Monday, February 9, 2009

Randomness and Differentiation

Sorry it's been so long since I posted, but the Shadow of the Plague fell on House Kesher. Yea, it fell, but has passed on, may it not soon come again...
A few years ago I came to the realization that I was sick to death of character histories. Some of it stemmed from the cliche that, really, no back story I had ever created had really been used by any given GM. Although, if I'm being honest, I was usually the GM and, while I encouraged back stories, rarely did I do anything with them: Mea culpa too.

Some of it also came from years of playing indie games where mechanically-relevant back stories were created during play, sometimes by the player alone, sometimes with the help of the group (Polaris is a really good example of this, as is In a Wicked Age, mentioned a few posts ago); this all made the "Orcs killed my family" clunker seem less than useless.

So enter my first attempt to let go and roll up a character for ODD completely randomly, right down the line. My task was to create a character out of whatever the dice gave me. Here were the results:

Str: 10
Int: 12
Wis: 9
Dex: 11
Con: 6
Cha: 7

Hm. Not too inspiring. Years ago I would've whined about it. However, that wasn't an option here---whining to yourself is usually just silly...

So, I thought, he may as well be a Magic User, even though that Con score is going to mean a -1 to all HP rolls. Except I had a sudden flash: Oh no---even with the Con, he's going to be a Fighting Man. He constantly drinks wine to deal with a persistent hacking cough that has sapped his strength and soured his disposition. His alignment was obviously Neutral at best, sliding toward Chaotic. I bought him a scimitar for pure color, a quart of wine for character and who knows what else, decided he could speak both Gnollish and Elvish, named him Ballantine, and he was ready to go. I'd play this guy in a second. And you know what else? I would make Con rolls after every fight to see if he didn't double over in a coughing fit. And if he did, well, that'd start to shape the rest of his actions. There's no way I'd ever have come up with that had I rolled 6d6takingthebestthreeofeachrollandputtingthemwhereIwanted, or allocated points, or whatever.

Ballantine's patron god is Randomness.

I was so excited I rolled up another character on the spot:

Str: 14
Int: 9
Wis: 7
Dex: 10
Con: 13
Cha: 15

Okay. Better scores on the surface. So, as the rules allow, I knocked his Wis down to 4 and raised his Str up to 15. No mechanical effect, but it does get him the 10% bounus on XP earned if I make him a Fighting Man. Anyone with a Wis of 4 is obviously Lawful, and probably a dwarf. So, a Lawful Dwarven Fighting Man, almost foolishly devoted to some kind of cause, most likely (given his Cha) with a couple of devoted followers. I named him Redbeard, made sure he was wearing platemail, and would defintely load him down with first hirelings, then henchman, for him to awe and boss around. Not bad either!

And the thing is, these details aren't really "backgrounds", per se; they're more like hooks upon which to hang some quick and dirty characterization during play. Each of these characters, of the uber-generic classificaton "Fighting Man" are already starkly differentiated from one another, all through the simple, built-in game tool of Randomness. Oh, Randomness, how I used to loathe you.

And how I love you now.

9 comments:

  1. I've never really gotten into the long winded history thing lately. I did when I was younger, but I think that was that natural kidlike tendency to obsess on the finest details. (OK, I still do, but I'm better about it. Honest. The meds help too. See?)

    I like the one to two liners, especially based on the stats. I like tools like the Labyrinth Lord CharGen which gives you a whole bunch of random ideas for character personality.

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  2. Yeah, the detail-overkill (part of which is what led to my "Devil's in the Details" articles in FO!) definitely had a whiff of young geek obsession. :) I think it also had to do with the fact that, especially in ADD, there was explicit direction to create some kind of background. The more detailed rules even seemed to support it, though in reality it still didn't matter unless someone madeit matter.

    I've only glanced at LL; I didn't realize it threw in "random personality" material. I'll have to take another look. I had this idea for awhile with ADD, to generate characters by rolling in the Rogue's Gallery, especially since they all have randomly determined "personality nuggets" included... Really, these days, all I need are a couple of random hooks and I'm ready to go. Almost paradoxically, I end up feeling much more free to play, since I'm not shackled to a more or less intricate background, self-created or otherwise.

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  3. So, as the rules allow, I knocked his Wis down to 4 and raised his Str up to 15.

    Check again: "Units so indicated above may be used to increase prime requisite total insofar as this does not bring that category below average,
    i.e. below a score of 9."
    -- Men & Magic, p. 11


    (Sorry. I spent the entire weekend at Con of the North in a 3.5 game; it brings out the rules lawyer in me...)


    Other than nit-picking, this looks good; it's the kind of background details you can just throw into the game.

    Like Bahb the Draftee -- his stats certainly don't warrant him becoming a fighting-man of his own accord, so I decided that he hadn't had any choice in the matter. Now he does it because it's what he does (and he's not much cop at anything else, either.)

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  4. I don't have the LL rules book, the personality bits come from the online LL chargen program. It sounds like they may have stolen their ideas from Rogue's Gallery, as these are personality nuggets as well.

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  5. Check again: "Units so indicated above may be used to increase prime requisite total insofar as this does not bring that category below average,
    i.e. below a score of 9."
    -- Men & Magic, p. 11


    You know, I imagine I've always been blind to this particular rule since I was like, "Duh. Why the hell would I want a stat below average?" How age changes us! :)

    Hey, wait--his Wis was already below average... Is that a loophole??

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  6. I'm a firm believer in letting the character's story evolve rather than fretting over it from first level. As a player, NOTHING annoys me quite so much as some other PC coming into a game insisting that he/she and some other PC or NPC already have a history between them in spite of what said other PC or the referee says to be true.

    I also don't care much for when PCs character sheet looks like an autobiography complete with family tree, list of personal contacts, and a long self-psychoanalysis. The "one liner" approach is much more flexible lest the player wish to evolve the character in a previously unseen direction.

    On the other hand, by the time a character reaches 4th level or so, he/she should've had plenty of time in the game-setting to have filled in those little details such as how he got his training or where she studied magic. There should be a sense of a "past" and possibly a tangent of the character's life that the referee can exploit into a new plot hook.

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  7. The "one liner" approach is much more flexible lest the player wish to evolve the character in a previously unseen direction.

    Absolutely, and I think the "unseen direction" idea is key. In my experience, it's almost always far more interesting as details evolve out of full-contact play.

    On the other hand, by the time a character reaches 4th level or so, he/she should've had plenty of time in the game-setting to have filled in those little details such as how he got his training or where she studied magic. There should be a sense of a "past" and possibly a tangent of the character's life that the referee can exploit into a new plot hook.

    Again, right on. By fourth level, enough stuff should've happened, and enough "items" been gained, that a real character is emerging. Which is good, since 4th or 5th level is about when they become capapble of having a real effect on the larger world.

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  8. I think these things have a cycle. When I was a kid my characters never had histories. Then during my teenage years I gradually got into the whole biographical thing and my characters were always accompanied by a page of melodrama. Now I'm back to the beginning again, and have a real appreciation for randomness and development during play. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of gamers didn't follow the same pattern.

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  9. I think you're probably right. Of course, there's only been maybe 2.5 generations of gamers, so it's hard to tell for sure. If my kids get into it, it'll be interesting to see what choices they make as they get older, assuming they learn to play under my current aegis of randomness and simplicity.

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