I’ve decided it’s not enough for me to teach you how to run less-worse games. Now, I’m doing your job too. I’m teaching your players how to play role-playing games. Not the rules and mechanics. No. I’m teaching them how to actually do stuff in the game: take actions, portray characters, interact socially, explore the wilds, survive dungeons, all sorts of crap.
Below’s a short memo for your players. Seriously short. Single page short. It’s less than five minutes of reading time on average. So, send a copy to each of your players and watch them grow infinitesimally less bad at playing RPGs. And read it yourself so you know what it says.
But, less crappy players need a less crappy GM. So there’s a short memo for you too. After all, if you’re not running the game right, my helping your players won’t matter. That other memo will tell you all the behind-the-scenes crap you need to know to make my advice work.
And if you’re a player and you want to play a less worse game, share these memos with your fellow players and your GM. If your GM won’t read it, let me know. I’ll address it at the next Shadow Council meeting.
You can either download the memos as separate PDFs or read them both below.
Download Memo to the Players #2: Portraying a Character
Download Memo to the Game Master #2: Portraying a Character
Memo to the Players
Re: Portraying Characters
Here you are. You’re playing a table-top role-playing game. The fight’s gone bad. Arwydd shouts, “I’ll cover your escape. You all run.” Cassia and Dameer are already heading for the door. But your character, Bathar, swore never again to leave an ally behind. It’s your turn. Do you flee? Fight? Drag Arwydd away?
That’s role-playing right there. Playing an RPG isn’t just about making the best game choices. It’s also about portraying a character.
Or is it?
Action, Not Acting
No. Role-playing isn’t portraying a character. It’s not speaking in character. It’s not pretending to be someone else. It’s not sharing an awesome character with the world. It’s not psychoanalyzing a character. Role-playing is entirely about making choices and taking action.
It’s not who your character is; it’s what they do that defines them.
Between You and Your Character
Role-playing has nothing to do with anyone else. You’re not putting on a show. It’s entirely about building a relationship with your character. Your character in a role-playing game is like your favorite character in a Netflix series. The longer you spend with the character and the more you learn about them, the more you care.
Role-playing is about experiencing a story through your favorite character’s eyes. Experiencing a story about your favorite character from the inside. But the relationship still needs time to develop and room to grow. And it has to catch you by surprise sometimes. Just like your favorite characters do. Surprises test and strengthen relationships.
How can you pull that off?
Start Small and Build
The more you know about your character at the start of the game, the less room it has to grow. And the less chance it has to surprise you. But that’s okay. Your character’s a low-level nobody when you start playing. And that’s great. Because everything that happens to your character before the game starts is something you won’t get to experience at the table.
In other words, skip the extensive backstory and character analysis. Instead, try this:
Step One: Come Up with a Prompt
Think about your favorite character from that Netflix series again. Think about what they were like when the show first started. In a single, short phrase, how would you describe that character? That’s how you describe a newly-minted RPG character too. One short phrase with room enough for one or two ideas. A motivation, a simple trait, a defining moment. That’s all.
Bathar is a dishonored ex-soldier trying to redeem himself.
Step Two: Keep that Prompt Handy
That prompt? Write it down. Type it out. Don’t just keep it in your head. Put it somewhere on your character sheet. Somewhere you can see it.
Step Three: Refer Back to Your Prompt
At the start of every game session, read your prompt to yourself. Read it again whenever something happens in the game that feels big or important. Read it whenever you have to make a choice and you don’t know what to do.
Step Four: Trust Your Character
Did you come up with a prompt? Did you write it down? Do you refer back to it? Great! Don’t do anything else. Don’t analyze your character. Don’t explain your character. Don’t change your prompt. Don’t write stories about your character. Just refer to the prompt whenever you have to. And then do whatever feels right. Make whatever choices seem best. Gradually, the character will grow in your head. They’ll start making choices. They’ll start talking out of your mouth. It will happen. You just have to give the character space to grow and time to grow in.
Sidebar: Some Harsh Truths
Here are a few harsh truths for would-be thespians who think RPGs are a chance to put on a show.
1. No Plan Survives Contact with an RPG
Role-playing games aren’t novels. And they don’t have scripts. You can’t control the game’s events. You can’t control how the other players act. You can’t even control how other people perceive your character. The only control you have is over how your character responds to what happens in the game. And people — even fictional non-human cat people — evolve as things happen. Your thirty-page character analysis is useless after two hours of gameplay.
2. No One Cares But You
Everyone at the table has their own favorite character. It’s the one they’re playing. No one’s there to watch you play yours. And the GM has five different performers to watch and a world to manage. There’s no point playing your character for anyone other than you. Consider this: do you really pay attention to what the other players and their characters are doing? Or do you spend most of your time figuring out what your character is going to do next? It’s the same for everybody else at the table. Sorry.
3. Understanding Comes After Action
You don’t need an extensive character write-up to know how your character should act. You don’t even need to know why they do what they do. Because that’s not how people work. Not even fictional non-human cat people. People act first. The reasons come later. You might not believe that. You might think you’re different. But people with extensive graduate degrees and complex medical equipment have proven it. If you give your character space, they will tell you how to act. And eventually, you’ll be able to figure out why they acted the way they did.
Sidebar: Awesome Character-Building Scenes
But what about those scenes in TV shows and movies where the characters aren’t making choices and taking action? When they’re talking about the choices they made. Aren’t you giving them up with this “simple prompt and action” stuff?
Nope.
As you play, your brain will constantly invent stories about your character. They’ll seem to come out of nowhere. Your brain is a story-writing machine. And it loves stories about people. Especially about why people are the way they are.
When something forces you to explain your character’s backstory something will come out of your mouth. If you let it. Even if it’s just:
I don’t know. I just realized at that moment that I didn’t want to be the kind of soldier who’d leave someone behind.
Memo to the Game Master
Re: Portraying Characters
Do you want your players to experience the unbridled joy of True Role-Playing? Of revealing a character through gameplay? And building a deep, emotional bond with that character? Of course you do!
But True Role-Playing requires time, patience, and trust. Not on your part. On your players’ parts. They’ve got to put in the effort and they’ve got to trust that it’s all going to pay off. You can’t put in the effort for them. And there’s no shortcuts you can offer. But you can help.
Encourage: Attitude
True Role-Playing is all about attitude. It’s about patience. It’s about investment. It’s about trusting the process and trusting your gut. Unfortunately, you can’t change the players’ attitudes. But fortunately, they tend to reflect whatever attitude you bring to the process. If you’re excited to see their character emerge over time and through gameplay, the players will be excited. Bring the right attitude to the table. Starting with character generation.
When you sit with the players to make their characters, focus on the mechanical choices. Nothing else. Push the players to trust their guts. To make choices that seem like fun. And not to sweat the in-character, backstory justifications. If they struggle with that, let them know you’re excited to discover the reasons for their choices as the game goes on. “I can’t wait to find out why your character is so good with animals.” Let them see you’re sure that a great character will emerge as the game goes on. Let them share your excitement.
Discourage: Make-and-Portray
A good attitude is a good start. But you have to steer your players away from the traps that lead away from True Role-Playing and into the shallow Make-and-Portray approach. Some players will resist the steering. You can’t force them to accept it. But you can refuse to ride along with them.
During character generation, discourage complex backstories and pre-existing relationships between player-characters. You can’t stop the players from inventing backstories and inventing relationships, but you don’t have to play along. If a player shares their backstory ideas or discusses their existing relationships, stop them. Say, “let’s focus on the character sheet right now, and let me learn about your character while we play.” Emphasize that you, at least, are playing the game to see what happens. Not to watch a script play out.
If someone tries to hand you a written backstory, refuse it. Tell them you want to be surprised when this stuff comes out during gameplay.
And during gameplay, stop any players from pontificating. Don’t let them bog the game down with a monologue describing their character’s thoughts, motivations, and personal history. Interrupt them and ask them to describe their action, please. Or ask them if their character is really standing there in the middle of the pitched battle giving this speech.
Require: Prompts
I told your players to come up with a role-playing prompt. A single sentence that describes their character. You can’t force True Role-Playing on your players, but you can demand a prompt. If they hand you something that’s more than one short sentence, hand it back and tell them to try again. And no, long, run-on sentences with lots of clauses don’t count.
Most prompts will naturally include a motivation, as described in the sidebar. As a rule, people are inclined to understand characters in terms of their motivations. But if you’ve got a prompt that doesn’t suggest a motivation, ask your player to pick one.
Nurture: True Role-Playing
True Role-Players don’t know their characters inside-out. In the first session, they barely know their characters at all. So, take it easy on your players when the game starts. No complex moral dilemmas. No NPCs interrogating them about their backgrounds. Keep the interactions and choices simple and focus on stuff that reinforces each character’s prompt and motivation.
Over time, the players will find their characters. That is, distinct personality traits and behavior patterns will start to emerge. Use in-game events and NPC interactions to foster that growth after it starts to happen. And if the players shy away from it, back off.
That might sound complicated. But it’s actually easy if you have the right attitude. If you’re genuinely interested in the characters at the table — if you want to get to know them — you’ll do what you need to do without thinking too hard. Imagine they’re your favorite characters in a Netflix series. You want to get to know them. But also imagine they’re really shy. If you push too hard, you’ll scare them off.
Sidebar: Motivation Required to Proceed
Every fictional character needs a motivation. You can’t play a character without one. Fortunately, most humans understand that on such a basic level that, if you ask the players to come up with a prompt, it’ll include — or imply — a motivation. But if you’ve got a prompt with a missing motivation, get the player to fill in the blank.
Motivations drive character actions. They’re not goals. Goals come and go. Motivations underlie every goal. Motivations tell you what a character values. What they’re seeking. What gives their life meaning.
Here’s a bunch of sample motivations:
- Amass Wealth
- Earn Glory
- Gain Respect
- Accrue Power
- Achieve Status
- Earn Recognition
- Perform a Duty
- Discover the Truth
- Do Good
- Help Others
- Attain Perfection
- Acquire Knowledge
- Indulge Pleasure
- Fulfill a Destiny
- Stave Off Boredom
- Satisfy Wanderlust
- Instill Chaos
- Slake Anger
- Mete-Out Justice
- Spread an Idea
- Take Revenge
- Climb the Ranks
- Build a Following
- Test Your Mettle
- Become a Master
Sidebar: Stop Worrying and Love Tropes
Learn to love tropes and cliches and stereotypes. Encourage your players to love them too. Tropes are just storytelling seeds. But they’re familiar seeds. Seeds that resonate deeply with people. That’s why they’re the ideas that last. True Role-Playing is about planting simple seeds and watching them grow. Tropes are seeds that grow well in human brains. So use them. Play with them. Enjoy them. And always do so with a sense of loving respect.
You’re not clever when you subvert tropes and cliches and stereotypes. You’re not smarter than anyone else. You’re just telling stories no one cares about. That no one will remember.
Nothing grows from a deconstructed seed.
I think it’s the same misconception that leads newer DMs to overvalue worldbuilding/prep and undervalue the stuff that actually happens at the table.
This advice seems to be a good approach to put players and GM into a mindset that focuses on the stuff that actually matters.
Nevertheless, to me, the article implies that creating anything beyond a sheet and a prompt is bad, period – and here, I subjectively disagree.
It might be just me, but I love it when at least part of the party has already ties to some of the minor elements (NPCs, locations, events, items, …) I might bring up in the story. Maybe the adventure starts in their home town. Maybe the party visits a place where part of a PC’s extended family lives. Maybe one of the PCs has a history with one of the main antagonist’s lieutenants. It makes PCs feel more like actual people and less like stat-block-driven video game protagonists.
Nevertheless, that stuff is best sketched out in a dialogue with the GM, not via static, written backstory – and that conversation can happen even later in the campaign.
I also strongly disagree with “never change your prompt” – I’d argue that one should never change it LIGHTLY.
But one of the most enjoyable characters I’ve ever GMed for was a dishonored former soldier looking for redemption …who, eventually, found it. And kept gong, evolving beyond that original prompt into “I’m a knighted commoner, trying to do justice to the title I’ve been granted”. The context stayed similar (trying to prove themselves), but the tone of their story changed notably.
And one of the most subjectively profound “true roleplay” moments I’ve experienced with my own PCs was when Mr. “I’m a naive academic trying to see the world” came to realize the power he’d accrued and had to think about how to use it responsibly, which lead to rephrasing their “core prompt”.
(And here I strongly agree: The latter wasn’t a moment I’d planned – it was something that the character-impersonating part of my brain surprised me with.)
I won’t address you utterly incorrect disagreement. Because it implies I said something incorrect and that is something I never do. But feel free to run your game any wrong way you want. *wink*
On the second, never change your prompt. Your prompt forever remains the seed for your character. The heart of the character that was the start of the journey. And it’s always in there somewhere. The acorn remains somewhere under the tree. By the time your character has grown beyond your prompt, you don’t NEED the prompt anymore. The tree has grown. So forget about the seed. You don’t look at the oak tree and say, “well, obviously, the acorn has changed because look at that tree.” You don’t even see the tree anymore. The prompt is supposed to get overshadowed by the character. Eventually, to be forgotten. And if you ever do refer back to it, all it is a pointer. A sign that shows you where in your brain the character lives. Everything that’s grown from it is still there. It’s a psychological trick. So no. Don’t. Change. Your. Prompt. Ever.
As I understand it, the prompt is just a prompt – it’s a starting point. Evolving from that point is expected. I suppose that depends on the story, but hopefully character arcs emerge, resolving conflicts and often motivations along with them, and at that point, either a new motivation must be found, or the character should rely retire from adventuring, and have their hopefully happy ending. I wouldn’t say the prompt describes who the character is continually so much as who the character is when they start their adventure.
As far as continuing past the prompt goes – I do think that varies by group, but I think Angry’s advice here is safe across the board and will work for anyone. I have known players who can go further without getting too committed to their ideas or losing flexibility, (and I believe I am among that number, as well) but it doesn’t cost those players to put on the brakes until the game starts. It does harm the game, however, when you let other players try to go past the prompt.
Sorry for a worse explanation than Angry already gave – I got sidetracked and didn’t click post for a long time, so I didn’t see Angry’s message until after I posted my reply.
“Do you want your players to experience the unbridled joy of True Role-Playing? Of revealing a character through gameplay? And building a deep, emotional bond with that character? Of course you do!”
Darn if Angry isn’t right, I do want that. I’m grateful for this series especially. I’m in agreement on tropes and motivations, and the focus on only mechanics during generation surprised me but makes sense. I tried a quick one-on-one with my roomate and simplified generation mechanically (in an Angry way), but found the narrative expectation I was asking for was still too daunting for the poor little guy.
“Darn if Angry isn’t right,”
Heh, yeah. You can say that again. And again. On everything he’s ever written afaict. I keep telling everyone “Listen to Angry, he will save you years of fumbling around in the dark testing all the $#!* that doesn’t work”
But I guess a lot of people need to go through that process before they can appreciate a source of illumination. I had to, there wasn’t any Angry to carry a bullseye lantern for me into the dungeons I was mastering. And maybe (probably) I wouldn’t have listened, then, and Angry could quite justifiably have laughed in my face.
Based on these ideas, would you say that RPGs like Traveler, where a significant portion of the PC’s lives is “played” out in character creation, are going too far with backstory? Or does that count as the players learning their characters through play? My gut says it would be on the edge between the two, and would depend a lot on the group and the exact mechanics of it, but I don’t have much experience to draw on with those kinds of games.
For Traveler specifically, I would say that is part of the game itself, which would make it okay.
Original Traveler, it was really just character design, you served 4 terms (16 years) in the Imperial Scout Service, you got these skills and ability increases, and as a mustering out benefit you got this much money, these weapons, and a scout ship. You and some friends are going to go out and try to do something with all this crap.
That’s really all you got out of it. And that’s not really too much backstory.
People make a big deal out of it being complicated and taking time and dying in character creation, but ultimately, it was about a dozen rolls on some random tables for your starting conditions.
Well put Dungeoneer.
The Traveller setup process offers a player the ‘real-world’ choices that help define his character.
And also vicissitudes and unexpected successes. which he can account for.
For example: “Why did your colonist wash out of the Scout program?”, “What rival did she make in term 3?”, and “These freakish rolls have left your journalist with a higher social standing than the Emperor: how did that happen?”
“Nothing grows from a deconstructed seed”
Brilliantly concise. And +1000 for your summary of what a trope is.