Comments on: That Cool Thing Your Character Does

By: Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2010-02-05

Ravenous Role Playing » Blog Archive » Friday Five: 2010-02-05 — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:24:26 +0000

[...] That Cool Thing Your Character Does When I create a character, I always examine the rules to see if I can find one or two things within the rules that I can do well. It could be exceptional movement, a special power, the right combination of skills/spells/feats/perks/flaws that make me special. I also, of course, come up with a character background that explains, among other things, why my character is so extra special in these areas. Sometimes the plan works, and sometimes it doesn’t. In a recent D&D 4e expedition, I ended up with an elven predator power druid that had a move of 8, which is fantastic. I also included many “shift enemy” powers that I thought would make me unique. It turns out that many of the other characters in the group had similar shift enemy powers, so I wasn’t extra special in that department. I didn’t have time to read all of the powers of all of the other classes, so where I thought I would be special a lot of research would have told me otherwise. I was disappointed at not being special in that regard, but that’s OK. I still had fun with the character for the short time that I played him. [...]

By: tommy the gangrel

tommy the gangrel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:57:30 +0000

I like the idea of writing down the cool things of your character very much. But as the story goes on, players may have different iedas of their characters, so the cool thing will change as well. I think it would be better if the GM replace the cool things with a more general question: what pleasure do the player want to gain from roleplaying his character? Try to write some words (not complete sentences) to describe his pleasure briefly. It is a more flexible way for the player to build a character he likes, and for the GM to arrange some plots that fit the character well.

By: Omnus

Omnus — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 17:50:42 +0000

You forgot one other thing that causes character disenchantment: the other PCs. If a character rolls well and comes up with a cool concept, then bellies up to the table to find that the other players have rolled unbelievably powerful characters, the enchantment over the new character can vanish in a cloud of character envy. That's a much harder obstacle to surmount, as it means you'll have to find ways to include the weaker character and his strong concept in your game that the powerful characters may try to dominate. In the game of Dark Heresy my group just started, I rolled below-average for my character's stats, but I came up with an interesting concept (a scum fallen noble with charisma to spare and good observation skills) but the opening night showed all too well the deficiencies of my character. He has no future: the combat is brutal, and with no armor or serious weapon skills (picked the entirely wrong campaign to choose combat skills as the dump stat). But the other characters all were made with combat in mind, and they'll continue to shine in 90% of the game scenarios since the GM has to make the game that entertains the most of us at the time. Rather than sticking with a lame duck (and honestly, it's the first time I've gotten to play, not run, a game in years) I'm abandoning the character for a new one now that I know the game mechanics and the thrust of the campaign itself. Was the character bad because of the not-so-great rolling? Not at all. But as in the article, the "cool thing the character does" turned out to really be a non-issue, and after talking things over with the GM, my character would never be all that relevant for what he had in mind, despite what we had talked about earlier int he pre-game.

By: Scott Martin

Scott Martin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 05:35:19 +0000

Redesigning the character is another way to make sure the character is one the player wants to play. Though if you combine that with asking for a cool thing they want to see... you might drift the character to something that excites your player.

By: Scott Martin

Scott Martin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 01:49:37 +0000

I like this approach; it's something that we often seek, but not this directly. Asking for actions and scenes taps a different part of what motivates players-- and you might pick up great scenes that aren't obvious from the character sheet. I would worry about asking players to take backup roles-- often that's only a temporary solution at best. Keep a careful eye on the player, and make sure they find fun in their new roles.

By: d7

d7 — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:20:28 +0000

This is timely! I'm doing some conversions of existing characters in an established campaign to a different system in order to run a "pilot" of another system. (Burning Wheel.) The character generation system has a lot of up-front complexity, but the core system is what I want to show off in the pilot. I want to make sure that the character sheets that I sketch out are going to feel right to the players. Asking what makes each character cool to the player will help me translate the characters faithfully. Thanks!

By: Kurt "Telas" Schneider

Kurt "Telas" Schneider — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:12:55 +0000

Nice insight. I've never put it quite that way. As a player, I've always had strong visual images of my characters in certain scenes, and presumed that every other player has those images as well. Some may not. Some may, but might not be able to communicate it gracefully. And some may not know how to realize their concept through the rules. There's definitely a fine line between advising on character builds and doing it for the players. Tread lightly...