No Long, Rambling Introduction™ today. Sorry. This article is too long and rambling by itself. Which is why it starts with…

A Warning to the Reader

This is a long-a$& article. About a thousand words longer than most of my articles. And that’s without a Long, Rambling Introduction™. Well, it’s long because it needs to be. I’m talking about role-playing here. Specifically, what role-playing actually is and how to actually do it. And if you want, you can just skip ahead to the part where I tell you what role-playing actually is and how to actually do it.

But you’re not going to like it. Probably. It goes against pretty much everything every self-proclaimed expert has said about role-playing in the last ten years. And it most definitely goes against the way you’ve been role-playing, which you do perfectly well, thank you very much. Hell, you’re a great role-player. What do I know?

Well, most of this article is about exactly what I do know. And about why the stuff I say at the end about what role-playing actually is and how to actually do it is correct. And it’s pretty dense, heavy, high concept, theoretical stuff about the relationship between actors, audience, and characters and how characters are made so people can actually care about them. And also about how your brain works.

Thing is though, that you don’t really need to sweat any of it. You can skip ahead to the practical instructions. They’re short. They’re easy. Anyone can learn them. That’s why they’re so awesome. And why I’m so awesome. But you can also skip the practical instructions and not care about any of this s$&%. Because it turns out, you don’t have to role-play to play a role-playing game. All of this is completely optional. If you care about really playing a character, about really exploring a role, then all of this s$&% is for you. If you just want to crack some skulls and loot some treasure, I’ll see you next week.

But if you’re one of the selfish character actors I talk about later who think they want to role-play but really want a captive audience to clap for their brilliant character, feel free to skip down to the comment section and curse me out. Because that’s where this is going to end.

Anyway, you have your warnings. You have options. Enjoy the article. Or skip it.

Oh, also, all this advice is for players. Feel free to pass it along. It doesn’t really work this way for GMs.

How to Even Role-Play

Today, I want to talk about what role-playing is. What it really f$&%ing is. Because role-playing is an actual thing. It’s not just a part of role-playing games. And it’s not something that everyone can just define for themselves. I’m f$&%ing sick of hearing gamers tell me that this or that can be “anything you want it to be.” Because, no, it can’t. Role-playing is a thing. The phrase means something. And you can be good at it. And you can be bad at it. And you can do it wrong. And you can do it selfishly too. Though, if you’re doing it selfishly, you’re not really role-playing. But I’ll get to that.

The reason I want to cover this today is that I’ve been trying to get you all to grasp what I thought was a very basic, f$&%ing idea: how to define a character through play. But whenever I try to explain what I actually mean when I say that, you all look at me the way a dog looks at a ceiling fan. Like I’m just spinning away up there and it’s fascinating and all, but what the hell is it really all about, and how the hell did that thing even get up there?

The problem is, I finally figured out, that you all think you know what role-playing is. And you don’t. And you all think it’s something you just do. That you can do intuitively. But you can’t. Even if you know what role-playing is about — it’s just pretending to be someone else, right? — that doesn’t mean you can do it. I know that golf is about hitting a ball into a hole with a club and I know that flying a plane is about getting up to speed, getting it in the air, following a route, and then getting her back down again. But that doesn’t mean I can actually DO any of that s$&%.

Except I can. Because I’m awesome. Chances are you aren’t though.

Thing is, there’s a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to role-playing. And I’ve caused some of them. I admit that I’ve given you some bad advice in the past. I mean, it was great advice at the time. But it isn’t anymore. And I wasn’t wrong. I just wasn’t as right as I could have been.

So I’m going to try to lead you to a real understanding of role-playing by first pointing at the stupid misconceptions you’ve got in your head, breaking them down, and then replacing them with something less stupid and more not stupid. Because, like all the best teachers in the world, I know the trick to educating people is breaking their brains and calling them stupid.

Misconception: Role-playing is pretending to be someone else
Misconception: Role-playing is making the choices someone else would make

Let’s start with those basically synonymous little doozies that you might have learned from such brilliant geniuses as me. Because, yeah, I once defined role-playing as projecting yourself into the mind of an imaginary character in a hypothetical situation and trying to figure out what choices they’d make.

To explain why that’s the wrong way to look at it, I want to tell you about the trill. See, I’m a Star Trek fan. Mainly, I’m a fan of the third Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine. After all, it’s the best series in the franchise and I don’t want to waste my time on s$&% that isn’t the best. But I also enjoyed The Next Generation and some of the original series that started it all. After that s$&%, though, it’s all downhill.

One of the main characters in DS9 was a member of an alien species called the trill. And the trill are two-part life forms. They’re two separate organisms. A humanoid host and a slug-like organism called a symbiont that’s surgically shoved into the host’s abdomen and grows into its central nervous system. Each is its own thing. The host and the symbiont have different personalities, minds, memories, the whole thing. And the trill’s personality and mannerisms become a unique blend of the two different entities. Eventually, the host dies. It’s got a normal humanoid lifespan. But the symbiont can survive and get implanted in some other host with all its previous memories intact. And the new trill’s personality and mannerisms become a synthesis of the new host’s personality and the symbiont’s personality based on all its lifetimes of experiences and memories.

And that’s how role-playing works. Role-playing isn’t pretending to be someone else because you just can’t ever do that. Like it or not — and lots of people resist this basic truth — you can’t take the you out of role-playing. Whatever character you play, you’re still the slug in the character’s stomach. All of your own personal experiences, beliefs, perceptions, attitudes, ideas, and priorities come along for the ride. In the end, it is still your brain making whatever decision the character makes. And your brain’s decisions are the result of its wiring. And your brain’s wiring is a result of your genetics and biology and how your brain’s wiring has developed in response to your experiences. Nature and nurture. That old yarn. You literally cannot think like anyone other than you for the same reason you can’t bend your knees backward. It’s a hardware problem.

Besides, to think like another person would require you to hold an infinite set of memories, experiences, beliefs, priorities, natures, and so on in your head. Perfectly. Because all of that s$&% figures into every decision you make, no matter how simple. And, guess what? You can’t do that.

Role-playing’s thus not really about pretending to be someone else. It’s about making the choices you would make in a given situation if you were a certain character. Role-playing is saying, “okay, so, this dragon is descending on the town. What would I do in this situation if I was a bada$& barbarian dude from the hill tribes in some fantasy world?” The question’s not “what would Angrar do?” It’s “what would I do if I were Angrar?” It’s a subtle distinction, but super important.

The character you play is always “you, but…”

Misconception: In an RPG, you create a character and then portray it

Because I like to get a lot of mileage out of my examples, let me tell you something else about the trill. Jadzia Dax, that trill character I mentioned from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine wasn’t the first trill we ever saw in the Trek-verse. Years before, there’d been an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation that involved a trill. And while the basic idea of symbiote-and-host joint package deal was the same, there were a lot of differences between the original trill we met in that episode and the species Jadzia Dax represented. Moreover, both Jadzia and the species continued to evolve as DS9 ran its course.

What happened? Well, when there was just one trill in one episode meant to drive one plot, the species didn’t need that much development. But when there was a trill onscreen in every episode and other trill came and went as well, the character and the species needed more depth. The thing is, though, in the universe of the show, the depth was always there. It’s just that we, as the audience, didn’t see it.

There’s a reason role-playing’s often used in therapy and education and workplace training. Even though you can’t really, fully pretend to be a different person and even though you can’t internalize everything you’d need to make the choices someone else would make, the act of projecting yourself into a role other than your own does help you understand how you might make different choices if you had a different perspective, different goals, different preferences, different beliefs, or had had different experiences.

Role-playing’s not about portraying a character. It’s about exploring other characters and gradually coming to understand those characters. It’s about exploring how all that crap — experiences, perspectives, goals, and so on — how all that crap might change the way you behave.

Notice that I said, “gradually coming to understand…” Because that s$%& takes time and patience. And the more time you put in, the more deeply you understand the character. And, consequently, the character becomes more complex. Deeper. More nuanced.

You can’t start with a fully realized character. You can’t just play a character out of the gate. The best actors in the world don’t even do that s$%&. Why do you think you can just instantly step into a complex role and portray it for years given that your only training has involved pretending to be an elf one day a week for four hours in someone’s mother’s basement? I mean, yes, some actors can get into a role very quickly after years of training and perfecting the technique. But if you watch anything that runs longer than a two-hour film — say, a television series — you’ll find that the vast majority of the characters gradually evolve over time. They find their voice, they develop chemistry, all that s$%$.

Did you ever see Who Framed Roger Rabbit? You should. Because it’s a perfect f$&%ing example of this whole “gradually understanding a character” thing. First time you see Eddie Valiant, you learn just two things about him. He drinks a lot and he’s got no patience for toons. The first thing he does on screen is take a swig from a hip flask and then roll his eyes at Roger’s antics. Next scene, in Raoul “R.K.” Maroon’s office? He helps himself to booze without being offered, refuses to work in Toontown, and argues about how much he’s being paid. So, now he’s a materialistic drinker who hates toons.

Later, we see he’s struggling with money. He can’t pay his bills. He’s not greedy, he’s down on his luck. Then, we find out he used to have a brother. That they used to work together. We see him drink himself to sleep while reminiscing over newspaper clippings across from his brother’s empty chair. He’s not a drunk, he’s drinking to dull some kind of pain. He used to love Toontown and help toons. What happened? We meet Dolores. They had a past. A bitter past. But they used to have fun too. She, Eddie, Eddie’s brother. Eventually, it all comes together when we learn his brother was murdered by a toon while investigating a bank robbery in Toontown.

Misconception: the role-player is an actor and the other players are the audience

Now, you might be looking at that Eddie Valiant example and saying “yeah, the character’s revealed to the audience; but Bob Hoskins understood the whole character from the beginning. He was just revealing the character to the audience.” First, no, he didn’t. As I said above, most actors — who are f$&%ing experts in their trade by the way and unless you’ve got a major motion picture contract in the offing you didn’t mention, you aren’t — most actors have a process for “finding” the character and most actors put in a lot of work before they play a character. And playing a character for one, feature-length movie is a lot easier than playing a character for years and years.

But, when you’re playing an RPG, you’re not an actor and the other players aren’t your audience. You’re a hybrid thing. A trill-like synthesis of actor and audience. You’re playing a character, but you’re also trying to understand your character. More importantly, you’re trying to care about your character.

Your character is a deeply personal extension of you. You have to care about your character. And you’re going to care more about your character than anyone else at the table. That’s just how it’s going to be. No one gives as much of a s$&% about your character as you do. Not the other players, not the GM, no one. And if you’re trying to get anyone else to care about your character, you’re playing for the wrong reasons. To play your character, you have to want to play your character. You have to understand your character. And you have to feel a connection to your character. No one else needs to understand your character or sympathize with your character or even like your character.

Besides, every other player is trying to understand, connect with, and like their own characters. They’re busy. And the GM has a hell of a lot on his plate.

Role-playing’s about building a personal relationship with your character. That’s not just why it’s a gradual process, that’s why it has to be gradual. Real relationships don’t just spring up fully formed. We don’t necessarily like Eddie Valiant at first. His surface behaviors actually make him seem like a pretty crappy guy. But when we see clues that there’s more going on there, we get curious. And when the curiosity is paid off with little revelations, we become sympathetic. Which makes us more curious. And around and around it goes until we actually really do care why he is the way he is. If you learned everything there was to know about Valiant in the first scene of the movie, he’d make perfect sense and you wouldn’t give a s$&%.

A lot of it’s down to this thing called recontextualization. That’s a fancy word for what happens when you discover something that changes your understanding of past events. We first understand Valiant as a greedy, humorless, drunk. But then we discover he’s struggling with money. That he had a personal tragedy. That a toon killed his brother. And with each discovery, we have to go back and revise our understanding. He’s not greedy, he’s struggling. He’s not humorless, he’s bitter. And lonely. He’s not drunk, he’s trying to numb his pain.

See, recontextualization forces you to do something you don’t usually you. It forces you to stop and reflect. People ain’t reflective by their nature. They don’t usually stop and let their brains sort through things. But reflection is actually how you build understanding and attachment. Recontextualization is a shock that forces you to stop and look back. To let your brain sort things out. And when your brain sorts things out, you deepen your understanding of things and you build stronger relationships.

Misconception: role-playing is about playing your character the way you want to play them

Role-playing’s not about creating a character and then playing it. It’s not about fantasy, escapism, or wish fulfillment. If you want that kind of s$&% — if you want to tell the story of your awesome character or just be your awesome character — write a book. Or film a Tick Tock on YouTube. Or sell a screenplay.

There’s a reason why RPGs aren’t solo activities. And the reason’s not so your awesome portrayal has an audience. Sorry to tell you this, champ, but to everyone else at the table, your character’s one of the supporting cast. Every PC is the main character in their own story. Everyone else is along for the ride.

The reason why there’s other people — and a GM — at the game table is because role-playing is an interactive activity. You don’t play to tell your story. You play to discover a story. And that story is outside of any one player’s control. Even the GM’s not allowed to completely control the story. That means your character is going to have experiences outside of your control. The game’s world, the adventures, the other players’ characters, they’re going to do things and say things. And to role-play, you have to take those experiences into your character. Make them a part of your character.

Character is revealed through interaction, but it’s also changed by interaction.

The trill symbionts grow and change with each life experience. Eddie Valiant starts as a bitter drunk, but by the end, he’s doing the right thing. He’s defending a bunch of innocent toons even though there’s no money in it for him. He throws away his booze and he confronts Judge Doom. And in the end, he gets to avenge his brother’s death. But if Judge Doom hadn’t been Teddy’s killer, the movie would have played out the same. Think about that.

Role-playing’s personal, but not selfish. It can’t be. It has to be selfless. You have to listen to everyone else at the table. To pay attention. You have to let the game shape your character. Which means giving up control over your character. Just like in real life, you don’t have total control over what happens at the game table. Your character’s shaped by others’ choices and actions and the chaotic whims of an uncontrollable world. If you can’t handle that, lock yourself in a room and write a novel.

Misconception: Role-playing is easy; it’s intuitive
Misconception: Role-playing is hard

Before you read all that crap above, you probably thought role-playing was easy and intuitive, right? It’s just pretending. And everyone knows how to pretend. But after I’ve had my 3,000 words of say — so far — now, it probably sounds f$&%ing impossible. Right? How the hell do you play yourself but different while gradually revealing and understanding a character and building a deeply personal relationship through ongoing moments of surprise and recontextualization? Is that even a word? And how do you do all of that without any real control over anything at the table? Selflessly?

Here’s the thing: pretending to be someone else outright is impossibly hard. That’s the thing you thought was easy. And the thing that sounds hard? All that s$%& I said. It’s actually easier to do it than it is to understand it. Or explain it. And it mostly involves not doing anything at all.

Effort’s a funny thing. Sometimes, the more effort you put into something, the more you get out of it right? But sometimes, if you try too hard, you won’t succeed. Think about falling asleep. Have you ever tried to fall asleep? Yeah, it doesn’t work. Sleep comes when you stop trying and just let it happen.

Role-playing’s one of those things that takes just the right amount of effort. If you try too hard — if you try to play a complex character exactly the way you imagine them from the get-go — you’re going to fail. You’ll probably struggle to remember everything you need to remember and consequently make a mess of it. Or you’ll end up sticking so rigidly to the character as defined that your character doesn’t grow or change during play. They never surprise you. You never develop any curiosity about your character. You never reflect or recontextualize. And so, your relationship and understanding are as deep as a kiddie pool.

On the other hand, if you don’t put in any effort — if you just feel your way through and do whatever seems like a good idea at the time — there won’t be any character there at all. There won’t be any patterns, no behavior, no personality. Nothing gets revealed because there’s nothing to reveal. You’re just sort of doing whatever you do. Never reflecting, never examining, never working at the relationship.

Role-playing’s not easy, but it’s not hard. See, I learned about this effort thing from meditation. And in meditation, there’s this idea called gentle curiosity. The right amount of effort is the one that leads you to be curious about your character. Genuinely interested in who they are without trying to force them to be who you think they should be. You want to know who they are, what their deal is, what’s going to happen, and what they’re going to do, but you have no preconceived ideas about who they should be, what their deal should be, what should happen, and what they should do. You won’t dictate the answers, you won’t reject the answers, you’ll let your character be who they are.

 

tl;dr What Actually Is Role-Playing?

 

Well, I’ve sure said a lot of s$%& haven’t I. But I also promised that I’d say it all so that I could tell you what role-playing really is and how to really do it.

First, what is it? Really?

Role-playing is planting a seed in your head and, by playing the game, letting that seed grow into a dynamic character. One you come to understand and to develop a personal relationship with. A character that feels distinct from you, the player, but who nonetheless becomes intuitive and nearly effortless to play.

But who cares what it is? How do you actually do that?

tl;dr How To Actually Role-Play

A long, long time ago, I blew everyone’s f$&%ing minds by explaining clearly and concisely how good GMs actually make decisions. The actual process a GM goes through inside his brain to adjudicate an action. Well, prepare to have your mind blown again. I’m going to tell you — players — how to actually role-play. What you — players — should do in your head. And sometimes on paper.

Step 1: Start with a Simple Seed

Worldbuilder GMs are told to “start small and build.” That’s because it’s a huge amount of work to build an entire world and remember everything about it. And it’s also impossible. Which is okay because most of the s$&% you do build usually doesn’t end up mattering in the slightest once the game actually starts.

The same applies to players making characters. Even though lots of people think they can build and play detailed, deep, complex characters right out of the gate, they can’t. You can’t. And you can’t see how bad your weird, stilted, crappy caricature actually plays at the table because you love them and you think you’re a role-playing genius. But trust me, you’re playing a wacky, unbelievable bit of inconsistent nonsense that’s basically just you without restraint or accountability. I hate it. The other players hate it. And we’re all secretly hoping you fail that saving throw and your character ends up a wisp of smoke rising from a pair of inexplicably unharmed boots.

So, start small and build. Start by planting the smallest possible seed in your brain. The smallest thing from which a character can grow. Paradoxically, the less you start with, the deeper and more complex your character will end up. If they live. That’s because the less you know about your character, the more space you’re giving them to grow. If you plant a seed in a tiny pot, you get a tiny, stunted wisp of a plant. If you plant a seed in an empty clearing, you get a towering oak with deep roots and lots of branches.

Now, if you’re playing an RPG, you’ve got to fill out a character sheet. There’s no helping that. But don’t try to put too much thought into it. Don’t try to make it too consistent with some stupid vision you have in your head. That’s a small pot and you’ll end up with a diseased twig even Charlie Brown wouldn’t take pity on.

In my latest game, I went through this s$&% with one of my players. He literally wouldn’t let himself choose certain skills for his character — skills he wanted; skills he thought would be fun — because he couldn’t see why and how his character might have those skills. And I was all like, “yeah, who knows how he learned that skill; isn’t that an interesting mystery, let’s see what he says once you’ve played him for a few weeks.” Would he listen to me? Nope. Of course not. He wanted a tiny pot. Apparently.

To start playing a character in an RPG, you only need two things. You need a role to play. Which is to say, you need a role in the world or the story, not a character. An adventuring wizard. A mercenary fighter. A cunning rogue. At the start of Fellowship of the Ring, Legolas was the elf and Gimli was the dwarf. And that was enough.

The other thing you need is a motivation. Just one. Not a goal, a motivation. Goals can come later. I’ve got a big article coming up about motivation, so I won’t go into much detail about this. Just know that a motivation is the thing that drives your character. It’s what your character is striving for. It’s the thing that underlies all their goals. Wealth, power, glory, respect, wisdom, self-improvement, being a force for good, yadda yadda yadda. Motivation. And while most characters end with several different motivations, they only need one to start. The one that gets them out the door and on whatever adventure they’re on.

Now, lots of you will complain that “academic wizard who wants power” isn’t really a character. It’s just a stereotype. Well, actually it’s an archetype. But I never claimed it was a character. It’s a seed. It’s what will grow into a deep, rich, nuanced character you care deeply about someday if you can exercise a little bit of restraint and some f$&%ing patience. It’s also really easy to keep in your head. And easy to start playing. There’s a lot of room to grow, a lot of potential for change, and a lot to be curious about.

Honestly, I’ve been toying with incorporating this whole thing into a great character generation process lately and I think I have a pretty good idea. Maybe someday, if you’re really nice to me, I’ll tell you what it is. For now, though, just fill out a character sheet, pick a motivation, and start playing.

Step 2: See What the Character Does

As you play, the character’s going to do stuff. Of course, they won’t just do stuff on their own. What’ll happen is that the GM will say something like, “okay, the cataclysm dragon is stomping toward the puppy orphanage, what do you do?” And you’ll have to tell the GM what your character does. And, at first, you probably won’t know what to say. This is where bad, selfish character actors who wish they were writing novels will try to remember their sixteen-page backstories and then launch into a soliloquy nobody gives a single, solitary f$&% about that explains how their experiences in the City of Joojooflop at the Academy of Dingledangle left them with a deep, abiding love of puppies and so…

Sorry, I fell asleep just imagining that happening at my table.

Anyway, this is where the bad, selfish actors will refer to their backstories and find exactly the answer and then play it out for the delight of the table. Or worse, discover there is no answer in their backstory that tells them what to do when dragon meets puppy orphanage and just freeze the f$&% up. Or worst of all, roll a die to determine what their character does.

Meanwhile, good role-players like you and me will remember that we need to figure out what we would do if we were academic wizards who want power and a dragon was rampaging toward a puppy orphanage. And that’s exactly what we’d ask ourselves in our heads. I’d ask myself:

If I were an academic wizard who wants power and a dragon was rampaging toward a puppy orphanage, what would I do right now?

And that’s what you do whenever you don’t know what your character would do. Ask yourself what you would do if you were that role with a motivation you planted in your head in this situation. And whatever pops into your head? You do that. Go with your gut. That’s role-playing.

At first, you’ll find there’s a lot of you in your character. If you, personally, find the idea of puppies getting stomped to death by a flaming lizard a little off-putting — for some crazy reason — your character will probably intervene. That’s fine. Go with it. But, as time goes on, you’re going to see two things happen. First, you’ll see less and less of you in your character. The character will start to take over. Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes it takes a while. But eventually, you’ll start answering that question in ways that don’t come from you at all. Like, you might ask yourself “what would I do if I were an academic wizard who wants power” and the answer might be “well, if I were an academic wizard who wants power, I’d recognize I’m basically a nerd that’ll be reduced to a pair of smoking boots if I get involved and there’s no power in this for me anyway, so f$&% the puppies, I’m out of here.”

Second, you’ll find that you actually don’t have to stop to ask yourself what you’d do so often. That is, as soon as the GM says “what do you do,” you’ll find there’s an answer ready to come out of your noise hole. And that answer will be something like, “who gives a damn about puppies? If the dragon’s here, that means the Tome of Ultra-Powerful Spells is unguarded and ripe for the taking!” Sometimes, the answer will even surprise you. Sometimes, after you blurt out your action, you’ll be thinking, “wait, I don’t even like puppies; why the hell does Malfiliax the Archmagical care about puppies?” But he does.

If you’ve never experienced this crap, you won’t believe me. But it happens. Eventually, without you really doing anything to make it happen, there’s suddenly a character in your head with a mind of its own. And it’s really f$&%ing cool. As a GM, by the way, it’s super useful once you get good at it. It means playing NPCs becomes a lot easier, a lot more surprising, and a lot more fun. But it takes practice to get there.

Thing is though that, lots of times, none of that s$&%’s going to happen. Especially at first. The character won’t pop into your head. They won’t have an answer. And you won’t ask yourself “what would I do if I was…” either. Why? Because you’re going to forget. You’re going to get caught up in the moment and blurt something out without thinking. And because some decisions are pretty easy. And sometimes they don’t matter very much. Real people go through a lot of their lives on autopilot. It’s totally okay if your character does too. Some s$&%’s just not important enough to ruminate on. Every moment’s not a defining moment.

But you do want to try. Try to catch yourself before you make a decision. Try to ask yourself “what would I do if I was…” The more you do it, the more you’ll remember to do it. Especially when the stakes are high or when you really aren’t sure. Whenever you don’t blurt something out immediately and whenever there isn’t a firm answer in your head already, try to ask yourself the question. And try not to blurt anything out immediately. Give your character time to answer. And whenever the character does answer, whatever the answer, go with it. Without judgment.

Step 3: Take Time to Reflect

Role-playing — actual role-playing — doesn’t stop at the end of the session. Remember, the goal’s to gradually build a deep understanding of and relationship with your character. And those things come from reflection. You have to give things time to marinate in your brain juices.

Once in a frequent while — ideally, at the end of every session — you should sit your a$& down and ask yourself what new thing you learned about your character during that session. You don’t need to take too long on this and you don’t need to write anything down. Just ask yourself if your character did anything unexpected, surprising, or unusual that’s worth taking note of. Don’t ponder it too deeply either. Just note the new thing and say, “huh, that is certainly a new thing about my character to consider.”

There’s going to be lots of times when you won’t have learned anything new at all. Especially the very first few sessions you play the character and most of the later sessions after you’ve been playing your character for a long time. That’s fine. It’s normal.

That said, whenever you sit down to reflect on your character and you don’t find anything new to take note of, ask yourself what you’d like to know about your character. What are curious about? Is there something confusing or mysterious? “Why is my character so power-hungry,” you might wonder. Or, “I know I like puppies and I’d save them from a dragon, but why did my character try to save the puppy orphanage?”

That’s an important thing to remember. Oh sure, there’s times when your character only does something because it’s what you’d do and your character is “you, but…” But that doesn’t mean your character doesn’t have a reason of their own for doing what they did. This is a variation of a game I once wrote about called “how can be this true?” Whatever the reason for your decision as a player, the fact is your character did something in the game world. And there must be a reason. But your character doesn’t know you exist. So, they must have their own reason to do the thing. What reason is it?

If that last paragraph made your head hurt, that’s okay. It’s not important.

Sometimes, when you reflect on what your character did, you’ll see some sort of connection to some past in-game event. Sometimes, something your character did tonight will explain something completely baffling your character did months ago. That’s that recontextualization thing happening. By reflecting periodically on your character and remaining curious about your character, you’re priming your brain pump to do that sort of crap. That’s why you don’t have to write anything down or say it out loud or change your character’s seed or anything else. What you’re doing is just tending to the garden where your character is growing. Weeding it. Putting down fertilizer. Checking for insects. That kind of thing.

By the way, never change the seed. Never, ever change that basic question you ask yourself. The one that goes “what would I do in this situation if I was a role with a motivation?” Never, ever change the role or the motivation. You don’t need to. Your brain knows all the rest. And eventually, you’ll stop falling back on even asking the question.

Step 4: Take Time to Reflect

Nope, that’s not a typo. I’m really telling you to do the same thing twice. Except I’m not.

Remember when I said role-playing was reflective in two ways? That you have to reflect on your character and that your character has to reflect their experiences and interactions? The ones that come up through play? Well, interaction is a two-way street. And role-playing can’t be selfish. So, whenever you do that reflection thing with your own character, you also want to reflect on the other characters in the party. The other players’ characters. After you’ve spent a few minutes thinking about what new thing you know about your character or what you’re curious about, do the same with one or more of the other members of the party. Specifically, ask yourself if you learned anything new about any of your allies. And if you’ve got nothing, then instead ask yourself what you’re curious to learn about one of your allies. You can even do both. Learn a new thing and then wonder why that thing.

You don’t have to do anything with this. You don’t have to write it down. You don’t have to pursue it during play. But you also totally can. Next time you play, you can — in character — try to satisfy your curiosity by asking — in character — another character what their deal is. And the fact that that’s such a mind-blowing idea just shows how selfish role-playing has become. Remember, character is revealed through interaction. Interaction’s a two-way street. If your character interacts with another character, both characters get to shine. And most players are really happy to share some of their own character details with someone who seems genuinely interested. I mean, if one of the players asked you about your character — in character — you’d probably be f$&%ing delighted. Well, you get what you give. Get me?

But you don’t have to do that s$&%. Not everyone’s comfortable playing in character like that. And that’s okay. The important bit — again — is the reflection and the curiosity. It trains you actually pay some f$&%ing attention to the other players’ characters. To see them as part of your character’s life. And it trains you to be curious about them. That way, you’re more likely to let them shape your character instead of just seeing them as the audience for your antics.

And if you really have some extra time, you can do this same thing with the game’s NPCs too. Because some of us GMs actually work really f$&%ing hard to bring a whole world’s full of people to life. And it’d be nice if you saw them as part of your character’s life, worthy of your understanding and curiosity, instead of just props on stage for your character to kick around in their one-person show.

I need a f$&%ing drink.