Well, this You Pick the Topic thing has turned into a total friggin’ disaster.

I’m gonna level with you: this is a long-ass story. It’s long even for a Long, Rambling Introduction™. If you don’t give a shit about why this article is what it is and why it’ll get a second part eventually, you can skip to the start of the actual article.

So, I invited members of my support community to propose topics for a Feature to sit between the March True Campaign Managery lessons, right? And I picked the five least worst — and most popular — topics, stuck them in a poll, and asked my supporters to vote. And they chose Supporter Sonderval’s suggestion:

How to plan and execute character arcs.

So far, so good, right?

But I didn’t write that feature. And it’s all Discordian @Athetos’ fault.

You see, when the poll went live, @Athetos was all like, “I picked that topic because I know Angry is using character arcs in his AD&D 2E Chain of Stars campaign and I want to know how he’s doing it.” And that really pissed me off. Because I am absolutely, definitely not using character arcs. I like to run good games and that starts with not using shitty ideas like character arcs. So, I told @Athetos off, quit Discord for the day, took my heart medicine, and did some breathing exercises because my doctor is still on my ass about not letting my dumbass supporters give me a stroke.

Meanwhile, a long, long argument raged for days in my Discord community about character arcs. And only in the end did it become clear that some people — especially friggin’ @Athetos — were using the phrase character arc wrong. Which happens a lot. People forget that words mean things and you can’t just make up your own damned definitions and expect to communicate meaningfully and you should never, ever use jargon or idioms or phrases when you’re trying to be clear and, once a fight’s been raging for more than hour, you should stop and make sure you’re all using words to mean the same things.

I didn’t come back to Discord until the dust had settled and the crows were picking over the corpses. And when I saw what had happened — all of it — I was like, “You dumbasses! Do you realize how close I came to writing the wrong article? You don’t want to hear about character arcs at all! You’re lucky I have time to fix this.”

It wasn’t until I wrote the outline and half the draft that @Athetos finally, sheepishly said, “You want to hear something funny? Seriously… you’re going to laugh so hard. I didn’t actually propose the topic of character arcs, I just voted for it. Whoever actually posed it probably did know what they were talking about. Unlike me. Because I mainly use my skull to store my collection of shiny rocks.”

And then we shared a good laugh. Except for me. I wasn’t laughing. Because I’d already outlined and started drafting an article that wasn’t about Character Arcs but was rather about the thing dumbass @Athetos actually meant.

I was fucked. I had no time to pivot on the article topic again once I found out @Athetos had sabotaged me. But going forward meant poor @Sonderval — who actually proposed the Character Arcs topic — would be screwed out of the Feature they requested. Which is also the Feature lots of my supporters voted for. And presumably, they all knew what they were voting for. And, frankly, that Feature — the Character Arc Feature — was the one I actually wanted to write. I was rooting for that topic to win. See, Character Arcs are a shitty idea that don’t work in tabletop roleplaying games. But they’re a shitty idea for an interesting reason and it is theoretically possible for a talented Game Master — or designer — to mitigate enough of the shittiness to make them work. At least in the right game. Which, by the way, is not Dungeons & Dragons.

Ultimately, I decided I’d finish the crap Feature @Athetos had tricked me into starting and then deliver an actual, good Feature about Character Arcs next month and then never, ever ask anyone to pick my topic ever again.

And if that was the end of the story, you’d be reading this shitty Feature about Not Character Arcs a week ago. But you aren’t. Or, you didn’t. Whatever. Tense formations are tricky when it comes to hypothesis contrary to fact. It’s not last week, so something else clearly went wrong.

First, I found the Not Character Arcs Feature immensely difficult to write. I was struggling to say anything useful about the topic because the topic was a terrible idea. And it wasn’t even terrible in an interesting way. So I ended up getting ranty and mean-spirited and bitter and boring. And it took a week of me trying to save the thing by writing and rewriting before I was prepared to try a different tack.

And then, dumbass @Sonderval — proposer of the original Character Arc topic — decided to join my supporter Discord community just to spew a blog-length diatribe about what four — yes, four — things they’d meant when they said Character Arc. I shit you not. @Sonderval decided their brief topic needed five hundred words of clarification and four different definitions. And they decided the best way to share them was to hijack one of my Discord channels to deliver a speech. And, as if that’s not bad enough, only one of @Sondervals four fucking definitions came anywhere close to what the phrase Character Arc actually fucking means. The other three were basically three different misspellings of the same dumbass things @Athetos had started a two-day fight about.

And that is when I decided to shut down all contact with the outside world and just write whatever I thought was best.

As a result of all of this crap, I’m writing three things. First, even though they’re a pair of dumbasses who’ve ruined everything and wasted a week of my productivity with their inability to communicate — or think — clearly, I’m giving @Sonderval and @Athetos what they asked for. I’m writing a shitty, boring Feature about Personal Character Quests. That’s the term I’m using. And I’m allowed to do that because I’m going to clearly describe what I’m talking about. And I’m hoping I’ve burned through enough of my rage with this overly long and overly ranty Long, Rambling Introduction™ that I can write a decently objective take on the idea. No promises though. Because Personal Character Quests are a shitty, stupid, ill-conceived, wrong-headed thing to do in tabletop roleplaying games pretty much by definition.

Second, for all the non-dumbasses in my Discord server and in my community at large — the ones who voted for the Character Arc Feature because they actually wanted to hear about Character Arcs — I’m going to write an interesting and enjoyable Character Arcs Feature and why they’re such a terrible idea and how one might be able to overcome that terribleness — maybe — for the right game. And I’ll put that Feature out immediately after this one. Just to get this shit off my damned plate.

Third, on some future date, I’m going to do some kind of Angry Table Tale thing about how I launched my AD&D 2E campaign, Chain of Stars, and why @Athetos — incorrectly and insultingly — accused me of doing Character Arcs or Personal Character Quests or whatever. I didn’t. But I also kind of did. But not in a shitty way. Maybe it’ll be instructional for some of you. I don’t know.

Unless, of course, y’all force me to write something else instead of — or before — that last thing. I guess we’ll have to see what happens.

Anyway… that’s the plan. And now that I’ve wasted a quarter of my word count explaining what I’m writing and why to those of you too stupid to click that link and skip this shit, I can focus on the topic itself.

The shitty, crappy, garbage topic.

Thanks, @Sonderval and @Athetos. I hate you both.

My Personal Character Quest:
Come Up with a Better Heading for this Section

Today — for reasons I’ve already exhaustively explained — I’m going to help you “Plan and execute Personal Character Quests.” Assuming that’s something you actually want to do. Perhaps you’ve decided that you’re tired of running good, fun games and need a change. Or maybe you’ve given up any hope of becoming a True Game Master and now you’re just trying to keep your monkeys busy while you consider an alternative hobby.

Huh. The Long, Rambling Introduction™ didn’t work. I guess this is gonna be a cranky one.

If you’re wondering why I’d help you do something I obviously think is a bad idea, it’s because my spirit’s been broken. See the wall of text above for more details. But most of you are probably just wondering what the hell a Personal Character Quest even is. And that’s fair because I basically coined the term just to talk about the thing I’m talking about today. Because it sure as hell isn’t Character Arc.

Sorry.

Look, I’ve been asked to write about how to plan and execute Personal Character Quests, and my honor and integrity demand I do my best to answer the question even if those who posed it don’t deserve an answer. So that’s what I’m doing.

What Are Personal Character Quests?

Do you know how players sometimes pick specific goals for their characters to achieve or ambitions to pursue or dreams to chase? You know how they say things like, “I want to avenge my master’s death” or “I want to reclaim my family’s throne” or “I want to free my brother from prison” or “I want to be the leader of the Jade Order” or some shit like that? Those are Personal Character Quests.

Personal Character Quests are basically in-game goals that come from the individual players and that are specific to their characters. Often, they’re devised during character generation and they provide the impetus for the character setting out on the road to adventure. It’s also implied that, when the Personal Character Quest is finished, the character’s story is over. The character is done.

Of course, I’m using this term I’ve chosen — Personal Character Quest — so that I can write about the general idea of characters mostly pursuing their own stories and goals in tabletop roleplaying games instead of — or in addition to — a shared, group goal. Consequently, you shouldn’t take anything I’m saying as firm or hard or conditional or definitive. It’s possible at some tables that the Game Master might work with each player to invent a Personal Character Quest for their character. It’s possible at some tables that the players simply choose new goals when they complete their Personal Character Quests rather than retiring a character whose story is over.

My point is, there are lots of variations on this theme and there’s really no point in arguing about what the term encompasses and what does and does not technically fall under its auspices. If it looks like a Personal Character Quest and it quacks like a Personal Character Quest and smells like a Personal Character Quest then it’s probably a Personal Character Quest.

And I’m really sick of having to remind people of that.

That said, it’s important not to mistake Personal Character Quests for Personal Character Motivations. Personal Character Quests smell like duck shit; Personal Character Motivations smell like freshly brewed coffee and baking cinnamon rolls and sizzling bacon in the skillet on a crisp, autumn Sunday morning.

Goals Aren’t Motivations

I’ve explained before how Goals and Motivations are different. Dozens of times. And I’m gonna explain it again now. Partly because it’s super relevant here and partly because I know it takes dozens of explanations to get through to some of you.

Remember: Personal Character Quests are about Goals. And Goals are not Motivations.

A Goal is something a character can do. It’s the finish line at the end of a quest. You know when a character’s accomplished a Goal.

Is your master’s killer dead or jailed? Great! You avenged your master.

Are there any bars between you and your brother? No? You got your brother out of prison!

Are you sitting in a fancy chair with a gaudy green hat and a jeweled scepter? Hail to you! You’re the Grand Almighty Poohbear of the Jade Order.

Motivations are things a character values and things they can chase, but they’re not things characters can really finish. Motivations include all sorts of conceptual stuff like wealth, justice, respect, glory, love, family, duty, faith, pleasure, knowledge, fame, mastery, and on and et cetera and ad nostrum. Motivations aren’t Goals, they explain Goals.

Why are you chasing your master’s killer? Is it duty or is it a desire for revenge?

Why are you trying to rescue your brother? Are you honoring your family or do you really love him?

Why do you want that dumbass hat? Are you after power or respect or do you just want to prove you’re the best?

Motivations are great tools for Game Masters. I’ve said that before. They empower Game Masters to create goals the players and their characters want to pursue. A character with a Motivation can chase a thousand Goals, but a character with a set Goal can only chase that one Goal.

I Can’t Pretend I’m Objective

If you’re not exceptionally thick-skulled, you’ve probably noticed from my tone that I’m not a fan of the whole Personal Character Quest thing. But I know lots of you are. Lots of players think that a character’s not complete without a specific, personal pursuit to pursue. And I know lots of Game Masters think Personal Character Quests are the only proper quests in tabletop roleplaying games. Anything else is wrecking agency or limiting buy-in or some other horseshit like that.

The problem is lots of players are selfish, spotlight-hogging pricks who can’t put aside their main character syndrome for even a second to acknowledge the people sitting next to them are also players and not a captive audience. And lots of Game Masters wish they could drop the word game from tabletop roleplaying game and run collaborative tabletop roleplaying storytelling collaborations. And lots of people bought orange shag carpeting in the sixties.

I’ve been asked how to do the whole Personal Character Quest thing and I’m gonna give an answer. And I’m going to keep my personal — but correct — opinions to a minimum after this section’s done. But have y’all considered there might be a reason why they’re so hard to manage? Like, maybe the reason you can’t get them to work is that the idea is flawed?

Consider this: everyone who ever asks about Personal Character Quests — including the dumbasses I’m blaming for today’s crap Feature — cites the same concerns. “I’m worried the rest of the players won’t feel engaged when one member of the group is pursuing their own Goals,” they say. Or, “What happens to the game when one of the characters finishes their Quest? Or fails beyond recovery? Or dies?” Or, “Why would any character take time off their Personal Character Quest to pursue any shared goal or help any of the other characters with their Personal Character Quests?”

Those are damned good questions. And sometimes, when your gut points out a bunch of damned good quests, it has a point. Those problems are precisely why Personal Character Quests are troublesome. Can they work? Can the right group with help from the right system overcome those problems? Can the Game Master design a campaign to mitigate those issues? Yes. But will the resulting game be better than one that doesn’t start with Personal Character Quests? You probably won’t like my answer, though I’m sure there’s a bunch of people who’ll insist I’m wrong in the comments. Folks whose gaming rooms are probably carpeted in orange shag.

“How do I overcome the obvious problems with Personal Character Quests,” is a bit like saying to a doctor, “I’d like to infect myself with irritable bowel syndrome; can you tell me how to manage the symptoms so I can live an almost normal life?”

But this isn’t really about the objections and the problems and overcoming them. This Personal Character Quest shit is tricky on a fundamental, game design level. Tabletop roleplaying games are games and games must include Goals. Not bullshit goals like, “Everyone has fun” or “Tell a story together.” Games need Goals to provide direction and context for the players’ choices. Otherwise, everyone’s just dicking around doing whatever. Which can be fun for a little while, sure, but it isn’t meaningful and satisfying.

If the players aren’t pursuing the same, shared Goal, each player is playing their own game. You’re not running a cooperative fantasy adventure anymore; you’re running five separate games on a bunch of crisscrossing tracks and the games have to keep stopping and starting and lurching and waiting for the tracks to clear or else they’ll crash into each other.

Anyway, that’s it. That’s my speech. That’s why I don’t touch this Personal Character Quest shit myself with an eleven-foot pole except in very rare, very special circumstances. And for the rest of this Feature, shit as it is, I’ll stop pointing out how bad an idea all this crap is. Fair?

Designing Personal Character Quests

This first part of the question that touched off this nightmare of a Feature was about designing Personal Character Quests. And my answer’s short. Really, really short.

You design Personal Character Quests the way you design any tabletop roleplaying game Quests. You build them the way you build any adventure or arc or campaign. First, you figure out whether the Quest is a side thing or whether it will comprise a single adventure or whether it’s going to fill a chapter of your campaign or underscore the entire campaign itself. Then, you define the Quest’s Goal. Then, you break its pursuit down into Plot Points and figure out how those Plot Points connect to each other. And then you turn the Plot Points into Encounters or Scenes or Adventures or Arcs or whatever as you need to.

Assuming you know how to build Encounters, Scenes, Adventures, Arcs, and Campaigns, you don’t really have to do anything special to build Personal Character Quests. Though how you plan to execute the Personal Character Quests will limit how you can break them into pieces and how much time each will span.

So I guess that brings me to the other half of the question…

Executing Personal Character Quests

How you design and execute Personal Character Quests is really down to what the hell you plan to do with them. That is, what role do you intend the Personal Character Quests to fill in your Campaign. Or, to put it more properly, how you plan to integrate the Personal Character Quests into the Campaign.

Who’s Got a Quest to Share?

The first thing to consider is how many characters are bringing Personal Character Quests to the table. Does every character have their own or do you just have one or two Personal Character Quests to deal with?

Now, that second option — that just one or two characters have Personal Character Quests — might seem odd, but it happens more often than you’d think. It usually happens to Game Masters who don’t think this shit — or don’t think Character Creation — through when starting a campaign.

Imagine you’re starting a fairly loose campaign with no strong Campaign Vision. You ask each player to create a character and provide whatever backstory details they’re comfortable with. Thus, you end up with a couple of blank-slate adventurers, a couple of folks with basic Motivations who are up for pretty much anything, and a couple of heroes with full-on Personal Character Quests anchoring their backstories.

It is possible to build a campaign from that shit just by incorporating a couple of Personal Character Quests into whatever shared Goals you build the adventures or the campaign around. That’s a clumsy, clunky, kludgey, contrived fix but it’s the easiest fix to make and it’s the most likely to work.

Meanwhile, Game Masters who do think this shit through and who think — for some insane or inane reason that this shit’s a good idea — may ask every player to invent a Personal Character Quest for their character. At such tables, every character comes packaged with a personal destiny to chase.

Entrees or Side Dishes

The next consideration is whether your game is actually about each character’s Personal Character Quest or whether those are just side events to the main story? Is your Campaign about five characters who are each making their own dreams come true or is it about a group of adventurers whose shared adventures provide each the chance to advance their personal stories on the side.

Based on my screed about why this Personal Character Quest crap is such a bad idea, you might assume the second option is the better one. And, from a game design standpoint, it is. At the very least, it ensures everyone’s playing the same base game. It’s just that everyone’s got a hidden goal card that’s worth some bonus points at the end.

The problem is that players rarely see it that way. And nothing you say can change their minds. Most players will naturally treat their character’s Personal Character Quests as their raisin detritus and consider the party’s shared goals to be side roads on the path to personal victory. And that’s when you’re most likely to run into all those issues I talked about with players not engaging stories that aren’t their own and the game-breaking down as players finish — or fail — their Personal Character Quests.

And that means that, if you’re going to do the Personal Character Quest thing, you’re almost better off making the Personal Character Quests the focus of the campaign. Almost. Because now you’re back in the nasty position of running five separate games on crisscrossing tracks and trying to keep everyone aboard without crashing any of the trains.

So, really, it’s a pick your poison kind of choice. Do you want potentially disengaged players or a potentially disconnected and disjointed campaign?

Setting the Scope and Scale

Once you know who’s bringing what to the party and whether you’re responsible for the mains or the side dishes, you can figure out just how to weave the Personal Character Quests into your Campaign. Depending on the scope and scale of the Personal Character Quests, there are a few different ways to fit things together.

Meanwhile, Back in Town

If your Personal Character Quests are small enough but you’ve got a bunch of them floating around, they often work best as minor things for the characters to chase between adventures. Design such quests around town exploration, investigation, and interaction so you can slot them into the characters’ other town activities. While the party’s selling treasure, repairing goods, training, crafting, or whatever else they do in town, you can provide a character or two an opportunity to advance a Personal Character Quest.

Obviously, when you expand the various Personal Character Quest Plot Points into action, you want to make them into Encounters. And they should never demand any urgency. Think of them like breadcrumbs the characters pick up by happenstance between adventures. Of course, you can include an occasional Encounter or Reward woven into an adventure now and again for flavor and variety.

Questing with a Side of Quests

If your Personal Character Quests are small and they’re not too numerous and if they won’t fit well into the between-adventure crap, the next step up is turning them into Side Quests. Expand each Plot Point into an Encounter or two as a diversion to another adventure and drop them in the party’s adventures. As with all Side Quests, you want to require some deliberate choice on the party’s part, but don’t ask too much of the party.

For instance, if the party’s next adventure involves a trek to Copsewood Forest, perhaps Ardrick might learn beforehand that someone connected to his personal quest is hiding out in a forester’s camp nearby. Thus, he can say, “Hey, guys, while we’re in the forest, can we make a detour to this camp? I have some questions to ask someone. It won’t take long.”

Remember, you want to make pursuing the Side Quest a deliberate choice and it should cost the party something, but it doesn’t matter how much it costs, so don’t charge too much.

Tonight… In a Very Special Episode

If you’ve got one or two Personal Character Quests that are too extensive for Side Quests or if they integrate into the group’s shared goals, you can turn the Personal Character Quest Plot Points into full-on Adventures and drop them into the campaign as their own things.

Basically, once in a rare while — no more than once out of every four or five adventures — a character finds a lead that’ll let them advance their Personal Character Quest. They then drag the party along on an adventure to hunt the six-fingered man or pay the ransom or bring low the traitor from the Jade Order or whatever.

A few caveats with this approach, though. First, don’t let these Personal Adventures steal the show. They should be rare. And no character’s Personal Character Quest should need more than three adventures to finish. Second, keep the Personal Adventures on the shorter side. If your adventures normally fill three to four sessions, keep the Personal Adventures down to two sessions. Third, ensure the Personal Adventures explicitly and obviously play into at least a couple of the party members’ Motivations. Assuming you had your players choose Character Motivations. But why wouldn’t you?

In short, keep the diversions short and write them for the whole group to enjoy, not just the character whose Personal Character Quest is on the line.

It’s My Turn to Pick the Adventure

Finally, if you’re sitting on an extensive Personal Character Quest for every party member and you can’t make them work on the side, you’re just gonna have to accept that the Personal Character Quests are your Campaign. That’s what you’re doing.

And the players are gonna have to suck it up too.

If that’s the case, you just turn each Personal Character Quest Plot Point into a stand-alone adventure as above. And yes, keep them on the shorter side and incorporate as many Motivations as you can into each. Then, just rotate through them. This week, it’s Ardrick’s adventure. Next week, it’s Beryllia’s. Then it’s Cabe’s. And so on. Just make sure to jumble up the order to keep shit from being formulaic. You can also weave your own stand-alone adventures — or even a campaign-level plot — into the game. Just mix them in among the rest. And do feel free to make those adventures longer and more involved.

And, truth be told, if you’re committed to this Personal Character Quest thing, the Interwoven Campaign approach I’m describing is actually the best way to do it. Or the least worst anyway. Hell, it’s the basis for my secret Personal-Character-Quest-Based Campaign recipe. Yeah. Seriously. I have a recipe. Because despite all I said…

Letting My Mask Slip

I remain firmly against this whole Personal Character Quest thing. It’s got issues. Deep, fundamental issues. It ain’t what tabletop roleplaying games do best. It’s a much better fit for solo experiences like computer roleplaying games. But such games rarely give the players the chance to pick their own destinies the same way tabletop roleplaying games do. And I totally get the draw of creating not just a character but a character with a dream to chase.

Personal Character Quests aren’t actually terrible. Especially if they’re handled with intentionality. That is, they work best when you — the Game Master — decide up front that they’re a thing you want in your game. And when you decide whether they’re to be an optional thing for some players to pick or whether they’re a required part of character creation. And when you decide — in advance — how — exactly — you mean to incorporate them into your Campaign.

And if you do make them mandatory, you’ve got to plan on helping the players who struggle with such shit to come up with good ones. Because lots of players really do have a hard time inventing a destiny for their character.

And while I stand by everything I said about disengagement and disjointed gameplay and the importance of shared goals at the heart of every game, you’ve got to understand that I’m taking an idealist stance and I’m writing about how to run the best possible game. Which is always my perspective, by the way. Even when I told you years ago about building totally adequate, quick-and-dirty dungeons using published content from your game’s core books, I was telling you how to run the best possible game. And lots of you discovered that I was right.

If you’re willing to settle for a merely okay game with some occasional disconnection and disengagement, you can do the Personal Character Quest thing. Especially if you do it with deliberate intentionality and especially if you’ve got reasonably mature, reasonably chill players who are happy to go with the flow if it means they get a game.

Fortunately, that’s actually most players.

Personal Character Quest Adventures will absolutely matter more to the player who owns the quest, but if they are good, fun adventures, it’s not like everyone else is going to check out or piss and moan about wasting their time on shit that doesn’t matter to them. And if you do have a player pissing and moaning, you’ve got a selfish player and that’s a different problem.

Meanwhile, as long as you’re aware of the potential issues — as a Game Master — and you keep your eyes and ears open, you can pivot your game on the fly to resolve the problems that actually do arise. I don’t recommend you waste time and energy assuming problems will arise and pre-solving them. And this whole Feature and everything I’ve said is basically a response to dumbasses assuming problems and trying to pre-solve them. Which is another reason why I struggled to write it.

And all this soft, reasonable practicality is why I actually did figure out a secret recipe for a Personal Character Quest Campaign. If I ever did want to start a fresh campaign and I wanted it to be about Personal Character Quests, I can tell you how I’d give the best chance to succeed. It’d require some pretty specific, pretty deliberate choices and it’d require some up-front work with the players to make it work and I’d need a few thousand extra words to spell it out, but I do have something.

Not that any of you would want it. After all, it still amounts to deliberately infecting your game with crippling diarrhea and then hoping you can manage it with a good diet and exercise regimen. And why would you ever want that? I sure as hell wouldn’t. So just forget I said anything and let’s never speak of this again.

…

You’re gonna make me tell you, aren’t you?