Sunday 19 March 2017

Hopeless at creating characters

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I’m not very good at creating characters for tabletop roleplaying games. I don’t mean I’m not very good at rolling them up, but I mean that when given a blank canvas, I struggle to come up with an interesting character concept and backstory.

For example, recently I played in a Star Wars game (using Fate Accelerated). The premise of the game was that we were a couple of guys in a spaceship in the Star Wars universe. So did that mean we were bounty hunters? Criminals? Traders? Rebels? Imperials? Something else?

The GM really didn’t mind - it was up to us, the players.

So between us we created a small crew of a trading spaceship and we set off in search of cargo to trade (and inadvertently running the risk of turning the game into Traveller).

But I found it hard to create a character I was interested in.

Story not sandbox


I think the problem for me is that I want to see a story, not just a sandbox. In fact, I’m not even sure I particularly like sandbox play (if I understand the term correctly).

I really want my games to have a beginning, middle and end. And I don’t want that middle to be wandering around the game world poking the scenery with a sharp stick to see what happens. (Okay, that’s perhaps extreme, but I’ve seen it happen. That’s not the case as far as our Star Wars game goes.)

And when there’s a strong story, in my experience you need characters suited to that story.

I think my gaming history has lead me in this direction:

  • Call of Cthulhu: I played (and wrote) far too much Call of Cthulhu in my early, formative years. And as Cthulhu tends to be all about the mission/scenario, I kind of have that in my blood. (I can’t imagine a Call of Cthulhu sandbox…)
  • One-shots: These days I play in (and run) a lot of convention one-shots. They tend to be mission-focused, due to the nature of a short, one-shot game. They also tend to have pre-generated characters designed to suit the scenario. (At least, the best of them do - but I’ve talked about that before.)
  • Freeforms: I play in (and write) a lot of freeform larps. Freeforms are often little more than a bunch of pre-written characters put in a setting and told to get on with it. So I’m either used to being given a character that suits the game, or I’m writing characters that I know will be fun to play given the game I’m writing.
  • Sandbox inexperience: When I look back, it turns out that I’ve not played in many true sandboxes. There has always been a point to the adventures. (And the last sandbox I played in was over 20 years ago.)
  • Short games: I prefer short games. I’ve never run or played in a long campaign - 10-12 sessions is the absolute most I’ve played or run, and 6-8 is probably more common. I don’t think I’d want to play in an epic campaign - there are too many games out there that I want to play.

Solutions


I like it when a GM gives me some guidance as to what sort of character suits the game we’re going to run. For the Star Wars game we did some collaborative world building, but looking back the key bit we missed was to define the issues that the game was about. We didn’t follow the Fate Core or Sparks process, and maybe if we’d done that I’d have a clearer idea of the character I wanted to play.

And I really like pregenerated characters, although that’s more work for the GM. And it’s nice to be able to tailor a pregen, so the PbtA playbooks are pretty close to perfect, and I’ve started using that basic idea when writing pregens for my games. (Some excellent examples here for Fate.)

Friday 17 March 2017

AireCon

Last weekend I visited AireCon, the new Yorkshire-based games convention. Technically I think this was the fourth AireCon, but given that the first was in one of the organiser’s houses, and the previous two were in Bradford, but I missed them completely. But given that AireCon is rapidly expanding and its new home was the Harrogate International Centre, I thought I’d support it this time.

I bought a full ticket (Fri-Sun), but I ended up unable to go on the Friday. But I was there for both Saturday and Sunday.

Spacious!
Anyway, a few thoughts:

Location: Harrogate International Centre is a really nice venue. Large, spacious, on-site catering (and although the food was expensive, it was pretty good.) There was some unused space as well - three spare rooms that didn’t seem to be used much (the quiet play area, the large games space and the event space). The quiet area was used by some people to eat, and the event space had some people in it on Saturday but was empty when I popped my head in on Sunday.

Boardgames: tabletop games were really well presented. Huge versions of Ticket to Ride and Pandemic, a comprehensive games library, many games designers demoing their wares. And lots of people playing games. It was an awesome place to play new games, but not quite so good for meeting new people to play with. (I played Pandemic, Star Realms and Crabz.)

Family friendly: Loads of families with kids, whether playing giant Ticket to Ride or just looking at the stalls and playing with their mums and dads.
Giant Pandemic (we lost) with giant Ticket to Ride in the background
Some tabletop rpgs: The tabletop roleplaying needs a bit of attention and clearly isn’t as well developed yet. Paizo sponsored the marquee, and there was a “how to learn Pathfinder” GM, along with some other GMs, including Simon Burley and John Dodd. there. There were other GMs as well, and I played a SF horror game by John Dodd and an introductory Pathfinder adventure (more on that below).

I think the tabletop roleplaying still needs to develop. There’s an intriguing difference between regular tabletop convention goers (not many at the convention) and casual boardgamers who might drop into a game. The regulars want a four hour slot, the casual boardgamers want something that will take about an hour or so (like a regular boardgame). I’m sure there’s a solution in there somewhere.

(The AireCon website doesn’t help - it’s not very tabletop roleplaying friendly.)

GoPlayLeeds: I attended along with a few others from GoPlayLeeds, but it wasn't a great success for us. We weren't really organised, and so I don't think we drummed up any new players. (But then there were many more boardgamers than roleplayers present.)

We also didn't advertise ourselves very well. There was a community area which I found which we could have advertised on, but as far as I can tell, it wasn't directly linked from the AireCon website so I didn't find out about it until too late.
AireCon community noticeboard - which I didn't find out about until too late

Pathfinder: I played in an introductory Pathfinder game, a simple adventure involving finding a teenager who had run away and gotten a bit in over his head. I’ve not played Pathfinder (nor much D&D for that matter), and to me the switch between character interaction (what I think of as roleplaying) and the tactical miniatures game for the combat (never my favourite bits of tabletop rpgs) was a bit of a clunky switch.

But the GM was lovely (I'm sorry, I didn't catch his name), and I can really see the appeal of the Pathfinder society. The teenager in me thought that was great.

Mugs! AireCon’s mugs are really nice. For £6 you get a nice souvenir and £1 off tea and coffee at the drinks counter. They even come with a stick of chalk so you can write your name on the side so they don’t get mixed up.

Deodorant: One thing that made me smile was seeing three cans of deodorant in the gents. I’ve no idea if they were used, but it was a nice touch.

Friday 10 March 2017

DramaAspects in Play

So the other night I once again inflicted "DramaAspects" on my players (previously discussed here and here). I'm still experimenting as they're not as easy as I first thought...

I created pre-generated characters for the adventure with multiple-choice drama aspects. I did this because recently I found myself in the position of creating a drama aspect for my own character, and I found it surprisingly hard when faced with a blank piece of paper.

So I took a leaf from the Apocalypse (and Sophie LagacĂ©’s excellent Fate of the Inquisitor playbooks) and went for a multiple-choice approach to my pre-generated characters, including the drama aspects. (Why I find my player characters so hard to create yet pregens so easy may be a topic for another time. But never mind.)

Player characters


Of the five pregens, Jon chose Ezekial Gunn (overconfident student of cat magic) and Terry Chose PC Simon Ironwood (lazy half-fae career constable).

Their drama aspects, were, as presented to them:

  • Gunn: I need ____________ to [teach me to _____________ / let me protect them / forgive me for scarring them] but he/she won’t because _______________________
  • Ironwood: I need ___________ to [support my promotion request / let me teach them to See / respect me as a policeman] but he/she won’t because _________________

Invokes and Compels


Drama aspects are all very well, but the point of an aspect is being able to invoke and compel it. For many aspects invoking and compelling is obvious, but I’ve found that one weakness of drama aspects is that I don't find them as easy to invoke or compel. So I'm taking the time now (between sessions) to think about that in advance.

In essence, I see it that the drama aspect can be invoked to help with the thing that the character wants, and compelled to encourage the character to overcome the objection.

Ezekial Gunn: I need Ironwood to let me protect him, but he won't because he's never trusted anything to do with cats.

Gunn can invoke this aspect when he is somehow protecting Ironwood.

This aspect can be used to compel Gunn to do something that will persuade Ironwood that cats can be trusted. Such as:

  • Trusting a cat not to kill an important mouse
  • Trusting a cat with an important task (like that’s going to go well!)

PC Simon Ironwood: I need Ezekiel to let me teach him to See, but he won't because he believes that if he learns such fae blood magic then his totem cat spirit (that grants magic powers) will leave him.

Ironwood can invoke this aspect if Gunn is present when he is Seeing, and Ironwood explains what he is doing (i.e. is teaching).

This aspect can be used to compel Ironwood to do something that will persuade Gunn that Seeing won't affect his magic powers. Such as:

  • Capturing his totem cat spirit and demonstrating that Gunn's magical powers are unaffected by its absence.
  • Doing something that removes Gunn's cat magic (and thus the obstacle to learning).
  • Getting Gunn to learn some other fae blood magic first to demonstrate that it doesn’t affect his cat magic.

I haven't discussed these ideas with Jon and Terry yet, and I expect that they’ll have other, better, ideas.

Character flaws


I haven’t seen anyone use a character flaw as a reason for refusal yet. That may be because when players are choosing their reason, they don’t want to project onto the other character, so they pick a reason internal to their character.

I think the way for that to work is that to phrase it so that it’s a perceived character flaw, not necessarily a real one.

The keywords being “...because he/she thinks that I…”

 So: ...but she won’t because she thinks that I [ can’t be trusted / am too immature / am too bookish / am not worthy.]

These can then be used to compel a character to do something foolish/dramatic to show that they do not have the character flaw. (“I am not too bookish, I’ll show her…”)

Looking ahead


Next time I do this I will try to remember to ask the players to think about compels and invokes when they write their drama aspects. And I might nudge them towards “he/she thinks that I…”

(I’m sure this will all get easier with practice.)

The next thing to think about is resolving a drama aspect, but that’s a subject for another time.