It’s time for another Stupid Narration Trick. Really, it’s time for the first Stupid Narration Trick. All I’ve done so far is introduce the series and give you some drills so you could get better at pulling narration out of your ass? Incidentally, how are those drills going? Are you enjoying them? Are you even still doing them?

Yeah? Me neither. And man does it show.

Anyway…

Today, I’m gonna teach you how to tag your players’ characters.

Interaction is Characterization

Let’s talk about characterization. Let’s talk about giving your characters strong identities and making them clear. It’s a big part of making them seem like real people in a real world, which is definitely something you want to do.

Oh, did I mention that I’m not talking about non-player characters here? I’m talking about characterizing your players’ characters.

Wait, what?

I know that this crap is almost always about how to bring your world to life by portraying your non-player characters better. I’ve given plenty of advice on that front myself. But non-player characters are bit players. They’re the extras. Or, at best, they’re the supporting cast. They’re not the most important characters in the game or the world or the story. The characters you really need to characterize are the protagonists. The players’ characters.

“But isn’t that a job for the players?” you ask. Well, you could leave it up to the players. But remember the old adage, “Players are no good at everything.” Why would you trust them with something as important as characterizing the protagonists of the game? That’s like trusting them to drive the game’s pace or set its goals.

Okay, calm the hell down, you know I’m kidding. Well, half kidding. There’s more to this than just “players suck,” and I’m sure as hell not telling you to play the characters yourselves.

See, the thing is that characterization comes about through interaction. As an audience, we learn about characters and build relationships with them by watching them interact with each other. As roleplayers, we deepen our investment in and understanding of our characters by interacting as our characters. Either way, characterization comes out of a back-and-forth between two characters.

Thus, every time your players’ characters interact with the world…

Actually, let me flip that around for reasons that are going to be clear later. Every time the world interacts with a player’s character, there’s an opportunity to pull the player deeper into their own character and show more of that character to the other players. Not to mention the possibility of inviting the other players’ characters to get involved.

So every interaction is an opportunity for you to make your players better roleplayers and increase their investment in their own characters.

So how do you do it? Well, you have to understand first that interaction starts not with choices, but with impressions.

Interaction Starts with Impressions

You start most interactions without a clue. When you start a conversation with a stranger, you know nothing about their interests, background, social status, mood, hopes, dreams, personality, or anything else. You know nothing. In narrative terms, every interaction starts with zero characterization.

Consider that the players’ characters interact with lots of characters, but very rarely do they interact with the same character multiple times. There are different questgivers every week and different innkeepers and shopkeepers in every town and different contacts and villains and informants every adventure. So most interactions are shallow and neutral. There’s no time for depth before they’re done forever. No characterization.

And that would all be true if it weren’t all based on lies.

First, no one starts interactions clueless. Everyone makes judgments, assessments, guesses, and assumptions before word one comes out of their noise holes. We call those first impressions, and they’re a necessary and useful part of our social wiring. We treat people differently based on our impressions of them.

Second, interactions based on impressions are neither shallow nor neutral. They’re affirming, affirmable, belying, belyable, and affirming in another, different way. What the hell do those words mean? Let me give you an example.

Suppose Adam wants to buy some new armor for his character, Ardrick. Most Game Masters run standard script #401(b) Shopkeeper (Blacksmith). They put on a Scottish accent, because blacksmiths always have a Scottish accent, unless you’re in Scotland of course, then you affect a Broad Scots or maybe a Doric accent, or if you’re elsewhere in United Kingdom, maybe you use a West Country burr, but in America, blacksmiths have Scottish accents, though, technically, it’s this weird Scots-Irish hybrid accent associated with Appalachian frontier settlers…

Sorry…

Suppose Adam wants to buy some armor for Ardrick. He goes to the blacksmith. You, as the blacksmith, say, “Well, wot kin I do fer yer?” Adam says, “I need to buy some armor.” You say, “Aye, well, I kin pitch up an ornswoggle of mail fer yer. Fiddy gold the lot, ken? We’re a Jock Tamson’s bairns, ‘round ‘ere.” Adam marks off the gold, adds the armor, and the generic transaction’s done.

But suppose the blacksmith looks over Ardrick and decides, for some reason, that Ardrick’s a knight. Or at least a man-at-arms for a noble house. Consequently, he’s honored that Ardrick has chosen his shop, though he might also wonder why Ardrick isn’t getting his armor from the castle’s master of arms or whatever.

Suppose, then, the blacksmith says, “Sir knight, I’m honored to have your custom, if a bit surprised by it. What would you ask of me?”

If Ardrick really is a knight and Adam is shallowly engaged in roleplaying, he gets pulled in a little deeper because he can validate that assumption. If he’s already deeply engaged, he can respond in a deeper way because the statement is meatier. Roleplaying-wise, there’s more to bite on. And if the blacksmith has it wrong, Adam can either shallowly say, “I’m not a knight, just an adventurer,” or can engage more deeply with a meatier response. The other players, too, seeing the interaction, end up with a stronger characterization for Ardrick.

Meanwhile, however deeply Adam is engaged, his own portrayal of Ardrick is validated. “Wow,” he can think, “The world sees me as Ardrick, a warrior in shining armor. I must be doing something right.”

The thing is, players need this shit…

Most Players Don’t Swim Deep

The nasty truth is that most players stay pretty close to the roleplaying surface most of the time. That’s not even a criticism, even though I do love criticizing players. It’s just the nature of things. The players ain’t wearing their characters’ skins, and they can’t see their character on screen like in a video game or movie. It’s easy for them to forget they’re someone else in the world, and it’s even easier for everyone to forget who everyone else is.

Interaction is more about response than it is about choosing action. Every statement after the first is a reaction. If the interaction starts on the surface, it elicits only surface-level responses, which elicit more surface-level responses, and so on. Exceptions exist. Some players swim deep and stay there, but they’re the exceptions, not the rules, and you can’t count on them to carry the whole game.

As a Game Master, you’re the first cause in every interaction. If you start shallow, the interaction will stay there. If you start deeper, the players will swim down to meet you. Eventually, they’ll get more comfortable in deeper waters and stay there even when you don’t start the scene. They’re staying there with each other. They remember who their fellow players are in the world.

The trick is simple, right? Just tailor absolutely every interaction to the characters as the world sees them. Remember every detail about every character and instantly invent an appropriate first impression at the start of every conversation. It’s just that easy, right?

Divinity: Original Sin II

I gotta be honest: my love for tabletop roleplaying games does not extend to the computerized and consolized variety. I have no patience for interminably dull, dialogue-driven, turn-based or start-and-pause tactical combat video games like Clair’s Obscure Expedition and Baldur’s Gate. There was a time when I enjoyed those games. I loved the Black Isle Games like Baldur’s Gate: The Original Good Ones and Planescape: Torment: Not the Numanuma Bullshit. You know, the games Swen Larian ripped off before Wizards of the Coast let him make his own Baldur’s Gate. Once. And apparently never again. Because Wizards of the Coast is True Neutral and therefore must follow every actually good decision with a shitty one.

Meanwhile, I did spend a lot of my formative years exploring Alefgard and Terragaia and Eagleland and Chronoland. But, one day, I realized video games didn’t have to be boring as shit and that, with effort, I could rise to the challenge of actual gameplay challenge, so now I play real games. Like a real gamer.

That said, I keep my hand in. Whenever a dull-as-shit CRPG starts turning heads, I’ll give it a couple of dozen hours to see what it’s doing to get so many gamers gushing. I’d be stupid if I didn’t. But it isn’t fun. Games like those aren’t fun. It’s research. I’m there to work. Stop asking my opinions on such games; you won’t like them.

Hence, my playing Divinity: Original Sin II some years ago. For a couple of dozen hours. Well, for a dozen hours. It gave me the solution to the First Impression Problem, which is a Stupid Narration Trick I call Tagging.

D:OS2 is pretty character-driven. There’s a bunch of pre-made characters with detailed backgrounds to choose from, and they’ve all got specialized quests and unique dialogue options and crap like that scattered throughout the game. The game basically treats you differently depending on who you’re playing.

But D:OS2 also lets you make your own custom little avatar if you’re into that kind of thing. The problem is that your experience won’t be as deep. You won’t get special, unique dialogue options because the game doesn’t really know how to treat your customer character. It could use things like class and skills and crap like that, but it’s not a class-based system. It has classes, but those are just skill and ability presets. Baldur’s Gate III uses class and background, but, for reasons I’ll explain below, I don’t think that’s a great solution.

To fix the issue, DO/S2 Warp asks you to pick a couple of custom tags that describe your background and social status or whatever. They’re part of the same system the game uses to respond to pre-generated characters. They’re not super deep, and they don’t go much beyond D&D’s class and background crap, but the idea of Tagging is what grabbed me. It was the seed.

Tagging Your Player Characters

As Stupid Narration Tricks go, Tagging is as simple and stupid as they come. Just make a list of three to five keywords for each player’s character that describe how the world sees that character. Then, when an interaction happens, pick one keyword and use it explicitly to guide the interaction. Show the players the world sees the characters for who they are.

Ardrick, for example, has the Knight tag. He looks like a knight, and so people treat him as such. He’s also Human, which is mostly meaningless, and he’s a Noble, and he’s unusually Tall, and he has Kind Eyes.

When Ardrick gets into an interaction, I pick whichever keyword seems like the best fit for the situation. If someone’s desperate for help, they fixate on his kindness. If someone’s flirting with Ardrick or might be scared of him, I use his tallness. I make it an explicit part of the interaction. The harlot comments on his tallness. The pickpocket cranes his neck to stare up at Ardrick. That kind of crap.

The reason I use just a few Tags instead of relying on whole descriptions is mainly that it’s just easier and more expedient. I can remember three to five keywords or, at least, refer to them quickly at the start of every conversation. I don’t want to parse a whole paragraph of description or even a list of sentences. But there’s another reason to stick with a limited list of simple Tags.

When it comes to characterization, consistency and repetition are king and queen over all. You don’t want to highlight different traits in every conversation; you want to keep commenting on the same small number of traits. That way, they stay in your head, and they stay in the players’ heads.

The reason I absolutely don’t use simple game mechanical descriptors like background and class is that they’re too broad and too generic. Ardrick is a fighter, sure, but that’s a really broad term. Fighters can be soldiers, sellswords, knights, barbarians, thugs, and so on, and cetera, and nauseum. Each should elicit a different response. Sometimes, some backgrounds and some classes work as Tags, but I never default to them. I choose them. A bard might be a Bard. Fine. But those wandering researchers and collectors of stories for the Collegium Bardicus or whatever? They’re more like Scholars than Bards. Meanwhile, rogues don’t advertise their roguishness. Especially not those of the outlaw and con-artist variety.

For this same reason, I don’t have a master list of Tags to choose from. That would be a stupid-ass idea. Don’t ask me for it. I come up with Tags for the characters I’ve got at my table.

Anyway, that’s it. That’s the whole Stupid Narration Trick. Make a list of three-ish to five-ish keywords for each character that represent the different ways the world sees the characters, keep the list handy, and use one obviously and explicitly, and as early as possible in every interaction.

I’m sorry to bother you, good sir, but I’m in trouble, and you have such a kind face. You remind me of my brother, who always took care of me; the gods keep his soul. Would you spare a moment to hear my tale?

Tagging the Easy Way

So, how do I come up with the Tags? Well, mostly, I let my players feed them to me. But not by asking them explicitly for tags. That would be a frigging disaster. Don’t ever do that.

If you’re like me, you make your players describe their characters at least once at the start of the campaign. Maybe you even ask them to do it again from time to time. Of course, if you’re like most Game Masters, you totally zone out during these little introductive vignettes. Or you crack jokes. After all, players suck at description, and these descriptions are for the players, not for you. So who cares?

But what you should be doing is taking notes. Specifically, you should be writing Tags. Listen to the description and then, when it’s done, write down three to five keywords about the character you just heard described. Ardrick wears full field armor, carries a sword, and has a shield with a crest. He’s a Knight. He’s also Tall. The player said that. And the player made a big thing about his smiling face and sparkling eyes, for some reason. So he’s Kind-Eyed. He seems friendly.

Just grab the most salient details, turn them into single words, and keep them forever. If you just do that on the fly, your players will think you’re a super-attentive genius Game Master just because you remember shit about their characters that even they don’t.

Players are easily impressed, and they love being flattered.

But you can take this a bit further if you want to.

Tagging the Harder, Better Way

Before you even start listening to descriptions, decide what kinds of tags you need to run the game you’re running. Come up with classifications. What specific details must you have? If you end up with more than five, that’s okay.

I always grab Race or Ancestry, Gender, and Apparent Age. I don’t put a number on age, but rather, a descriptive term. In my Chain of Stars campaign, I have two Young humans, a dwarf who looks Middle-Aged to humans, but is actually Young to dwarves, and an elf who looks Ageless because, well, he’s an elf.

Next, I grab a job, role, or profession. Everyone tries to figure out what everyone else does in the world. The two humans are a Soldier and a Priest. The dwarf is technically a priest, but in human lands, he’s recognized as a Warrior. The elf is tricky. He’s a multiclassed rogue and wizard, but advertises neither. He’s wearing a suit of finely made light armor and has a nice, light elven sword, but also carries a lot of scroll cases, and he dresses nicely in general. So the world generally sees him as an Envoy or a Scholar. Basically, people in authority treat him like a visiting dignitary, educated people treat him like a peer, and everyone else just treats him like an exotic, mysterious elf.

Modern D&D actually gives you a leg-up here because it classifies clothes by role, profession, and social class. If someone is wearing a scholar’s outfit or priest’s vestments, don’t second-guess it. If it dresses like a scholar, it’s a scholar.

I also prefer to have an extra Tag for heavily armored characters when they’re not wearing their armor. When the Soldier isn’t wearing her full suit of mail, she just looks like a nondescript Tradeswoman. She’s got calloused hands, sun-toughened skin, and she wears peasant clothes.

Which brings me to social standing. In my game, status and social class are important. Everyone responds to them. The Priest is a Nobleman. The Soldier is a Commoner. The dwarf is technically an Artisan, but no one outside dwarven society could make that call. Likewise, the elf is basically a college graduate taking a decade off to backpack across Europe before settling down into something useful, but elven society isn’t that stratified, and non-elves would never know that anyway.

This raises an important point. Do pay attention to descriptions, but don’t stop at them. Use everything you know about the character and remember that things are more obvious than you might think. Especially when it comes to things like profession and social status.

There’s this great scene in season two, episode three of the Game of Thrones HBO series entitled What Is Dead May Never Die. Arya Stark, a young scion of a now-disgraced noble house, had disguised herself as a low-born servant and had ended up serving Tywin Lannister, the villainous nobleman who helped plot the downfall of House Stark. Her disguise seems to be holding up, which is odd because Tywin is very cunning and alert. Then, suddenly, as Arya says, “Yes, my lord,” Tywin corrects her.

Girl, it’s “m’lord.” Low-born girls say, “m’lord,” not “my Lord.” If you’re going to pose as a commoner, you should do it properly.

It’s a great scene for a lot of reasons, and the interactions between Arya and Tywin are a high point of the season, but it also illustrates something important about how people in stratified, class-based societies figure out where they stand. Because knowing where you stand relative to the people around you is a survival skill in a society like that. You can put on fancy clothes and jewelry, but unless you’re a skillful actor or a master of disguise, your speech, your carriage, how you hold your eyes, everything gives you away.

In Chain of Stars, everyone can tell Rhesa is a Commoner and Evander is a Nobleman. It’s apparent in a thousand social cues. In fact, it kind of throws people sometimes. Currently, Evander isn’t very well-equipped. He’s had some accidents, and some of his gear got destroyed. Thus, he looks like a humble, traveling priest in patchwork armor, but his speech and carriage betray him as nobly born and raised. Rhesa, meanwhile, is a commoner by her carriage and speech, but she’s got a nice suit of castle-forged chain mail and carries what looks like an heirloom sword. That’s why the world assumes she’s a Soldier and not just a Mercenary or a Warrior. She probably serves as a woman-at-arms to some noble house. Evander, meanwhile, is treated like a Priest, and people assume he was disinherited or brought low, or he’s from a house that’s fallen on bad times.

Meanwhile, if Galon ulen Glon meets other dwarves, they can tell at once he’s an Artisan because dwarves follow complex rules about how they keep their hair and beards and what jewelry they wear based on social caste. No one who isn’t a dwarf would think he’s anything other than a traveling dwarf Warrior.

So, I grab Race or Ancestry, Gender, Apparent Age, Role or Profession, Social Status, and finally, I try to grab one unique descriptor from every players’ description that catches my eye. Does the character have an unusual build? Do they have scars? Unusual eyes? Do they have a unique piece of gear? Sometimes, I’ll even grab too. Rhesa is actually exceptional for her plainness. The player made a point of that. But she also has this ancient sword inscribed with unreadable text. The sort of noble house would pass down through the generations.

I use my Tags a lot. I don’t just use them to drive conversations; I build encounters around them. Recently, my heroes attended a little cookout hosted by some farmers they’d helped. It turned into a medieval block party. At one point, a young pregnant woman approached the priest seeking a prayer for her husband, who is away at war, and a blessing for her unborn child, whom she hopes is a boy. Before that, the heroes were guests at a noble’s table. The nobles’ advisors fixated on the elf and the dwarf and made plays, later on, for their favor. They saw opportunities to open relations and make trade deals.

I also use the Tags to decide who people want to talk to when the party is interacting as a group. Most common folk are kind of awed and intimidated by the elf and the dwarf. They really can’t see past those tags. So they prefer to talk to the Solider or the Priest and often guess at who’s in charge.

I also often add temporary Tags to make the world seem more responsive and to remind the players that their characters look like shit. If they’re beat up or dirty, I note that. People comment on it. After a long journey on the road and until the characters have settled in for a bath and a change of clothes, everyone knows they’ve been traveling. Most folk don’t care, but in polite society, it draws comment. Thus, my players have learned to actually pay for a bath whenever they can. Likewise, nonplayer characters aren’t shy about saying, “Holy crap! Are you okay? You look like you’ve been through the mill!”

Ultimately, it’s that stuff that makes this more than just a Stupid Narration Trick. You can just stop at a list of permanent, unchanging Tags to shape your interactions, and that will enhance your game. But, if you’ve got the list anyway and you know what it’s for, why not find as many creative ways to use it as you can? That’s what turns it into a Smart Narration Trick.

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Thank you to all of my readers and especially all of my financial supporters for keeping the lights on here at Angry Games Headquarters. This work wouldn’t exist without you. Thank you especially to Necroevan for your years of generous support. I know you had to end your support due to circumstances beyond your control, but I remain grateful for all you’ve done, and I’m praying that you get through your current challenges. You will always be welcome in my community.