New players and character creation, three examples

[RDU Neil]

It's fun to some and boring to others. Even some long time gamers find character generation boring, but to make something of that, you would probably have to take a closer look at the game played, the group's creative agenda and how the rules for character creastion do or do not provide means for situation set-up that supports the CA.


- Frank

This is where I totally agree.  Character creation becomes so boring to me, because it is often done in a vacuum, without situation.  For char-gen to be interesting to me, I need to know why my character is important.  What is the story being told?  Why should I care about scene and character?  Situation should be inseparable from char-gen... otherwise char-gen is meaningless and boring... but this is not how most (in my experience) think about it. 

IMO there seems to be a long, scarred tradition of isolationist char-gen... where discussion of the SIS does not take place in any form... the player is given a sense that this is the one and only piece of control they have, so they have to get it all down before actual play (character history, stats, pet peeves, favorite colors, whatever...) because as soon as play begins that character concept will be under attack by the GM and his world.

Incorporating situation into char-gen... at least in my understanding... means that player and GM recognize that the game world is shaped just as much to accommodate the PC as the PC is shaped to accommodate the game world. 

Now... how to do this with newbies who probably don't have an inkling what PC and game world might mean... to me this is where the game system and the GM (if experienced, and I'm using the term GM utterly generically here) must provide positive feedback.  Somehow the GM must be able to say, "Great idea... if you want to do that, then here is the kind of thing I can support you with in play."   The game system must provide the tools/rules/mechanics for the GM to support that.  For newbies, this support can't be subtle or vague... but needs to have a direct one-to-one immediate positive play relevance. 

[contracycle]

I think the statement that the character design is part of the game is correct and explains why new players struggle; it IS part of the game, and they do not know the rules of the game yet, and hence they have no idea what anything means.  I think going through the process of character design is essentially pointless and even harmful for new players.  If the purpose is to expose them to gaming, all they need is a piece to move, they do not have to have any engagement with it to start with, because the purpose is simply to get them to follow the form.  They should simply be given characters, or prompted to describe characters loosely and have them written by someone else.  Then after they heave learned to ride the bicycle, as it were, you can approach them about if they wish to alter or exchange the character or whatever.  This shouldn't need saying, but any local conventions you have about the introduction of new characters should be ignored for this purpose.

For people unused to RPG, the idea that you play, as in act, a particular given character is not alien, but in fact more familiar due to TV and film than the particular RPG device that you create and identify with a fictional character.  The question "who am I meant to be" comes easily, they have no reason to expect the GM to ask them who they want to be, they have no idea yet. 

As to funny accents and speaking in character more generally, I think it is very simply the case that this behaviour is potentially silly and embarrassing.  The best way to get people doing this is to let them see other people doing it, and that no-one is going to laugh or hold their words against them.  Once it becomes clear that this is an unremarkable element of play, if indeed it is so in your group, they will probably adopt it themselves.  Sometimes after a while I might ask someone to restate something in the characters voice if I felt they had seen enough to know what I meant and would be comfortable doing so.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Gareth,

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

Best, Ron

[Emily Care]

This is where I totally agree.  Character creation becomes so boring to me, because it is often done in a vacuum, without situation.  For char-gen to be interesting to me, I need to know why my character is important.  What is the story being told?  Why should I care about scene and character?

That click Frank talked about, when it happens, is when these questions get answered. The player sees what they can do with the character--not only how it can be in motion, but how they can set it in motion--and so they can invest in it. They feel ownership because they feel like they know what to do. They can see the vector, or line that the character can follow, how it can be effective in the world and engage with other characters and setting elements.  All the problems talked about here, creating characters in isolation from situation, having newbies start the game unaware of what kind of story will be told or how the mechanical components fit together all undermine their ability to get a line on what they will be able to do in play. 

And then the game may derail them from what they do find interesting, as in the au pair and falcon examples. The woman who made up the white trash "exact opposite" character had a line on what she could play based on the other woman's description of the au pair.  She was intuitively creating a character that would contrast the other and cause each of them to be highlighted. She found her angle in isolation from what the game was about--the vampires were extraneous to the story of these two women, so very different from one another. But I can easily imagine a story where these two women's paths crossed and intertwined in extremely interesting and dramatic ways.  When  the vampires were introduced, the differences between the two women ceased to have import.  No blame to you at all Frank, you were just doing your job--but it's a great example of seeing how our assumptions about what people will want to do because that's how the game works can be so wrong if we haven't gotten buy in or communicated what the game is or why the player should be interested in it.

[Ricky Donato]

Hi, Gareth,

I'm in complete agreement with you. I found an article on teaching board games to new players. I see a lot of parallels between that article and what we've been discussing.

Here are some important passages:

When your approach for teaching the rules is ill devised, you degrade and sometimes ruin the experience for those playing with you. For this reason I suggest that everyone treat teaching the rules as a skill worthy of practice.

Frank, this speaks to the first example you gave. A poor first game can turn people off to having a second game; I'm sure we've all seen that happen. You didn't say explicitly whether that happened in your example, but the possibility was certainly there.

Using an incremental approach, you start at the top and work your way to the bottom very quickly covering only the basics, not the details—very much like an outline. Once you've explained the basics, you work your way through again fleshing out the "finer points". Most people don't have the patience to hear out or the ability to absorb a detailed, chronological approach from top to bottom.

Emphasis mine. This passage is crucial. It's hard for people to absorb new information, and the more your present the harder it will be. So start at a high level and work your way downward.

Always set up the board and all its components first; you'll be using them extensively. Pay attention to how you organize the components. The way that the components are initially organized can improve the clarity of your explanation.
In Princes of Florence, for example, placing all of the bits used in the auction phase to the left of the scoreboard and all of the bits used in the action phase to the right makes it easier to grasp the structure of the game. This will become especially apparent when you mention that, "All of these items (showing the bits on the left) are bid on during the auction phase," and that, "All of these items (showing the bits on the right) are purchased during the action phase."

Excellent. The RPG equivalent is to have the character sheets, rulebooks, dice, and other components available and set up on the table. Refer to them specifically during the explanation and the game; when you say, "Your character can do X by making a skill check", point out the skill section on the character sheet, pick up the dice, and make a skill check to demonstrate how it's done.

Using only a few sentences, boil the game down to a how and a why. In an article about teaching new games to new players Mike Petty calls the how, "what I do on my turn", and the why, "the scoring." In other words, the how and why are, respectively, the "fundamentals of game play" and "their relationship to winning".

The general objective, the means of attaining it, the scoring, and the game-ending conditions are key aspects of the rules for all games. As such, they are worthy of repetition. Cover them with a progressive layer of depth as you drill down into your explanation.

I cannot repeat these passages enough. What is the purpose of the game? And how does each player accomplish that purpose? These questions need to be answered, multiple times, from different angles.

An example for Shadow of Yesterday could be, "The goal of the game is to tell cool stories about these people in this dark fantasy setting. We do that by creating the central characters of the story, and forcing them into tough decisions about their beliefs and values." Then as character creation progresses, I should point out the Keys and how they crucially relate to "forcing them into tough decisions about their beliefs and values".

Be flexible, allowing inexperienced players to take back their moves when you determine that they're clearly not aware of a certain rule. Don't argue about whether or not you've already explained the rule, simply explain it now and allow them to take back their move. In general, I allow them to take back their move up to the point where the next player begins his turn.

Translating that into RPG terms means that the new player must have an "undo" option. For example, the new player could be given the option to recreate his character after he's played it for 10 minutes or an hour or something, if he built his character using some flawed assumptions about the system or the goal of play. Similarly, if the character is in combat and the player makes an obviously poor tactical decision, everyone at the table should be ok with the new guy taking his turn over.

[Joe J Prince]

Alright guys,

I'm with Gareth and Emily!

I think character creation can be a rewarding and fun experience for new players. If done well, it encourages players to invest in their characters and the game. However, new (all) players are keen to get on with the game and actually start playing. Alongside character creation, the players need an idea of the game's situation.

I think this is where Frank's Vampire game ran into problems, World of Darkness games are very situation oriented, especially Vampire where you need to know about the masquerade, camarilla, clans etc - before even getting to the mechanics. Without knowing this, your players created character with no links to the situation - mortal PCs in the WoD. It's a steep fluff learning curve. Accompanied by a steep crunch learning curve...

Pre-gens seem the obvious solution. Although I'm prejudiced generally against them. Pre-gens let you skip character creation and jump straight into play. It was really interesting to see which demos at the Gen Con Forge booth used pre-gens and which didn't. Of those I played, most used pre-gens (TMW, Cold City, Contenders, Perfect, 1001 Nights, Mob Justice, Covenant, Death's Door, the Roach). But some did not (Best Friends, Breaking The Ice, It was a Mutual Decision, Sorcerer). For me, I invested more in the demos in which I created the character and had fun doing so, but they did take longer to get going (Indeed I bought Breaking the Ice and IWAMD and I'm moving to Scotland to best  Gregor in a haggis hunt to win a free copy of BF). I think this is relevant because in demos, you have to assume whoever you're demoing for hasn't role-played before and still get the essence of the game across. So when character creation is fun, simple and quick it adds to the play experience. Yet pre-gens can be geared to exactly showcase the situation and/or mechanics for that first game. Then character creation makes much more sense.

Ricky's article on boardgames is useful up to a point as it helps convey how to run a boardgame, explain the rules, be organised and not boring. However, RPGs are not games in the sense that competition is the sole factor driving play. A game needs a win condition (and reward mechanics). RPGs also need a situation, a stronger social contract and some appreciation of narrative.  Explaining verbal boundaries is a lot more difficult than pointing to squares on a board.

I think where a lot of traditional RPGs fall down in character creation, as far as new players are concerned, is the number of choices and the fluff or crunch learning curve. Compare:
"Ok, you can be a warrior a rogue or a magic-user."
"You could be a fighter - best warrior, a barbarian - like a fighter but  more savage, a ranger - wilderness warrior type, a paladin a holy warrior a bit like a priest but your alignment has to be lawful-good, a monk...

"You're undead monsters living in the modern world."
"You're Vampires, you belong to one of seven clans, possibly a different offshoot clan but probably not, there's this group called the Camarilla who are vampires who secretly rule the world, apart from the stuff they don't rule which is generally ruled by other supernatural beasts such as...."

So I think character creation can be good for new players, but pre-gens for the first session are a good idea - especially with the proviso that players can make characters later if they like the game.

This was supposed to be a short post. Ah well.

Cheers,
Joe

[GB Steve]

I have a friend called Sean who has been roleplaying for years. Sean has an unerring capability of understanding how to make his character extremely effective within whatever ruleset we are playing. And by effective, I mean good at generating the rewards that the game offers.

However the downside of this is that whenever we play a new game, Sean takes ages to create a character and quite often will make two or three before he's happy with one. The rest of us tend to go with a PC who talks to us in terms of the background/premise.

In games where there is no clear connection between the background/premise and the rewards this makes it difficult for our group to function because Sean is generating lots of rewards whilst the rest of us are trying to do something else.

I think for character generation to be effective it needs to signal to the players what is important in terms of having an effect on the game. For example in My Life with Master, never start with weariness 3 because you'll find it rather hard to get anywhere, but putting 3 in self-loathing means you're likely to have horror revealed scenes. However making detailed references to the mechanics is not so good so it's best to constrain character generation so that players get characters of equal effectiveness. With MLwM you could even toss a coin to choose between 1 and 2 self-loathing.

[Frank T]

Hi Ricky!

A poor first game can turn people off to having a second game; I'm sure we've all seen that happen. You didn't say explicitly whether that happened in your example, but the possibility was certainly there.

Sadly, that was how it happened.

- Frank