After considerable discussion and informal social contract forging, my Hârn game began today with character creation and backstory. Despite being inspired by Scripty's great thread, I didn't leave in a lot of connections or hooks that gave the PCs emotional roots. We decided early on to go with the familiar BRP (3rd edition RuneQuest) as the system, which at least has enough of a lifepath to give the characters parents.

I tried to dig into the psychological basis of everyone's concept--"Well, why are you a thief?"--so they were forced into digging a little deeper into the concept. What I want is for the character to become psychologically alive for the player.

I feel some light roleplaying of backstory is important to this. We went over half a decade in each character's life, assigning skill points year by year and glossing over the basic events and getting a little more in-depth over some key events. This is how we go from "Farmer, Civilized" to "Duelist."

Sean (ADGBoss on the Forge) had a core backstory and character arc in mind already. He is "The Duelist." The others are coming along well; a significant reason I'm running this game is as therapeutic recovery for players who had been involved in dysfunctional or abusive play before ("Show us on the doll where the Dungeon Master touched you.").

M. is "The Second-Story Thief;" P. is "The Adventurer." A misunderstanding in the latter's character concept lead to the current setting. She asked if she could play an Alan Quatermain type; I said yes. To me, that meant the raiding of tombs, lost arks and the like. To her, it meant the above, plus "I have a gun." So, I got consensus from the other players to move the timeline up six hundred years, when thankfully my nearly complete lack of Hârn supplements won't mean much.

The only mechanic I'm adding is trump cards, which the player can use once per session to avoid the Whiff Factor, and in so doing, narrate the events of their success. It also is intended to "claim the spotlight" when a character's specialty will come into play; however, P. has already expressed concern about the overlap between her and M.'s skills. I said I hoped discussion and compromise might work out any conflicts.

So there it is. I leave this as a record for posterity (ha!), and to talk about the trump cards I first introduced for a D&D game.

Just a bit of a response on whats going on, though Dave put things very well I think. The session as a whole went pretty well. The biggest problems I think we will have are:
1) P. (The Adventurer) is very heavy Actor Stance Sim. She likes to become her character, speak in character, and generally use only IC information when making decisions, though she will do her best to bend that a bit if it becomes necassary to use OOC knowledge. Generally she does not like characters using OOC knowledge, though she does not mind if players know. So its not a question of keeping secrets but of other players using OOC knowledge in game. It comes from years of Abused player experience. She was also skeptical of the Trump Card's usage but I think once we use it, she will see how useful it will be for Narration and Spotlight
2)M. (The Thief) has wanted to play a thief, a second story burglar really, for some time. She is what I think you could call a Monopoly Role Player. That is, the battleship represents her character, she rolls the dice, lands ona space, and buys or pays a fine based on what the square says. Its not a Gamist approach because she is not interested in competetion as a means to an end. She simply likes to play. M tends towards passivity and is content to let the GM do his or her thing, and then complain afterwards. So the challenge here will be to get her to be pro-active about her character, whatever that turns out to be.

All in all though the three of us are agreeable and amenable to newer ideas then others who could be playing. So in a couple weks we will see how it goes. Dave does not think he built emotional roots for the PC's but I think he did. Some things about the Backstory / life path did not go according to script as it were and there are threads linking the three of us. One between M and my character, my Duelist nobley took up for her at one point. One or two between P. and M. although between my character and P. not too much yet...

Sean