yet.  I've also been told that I need to check out The Pool, which I printed out and is waiting for me on my coffee table at home.

I suppose what I'm looking for is a game where you talk about your character in an in-character format, and then use that narrative to fill out whatever is needed on a character sheet.  I realize that this idea probably doesn't fit every game (probably not most games), but it's something I want to experiment with more.

Thank you.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Ryan,

I suggest checking out Castle Falkenstein, first published in 1994. Its character creation is the first, introductory chapter of a Victorian-style adventure novel, written in the first person. Later play is intended to provide later chapters. The various details of the first chapter provide the items on one's character sheet. The use of "character voice" plays a big role in the process.

Best, Ron