So over on Story Games I had a discussion about the way that conflict structures a character ... more specifically, the pieces of a character which are not dependent upon conflict to be interesting.  It's a topic I'm newly fascinated by:  What is it about beloved characters like (say) Firefly's Malcolm Reynolds that make us immediately happy to see them on the screen or stage or page, even before they've been involved in the events and conflicts of the story?

I think we're all probably down with the idea that a story that didn't mix that character in to some big conflict would be boring.  My more controversial thought is that a character who cannot, in some real way, stand on his own outside of a conflicted story is also boring.

In the interest of making a practical foray into the subject, I made a game world (government agency binds kids as the keepers of unholy spirit-things in order to combat Gods bent on the destruction of humanity ... sort of Pokémon meets Neon Genesis Evangelion) and set about trying to make the non-conflict description of a character.  The basic question I used to try to focus my mind is "On his best day, when everything goes right for this character, what is he like?"  But man, I started immediately tripping over my own feet in terms of conflict-oriented habits.

Draft #1:  Kyle is not a smart young man.  He doesn't let that get in his way.  Indeed, he jumps into situations where being smart is, pretty much, a pre-requisite and does his lovable best to bull through on sheer vigor and perseverance.

Man ... there's a character ready made for conflict with the world and with every other protagonist.  But other than that?  There's nothing there.  I wouldn't want to see him (for instance) doing housework.  It would just be a comedy of errors ... the only way for it to be distinctly him is if I say "Yes!  He does housework ... STUPID housework!  But he doesn't let that stop him!"

Is that really all that different from saying "My guy is a ninja, and he carries two katanas!"?  Yes, he does housework ... NINJA housework!

Draft #2:  On his best day, Kyle saves the day by helping somebody else find their strength, and face their own fears.  He has powers over dead and restless spirits ... mostly en masse, with stuff like chains and whirlwinds of tortured souls.  On his best day, Kyle is pretty damn scary, but never to his friends.

And ... there's a character ready made to support others in their conflicts.  Is this an "ontology recapitulates philogeny" thing here, with me reiterating the history of my gaming development, draft after draft?  That'd be funny.  But other than providing support?  Still looking pretty sketchy.  But there are glimmerings.  You got this wierd, scary kid ... yeah, I'd be a little interested in watching him do housework.  I'd be more interested in watching other people being all nervous and terrified of him, while he's just sitting there dusting the mantlepiece.

Draft #3:  On his best day, Kyle is insightful.  He knows people better than they know themselves, because he has confidence that there is more in them than what they, blinded by their own doubts, can see.  He stands up for them when they need a little strength and protection (and maybe a swift kick in the pants) before they can stand on their own.  On his best day, Kyle reminds us that, as scary as the damned and howling spirits are, human beings can be scarier, and that makes us proud.  On his best day, Kyle is so terrifying that his enemies couldn't imagine him being kind, and so kind that his friends couldn't imagine him being scary.  You're glad he's a little bit of a monster, because he's on your side.  And you know how important your friendship is to him, because he's a little bit of a monster, and he needs you to keep him grounded.  On his best day, Kyle knows that he's not really very smart, and makes that a strength rather than a weakness: he knows he can get things wrong, and so he puts his full focus and concentration into even little things.  He will willingly take on a secret burden of pain in order to help another.  Kyle doesn't smile much, but when he does he gives it his full attention.

Now, see, this is what I get when I clear out some of the dross and really consciously think only of the things that make me like the character as a character.  I like this guy.  I imagine him neatly, almost primly dressed.  A shock of black hair that he tries to comb into place, but that goes all unruly whenever his powers manifest.  Yeah ... I imagine that he carries a comb, and that trying to put himself back in order after a supernatural incident is one of his little habits ... a ritual of the self.

I would totally watch this kid trying to clean up a house.  He'd be so self-conscious about it ... wanting to get everything just so.  And there would have to be someone there saying "Please, please don't bother.  I can get it later," who he'd just ignore, and ....

Okay, rambling now.

The point is, I'm ready to see this kid in any type of conflict.  The character stands (at least for me) on its own.  To make a good story I only need to add conflict.  Interstellar God-Angels turn everyone in Tokyo into stigmata-bearing lizard zombies and the forces of G.A.I.A. need to get to the central nest-shrine without hurting the ensorcelled citizens?  I'm up for watching Kyle deal with that.  Young man spies a girl across a crowded room, falls in love, and tries to find out more about her?  I'm up for watching Kyle deal with that.  Both at the same time?  Oh yeah!

I would not say the same of either draft #1 or draft #2.  They're not merely lacking in details ... the details that they do have are the wrong details.  The difference between getting the wrong details (even page after page of the wrong details!) and getting the right details (even if it's only a single sentence) is the difference between a character who enchants from the first moment you see them and a character who can only become interesting after you've played them long enough to grope out the details you need.

So how do I encourage people to create those right details?  My current question doesn't do enough to prompt people into the right mindset.  Even for myself, knowing what I'm aiming for, it takes too long with too many false starts, before I start getting the good stuff.  I want to get the good stuff like turning on a faucet.  Hot and cold running awesome.  How do I do that?

Tony -- Here's a suggestion for a technique that tries to systematize the process you went through in creating Kyle. 

1.  Describe the character in one word.  What's he or she like?

2.  Now, what about the character [gets in the way of | allows him or her to overcome] that?  One word.

So you've just set up a central contradiction in the character.  It's not a conflict!  It's just something that adds depth to the one-dimensional description.  Some examples:

Spider-Man:  (a) Wisecracking but (b) guilt-ridden.
Kyle:  (a) Stupid but (b) insightful.
Mal Reynolds:  (a) Cynical but (b) good-hearted.

Notice how (b) is semantically opposed to (a).  I think that's the heart of the technique.

3.  Okay, now look at the description you've created.  Explain the contradiction that the character embodies, in a sentence or two.  How did he or she get that way?  What sustains this tension in the character?

Spider-Man:  He's trying to escape the responsibilities he feels, but they keep pulling him back.  At heart, he's a good boy.
Kyle:  He's a monster, but he's our monster, and he believes in us.
Mal Reynolds:  Even after having his youthful idealism burned out of him by being on the losing side of a war, he still tries to do what's right--when push comes to shove.

4.  Is this guy awesome now?  No?  Okay, let's add more.  What other word would you use...

Maybe this doesn't exactly mirror the process you went through with Kyle, but maybe it's simple enough to reliably reproduce.

Whaddya think?

Bill_White wrote: So you've just set up a central contradiction in the character.  It's not a conflict!

TonyLB wrote:
Where does that leave things that aren't contrasted against anything else in the character?  Like, Mal is funny.  And that's ... y'know ... part of why we like him.  Jayne is stupid, and there's really no contrast there.  He's stupid.  We like that he's stupid.

Does everything need to be in tension against something else?

Instead of a conflict list, why not a web of some kind?

Bill_White wrote: Okay, grant that Mal is funny.  That funniness (his good humor, his wittiness, whatever you want to call it) exists at the same time as his cynicism and his do-the-right-thinginess.  Like you say:  "it's part of what we like about him."  So an alternate character conception of Mal is that it's his general good humor that stands in contract to his overall cynicism.

How about this for a key to making a sympathetic character: we have to understand why they are the way they are. We need to understand their thinking and motivations enough to "get it" when they make different decisions than we would.

You start to approach this in the third iteration of Kyle -- you talk about how he's a little bit of a monster, so he looks to his friends for support, and how he knows he's not real bright, so he's very careful in everything he does. There are cause-and-effect relationships amongst the character's qualities.

I really like the "X, but Y" formulation of character traits.  But I wonder: do you really need to encode the character's sympathic qualities into character creation?  It seems to me in your example with Kyle that you're engaging in a little imaginative playing-before-playing to flesh him out, with good results; but could you have gotten the same good results by actually playing out a scene or two?  Here I'm thinking of the pilot episodes of PTA games, where I often see characters "come to life" and do things I wouldn't have expected. On the other hand, I've imagineered lots of characters that sounded really cool in my own head, but really didn't work out in the SIS. 

If I'm missing some specific Misery-Bubblegum issues here, forgive me, I haven't read or played the game.

Also, mind if I sig the phrase "Yes, he does housework ... NINJA housework!"  I think it's a meme that could thrive in the humid jungles of RPG.Net.

Danny

Tony --

TonyLB wrote:
I think my point is that I already know a lot about creating conflicts.  I know how to create conflict potential in most anything.  But I don't have the same depth of theory when talking about how to make a character appealing and sympathetic.  Conflict alone doesn't do that.

When I check my inventory of mental tools, I feel like I've got a recipe for cookies that describes the exact process of creating butter (including what cows the milk should come from) and then, having covered the butter, says "Oh, and you need some white powdery stuff too.  Sugar?  Flour?  Talcum powder?  Whatever.  Anyway, back to discussing butter!"

Hrmmmm.... Got some good cross-pollination happening with different people here, and I'm going to try to benefit from it.

Adam wrote: How about this for a key to making a sympathetic character: we have to understand why they are the way they are. We need to understand their thinking and motivations enough to "get it" when they make different decisions than we would.

Bill_White wrote: What I think you need to do is look good and hard at the process you went through in getting a draft of Kyle that you liked, that made you like him.  Look at that draft again.  Notice how it's built on contrasts, on contradictions even?  Kyle is not very bright, but he's insightful.  He's scary, but he can be kind.  He's grim, but when he smiles he gives it all he's got.  The essence of the character is there, not in the contradictions, but in the explanation of how those contradictions could possibly fit together.

Me:  Meticulous
Eric:  Carefree and rebellious
Jennifer:  Obedient and clumsy
Eric:  Graceful and arrogant
Jennifer:  Humble and contented
Me:  Miserable and quiet
Eric:  Loud and friendly
Me:  Shy and insightful
Jennifer:  Foolish and energetic
Me:  Restrained.

So, I actually got to play Misery Bubblegum in the G.A.I.A. setting last night, with Eric.  It was cool.

He (independently of anything I'd said, I think) wanted to play a hot-shot ... a surfer-dude who was lackadaisical about the meetings and protocol and stuff, but dead serious about saving the world.  The contrasts immediately flew hot and heavy.  Cody thinks rules are just for bossing kids around with.  Kyle thinks that following the rules is a sign of consideration for others.  Cody is friendly and connected outside of the organization.  Kyle is withdrawn, and has clearly lived much of his life in G.A.I.A. facilities.  Cody considers his monster (a lightning elemental) "safe," almost like a pet.  Kyle considers his monster (an amalgam of damned souls) to be even more dangerous than the Gods they face, and moves it about only with the most abusive and restrictive constraints.

It was fun and sick and awesome, in a buddy-movie-gone-horribly-wrong way.

Eric won several of the opening conflicts, while I steadily built up a bank of Contrast/Motif dice for later use.  So Kyle is a stick in the mud, and Cody is cool, and Cody has a better rapport with his monster, and Cody's cool at the beach.  And then things got all ugly.  A God of clotted starlight in human form appeared, and people flocked to worship (cuz it's a brainwashing monster).  Cody is suddenly up against peer pressure, and we rule (after Eric lost a big conflict) that he has to admit that he's basically got no defense against that kind of thing.  Kyle pulls him away, and they retreat, then return with their monsters.  Of course, by then, the God has a funky little tent-city of worshippers surrounding its altar at the Transamerica building like a living wall of meat-shield.  Eric tried valiantly to win the conflict whose stakes were, respectively, "We're clearly going to go destroy the God.  If I win then we do it with no important loss of human life," vs. "And if I win ... get a mop and a bucket."

So, I managed a come-from-behind victory on that one, largely because of the huge amount of momentum I'd built up on Kyle being the straight-arrow who follows the rules.  It turns out G.A.I.A.'s rules of engagement are pretty much of the "wipe out enemy combatants en masse, no matter who they were two hours ago," mindset.  Cody has to face the fact that, no matter how much he's got things under control, he's working for an agency that does some Very Bad Things.

Then, to follow that up, I actually managed to win the next conflict, which is about the aftermath.  So they regain consciousness on what is now the top of the TransAmerica building (several shattered stories below the previous top) and they're in the middle of a pounding lightning storm, because Cody's elemental has gone out of control.  Cody tries to rein the critter in with kindness and cajolery, but is forced (for the first time) to resort to the monster-punishing gadgets that G.A.I.A. provided him with.

So, as we summed up immediately afterwards:  Cody discovers that life sometimes throws him a curveball, and immediately turns around to horrifically abuse the one creature he has complete power over.

I want to play this again, so much.  I already have serious, serious thoughts.  There's a contrast between the monstrous and the human, and I can get it any time the monsters are on screen.  We could even do a conflict, if we wanted to:  How human are the humans?  How monstrous are the monsters?  But it'd also be cool just to have the humans doing compassionate, normal, human things and to contrast that against the unholy apparitions they are bound to.

Nothing substantive to say, Tony, other than "Very cool."

I think that the cross pollination we have here is essential. The contradictions of the character, how all these fit together; these make the character interesting to watch. And our understanding of the character as a person is what allows us to connect at whatever level we do. I wrote up some stuff last night about how to create a better understanding of a character so we can connect to them. I'll post that later on today.

Cheers,
Kirk

It sounded kinda essay-ish, so I posted it in my blog instead.

Cheers,
Kirk

Tony,

I want to go back to your OP. Where you talk about character. I have been doing that a lot in my game that I am designing recently as well and playtesting. I want to just share what has worked for me. Take from it what you will. In my two playtests this part of the game has been the same and hasn't changed, it has worked for our group.

Themes
Each character at creation has two themes. One is external, one is internal. External is what they as a character want to achieve. It is concrete, it is a goal that can be measured and accomplished. It is what drives them to do what they do. The second one Internal is a quesion. Is is for lack of a better term by me "the thing in Lit class your teacher is wanting you to look for in a book" I think for a good RPG this internal theme has to be a question where the answer is discovered as you play.

Examples
Here are two examples from our playtest...

First one - A japanese Oyabun in a cyperpunkesque new tokyo near future game
External - Protect the family interests at all costs
Internal - Can I really help the common man and be an Oyabun?

Second One - A fantasy princess who has discovered her magic mutant powers (which could caused her to be hanged)
External - Escape without being hanged
Internal - Can I ever be accepted as who I am?

Third One (from the second game a different player who hunts down those with magic mutant powers)
External - Hunt down those that have the wyrd to make the world a  safer place
Internal - Am I really doing the right thing with such much blood on my hands?

Conclusion
The external theme makes it easy for everyone to see what their goals are. The internal one makes it easy to know what the player wants to explore in the game (their "premise"). Making sure that they are in conflict with each other (such as the third one) makes it an interesting character from the start.

Maybe there is something there for you to use, or at least look at it from a different angle. I see characters as tools to express ideas in play. I can use any basic hard and flat object as a hammer (I have used many of my life time guarantee sockets as hammers in the past in RL). But a well designed hammer gets the nail in better. If nothing else, hopefully this post gives you the idea that there exists others struggling with similar ideas as yours - which I paraphrase as "How can we build characters that promote good stories [conflicts] rather than just "how can we make good stories [conflicts]".

Cheers for now,

Tokyo Steve

Well, Steve ... what you're talking about looks very much like conflict, yes?

I sorta know conflict, backwards and forwards.  I'd like to stop staring at it for a few moments, look around, see what else is out there and how I can use it.

Do your techniques touch on those other things?

Hmm...I am missing something. I don't think they are about conflict, I think they are about character. But maybe I am missing something and they are not helpful. If so then move on. I will try one more time to show how I think it is about character and your example about daily life. I am not going to use jargon, just my words at looking at it.

Lets take...me. I am a boring individual . I mean I am RL, I am not a ninja or anything. Let me put me into my system.

External Theme - Bring home the bacon. Continue working for the man, and bring home a phat salary to support family
Internal Theme - How can I continue to work for the man when I hate it so much and it conflicts with my personal views on christiantiy and the evilness of capitalism and the fortune 500?

Now I think that desribes who I am. There is no conflict there perse, it is what my being is, is the lens that I see my life through in every moment. Perhaps it is simplified a bit, I could eloborate, but for my system I want it to be managable (it is for a game after all) so maybe for another person you could expland. But clearly (at least to me) I don't see conflict, I see rather character viewpoint would be interesting to explore through whatever. Take that character and perhaps put them in a sci-fi setting, or put them in a fantasy setting or a modern one, doesn't matter.

Perhaps we are getting caught up in different terms. Are you talking about something like character traits? Like what traits make for interesting characters?  (not in a mechanics means but in a describe this person in a paragraph of less to your friends, the back jacket blurb as it were).

If somehow my post and this one aren't helping, then ignore and move on. Its not going to be productive if I think I am talking about a carrot and you think I am talking about blue.

Steve,