Character Generation and Literary Portrait

[Thierry Michel]

I'm aware of a few systems (for instance HeroWars or the Pool) that allow players to write a short portrait of their character and use it to derive traits and skills. As a fan of the genre of the literary portrait, I like this approach, but I wonder about the drawbacks (obviously, it requires an open system but that's not a drawback for me).

In particular, how does one balance flaws/positive traits, or internal/external traits and how general can the traits be ?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Thierry,

This method requires some rules in order to work, and the Hero Wars approach seems strongest. James adapted those rules for The Pool at my urging.

1. No lists. "My guy has an A, and a B, and C, D, and E!"

2. Good grammar. Put in (and count) all the "and's" and "the's."

3. Strict word limits. People always whine about it, but I've found them to be constructive in all cases.

You might want to examine some of your assumptions about "balance." Most of us are pretty pre-programmed that a character should have a list of "goods" and a list of "bads," and that the two should somehow match. This might be desirable for a given game, but it's not as obligatory for good play as many might think.

These two games have different approaches to positive and negative abilities.

In Hero Wars, all the abilities are rated according to their category. E.g., if you have "Ride horses" because it's part of your "Grazer" cultural keyword, then it's 13, just like any other ability in that category. So all of your abilities start at either 13 or 17. You do get to boost any three of them. So every starting character starts with exactly the same numbers. Also, some keywords carry Flaws (e.g. Yinkin worshippers are scorned by warriors).

In The Pool, all the abilities are just ... abilities. "Negative" is implied simply by not having an ability, or - more concretely - by an ability which is occasionally used positively (e.g. "arrogant") but can also be role-played in a negative fashion. It doesn't affect dice rolls negatively under any circumstances.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Final reference: Castle Falkenstein is the game which pioneered the method, although it's a little more "list of stuff drives the paragraph" rather than "paragraph drives list of stuff."

[ethan_greer]

I'll tackle this from a GNS standpoint, I guess.

The two examples you mention, Hero Wars and the Pool, both support Narrativist goals in play as I understand them.  The concept of game balance, on the other hand, is firmly couched in Gamist principles and goals.

Assuming a social contract in which participants are focused on Narrativist goals, the concerns you raise about balance become less, um, concerning.  If Joe Player wants his character to have a super-powerful ability, that's fine as long as it doesn't interfere with the overall goal of story/theme.  On the other hand, a snivelling toady with no redeeming qualities other than a gift for weasling out of trouble is at least as likely to make for interesting story/theme as a power-house character.

Narrativist games don't have to be fair or balanced to work, IMO.  They simply need to support story, plot, and theme.

On the other hand, it's all well and good to blather on about theory.  In the practice of actual play, I'd expect the GM to go over the characters and nix traits that they feel are inappropriate.  As such, game balance becomes an issue governed by the social contract of the group.  With games like Hero Wars and The Pool, it's important for the GM to have a good handle on the characters anyway, so going over the characters prior to play is practically a necessity IMO.

[Thierry Michel]

Actually, by "balance" I was not necessarily talking about game balance (though that might be an issue), but mainly on how to incitate players to submit interesting characters, that is sufficiently complex to have both good and bad aspects.

[ethan_greer]

Doh!  A misreading on my part.  Sorry...

[Paganini]

Ethan and Ron have nailed it as far as I'm concerned, so this is just a "yeah, and..." post. I'd like to point out two things:

1 - Ethan's absolutely right about the GM going over the traits and nixing inappropriate ones. But be aware that "appropriate" is vastly different from "balanced." Appropriate traits are ones that aim at the theme of the game, the issues to be explored, and so on. Let's say your game is dealing with the role of heros in society, and one of your players has a trait "Immortal," meaning he can never be killed. This would not be out of place at all. It points the story at all kinds of protagonizing issues: How does society treat someone who doesn't die? How does the character himself deal with it? etc. Other, non-immortal, characters might be just as protagonized as the immortal character, even though the Immortal character is over-balancing from a power-gaming perspective.

2 - If James (V. West) ever manages to get it done, The Questing Beast has some excellent ideas and advice for creating and handling the character's story (called the Romance in TQB). Not sure how much of the current draft is up on his website, but you should check and see.

http://www.randomordercreations.com

[Thierry Michel]

Appropriate traits are ones that aim at the theme of the game, the issues to be explored, and so on.

Actually, I was wondering about lifting (short) portraits from (relevant) literary works as examples to set the right mood.

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Thierry,

You wrote,

how to incitate players to submit interesting characters, that is sufficiently complex to have both good and bad aspects.

To answer this, we should consider why players may not submit such characters. Usually, it's because they've experienced other role-playing situations in which "bad stuff" exists as a means of GM control over their characters.

If you take Dependent Non-player Character in Champions, the GM kidnaps your girlfriend so you have to fight the bad guy. In some instances of Champions play, this is dysfunctional - the GM basically "makes" you decide certain things and forces the character to go here and do this.

If you take Honest as a psychological limitation in GURPS, the GM and the rest of your group expect you to play an honest character. In some instances of GURPS play, this is dysfunctional - the GM might force you to blurt out some truth or prevent someone else from lying in order for a pre-planned plot event to occur.

After a few instances of such play, players resist taking anything "bad" because they dislike being roped into situations in ways that diminish their roles as (a) fellow authors and (b) fellow thinking beings, as opposed to the GM's miniatures.

To make myself perfectly clear, your goal is, I think, to establish a social relationship among members of the group that keeps these and similar dysfunctions from happening. If I make up an honest character, it's because I look forward to his honest operating as both a strength and as a weakness - at times of my choosing, and in ways that matter to me and to everyone at the table.

In other words, this desire you have regarding the players' attitude and approach toward play has to be integrated with a commitment on your part never to railroad, and with demonstrating that commitment to the players. Once this happens, you will see players absolutely loading their characters with disadvantageous stuff and gleefully bringing those negative aspects into play with no effort on your part at all.

Best,
Ron

[Bruce Baugh]

Ron beat me to it. When players know that character limitations and vulnerabilities will lead to MORE FUN PLAY, they'll go with it. I find that with players coming out of more adversarial environments, it often works well to encourage them to pick just one or two interesting and not terribly handicapping flaws for their characters and see how it works in play. Then let them add some more later. They have to learn how to trust you, if they've been shaped by other styles, and you need to show them that it's worth it.

[Thierry Michel]

And for the more technical question, the "narrowness" of the trait ?  Is it important ? Or should everyone be allowed to take broad traits and apply them liberally to many situations ?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Thierry,

You might consider how you're delivering these questions. There isn't any "should." If you ask "should" relative to a spectrum of options that have been employed successfully over hundreds of games, all we can say is, "There's a spectrum, pick a spot you like."

Amber: four attribute-type scores, each of which covers hundreds, possibly thousands of proposed actions, and no skill/ability type scores at all. Very very broad per named ability.

Zero: dozens of skill-type abilities, plus a reward mechanic for inventing new ones, with no attribute-type scores at all. Very very narrow per named ability.

These are the far ends of the spectrum, or near the far ends. The whole spectrum "works," pending other aspects of the system and how the system relates to functional play. Ya just pick a spot you like and which works relative to these things.

Best,
Ron

[Mike Holmes]

Once you've decided on the "Narrowness" there are several cool ways to enforce this. The obvious choice is the list of abilities to select from. But I'm getting that this is not what we're after. If you want freeform creation look at requiring abilities to go in boxes.

In Hero Wars, you have a cultural keyword and examples of what a cultural keyword can give. So a player can make up an entire set of abilities based on culture, just by looking at the other templates and choosing parallel abilities. Same goes for occupation and magic types in Hero Wars. By constraining the abilities to certain types of areas, players have an automatic idea of how wide or narrow they ought to be.

Older games have similar concepts less well developed. There are often "skills" that require you to further define them. As in GURPS where you cannot choose Survival, but must choose a biome in which the character is adept at surviving.

Just extend this sort of principle until all abilities are in some sort of box, and you'll have your enforcement issue solved without resorting to heavyhanded GM fiat.

Probably other ways as well.

Mike

[szilard]

And for the more technical question, the "narrowness" of the trait ?  Is it important ? Or should everyone be allowed to take broad traits and apply them liberally to many situations ?

One thing that I'm trying to figure out (I'm using a free-form skill system, but not the literary portrait thing) is how to allow skills/attributes of differing breadth.

What I have realized, though, is that it isn't the breadth or narrowness of the skill that matters, but how often the character uses it - and how effectively.

What brought this home was reading a little-known science fiction novel, The Golden Queen, by Dave Wolverton. The main character in the novel has Very Strong Wrists. Overall, he's a pretty strong guy, but he's short - and his strength isn't really unusual... except for his wrists. He manages, though, to make extremely effective use of his remarkable wrist-strength fairly often (part of this is that he's also a superb tactician).

So, in my game, (assuming I use character creation points) I'd want to make him pay about as much for his Very Strong Wrists as someone else might for simply being Very Strong, despite the fact that the former is far narrower than the latter.

What's important isn't simply the narrowness of the trait, but is also the narrowness (or breadth) of situations to which it is applied.

Stuart

[M. J. Young]

Amber: four attribute-type scores, each of which covers hundreds, possibly thousands of proposed actions, and no skill/ability type scores at all. Very very broad per named ability.

Or Legends of Alyria, in which there are three attributes any one of which can be used to support any action (it's an outcome resolution system, not a task resolution system--and extremely well designed).

(Oh--and Ron knows that already; that's for anyone else wondering how you can use one attribute for everything, and still have a reason to have three.)

--M. J. Young

[bladamson]

I've been toying with the idea of a sort of "concept worksheet".  It might cause character creation to take a little while, but might also assist those that have trouble coming up with a decent background.

Here's the idea.  It is divided into several sections, one for each phase of life up to when the character enters play.  Each section has three columns.  The first column asks some questions along the lines of "what if any enemies did the character make?", "What job or schooling did the character participate in?", etc etc, with a few lines for expounding upon the answer under each question.  Hopefully this will provide enough guidance for players who are uncertain about what sort of character they wish to play, while not hindering those who do.

In the second column, the player derives learned skills from what was listed in column one.  Probably up to some sane maximum to keep people from taking advantage of the system.

In the third column, the player derives "plot hooks" from column 1.  The character is rewarded with "Luck points" (up to some sane maximum) for each plot hook, which are more or less used to fudge die rolls in the character's favor or reduce damage, etc.  The GM can then model his story taking the characters' plot hooks into account.

I was also thinking of allowing randomly generated lifepaths for players who like having more random characters.  The output of lifepath generation would fulfill the same function as the worksheet.  It would still be up to the player to derive plot hooks, if they desire to do so.

Care to comment on any pitfalls I'm missing, or anything else?