Dealing with wonky character concepts

[Jeffrey Straszheim]

Hey folks,

This is in reference to Ron's comments here, specifically in regards to character creation.

One thing that interests me is his comment that he did not challenge Frank's amnesia concept.  I'm wondering if this is a good general policy, not to criticize a player's character concept even if you see potential problems with it?  My new group will be getting together to create characters next week, and I've never gamed with two of these guys before.  So, say one of them comes up with a complete turtle, and the other the man with no name.  I wonder if I'm better off explaining the problems with those concepts, or just rolling with the punches and trying to juice them up during play.

I'm sure there is no one right answer here, but am interested in where the dividing line is.

[erithromycin]

I think this might even be interesting enough to move to Actual Play, to be honest, but that's just me.

I have, in the past, been critical of characters that people have created. It almost always results in defensiveness, and often an increase (mechanical or otherwise) in the traits that I disapproved of. Usually, for one reason or another, the character becomes untenable (or in some cases becomes boring because it can't acheive what the player actually wants it to do), and there's another character being created.

This is, to digress for a second, one of the reasons why I'm now very keen on shared character creation - when it's really flying, and that's a wonderful feeling, the "bad" concepts just sort of fall off to the wayside and are forgotten about, and you're left with a set that works. That said, I'm the kind of guy who'll often build characters to make other characters work, but I like to be difficult like that.

So the first thing is experience, of creating characters that do what the player wants them to do, but also of creating characters within the, say, "channels", that the GM would like them to fit so their conception of the game will work. Except that in Sorcerer, which we're talking about, that conception of the game is shared between the GM and the players, and that's one of the things that the combined character creation session throws up, and gives you the chance to change.

The second thing is making sure that players know what they want to do, and what you'd like them to do. This requires discussion. In the LARP I run with someone else who doesn't post here (because calling it my game isn't really accurate, nevermind borderline dysfunctional) we like to suggest that people bring concepts, not character sheets, and we sit with them and work with them to make sure that they function mechanically, and, more importantly, that they have something that they want to do. In the cases where this doesn't work, and with a player base just about large enough to support it, we give people NPCs for a while, usually a mite more powerful than others, and usually with an agenda, and then we watch, to see what they do with them.

I've done this three times, or so, over the last three years. The first was a success. A good roleplayer, they took the character, found the bits that interested them, and worked to develop them. The second was, in a different way, I suppose, a success. Perhaps because it was a failure. Given an NPC, after a litany of attempts and "new, killer, characters", he proceeded to play the same character that he always did. He's not left the game, and, if I'm honest, I'm not sorry to see him go. The character he kept playing over and over really wasn't a nice one, in the sense that it closed off more opportunities than it opened. He was also a chronic offender in the "my character wouldn't" stakes, but that's another discussion. The third, I think, was also a success. While their character was "on a break", they got a very powerful NPC, and it seems to have been a learning experience. At first we were asked what the NPC would do, but, gradually, over a few weeks, they started to put together the character's history and motivations to decide what they'd do next. Now that they've got their original character back, it's already looking as if he's making the same sorts of decisions with a new set of information, and it's a joy to watch.

So, in conclusion, I think the dividing line is play. I know that might disagree with what I've said up there, but I'm doing this on the fly. Character concepts that don't seem to work might just need some time to get the edges sanded off, and even those that seem perfect for a game can be bone-crunchingly uncomfortable to work with. So, as is usual for these things, the key components are communication, and a willingness to change things if they aren't working.

Drew

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

This a highly, highly localized issue for me. In Frank's case, we're talking about a guy who was very enthusiastic about role-playing again, and preserving that enthusiasm was the first priority during the prep session. Also, it's not as if I were looking at a fully-done character sheet with all the details nailed down; he presented "amnesia" concept only as a possibility, and only as conversation.

All I did was work through the character creation process just like it's presented in the book. Amnesia or not, why and how did he Bind the demon? Amnesia or not, what is the Kicker, bearing in mind that the Kicker will initiate the single most important events and decisions in his life? I was pretty confident that these questions would either reveal the amnesia as being more in the way than helpful, or integrate it in such a fashion that it would be a powerful element of play.

For other characters and other players and other games, I've done the whole gamut, from (a) flatly disallowing characters, to (b) negotiating their details and back-story, and (c) saying "OK" and sanding off the edges through play, as Drew describes. (B) is usually not very effective, unless the whole group is involved and everyone's riffing off one another for character creation in the first place. I learned that lesson long ago, when running Champions all the time.

Best,
Ron

[Jeffrey Straszheim]

Thanks Drew and Ron,

We will be creating characters as a group, which is an approach I've always insisted on since my Ars Magica days.  All in all, I guess I won't know what's going to happen until I try it out with these guys.

I'll let you know the results.