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 ?

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."

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.

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.

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

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

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

Hi Thierry,

You wrote,

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

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.

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 ?

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

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

Thierry Michel wrote: 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 wrote: 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.

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?

Sounds pretty cool to me.

See cyberpunk for something similar that might give you ideas on what sort of developmental areas to look into.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: See cyberpunk for something similar that might give you ideas on what sort of developmental areas to look into. Mike

B. L. Adamson wrote: 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.

M. J. Young wrote: One thing you might consider is to leave that second column blank, and split it into two columns. Then when a situation arises, let the players say, "It's possible that my character knows how to do X, because he might have learned that when he Y." Assign a probability to it. Sometimes that probability will be 100%, and you'll just grant it; sometimes it will be 0% and you'll say, "that's ridiculous, there's no connection between going to clown school and being able to fix a faucet." Most will be between. You'll assign the probability and roll the dice. If it's good, it gets added to column B as something the character knows how to do; if it's not good, it gets added to column C as something the character doesn't know how to do at this point.

That way you can represent the vast number of skills characters really have without having long skill sheets. Nothing wrong with long skill sheets--I use them all the time, and enjoy them. But if you're looking for a way to control how many useful skills characters have, and you don't have any better way than maximum number (very unrealistic, it seems to me), it might give you what you want. It also gives you surprises. After all, probably very few people who know me would guess that I drove a dump truck in college--but I know how to do it, because I did, even if I never do it again. So, too, with characters, you'll have those moments where one of them says, "I did something like this before, let me try," and everyone discovers a new facet of the character not previously explored.