What is Playing a Character?

I wonder if someone who has been a DM as long as I have, without much playing, should give any advice about rolling up a character. I’ve watched many do it; I have seen players create back stories and establish “characters” outside themselves … but I’ve never seen any of these people choose their stats for any reason except to satisfy some mechanical need, such as dexterity to ensure safety checks or a high charisma to help with speaking to NPCs.

Suppose that before we threw any dice, we decided who and what our character was going to be, regardless of race and class. Suppose we didn’t base a character on our die rolls or upon our skill set … what would we base that character on?

The most obvious answer would seem to be alignment: is the character good or bad; a team-player or a loner. My feeling is that generalizations such as these are so large as to be useless. We are all sometimes a loner and sometimes a team-player. We are all sometimes good and sometimes bad ~ and I lean to the argument that villains consider themselves either justified or heroic. Adhering to alignment just creates cardboard cutouts. We can surely do better.

Likewise, I am learning through these last five years that it’s no good to think in terms of ambitions, either. We expect that everyone wants to be rich and powerful, certainly enough to obtain those things they want, whatever they might be. That’s all very well for the future, and it might be a motivation for the present, but it isn’t a personality. It might explain why the character is willing to raid this dungeon, or how hard the character is willing to quest … but unless your character is a one-note monster, it doesn’t make much sense. Nor does it make interesting play.

Does this character, or this player, have any sense of personal growth, beyond accumulation and revenging his father’s death? How about the character’s ideas about community, social responsibility, the state of the kingdom or the world? None at all? What entertains the character? How does the character relax … does the character like doing ANYTHING except killing and hauling away the loot?

We can pretty much assume, “no.” The subject never comes up. A stranger turns up, starts up a story about some secret amulet that a bad person is using to mess with a kingdom’s residents and everyone gears up and heads off to a land we never heard of five minutes ago. Ask someone if they’d like to borrow a strong cabin in the woods near a pleasant pond and spend the week there before the next adventure and we get blank faces.

We build murder-hobos because the adventure format demands we pack up and ship out on a moment’s notice, while most of what we’ll meet is so evil there’s nothing to do with it except kill it. There’s no time to think about having a family or building a future. There’s no time to deliberate the everyday issues of the local troubles of the people. If everyone here is starving, don’t ask us; unless there’s a Macguffin involved, we can’t be bothered.

It is silly to talk about “character” when every facet of the game boils every individual down to pressboard cut-out.

I guess that’s where I am different. I’m happy to go on adventures and kill things. I like hauling away loot. But I want a home. I want a reason to go home, and someone to go home for. As I beat this ogre into the dust of his own bones, I want to be thinking of spinning my kids around and showing them this beautiful new gem I found. I want to be planning the new mill and getting back in time for the festival that begins this year’s harvest. I want to tell the stranger who’s bitching about how some wizard in HIS kingdom is stuffing his face with the blood of his people to get the hell off my land, I have problems in my own kingdom to fix. I want to enter into adventures that are RELEVANT to my needs, my environment and my future.

If I think of the character I want for that, I’m ready to forego some charisma in favor of wisdom; or to suspend dexterity in favor of strength. I’ll pay someone else to do my talking; I’ll pay someone else to backstab an enemy. I want a class that will let me command men; or at the very least, will help me establish an entourage that I can rely upon when enemies begin organizing the local villagers against me. I want to encourage grateful immigrants and hamstring entitled locals who resist my changes. I want to help a scarlet-lettered woman regain her reputation; I want to sully the reputation of a narrow-minded bigot. I’m going to need to be tough; generous; dutiful; self-sacrificing; pleasant to know and fearsome to oppose.

I can do that with any race; there are quite a few classes that will let me manage that. If a fighter, I’ll move to an urban setting; with a ranger, something rural. With a cleric, I’ll seek a mission. If I’m a mage, I’ll need isolation at first, then the opportunity to marry into a reputable family. There’s always some means to make my designs work. My designs are flexible enough for that.

What I can’t bear is to have some DM decide what adventures I ought to follow, or what designs I ought to have, or whether those designs deserve constant harassment from the DM. I’m willing to admit a little bad luck, but when it is orcs this week and last week it was giant grasshoppers eating the crops, and the week before that a chimera was destroying the neighborhood, it gets to be suspicious.

But then, I’m weird. Truly, truly weird. I think this game is about playing a character in a setting, when in fact it is about playing a block of wood in a very small box.