Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 10 - Good Character Design

Episode Date: March 17, 2020

DOUBLE DIGITS and I STILL DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING! Jeremy this time talks about building characters around tropes, concepts, pictures, party roles, and statistics.  Finally, Jeremy discusses the things your character simply must be, regardless of the personality he/she has.

Before we get started, I wanted to say something very quickly. A lot of people are scared about the coronavirus, and for good reason. It's very dangerous for the elderly and people with underlying health conditions. We all love to play role-playing games, but please consider using some online solutions like Roll20 or Fantasy Grounds for the time being. I'd like to ask that you be smart, get your news from a reputable source, avoid touching your face, I know I'm beautiful too and it's hard, and wash your damn hands every now and then. Stay safe out there. But for now, here's episode 10. This episode of Taking20 Podcast is brought to you by Rolling for Initiative, the number one source of player stress. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for tuning in to Taking20 Episode 10, Good Character Design.

This episode we're going to talk about ideas for characters, inspirations for characters, and then maybe what makes good characters inside of role-playing games. First, a couple of rules. role-playing games. First, a couple of rules. Rule one, if you have a good character idea or what you feel like is a good character idea, talk to your GM about how to incorporate him or her into the story. The GM will help you weave that character's backstory into the adventure or the campaign, and it will make that character feel more integrated into the world around him or her. Rule 1a, if you have a character idea and you don't know how to build it, talk to your GM. Trust me, as a GM, I have and will happily in the future spend hours with you to build the character that you want to play inside an adventure. There are all sorts of utilities that can help you with it, but nothing replaces spending time with your GM to build the character properly.

So how do you come up with a good character when you really don't have a lot of ideas? Well, one of the easiest things that you can do is build around a character concept. TVTropes.org has more character ideas than you can shake a stick at. If you go to TV Tropes and search for heroes, you get this massive list. Everything from the punch clock hero, to the Failure Knight to the Farm Boy. We've all seen movies, we've all read books, and if you really look around you, you can find tons of characters that show up over and over again. Random examples that I can think of include like the strong but silent type, which if you've seen the movie Predator, the character Billy fits

that archetype well. The rogue with a heart of gold, of which Han Solo is kind of the gold standard. People who have taken a vow of non-violence and then get thrust into violent situations. People like the Dandies and Dear Wendy. The street-tough punk like John Bender from The Breakfast Club. The old man or old woman on One Last Adventure, the entire group of characters from the movie Bubba Hotep. The manic pixie dream girl like Sam from Garden State, or the career criminal like Neil McCauley from Heat. The blind seer who sees into the great beyond like Chirrut from Rogue One. Another example of that would be from Oh Brother Where Art Thou, the old man that's on the railroad track. The Gentle Giant, of which Andre the Giant is the gold standard from The

Princess Bride. And of course, the Ingenue, which Maria from West Side Story fits real well. There are all sorts of examples of character concepts in all kinds of media that you can find. You can always pick a random character from media, from books, from movies, from TV, from Netflix, from whatever, and build a character around that particular character's concept. Another thing you can always do is find a picture that you like that you think would look like an awesome character and build your character around that picture. There are all sorts of places that you can find this, like Pinterest, for example. I did that recently in a one-shot with a female goblin rogue.

I found a great picture of this sassy-looking female goblin rogue that I thought was perfect for a character I wanted to play. Named her Eddie. She was a ton of fun to play just by looking at the picture with the purple hair and the purple sash. And if you actually do a search online, I'm sure you'll find it as well. I sent a message out to the artist and thanked him for drawing that because it was just absolutely fantastic. There's a subreddit called Imaginary Characters that has a ton of drawings in it. You can always

go there, do a search through the drawings, find one you like, and then build a character concept entirely around that picture. Deviant art, wikimedia, google image search, bing, whatever. The only thing I would suggest is that if you do use an artist's image as an inspiration for a character, just send them a quick message thanking them. I'm sure they would appreciate it. Rather than building around a picture or building around some concept that you have in your head, you can always build your character around a role that you want that character to play within the party. For example, if you start talking about character types in Dungeons & Dragons or Pathfinder or Starfinder or any other RPG, you can always build around damage per round or damage per turn. A lot of times in MMOs, these are called DPS characters, damage per second.

The idea behind this character is you do the biggest damage per attack or the most attacks per round. You are the jaws that chew up the bad guys and bash them with your maul, kill them by the dozen. Another role you could build around is healer. Healer a lot of times is a hit point battery, but one of the issues with playing healer is a lot of times is a hit point battery, but one of the issues with playing healer is a lot of times that role can become dull and repetitive. You do the same thing over and over. Character becomes damaged, you lay on hands, or you do a heal check, or you cast cure light wounds, or you channel energy, or you use a medicine kit. It can easily become dull and repetitive. If you are playing a healer of

some type, look for ways to make it unique. When I ran through Rise of the Rune Lords as a player, I played a dwarf cleric that was permanently enlarged. He was a dwarf that was 8 foot 6 inches tall and 1,400 pounds because of the way enlarged person works. He wielded a Dorne Dergar, which think of it as a bowling ball on the chain, that once you enlarge it becomes eight times heavier. So it becomes 120 pound bowling ball on this massive chain. It was a ton of fun. He did a tremendous amount of damage. The only problem was is that he really wasn't as good of a healer as he could have been, but it was fun to wade into melee combat with this glass cannon that could pull off quickened heals every now and then and still swing a giant weapon that hit like a truck. As a joke, many, many years ago, I played

a cleric that dealt healing via a sling. He would cast Cure Serious on a sling stone and sling it at the person that he wanted to heal. If it hit you, it did 1d4 damage, but it healed you for 2d8 plus 1. His general phrase was, you want some healing? You feeling lucky? Sure, it's stupid and I even knocked an ally below zero with it once, but it was fun as hell to play and I didn't stand around going, you get a cure and you get a cure and you get a cure and oh look, combat's over. I even once had a DM NPC that was playing as the cleric. Every time he channeled or cast a cure spell, played six seconds of a random song by the band The Cure. So the character needed healing and the player would have to deal with six seconds of it's Friday, I'm in love or in between days. So find a way to

spice up your healing role if you're going to be a healer. Another role that you can play within a party is the buffer slash debuffer. The buffer concentrates on positive effects for the party, giving your team powers and abilities from behind the lines, make your team stronger, give them better attack roll bonuses. Give them better saving throws. Make them better at being them. The debuffer is the opposite side of that coin. The debuffer concentrates on negative effects for the enemy, where you take powers away. You make them weaker. You make them not able to attack as well. You make them more vulnerable to the abilities that your party has. Both of these roles can serve a party very well.

Either one of them would be a fantastic addition to the party. Another role that's not talked about as much, but I believe was born out of the MMO EverQuest, is a role called the Mezzer, which is short for Mesmerizer. This is a variant of a debuffer that focuses on stunning or incapacitating enemies. Think daze attacks. Think the ability to halt their movement, the ability to halt their attacks. And so it's a variant of the debuffer that effectively tries to stun lock enemies that allows your attackers to do more damage to them while they can't move. The final major party member I want to talk about is the tank. Maybe you have

the strongest armor or you're the hardest to hit. Maybe you have the most hit points. Maybe you have some sort of regeneration or ability to neutralize their attacks in some way. But either way, your job is to, if you'll pardon the term from MMO, draw aggro to bring the monsters to you so that your nice squishy healer in the back doesn't get as many attacks against him. Finally, if you're looking for inspiration to build a character, there's nothing wrong with rolling the stats randomly in the way that your GM would allow, and then build your character from there. You happen to roll a high Charisma, let's play a Sorcerer. You happen to roll a high Dexterity, let's play a Rogue, or whatever your gaming system calls those classes. One of my favorite articles that

I've read recently is Building Better Characters No. 1 by Greg Schneider. It's an old article. It's been around for a long time, but these concepts are critical to good character design. No matter how you build your character and what your character's role is, that character must be able to work in a group. You can start out maladjusted, but you must want to become part of a group. No one wants to adventure with Sulky the Bitter Elf. And there's nothing wrong with being rough around the edges, but don't go all loner and try to get away from the party anytime that you can. Regardless of its inspiration and regardless of its source, that character must be fun for the player and the rest of the party.

You have to enjoy playing it, and the rest of the party has to enjoy being around it. One of the concepts I'll say to my players many times is that your fun stops at the other player's nose, which means if it's tons of fun for you, your fun doesn't force the other players to get along with you. So your character must be fun for the other characters and players to put up with. Not fun at their expense. Unless you're running an evil campaign, all PCs really should be good at heart. A party that consists of good PCs with one evil one can cause undue heartache around the table. The party comes upon a merchant that's been robbed,

and he's lying there half-conscious next to his caravan. The party heals him up so that at least he's not going to die, and the evil wizard walks up while the party's distracted and says, give me your shoes or I'll kill you. Not fun. The other players probably are going to start to get annoyed by it over time, so at least have PCs be good at heart unless you're running an evil campaign. Another thing about building better characters by Greg

Snyder, that character must have a reason to adventure. Tragic backstories are cliche where, my parents died, or my spouse died, or my kids died, or usually it's somebody died. But a lot of backstories for adventurers are tragic for a reason. I mean, let's face it. If you had a classic, good, happy backstory, would you become an adventurer? Malleus, yes. Would you like to leave your successful winery and go into old, unexplored caves and fight monsters? Fuck no.

I've got a winery. Piss off. So a lot of times a reason to adventure is the tragic backstory. It doesn't have to be, but it's very common. Another possible reason to adventure is maybe the character wants to accomplish a goal. They want to be rich and they see adventuring as their path to it. They want to fulfill a quest. Maybe the big bad evil guy has stolen the MacGuffin and they're the ones that decided they have to go retrieve it. The character needs to combat an evil.

Well, if no one else is going to rise up against Sir Malevolent the Shithead, I guess I will. Maybe the character wants to emulate someone else. Maybe they're young and adventurers roll into town like rock stars, spin gold like it's going out of style, and then move on to the next town. And they say, that's the life I want to lead. Maybe the characters are running away from their life. They don't want to become a scullery maid. They don't want to become a farrier's apprentice. They don't want to be the third wife of Baron Smarmy Von Poopernick. They don't want to go to prison. Maybe the characters have no other option. They've lost everything. They're broke. Maybe this is their Hail Mary to win the guy of his dreams.

Whatever reason, characters must have that reason to become adventurers. Because let's face it, it's a dangerous life. Good characters must fit the campaign style. If you're running a space campaign and you decide, I want my character to be completely terrified of the void of space, you're going to have a bad time. The players around you are going to have a bad time. The players around you are going to have a bad time, as their characters have to carry your catatonic

butt from one place to another. Don't get me wrong, playing against type can work. For example, if somebody's running a dark campaign and somebody wants to play cheery unicorn bubbles adventuring through the pit of unending pain, that still could be a lot of fun. Finally, to be a good character, again per the Greg Schneider article, the character must have long-term goals. Maybe the character wants to retire wealthy. Maybe the character wants to open a tannery. Maybe the character wants to run a winery that competes against that winery that Malleus is running. That way he could go back to him and say,

See, you should have gone on an adventure. Maybe the long-term goal is that you want to rescue the prince and marry him. Your character needs to have some sort of long-term goal that adventuring helps accomplish. So what are some tips? Well, if nothing else, if you don't know what to role play, role play yourself. You know you. Be you, but you know, elfier. Make your stats similar to maybe what yours would be. I don't know, mine, I'd want to up my con a little bit, but be you and adventure as yourself. You can always emulate a character from movies, TV, literature, as I talked about earlier. Be like John McClane.

You're trying to visit your family and you get caught up foiling a bank robbing scheme. Be Harry Potter. Be a DC or Marvel hero and emulate them as best you can in the gaming system that you have. You can also even be non-heroic characters based that have to rise to heroic levels. Be Woody from the show Cheers. Be Woody from the movie Toy Story. Be Woody Allen, a famous director. You can also be a non-heroic character that's thrust into the role of greatness. You can always play a family member or friend that you know well, but you may not want to tell them about it. Yeah, I'm role playing as you and you died in the swamps of despair. If you're really stumped, there's a website that I hesitate to full-on recommend, but it is a resource. It's www.whothefuckismydndcharacter.com.

thefuckismydndcharacter.com. I'll put a link to it in the resources. Going there and clicking, I get, okay, the character I got is, quote, an inconsiderate dragonborn ranger from a prison colony who is a recovering cannibal. Hmm. Cannibal and prison colony. Maybe cannibalism is what sent him to prison. Ooh, ooh, okay. I think I got prison. He's full of regret over who he ate. He ate a family member or a friend. They were trapped in the wilderness and maybe the friend died. The rations ran out, the food ran out, they were snowed in, and they couldn't get any more food. Hunger got the best of him and he started eating part of his dragonborn ally. When the rescue party found him weeks later, he was alive but with his partially eaten friend next to him. He gets arrested for cannibalism, gets sent to prison, and was released recently.

Let's see, why would he be an adventurer? Oh, okay, he's a felon and he can't get a job anywhere. So he's tried to go back to his old life. Nobody wants to hang around this dragonborn who was convicted of cannibalism and he gets tired of the jokes. So he decides that adventuring is maybe the way he's going to make his money. Ooh, here we go. Let's add a secret. He keeps the reason for going to prison a secret from the party until the party's adventuring and they're low on resources. That would be interesting. You know what? Fark it.

That's not a bad character to play. I'd roleplay the shit out of this. Let me do one more and see what I get. Eh, okay. Interesting. Yeah, I like the first one a lot more than the second one. Point being, there are inspirations for good character design all over the place. You can always play tropes.

You can always build around pictures. You can always build around the role that you want your character to play within the party itself. You can also roll stats and decide what kind of character that you want to be. You can always use some of the what kind of character that you want to be. You can always use some of the random generators and websites that are out there to help pick what type of character that you want to run. Or if all else fails, play yourself. Put yourself in that Starfinder adventure. Put yourself in that GURPS encounter. Put yourself in the lost mines of Phandelver. Whatever type of character concept you picked,

pick the type of character that you want to play, work with your GM to build it, have fun with it, with you and your friends around the table. I once again want to thank our totally not made up sponsor, Rolling for Initiative. If your GM cusses at the beginning of a battle, he rolled low.

This has been Jeremy Shelley, and this has been Taking 20, Episode 10, Good Character Design. And I hope that your next game is your best game.