Welcome back. Thanks for stopping by. Last time we discussed how your group got together. This time we'll discuss who should be in the group. A group of PCs is generally a task force of some kind. They're adventurers who will be presented with a variety of challenges and obstacles. They need skills relevant to the tasks at hand, and some means of coordinating their actions.

I've had to revise my thoughts on this topic quite a bit since I realized that not everybody has me or one of my friends as a GM. The optimum spread of character abilities that work in my games may not be very useful for yours.

So lets start with the basics.

Play Style:

The type of game you're playing will heavily influence the makeup of your group. If you're playing in a good, old fashioned dungeon crawl then you can focus on combat abilities, worrying only a little about non-combat skills. If you're more interested in playing average people in extraordinary circumstances, your characters will have a wide range of skills, many of which won't be particularly relevant to the tasks at hand. If you're playing a "Feeble Mortals Against the Mighty Old Ones" game like Call of Cthulhu then you'll need a range of social and investigative skills. Combat prowess will be of limited use.

Personal preference is important, too. The group I'm in now likes tight, well-rendered stories -- similar to what you might see in an hour-long TV drama. There are subplots and side trips, but mostly everything relates to the main plot. That may change as the game grows, of course. I've played in a couple of groups where we spent as much time on the characters' personal lives as we did pursuing "adventure goals." I've also seen groups where combat is the main focus. Social interaction was limited, and frequently abbreviated so we could get on to the next fight scene. In a game like that, a bookish, social character is probably not going to have much to do.

Most of my experience has been in games with a mix of challenges where a wide range of skills was required. Even if combat was the primary focus, other activities took up a good share of time, and characters that were only useful in combat could sometimes be left out. Since I only have my experience to draw upon, and since I figure that kind of group is the best example for the purposes of this article, I'm going to talk about building groups with a range of skills, rather than just fighters or just occult dabbling antiques dealers. This is probably the most common situation, and it's easy to adapt to styles of play with different expectations.

So, let's move on.

Group Construction:

I have never encountered a group of players who sat down with the GM, having no personal expectations, and asked, "So, what kind of game is it?" then negotiated with each other to make sure they had all the needed roles filled. I'd like to try it some time, but I doubt I ever will. When a potential GM pitches a game for me, the first thing that usually pops into my head is a character concept.

Most group construction takes place after some or all of the players have chosen concepts. Usually the more flexible players, or the ones who just showed up late, modify their concepts to fill needed roles. That generally works out just fine, since there really aren't that many roles to fill. Unless your GM is just an obstructionist, he's probably not going to make your ex-Marine, former cop, school Librarian, and town dog catcher go on a geological survey mission to Madagascar. (Well, he might, but he's probably going to take into account the fact that none of the characters know anything about geology -- work with me here.)

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2^nd ed. divided up the roles very neatly: Warrior, Rogue, Magic User, and Cleric. Warriors were primarily combatants. Rogues primarily snuck around. Magic Users primarily threw spells. Clerics also primarily threw spells, but they were different spells. Honest.

Seriously, that wasn't a bad spread. Warriors were useful for defeating adversaries. Rouges were able to circumvent physical barriers. Magic Users wielded a lot of different abilities, potentially able to substitute for just about any other party member. Clerics were good for support roles, mostly healing injured companions. Some of the secondary classes provided redundancy, which I'll talk about presently.

You don't have to have a class system to have specialists. Most game systems reward specialization to one degree or another, since a character who's specialized in one area has better skills than one who spreads his points evenly. Even games where all the characters are similar, for instance Ars Magica, Amber, or just about any superhero game offer opportunities for specialization.

So, why bother to specialize? Some games make you specialize (Dungeons and Dragons, Cyberpunk 2020). Some games just reward specialization (in Fading Suns a starting character can pretty much be good at one thing). Other games leave the field open, but it's a good idea to specialize anyway. A group of specialists is more capable than a group of generalists at a similar level of experience. Look at The Princess Bride. Wesley is superhuman. If he was a PC, then his player was probably the GM's Significant Other or drug supplier. The other main characters, though, were not unusual in and of themselves. Visini was small and stunted, so he developed his intellect. Fezik was incredibly strong, but not really smart enough to manage on his own. Inigo was totally dedicated to swordplay, and pretty helpless in any other arena. If he'd been a better investigator, he might have found Count Rougan. All three of them together are roughly as "powerful" as Wesley, who would have had a vastly higher experience level or character point total.

Group Composition:

So we've established that specialists are useful. Now, what kind of specialists do we need? Ultimately, that depends on your game. CoC Investigators need significantly different abilities than D&D treasure hunters. These are some general roles, along with some explanation of what each role is good for.

Warriors: Role-playing games are mostly about combat. Even games where combat isn't the focus frequently include episodes of violence. Warriors are focused on various means of harming others. For my purposes, a swordsman, a Shao Lin monk, and a pyrokenetic teenager are all Warriors. The Warrior's job is to eliminate threats and protect his companions. In a combat heavy game, you probably want most of your characters to be primarily Warriors, but several might have secondary specialties. In a game focusing on social interaction or investigation, you might turn it around so that most of your characters have other primary specialties, but some or all also have some skills in combat.

Scouts: Scouts are adept at moving around without attracting notice. Where the Warriors blow thorough obstacles, the Scouts generally work around them. Used carefully, a Scout is more effective than a Warrior in some situations. Stealth and guile can get you past difficulties that brute force can't defeat. Scouts almost always have a secondary specialty, since it doesn't do much good to get past all the obstacles if you can't do anything useful when you get there. A Scout who is also a Warrior can be particularly nasty. Most people call them Ninjas...

Investigator: Knowing where to go is as important as being able to get there, and knowing who to hit is sometimes more important than knowing how to hit them. Investigators can be magicians with scrying spells, astrally projecting psychics, or good old-fashioned gumshoes. Investigators almost always have secondary specialties, frequently social skills. Lots of gamers overlook the value of investigation. Careful gathering of information can help you avoid a lot of trouble later on, though.

Talkers: I couldn't really think of a better name for Talkers. The AD&D Bard is the classic Talker. A Cyberpunk Fixer is a good example, too. Talkers are good at dealing with people. Their role overlaps with the role of Investigator quiet a bit since one of the most common uses for their skills is to convince people to tell them things. Talkers usually split their skills between social and investigative skills since they overlap so much to begin with. Talkers who are better at giving orders are frequently also Warriors. The ones who specialize in convincing people of things that might not strictly be true find the skills of a Scout to be handy for those times that they can't fool all the people.

Healer: Healers are adept at patching up their comrades, most often the Warriors. In games with Healing Magic, Healing is likely to be a primary specialty. Let's face it; the Fighters could really kill all the zombies. They keep the Clerics around for "Cure Light Wounds." In other games, Healing is more likely to be a backup specialty.

Expert: This is kind of a catchall category. An Expert has a particular skill that's useful in the right circumstances. A Healer is a certain type of expert. Others are Pilots, Weaponsmiths, and Scientists. Esoteric Experts are probably the most dispensable specialty most of the time, but when you need one you really, really need one. In my games, Expert tends to be a backup specialty, or something NPCs do. Ghost (way back from the Character Creation examples) was a Warrior first, and a Weaponsmith a very distant second. Curiously, the way the game turned out his skills in the smithy turned out to be more crucial to the overall plot.

Jack-of-All-Trades: After all this talk about specialists, I'm going to extol the virtues of a generalist. If you have the room in your group to work one in, a Jack-of-All-Trades can really come in handy. He won't be as effective at anything as his companions, but he'll be useful just about everywhere. Since most characters can't be in two places at once, it can be really useful to have two people with similar skills. That said, it's probably best if a Jack of All Trades is at least a little better than average at one. A Warrior with a wide range of low-level skills is a good choice. In a D&D game, the Magic User is sort of a Jack-of-All-Trades. The right choice of spells can do just about anything any other character can do. If you're coming up on a big fight, load up on Fireballs. If you're trying to sneak across the country, Invisibility and some illusions will come in handy. If you need to make some friends, Charm Person is a good choice.

Redundancy:

The above descriptions hinted at this. You want to be sure your party isn't over-specialized. If you only have one Scout, you'll blunder into a lot of trouble he gets taken out. If you only have one Medic, everybody had better be very, very careful if anything happens to him. Besides, an over-specialized character is likely to be boring to play whenever the game doesn't revolve around his specialty.

Ideally, every character in your group can pitch in to help with one other character's job, and be at least a little competent at a third. Perhaps sadly, one of those three jobs should probably be Warrior. I've played characters that were totally helpless in combat. It can be fun once in a while, but it's not tactically the best choice. It can also irritate the GM, since he'll probably have to modify scenarios somewhat to take care of you. If you're going to play a character that can't fight at all, you should take care to make sure he's pretty good at something else.

Your exact choice of specialties will be dependant on the type of game you're playing, and the backgrounds of the characters. Here's the spread on my current Shadowrun game. I'm running Shadowrun to fill in for a while. Our Tribe 8 GM had to quit, and the next GM is too busy to start his game, so I decided to run a somewhat episodic game with a few subplots to keep things connected. I'm a big fan of Cowboy Bebop (an Anime about interstellar bounty hunters, for those who might not know) so I decided to capture a little of that flavor in my game. The Runners aren't bounty hunters, but they're more or less "good guys" operating on the edges of the underworld. Everybody's got at least a little combat skill, since I don't consider an episode complete without a massive fight that lowers property values in a six-block radius. (Well, maybe not every episode...)

The players didn't set out to coordinate their characters, but they checked in with each other to make sure they had the major bases covered. Here's what they came up with:

• Alex Black (Bodyguard): Alex has enough cyberware that he's as tough as a Troll. He's also a crack shot with a pistol. His primary specialty is Warrior. He can also handle the role of a Talker in the right situations. He's charismatic and good looking, and used to work amongst the rich and famous.
• Father Angus (Bull Shaman): Father Angus is moderately better at Conjuring than Sorcery, and has ready access to Spirits. In my terms he's an Expert in magic and kind of a Jack-of-All-Trades. He's most useful as a Healer, and pretty handy as support in a lot of applications. He's not a great Scout on his own, but his spirits can help the group's other Scout. He's OK in a fight, but mostly good at summoning a spirit to harass the enemy so his friends have an advantage, etc...
• Cammy (Con Artist/Burglar): Chameleon, Cammy for short, is adept at stealth, breaking and entering, and confidence games. She's a good Scout, and a decent Investigator or Talker when the situation calls for it.
• Ena (Elf Mage): Ena is the group's other Magical Expert. Like Angus, she's kind of a Jack-of-All-Trades. She's most useful as a Scout, with Clairvoyance and a Mask spell to let her see things the group's enemies don't really intend. She's got a pretty good Power Bolt for when things get hairy. She's not as adept a Conjurer as Angus is, and Elementals aren't as readily available, but they're more useful when she summons one.
• Ziff (Ork Combat Decker): Ziff is big and strong, with some cyberware to help him survive a fight. He's also a pretty good computer hacker. I'm going to tag him as an Expert in running the Matrix. Within the Matrix, he's mostly useful as an Investigator. He's also not a bad Warrior.

This group is a nice spread. I don't think they would have done a lot better if they'd tried to coordinate from the beginning. So far, the only real weakness they have is a lack of Investigative talent, which they don't need a lot of. Most of their runs don't require more than basic fact-finding. If the game runs long enough for much development, they'll probably decide they need some more investigative skills in the meat world. Ziff will probably decide to leave his Combat abilities alone and get more adept at Matrix running. Another solution is for every character to develop a wider range of contacts the group can tap for information.

And that's about it for this time. Next up: Combat Roles. See you then.

Welcome back. Thanks for stopping by. This marks the beginning of my second year of columns. The fact that you're still here either means I'm not as bad at this as I think, or you're all literary masochists.

Last year we talked about character creation. Of course, there's more to a game than a single character. Besides all those guys the GM plays, you probably have to deal with two or more other players and their characters. I touched on this way back in the first column, and for the next few columns I'm going to expand on that idea.

All the Player Characters will form some kind of group. Whether it's an effective group or not depends on how the characters interact. A good group needs a range of skills and abilities appropriate to the group's goals. For instance, a team made up of a portrait artist, a street mime, and a hurdy-gurdy man with a monkey would probably not make the most effective hostile insertion team. On the other hand a ninja, a navy SEAL, and a MI6 agent might not do all that well collecting change on the boardwalk, at least not without bloodshed.

A team also needs some measure of cohesion. They need to have some means of making group decisions, either through a command structure or some type of democracy. If they can't act in concert they're not really a team, just some people (probably highly armed) hanging out in the same place.

The players as a group need to build characters who will fit into a team (Unless they're playing a highly competitive game like Amber, perhaps). The beginning of team building is figuring out what the team does and how it formed. The GM may have something to say about this. He might tell you "You will be a team of Rebel Agents with the mission of delivering the Death Star plans to Princess Leia." That's pretty specific, while still allowing for a range of character types. The GM's concept could be even more restrictive, like "You're the only surviving members of a Ninja clan that was just wiped out by the evil Shogun." Often, though the GM just tells you to make up whatever characters you want. That has been my general experience, both as a player and as a GM.

The "open call" sort of games, if done well, provide the players with the most freedom and produce some of the most fun groups. If done poorly, however, they lead to the variations of the old cliche of "you're all at the tavern when an old wizard comes in and says he's looking for adventurers..." With a little more thought, you can do a lot better. Just because the GM didn't say your characters had to start the game already knowing each other is no reason why they shouldn't.

So then, who are your characters and how do they know each other?

Let's start at the beginning. Usually the GM will have some concept of a game. It's a good idea to find out as much as possible about what's going on before you make up characters. Find out if there's anything the GM really likes or hates. It's a good idea to avoid things you know the GM's not going to like. Find out where the story will begin. With that as your starting point, figure out who you want to play and how they got there. Start with generalities and hammer out the specifics later.

Once everybody has a character and a general idea of how that character wound up at the game's starting locale, you can start looking for connections. Every character does not need to know every other character, and nobody necessarily has to be best friends. What you want, if you can get it, is a lose web. Character A knows B and C; C knows D, and D knows E (who is secretly A's half-brother). When the game starts off, those characters would tend to gravitate toward one-another just because everybody else is a totally unknown variable. You can start building a real team as you go along.

Example:

I never tried to build a really cohesive group until my Vampire Chronicle titled "Now is the Winter." I gave the players some direction by giving them several concepts from which to choose. The one they liked best was "Servants of the Prince," but nobody wanted to be an actual "servant of the Prince."

I love being the GM.

So anyway, what I finally wound up with was:

Bradley O'Neil - Losombra Antitribu and former Arcanum member. Bradley was pretty easy. When the player initially gave me the concept I told him the only way such a poor fool would have survived was with the protection of the Prince.

He was an occultist embraced by a Sabbat Losombra. She was so cruel that he eventually attacked her and, by a stroke of luck, managed to diablorize her. Having been a member of the Arcanum, he knew enough about vampire politics to know that was bad. He fled to the one city where he knew any other vampires, and begged for the protection of the Prince (who kind of owed him a favor).

Jason Sinclair - Brujah political manipulator. Jason was the Childe of the Brujah Primogen. The Primogen was fairly weak owing to the fact that the Prince recently killed half his clan in a fit of anger.

Jason didn't present too much of a problem, either. He Bradely O'Neil was one of the Prince's flunkies, so they would have run into each other from time to time.

Dr. Zhou - Tremere Feng Shui expert. An old, Chinese doctor embraced by the Tremere for his occult knowledge.

Once again, it was no great stretch to say he would have known Bradley. The players even went above and beyond the call of duty and made up some personal connections. The Tremere Chantry was in the local university, and Bradley taught a night class. Better yet, my city's Chinatown was within Brujah controlled territory, so Dr. Zhou and Jason had crossed paths on ocassion.

Catlin (who's last name I can't remember) - Ravanos Stripper. (Why Amanda wanted to play a Ravanos Stripper I truly don't know). She was a former blood doll/prostitute. The Ravanos who eventually Sired her used to rent her out to other vampires as food. One of her customers was careless and gave her AIDS. Rather than see her die, her Sire embraced her. Later he regretted wasting perfectly good favors on a "chew toy" and abandoned her.

Catlin's story gave her some great hooks which I'll get into a little later. In the short run, we just needed a reason she'd hang out with all these other vampires. Since Bradley was an agent of the Prince, the players involved decided he got the job of teaching her the ropes after her Sire kicked her out. That put her next to one of my two prime movers, which was good enough for me.

Sir Miles - Gargoyle.

Sir Miles' player wanted him to be an ancient warrior who had been serving the Tremere for centuries. Since I didn't want a 1000 year old warrior of death in my game, I insisted that a huge portion of that time be spent in Torpor. Since I already had a Tremere, a Gargoyle was easy enough to fit in. If nobody had been playing a Tremere, I would have insisted that Miles' player come up with a connection to somebody else.

All in all, they were pretty cohesive, even though there was still a lot of room for conflict. In fact, it wasn't long before a couple of them were plotting to kill each other, but that's a story for another day.

Once you have a loose structure, it's time to start putting the pieces together. If the GM has guidelines follow them. For instance, in the Dungeons and Dragons game I'm playing now, the DM wanted to throw us together in the first adventure. Our pre-game planning was limited to figuring out how we might interact once we actually met. Since one PC was a Northman (and really big and strong) it wouldn't have been a good idea to have another PC who hated the Northmen with unquenchable passion. An initial prejudice would have been fine. In fact, we got a little bit of that kind of thing. But, the players needed to know what to expect going in to avoid hard feelings and player to player misunderstandings.

If the GM doesn't have any preferences, then you can do whatever you want. Try to figure out what's logical based on everybody's characters. In games like Pendragon, your characters might have well all grown up together. It's a good idea to work out these social dynamics early on. I've come up with really cool ideas for my character after hearing another PC introduce an element from his. I personally like to create the closest relationships possible (within reason), but some people like to start off as relative strangers.

Whatever you do, however you do it, you'll eventually end up with a bunch of characters who you know will soon be thrown together. Your next step is to figure out, at least in general, how they're going to interact. This is when you start really comparing histories and doing a bit of character editing.

Example:

Going back to the PCs in Now is the Winter, we had five vaguely connected characters. As the PCs played around with their backgrounds, some interesting hooks emerged.

Jason wanted the Brujah to run the city. It had been held by the Ventrue since it was more than a crossroads with two buildings, but everybody needs a dream. In the short term, he just wanted the Brujah to be less weak than they were. Still, his political ambitions were quickly going to bring him into conflict with two other PCs. Anything he did to or around the Prince was going to involve Bradley, since the Prince used Bradley as an agent in any matter he didn't want to risk one of his own clan over. Also, since Chinatown was in the middle of Brujah territory, Jason and Zhou were eventually going to be fighting over a piece of territory.

Dr. Zhou didn't intentionally cross any of the PCs, but the easiest way to work Miles into the rest of the group was to have the Regent put Miles under Dr. Zhou's direction. Zhou was also the Regent's Childe, so she tended to send him on her errands, particularly since she didn't like her Second. That made it easy to tie Zhou to the Prince.

Miles didn't have too many connections. His only real link was to Dr. Zhou. That was OK, since as GM I was able to quickly insert some others. I made sure Miles owed Jason a small Presitation debt in the first session.

Catlin was already connected to Bradely. She looked at him kind of like her Sire early on, and later fell in love with him (more or less, these are vampires we're talking about). She also came up with another cool connection due to one of her Flaws. Catlin was a Plague Carrier. Since she's had AIDS when she was Embraced, there was no easy way to get rid of it, but the Tremere with their blood magic, might know a way. If any Tremere would know, it would be a freaky blood alchemist with all kinds of esoteric medical knowledge. Luckily enough, there was one of those in the city, Dr. Zhou.

Bradely didn't really need any more connections. Almost every PC had some link to him already.

These hooks didn't turn them into a perfect team by any means, but they did establish some initial relationships. Bradely was the natural leader, with Jason always trying to wrest control away from him. Zhou could be counted on to be loyal, but only for as long as the Regent wanted him to. Right there I had a cool dynamic with all three subtly playing against each other. Miles wasn't interested in being in charge, but his ties to Zhou and Jason, along with his natural tendency to want to follow someone, put him in an interesting position during all the power struggles.

And there you have it. A group built this way has some possibilities that a group just thrown together at random doesn't really have. Before I started doing things like this, most of my PCs would interact with NPCs but had relatively little to do with each other. There weren't many in-character conversations between players, particularly in the early stages of the game. That left a lot of burden on the GM if players wanted to play through anything beyond the basics of the "adventure."

In Now is the Winter my players spent almost as much time interacting with each other (arguing, back-stabbing, sharing blood...) as they did talking to NPCs. That turned out to be a good thing, since it gave me time to figure out what was supposed to happen next while they were arguing about it.

The next column in this series will cover roles within the group. It doesn't matter how well integrated your characters are. If they don't have the skills they need to get the job done, they're going to be in trouble. So be sure to tune in for The Butcher, the Baker, the Candlestick Maker.

See ya' then.

Hi folks. Welcome back. This is the first totally original column I've written for RPG.net. I'm extending my series on character creation one, and just possibly for two more columns.

Today's topic is adapted characters. Almost everybody gets the idea at some point "wouldn't it be cool to play Wolverine?" or Connor McLeod, or Luke Skywalker, or James Bond, or some other literary character. In superhero gaming it's almost expected some times. In other genres, the possibility hovers like the vision of the Holy Grail, beautiful but unattainable (unless you're Galahad, and then you'll die when you get it).

So, for purposes of discussion, let's assume you want to play some literary figure in an upcoming game. My first piece of advice would be "don't." Outside of some fairly specific circumstances, it hardly ever works.

There are some pretty formidable obstacles. First of all, in most RPGs, characters start at a fairly low level of ability. The heroes of novel, comic, and screen, on the other and, start off at or near the apex of their development. One only has to look at Raiders of the Lost Ark, and then watch some Young Indiana Jones to see what I mean. (A fact that will become useful later) Most of the time, starting characters simply don't have the capabilities necessary to totally match their literary counterparts. They often can't be as good, or skilled in as many areas. If all your hopes are set on your grizzled bounty hunter being as cool as Boba Fett, you're doomed to disappointment.

Second, in many cases the worlds are different. Characters are partially a product of their environments. The Highlander needs the game. Otherwise he's just a psychotic antiques dealer. Taken out of context, a lot of characters just don't completely work. I could make a short, Canadian assassin with metal laced bones and hand blades in almost any cyberpunk game, but without all that backstory, he wouldn't really be Wolverine. This is less of an obstacle than the first, but you've still got to consider it. A related problem is that, while the background might support someone very much like the character you have in mind, the game doesn't really translate him very well. Going back to my pseudo-Wolverine, I can come very close to simulating all his abilities, but I can't get it exactly without a "Mutant" healing factor. My simulation can have all the concrete abilities (to some degree), but so can anybody else.

Third, most of us aren't really very good actors. (Not you, you're great, I'm sure. But I have to write this for all those other people) A great deal of what makes a character "cool" is the way he's portrayed, even more than anything he does. Look at Boba Fett. In the original movies he gets about four scenes, and in his one fight he gets knocked off the skiff and swallowed by the Sarlacc. He never does anything really amazing, yet he has tremendous mystique. Unless you can pull off that same quiet menace, your armor-clad, weapon-festooned bounty hunter just isn't going to be as cool as Boba Fett no matter how good a shot he is. Even if you can portray a character you created very well, it can be hard to imitate someone else's character. So much of the performance is personal that your portrayal is likely to be different, and possibly disappointing.

So, if you shouldn't simulate characters then what's the point of this column?

Good question.

I use quite a bit of literary inspiration when I make characters. There are several things you can do that lead to some really interesting characters.

The Early Adventures of...

Remember young Indy? While you probably can't make the fully mature version of a literary character fit into the stats available to a starting PC, you probably can make a younger, less experienced version.

I still don't really recommend this, since it doesn't address the fact that your character doesn't fit into the game world - he belongs in some other world. It would probably work, though. If there's some background element you want to have, just work your way back along the character's life until you get there and see if the less experienced version fits. In some ways, this might be interesting since it lets you play "what if?" Maybe your version will handle a problem better than the original did and go on to an entirely different fate.

I've never done this, but I did once kind of do it the other way around. There was a Vampire Chronicle I played some years ago, troupe style, with vampires who were borderline Elders. I had reason to believe that my current PC was not long for this world, and that it would be a good idea to have one who was a little better at fighting than my Toreador musician.

I had recently seen Lonesome Dove, and read the book. It occurred to me that Agustus McCrea would make a really cool Gangrel. Of course, with an elder's worth of points, I didn't have to make too many adaptations.

Inspired By...

I do this a lot. So do a lot of other people. If you can figure out what it is you like about a literary character, sometimes you can distill out those elements and work them into a new character. I do this in supers games sometimes just for the challenge of figuring out how to make an interesting character's powers work in Champions (or Silver Age Sentinels, these days).

More often, I'll just take one or two elements that I thought were cool and try to work them into a fairly original character. I loved Mick Jagger's bounty hunter character in Freejack, and somehow he turned into a Lone Star Combat Mage in the Shadow Run game I was playing. All I really kept was the cool coat and the attitude. Eventually, I ditched the coat, too.

Another Place, Another Time...

This option is really cool, and actually feigns creativity if you don't tell anybody what you've done.

Take a character that really inspires you, then translate him to a totally different environment. Change the details so that they fit the new setting. Depending on how much the backgrounds differ, you might have to change things quite a bit. Find the key points of the character's background, personality, and cababilities, and figure out what those elements do.

Wolverine is a good example. His background is somewhat mysterious (unless you've read Origin, which I haven't). He's a mutant who was forcibly recruited into a secret super-soldier program. We don't know why, how, or by whom. Later on, he was heavily involved in the Yakuza, and is sort of a Ronin. He's got powers that make him a devastating tracker and fighter, almost impossible to kill in human scale combat. He's cynical, violent, and loyal.

So, since I've always liked Wolverine, I want to translate him to some new environment. Cyberpunk is too easy, as I already said. Fantasy is tempting, but I can't think of a system to which he would adapt well for purposes of this example. I love Eden Studios' Witchcraft game, so let's do that one.

Witchcraft has the Combine and various other nasty groups, any of whom would be likely to try to build a cadre of sociopathic, superpowered ninja death warriors. One of them will easily stand in for Weapon: X.

Capabilities are a little harder. Right off the bat, I think Wolverine would do well as a Feral, or with the Disciplines of the Flesh (psychological trauma based shapeshifting, for those not in the know). Either one will give him the raw combat ability. Neither are quite the same as low-end cybernetics and a mutant healing factor, but they have similar effects. Divine Inspiration and Tao Chi won't really work because they require too much willing participation. I'm more familiar with the Disciplines (since my copy of the Abomination Codex never materialized after I ordered it). They also lend themselves more to the kind of torturous process that Weapon: X seemed to be. I can see Combine agents kidnapping likely kids from the streets and subjecting them to horrors just to see if they develop superpowers quite easily.

My Witchcraft-Wolverine isn't likely to be as skilled as the real thing unless we're playing characters built on a lot more points than usual. Wolverine has 50 years or so of experience that I just can't simulate, particularly after I blow all my points on cool magic powers. I could do the longevity thing, (and might buy the increased lifespan just for the heck of it) but I would probably start my Wolvie off fairly soon after his transformation. As a nod to the Samurai part of the original's background, I'd probably make my character have an interest in the martial arts. Maybe he doesn't like the terrible rage inside him, and wants some way to control it. I might say he'd had some kind of ties with the Storm Dragons in the past.

That covers the basics. We've got a rough background, a pretty good idea of where to put the numbers, and, what the personality would be like.

Let's give him a name. Billy Logan. Normally, I wouldn't use a name remotely related to the character I was stealing for one of these things. Doing that kind of rubs everybody's nose in my lack of creativity and runs the risk of turning an otherwise serious character into a joke. But hey, this is just an article, not a real character. (That might be next month, if I'm lucky)

Billy Logan was a kid in trouble. Home was no shelter, so he ended up on the streets, in gangs, and eventually in a Combine laboratory. Somehow, he escaped, or maybe they let him go. His memories of the past are hazy. He knew he had power, and a very strong urge to hurt people who seemed to deserve being hurt.

Since then, he's wandered the country, mostly in the area around wherever the game takes place. Mostly he's been a fighter, and sometimes the line between fighter and assassin has been very thin. Deep down, he wants something better. He wants to find peace. He also wants to find a home.

I'd give him high physical stats, and in deference to his background, I'd make sure he could have claws. He wouldn't have a lot of high skills, other than hand to hand fighting ability - which would be as high as I could possibly make it. I'd also want to be sure to assign a Flaw of an personal nemesis, another survivor of the Combine project who's bigger and stronger, but maybe not quite as skilled. I absolutely wouldn't call Billy's nemesis "Victor Creed." (But I wouldn't resist the urge to use the first and last names of two different members of Creed for his name)

In one way, Billy sort of breaks the rules. Normal Disciples of the Flesh have to dredge up memories of past trauma to activate their shapeshifting powers. Since Billy doesn't really have any clear memories, I'd want to get permission from the GM to say that Billy's memories are disconnected flashbacks that he doesn't really understand. If I was the GM, I'd let me do it.

The end result doesn't look a whole lot like Wolverine, but you can see the resemblances if you know where to look.

Next month is in a bit of a flux. I hope to do the last piece of this series "The Sordid Truth," which will be a more or less step-by-step rendition of me really making a character, along with observations from the other people in the group. That's totally dependent on me getting into a game before the next deadline.

Failing that, we'll be starting a short series on group dynamics.

See ya' then.

Personality Based Character Creation

This column finishes up my original four part series on Character Creation. It also finishes up the first four "reprint" articles from Sabledrake. For the next couple of months, at least, we'll be in entirely new territory.

We've done characters based on a set of abilities, on a type of personality, and now we're going to talk about building a character starting with his history. I've only really done this once, so this is the most artificial of my examples.

Step 1: Choose your Background

Obviously, if you want to build a character from the background up, you start with the background. This is more involved than the character story you might write for an average character. You're going to use this background as the framework for everything else you do. It needs to define your character's life in some pretty serious detail, and to connect him to the rest of the campaign.

If you're building a character by beginning with his background, there's probably some compelling reason to do so. Maybe you're making up a character related to another PC, or one who has to fit into a specific slot in the story. That's your starting place. If your new character is supposed to be the long-lost brother of an existing PC, then you should start by examining the existing PC's background. Figure out where the two characters' backgrounds met, and where they diverged. Maybe you're turning an existing NPC into a PC. This really happened to me once, but it's a long story. In this case you probably have some idea of capabilities and personality, but you need to build a history to fit all the bits together. Anyway, find your starting point and work your way into a full background.

Step 2: Building the Frame

Once you have your starting place, work out the major points. Ideas for personality and capabilities will occur to you as you work, since what you're doing is deciding on the experiences that shaped your character's life. Try to make logical decisions, but don't hold yourself back if you get a couple of wild ideas. It's the GM's job to stifle your creativity.

Figure out where your character was born, and under what circumstances. What was his early life like? Were there any really significant events in his childhood? Children are remarkably resilient, but a child who lived through a really traumatic experience was probably marked by it in some way. Even in childhood look for the chance to connect your character to other characters or major game events. Then try to figure out what your character would have taken away from those experiences. You don't need all the answers now, but you should be asking the questions.

Go through your character's entire life up to date. You don't need to chronicle every moment, or even every year, but you should have a decent biographical outline when you're done. You want a pretty good idea of what happened at each stage of your character's life, and what effect those events would have had. That will help you work out the personality and skills and so forth.

That set up a really interesting dynamic once we started the game, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Step 3: Fill in the Blanks

Now you have a fairly complete story, and probably a decent idea of what the character is like. It's time to fill in all the slots on the character sheet. By now you've made most of the big decisions just as a consequence of writing out the character's past. If you decided he was adopted by a ninja clan, then he'd probably better have the skills of a ninja (even though there's no such thing as ninja). If he's part of a family of wizards, then his life is going to be really miserable if he doesn't know any magic - which might be very fun to play. If he's the adopted son of a Kansas farmer then it's up to you to convince the GM about the dying alien planet and the yellow sun thing. Otherwise, he'd probably better join the Marines when he grows up if you want him to be a big, tough adventurer type.

Make the personality fit the background and abilities. A trained warrior is probably not a total pacifist. A lifelong librarian probably doesn't know Hidden Ultimate Ninja Mantis style Kung Fu, and wouldn't want to hit anybody with Dim Mak if she did. (except for those annoying patrons who download AOL Instant Messenger on the public internet terminals - but maybe that's just me) There aren't really a lot of limitations. The world is full of people who had very similar experiences, but totally different personalities.

Step 4: Finish Up

File off all the rough edges, and work out the final connections to the rest of the game, and you're pretty much done. Working from the background doesn't leave you much to do at the end, since it forces you to work so logically at the beginning.

Obviously, the GM will want some input. If he doesn't like your story, you can't really move forward at all. It's a good idea to consult with him every step of the way so as to avoid continuity errors. ("Your ninja can't have trained at the Red Dragon Pagoda when he was sixteen. It was destroyed twenty years ago, and he's only twenty-five now. Do you want to make him over forty? I'd be glad to drag out the aging tables...")

Compare your character's story to the other PCs. If you haven't already found a good connection, try to come up with one now. Since most Background characters come up as a response to past game events, this is usually not too much of a problem.

Once you know where he's been, and have a good idea how he got to wherever he starts the game you're ready to go.

Next month we enter some uncharted waters. I have two articles, and I'm not sure which one I'll give you first. Either we'll do "Even Better than the Real Thing" which is about how to adapt a character from another source or we'll do "How it Really Happens," in which I reveal the sordid truth about how I really make up characters, instead of this sanitized, organized facade that I've been showing you.

Personality Based Character Creation

Last time I showed you how to create a character starting with his capabilities. This time around we're going to start with his personality. I use a lot of these techniques in all my characters, since with a few exceptions I have a pretty firm idea of the personality I want to play right at the beginning. There's also a lot of crossover to capabilities, since what you can do is a big factor in how you act.

Before I go much further, I'd better explain that I've never made a character based on a deep psychological profile, and that's not what I'm proposing now. A Personality based character starts with more of a character sketch. Many of the specific details won't be available until you get the character's background and capabilities nailed down. The first step of building a Personality based character is less work than either of the other two types. At the beginning you're just going to build a thin framework, which you will be filling in as you go along.

Step 1: The Personality

OK, this part is pretty obvious. Figure out what kind of character you want to play. Some people will say that no matter what you decide, your character is going to be pretty much like yourself. I don't think that's completely true, but I know from experience that it's hard to play someone a lot different. You don't need to make a lot of decisions right now, but there are a few things you need to know.

What's your character's general outlook? Is the glass half empty or half full, or are you just going to drink whatever's left to forestall the argument? Are you going to play a trusting character, or a suspicious cynic? Very little of this aspect will make it onto your character sheet in most games, but in some ways it's the most important aspect. Your character's general outlook should be played out in almost everything he does.

Since I love to throw in personal stories, I'll elaborate. In a VLARP I played some time ago, my character was Tybalt St. Croix, a Ventrue who should have really been a Brujah. His Nature was Martyr, and his Demeanor was Bravo. He acted tough and violent, but it was really an expression of his desire to protect his friends.

A perfect bit of roleplaying came up about near the end of a really climactic arc. Some powerful force was messing with all the Kindred of the city by opening magical portals, kidnapping Vampires and torturing them for information. In the session in question, Tybalt saw an open portal. Before this session, the gates were always too far away for him to reach.

This time, I grabbed a Storyteller and said "I jump through the portal." I had to tell him three times before he believed me.

I only figured out later how much of that came from Tybalt's personality. On the surface he was murderously angry at whoever had been kidnapping other Kindred. They'd killed the Prince recently, and Tybalt was very loyal to the Prince. On a deeper level, he knew eventually one of the PC's would have to go through one of the gates, and he wanted to be the one - so that nobody else would have to face the danger.

How honorable is your character? Does he live by a strict code, or the law of the jungle? Does he strive for justice, or just for himself? Maybe he tries to be honorable, but doesn't have a lot of willpower. Maybe he pretends to be cynical and cruel, but really has a heart of gold. Like his general outlook, your character's moral outlook will come out more in play than in statistics, but a lot of games do have rules to cover things like codes of honor. Besides, you can use this information to help point you to your character's chosen career. A deeply honorable, honest man is more likely to be a cop than a con artist.

What's his thought process like? Is he deep and philosophical? Brooding? Shallow and irresponsible? Is he very patient, or rash and impulsive? These decisions will help you decide how to flesh out his capabilities. If he's an intellectual, he probably doesn't spend a lot of time at the gym. If he doesn't have much focus, he probably hasn't spent much time at anything, but might have a lot of skills at a fairly low level, gained as he studied until he got bored.

Step 2: Definition

There are two ways you can go here. If, by now, you have a pretty good idea of the attributes you'd like, you can just skip to the capabilities, then write a background that fits them. On the other hand, you might want to work on the character's past for a while. As you figure out what experiences shaped your character, you'll know what he's had a chance to learn.

A dark, brooding avenger has probably been deeply wronged in the past. Figure out when that happened. Were his parents killed in a mugging on the way home from the movies? Maybe his whole family got caught in a mob shoot-out in the park. What if his father was a great sword maker, and an evil duelist killed him in a dispute over the price of an exquisite sword?

Your character's personality won't tell you what all the details of his background should be. Try to make logical decisions, but don't worry too much yet. People from all walks of life have all sorts of personalities. Two different people may have a very similar experience and come away with very different results.

With some ideas about the character's past, you can start filling in concrete details. You'll know where he came from, where he went, what he did, what he learned. Always try to remain true to your initial concept, but if you find it changing don't worry too much. My last Amber PbeM character, Miranda, is a great case in point. I started with a sketch of her background and a general personality. By the time I was done, her background bore almost no resemblance to my original ideas. If the Miranda I ended up playing had ever met the Miranda I thought up in the first place, she would have thought the "original" Miranda was a terrible wimp. She would have probably stole the original version's stuff, too, just to keep in practice.

Choose abilities in keeping with your concept. A brooding warrior had probably better be able to fight. A happy-go-lucky thief had better be good at running, and probably hasn't studied the art of poisoning. A quiet intellectual probably has a lot of knowledge, but maybe not a lot of charisma.

Step 3: Putting it all together

The last big step is to weld all your ideas into a coherent character. Right now you have a bunch of loosely connected facts and concepts that you need to transform into a finished character. How you do that will all depend on your game's character creation process. You can probably have just about any attributes you want, within the limits of the game. Obviously if you wanted your character to be really clever, it wouldn't make sense to give him a lower than game average intelligence. Similarly, if you were planning to make a grim warrior, you'd be ill served by giving your character low physical attributes.

Skills also have a lot of leeway. Unless there's something just screaming against it in your background, you can probably do just about whatever you want. The background you built to go with your personality will give you a lot more guidance than the personality will. Choose abilities based on what makes sense for your character. As much as you might want the Occult skill, your hard nosed, atheist cop who doesn't believe in anything he can't see and touch probably doesn't have it. Of course, if he's a Scully like skeptic, he might have studied the Occult so he could debunk it, but that's a little different.

That was pretty much it. Unlike most of my characters, he didn't have a dark past where evil forces had killed everyone he loved. He grew up in a California suburb where his dad was a real-estate agent and his mom was a paralegal or something. Nothing all that exciting had ever happened to him until he figured out that he could bench-press a Volvo and fly. Unlike most people, his first thought wasn't to put on a spandex suit and fight crime. His first thought was that now it would be really easy to get onto the Varsity football team. He was the only sophomore who got to start. He only decided to be a superhero to impress one of his girlfriends when he found out she was a member of some established superhero's fan-club.

I liked Max. I kind of miss him.

So anyway, that's our show for this evening. Tune in next time and I'll show you the most challenging process of all, building your character from the Background out.