New Girl at the Table

 Danielle is a new player in a game with Anthony and Jeremy.
 
 I'm the one that got away—almost.

    I never got involved in roleplaying games when I was a teenager, though it would have been right up my alley.  Obsessed with fantasy since I was a kid, I gobbled up every book on wizards and dragons that I could find.  Then, when I was 13 and looking through the bargain bin at my local library's yard sale, a huge event for a sleepy rural town, I scored bigtime.  I found Dragons of Autumn Twilight by Margaret Weis &Tracy Hickman.  From the first scene where the guards burst into the inn, I was hooked.  I devoured it, finding everything a tween could hope for, a band of unlikely heroes, magic, dragons and bad guys aplenty, dungeons and mysteries, all waiting for me to discover them.   Adding to the appeal of the series, it was suitably, tantalizingly racy.  I remember this scene with an elf bathing in the moonlight...  Anyway, I wanted more.

   I learned gradually that there was not just three or twelve books set in the Dragonlance universe, but over 190 volumes.  It vaguely occurred to me that these were interrelated, and I had some notion that the people involved in writing the series all knew each other, but it took me a long time to put it together that the books were based on a series of Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.  The Dungeons & Dragons rulebook was more expensive and daunting than pulp paperbacks, and my teenage self wanted instant gratification, so I was surprisingly slow on the uptake, even when one of my high school friends showed me dungeon maps he had drawn up in math class (putting his graph paper to good use).  To me, fantasy was something that happened on the page, and I was a huge fan, and I sympathized with the characters and came along for the ride.  Aside from choose-your-own-adventures, though, I would always be a passenger, and the people who wrote and participated in such stories were impossibly far removed from me.

   Fast forward to this year.  My appreciation for stories has deepened and matured, and that gulf between me and the exalted class of magicians and storytellers has narrowed to a gap I might easily cross in one step.  I find myself thinking, “I would have done it this way,” or “that villain is more interesting than the heroes,” and watching from the wings, itching to try out each character's part.  So when Jeremy invited me to a game he was starting I was thrilled, not just because it's great to watch his face light up when he's doing something he loves, but also at the opportunity to share a fantasy world as a group experience and participate in a living, breathing story.   I've come to roleplaying the long way around, but it is just as satisfying for me to manhandle and steamroller the GM's encounters, to laugh at the alchemist chef's antics and flee in terror from giant scorpions that will kill us at Level 1, to learn the seductive nature of powergaming and the delicate balance of roleplaying.  I'm new to roleplaying and the Pathfinder system, but I am not new to fantasy, and it's a pleasure to discover the mechanics behind the stories that have always fascinated me.  At some point we were all new players, and as That New Player, I'd like to say thanks to the people who stop what they are doing long enough to explain things to us at the table. 

5 Questions That Will Help You Make a Better Character

1) Why are you an Adventurer?       

Of all of the ways to earn a living in the fantasy world, adventuring probably has the greatest potential for both risk and reward. Sure, that pile of gold coins is enough to set you up for the rest of your life. And your kid's life. And your kid's kid's life. Too bad there's a dragon in between you and it. Your character should have a reason for adventuring beyond simple greed. Maybe you have an altruistic streak. Or maybe adventuring is a last resort. Figure it out so the next time your character is paralyzed neck deep in ghouls you'll know exactly what brought you there.


2) Why are you working with your fellow party members?

This goes along with 1) but is important enough to be it's own Question. While it's not very important that all the characters in the party necessarily like each other, it is crucial that they get along well enough to work together. There are certain roleplaying tropes out there that seem immensely appealing to play but in reality can be difficult work into a cohesive party. You know the ones. The gruff dwarf who hates everyone, the sly thief who will steal just about anything, the Chaotic Evil servant of the Blood God who, well… wants to kill everything. There's a metagame reason why all of your characters are adventuring together. It's because you're all (nominally) friends at the table and have decided to tell a collaborative story. But if you're playing a character with an abrasive personality ultimately the onus is on you to figure out why the other party members don't just kick your annoying butt to the curb.


3) What are your long term goals?       

This is probably also tied in with 1). Your character probably doesn't intend to be an Adventurer for the rest of his or her life. They probably have aspirations beyond an inglorious death in the middle of a swamp infested with dire rats. Maybe they have grandiose dreams of taking down the Tarrasque. Or maybe they're simply content to settle down and retire after buying a roadside inn with all of their loot. In any case, knowing where your character is headed makes it easier to make roleplaying decisions on the fly.


4) What are you passionate about?   

Passionate people are interesting. They're usually the main characters in stories because we find them interesting. You can generally get a good sense about a person based on what elicits strong emotional responses from them. What are the things that they love? What are the things that they hate? And to what degree do they feel for these things? Answering these questions sets you down a path towards more questions like: Why is your character so strongly compelled to stab [that NPC]? Does he remind you of someone from an event in your past? Is the response tied to anger, jealousy, self-loathing, or some other strong emotion? It's a bit of work to navigate through these sorts of questions but I promise that the result is worth it. You'll have a deeper understanding of who your character is and what he or she would do in a given situation.


5) What are you afraid of?

More than just a strong emotional response, fear is a back door into someone's head. Fear goes beyond love or hate. It's a base instinct for self preservation. Figuring out what your character is afraid of and why can be hugely rewarding to you as a roleplayer. You might not want to imagine your character with weaknesses. That makes sense. If you're imagining a heroic adventurer in a fantasy world, why would you make that character afraid of anything? Because it's fun. Say the half-orc wizard was once a slave, for example. He hated it and will do anything to avoid captivity. So when the Gnoll slavers ambush the party he goes crazy. He starts exploding everything left and right, not caring who else gets caught in the crossfire so long as the Gnolls don't get him again. Having your character afraid of something, however minor, sets up the potential for hugely engaging roleplaying situations.

Optimize Your Roleplaying #5: Collaborative Character Design

     Roleplaying games are collaborative endeavors from start to finish. While a GM can plan a campaign or a session alone, ultimately he needs players to run through that story. The story doesn't just consist of the encounters GM sets up but also how the players resolve those encounters. Both the GM and the players are working together to tell an epic story that everyone can be a part of. The more collaborative the story telling experience, the more fun everyone has at the table.

     I think that this type of collaboration has a place at character generation as well. Normally, in my group, character creation is a very individual process. A GM announces the type of game that he wants to run, details the setting, and lists criteria that he'd like the players to follow. Then the players go off on their own and write up a character in the way they think best. Almost all the inter-player discussion that happens revolves around balancing party mechanics and the interaction of abilities, spells, and the like. A couple of weeks later, we all sit down at the table, proudly placing our fine-tuned character sheets down only to be stopped dead by the dread question, "So how do your characters know each other?"

     But cooperating with fellow players during character creation holds rewards beyond simple party balance. The opportunity we're missing here, is to incorporate elements of other PCs' backstories into the write up of our own PCs. Instead of a mad scramble to figure out how a motley crew of adventurers would immediately get along come the first session of a campaign, we could be hammering out backstory and working out the exact details of our characters' pasts with one another. What's more is that we're missing the opportunity to craft a deeper and more engaging story even before the adventure has begun.

     I think ideally, the first session of every campaign should be character creation. We would all sit down at the table and work out what classes and races we wanted to play. Then we’d determine whether or not our characters had any sort of shared backstory then work out that backstory as needed. I think as an individual, the average roleplaying gamer has a strong sense of what he wants his character to be. So when two or more players work together to create a shared background for their characters, it can become a tricky little thought exercise to mesh two strong ideas of character together.

     I think getting into the habit of having these thought exercises with your friends can be a fun way to foster creativity when coming up with PC backstory and motivations. After all, you can’t think of everything. And bouncing ideas off of one another can end up creating more compelling backgrounds than one player could have alone.

     The other benefit from these exercises is that while working with another player in order to come up with a shared background is that you and your fellow player are investing the time and thought to become intimately familiar with your characters. You already know what they’ll do and how they’ll act in a given situation.  The fact that you’ve spent so much time thinking about where these characters are from and what they’ve done together has given you a solid basis from which to build a compelling personality.

     So go forth! Collaborate! Generate! Roleplay!

Media Studies

Whenever someone complains about a movie adaptation of a novel, telling me how it was “so different”, my response is always the same: it should be different. Some storytelling techniques work really well in one medium but translate badly to others. Role-playing games are just one more medium of storytelling, and there are some narrative devices that they just don't do well.

If you've seen Ocean's Twelve, you probably remember the scene in which the rival thief has to dance his way through the network of motion detector beams. For two minutes, we are transfixed by his every step and motion, appreciating the grace and technique that lets him weave through the room. In an RPG, this moment is almost completely lost:

“I want to dodge the lasers,” says the rogue's player.

“Cool,” says the GM, “roll Acrobatics.”

“37. I am a beautiful animal.”

“You certainly are. You're through, no problem.”

Similarly, videogames can capture really satisfying reflex-based adventuring moments- timing a jump perfectly from one platform to another, dodge-rolling under a giant's swing, or finessing a lock with a bobby pin. With the dice separating players' actions from their characters, it's hard to get that same visceral satisfaction.

I can think of plenty of other examples, but there's just one takeaway message that I want this post to have for all of them: if the moment matters, the players (and GM) should think about what medium would do it best, and try to recreate that feeling. Go for the climactic slow motion of the movies or the controller-gripping instinctual button mashing of the console platformer.

Compare:

Player: I'm gonna try to jump to the airship.

GM: You poor brave fool. I like it! Roll Athletics!

Player: ...three successes?

GM: Nice. You're hanging off one of the struts.

--vs--

Player: I'm gonna try to jump to the airship.

GM: Alright, so Liam starts running across the roof. The airship is actively getting farther away from the building. Last chance, one more step and you're committed... twelve stories down if it doesn't work... definitely doing it?

Player: gaaaahhhhh! Yes...? Yes.

GM: Your foot's on the edge. And you're rolling publicly, no takebacks, no retcons, with the knowledge that character death is permanent.

Player: Yep.

GM: And he launches! He clears eight feet out no problem, but starts falling with four left to go... roll your Athletics, sir.

Player: ...three successes?

GM: you get it with one arm. Your legs are flailing around through the air, but you're hanging off one of the struts.

And conversely:

GM: The door slams shut and something in the wall clicks. Reflex save.

Player: I don't have time to wedge something in the door? What's the save for?

GM: No time for wedging, no. You want to sit and make a Perception or trust your reflexes?

Player: Reflexes. Rolled a 16.

GM: Cool. Your spidey sense tells you there's a massive arrow trap behind the wall gearing up to shoot you. You can move forward into the corridor or stand here and try to dodge the arrows.

Player: Nope. I'll take a careful step forward. Perception?

GM: No time.

Player: Well I can't imagine this going wrong. I step forward.

GM: And another reflex save!

Player: What, really? More arrows?

GM: Nope, this time the floor's falling out from under you.

Player: I am the worst rogue... 8.

GM: Congratulations, you found a pit! 7 damage and you have a spike through your calf. Everything is terrible.

--vs--

GM: The door slams shut and something in the wall clicks. Reflex.

Player: What?

GM: You have 4 seconds. There's a LOT of clicking now. Give me a reflex save.

Player: buh... 16.

GM: The square you're in is about to be filled with arrows. Move forward or take them. 2 seconds.

Player: I move!

GM: Reflex save. 2 seconds.

Player: 8...?

GM: AND INTO THE HIDDEN PIT! 7 damage and you have a spike through your calf. Everything is terrible.

In the first example, the GM waits to call for the dice roll until the absolute last possible moment. In the second, she forces the player to act quickly to simulate what his character is experiencing.

Players can do this too. If you're doing something cinematic, describe every part of your action before you roll the dice. The buildup will either make you look incredibly cool, or will fail spectacularly. Either way, that action meant something to you, and now it's now more memorable for the whole group.

I feel like I should put this disclaimer: I am not just advocating more verbose and poetic roleplaying. The difference between “you hit it” and “you slice through its guts, spraying blood and goblin screams through the air” is pretty obvious and pretty well known, and if used overmuch, gets stale fast. 

I'm advocating specifically speeding up or slowing down your narrative to fit the kind of scene you're trying to create. If you find yourself wishing your game were a movie (or a book, or a manga, or a videogame) isolate the elements you want from that medium and bring them to the table. 

Character Sketches

Perhaps my favorite way to keep my hands busy during any tabletop RPG is to draw my character.

I'm an extremely visual person. Just like miniatures, a sketch of your character can help add an extra facet to the visualization of your game.

Shouting "Look! A huge White Dragon!" will evoke a clear image in the heads of everyone at the table.
Shouting "Look! A half-elven Arcane Archer, flamboyantly dressed in cape and top hat ala a stage magician but with an incredibly large composite longbow!" will do the same thing, but as the saying goes a picture is worth 1000 words.

D&D, Pathfinder, and all similar cooperative storytelling games are inherently creative. I like to have some sort of visual reference during the game. You'll often see me standing up at the table and miming the attacks of my Arcane Archer, with one hand outstretched and the other drawn back to my cheek as if firing a bow. But when I want to well and truly convey to everyone at the table what my character looks like from head to toe, I spend some time to put it all down on paper.

So try your hand at sketching your character! You might find that you enjoy it, even if your first attempts are pretty bad (and all of ours are). What's more, you might find out that drawing your character allows you to get a better picture of who they are. Sure, you might know how tall they are, or what color their hair is, but what is their idea of fashion? Do they have any interesting piercings or tattoos?

If you aren't a fan of creating your own art, there are other options as well:

Many artists do commissions of character sketches for relatively cheap if you shop around. Just check out any online artist community, like DeviantArt.
Some communities even exist that encourage soliciting pro bono artwork, like Reddit's r/characterdrawing/.
Barring that, there's always Google image search. Just look at all this pre-made artwork to choose from!

The world may be saturated with fantasy artwork already, but I don't think there can ever truly be enough. Now go, put your pencil to paper and breathe some visual life into your characters!