Personality Building

I had it suggested today that I hurry through character creation.  The exact reason for this understanding, I presume, comes from a combination of my saying I take half-an-hour to make a new character for a player and that I created an excel table that would instantly roll up all the various elements of the character background generator I use - an excel table that's out of date with my game world and mostly useless now, but exists in the internet cloud.  I answer under the link above that I'm efficient ... but it's more than that.

It has much to do with what I want from a player's character as a tool in the game world.

My sense from discussion and prevailing opinion is that many people want the player's character to possess a full-grown "personality" at the start of the game.  And that it's presumed my background generator is designed to give this.  After all, it gives a lot of information about the person, things that have happened, family, skill background, relationships, physical appearance and so on — but I'd like to stress that while these things might be interesting, and designed to be useful in playing the game — that this data is extraordinarily shallow in structure and not evident of "personality."  Personality arises from how a human person interprets the data and invents a personality based on that player's perspective and history.  How you interpret the value of cornflower blue eyes as opposed to how I do are two completely different worlds.  My vision of a character that was a farmer is not your vision.  Etcetera.

A film requires a profound and difficult effort to achieve grace, plus 90 minutes plus of your time, to make a "personality" seem even vaguely real ... and for the most part, it only becomes real when you've liked the film enough to see it multiple times, and therefore inspect every tiny nuance of the character's face and attitude, until you impress your vision on that character, just as you and I have impressed our image on a farmer.  A book requires even longer to get the personality across: tens of thousands of words, which includes the reader's active engagement with the text in order to succeed. 

In other words, "personality" doesn't come with the creation of a character, or the interpretation of a point-buy system or any other generation scheme, but with time.  A lot of time.  Time spent running that character, and deciding over time what the true nature of the character is.

The amount of time spent actually creating the character doesn't matter.  Gygax and co. recognised their own tendency to anthroporphise game chits — little cardboard pieces they used to play chain mail — which required no more game prep than taking the chit out of its bag or box and putting it on the map.  Players invent instant personalities for miniatures that have no stats, before anything about the miniature's character is generated.  I push to get a new character generated quickly because it's irrelevant how long the process lasts.

[Zarious ... if your point was that I'm rushing the player, it never feels that way.  An old player knows the drill; a new player has no time framework upon which to base their feeling of being rushed.  I generally find that if the choice is put to the player in a direct, simple manner, new players are okay with answering a few seconds; later details can be hashed out in the future ... especially if the DM is willing to retcon an early character if need be.  I am willing to do that, but 99% of the time I offer, the player prefers to live with their decisions than get an out.  Must be the sort of people I know.]

Character creation has as much to do with the character's trajectory in the game as the moment of birth has to do with the person's choice of whom to marry.  We don't play well because we have a host of abilities and skills; or because we have great stats.  We play well because we think our way through problems, when they arise.  IF the player is unable to do this, perceiving game play as "the DM gets me out of this," then he or she doesn't belong at my table.  It's the player's responsibility to manage the situation and survive it.  It's my responsibility to create situations that can be survived.

Okay, so how does the player do this?  It's a mindset.  Take a look at this animate featuring Philip Zimbardo from 12 years ago.  I'm not going to quote the relevant points here; I'd need to quote the whole video.  So stop reading, watch the video, and then continue.

Hm hm mm ... hm hm mmmmm hmm ... 

Okay.  To have the nerve to plan an uncertain action with your character in D&D, recognising that several parts of that plan have to depend on the dice falling right at the right moments, you must be capable of trusting the future.  You must fundamentally believe that whatever happens, whatever goes wrong, you'll recalculate when that time comes and make it work, regardless.  Of course, you might be wrong, you might die, there's no guarantees ... but you must BELIEVE that even if there are no guarantees, the RIGHT MOVE is to plan.

If you're the sort of person who focuses overmuch on regret and failure ... if you can only view your character in terms of times you tried to make a plan and it didn't work, or all the reasons why you can't rely upon a plan because of all the possibilities it won't work, then you will be driven to the place where you put your faith in the DM and not yourself.  You'll believe that you can't put your faith in yourself, because you can't control the dice, and what the dice might do — but the DM can.  The DM can wave the dice away at any time.  So ... you'll think ... put your faith in the DM, and not yourself.

But, if you have a DM like me, who doesn't use a screen and rolls the die out in the open — so that I'll be just as imprisoned by the game's random element as you — then you're driven to this place where you think, "I'll make my character as strong as possible, so that it will survive anything."

But, if you have a DM like me, who severely restricts how much control you have in making your character strong, then you're fucked.  You're out of game options.

So maybe you choose to be hedonistic.  "If I die, I die."  You stop worrying about planning, or surviving, because the character doesn't really matter, what matters is that we're all here together and having fun playing the game.  It's the sensation of playing the game that matters, and not the game itself.

Anyone who reads me recognises this won't work in my game.  I hold you accountable for everything your character does, including how much he or she carries, or the amount of food eaten, or what you know, or what you believe.  I've gotten into a lot of trouble in the past for deliberately making the situation the character's so patently unpleasant — emotionally and ethically — that it gets HARD to find any fun in it.  Because I don't want hedonists.  Hedonists suck.  You can't build tension with them, you can't make them care ... and because they don't care about the game, they spend their time disrupting other players who do care.

Here's an example.  I had a player in the online campaign who, when he invented his character, he was given the result that he'd spent time in prison.  He took that and proposed that he had gone to prison because he'd been jilted by his lady fair, who never properly loved him.  However, I take the position that I get to decide what non-player character's do and think, NOT players, so when I maneuvered the woman into the campaign, and had her confess that she DID love him, that spoiled the great self-sacrificial cross he wanted to carry around for the campaign.  He didn't want a relationship; that's not how he saw his character.  But I saw the opportunity to make something uncomfortable and real happen, since that forces a player to rise above their petty bullshit and PLAY.  He didn't like that and the relationship soured.

If you invent a comfort zone for your character, I will fuck with it.  Nobody gets a comfort zone.

I'm a future-oriented person ... which ought to be obvious since I plan on creating maps that I expect will grow larger and larger with time, because I trust myself not to stop.  I calculated the other day how long it would take for me to map the world in my 6-mile hexes at the rate I'm going.  174 years.  I don't think I'll make it.  Doesn't want me to stop making maps.  I picture where I'll be in a year, in two years, in ten years ... with every expectation that I'll still be there.

I like working.  And for me, the best games are those where "play" feels like "work."  That makes no sense to a lot of people.  But for me, the difference between work and play is not how much fun each is, but rather, what's left over from play vs. what's left from work.

I want to go kayaking.  I rent a kayak, I get out on the water, I paddle around, it feels good.  I look forward to it, I plan for it, the day happens ... and for a week afterwards I'm tired from it.  And overall, what's left?

Nothing.  A memory.  But I already have memories of kayaking, so ... really ... nothing's left.  It's momentary.  And I know it's momentary.

D&D is not momentary.  The player with 142,908 earned every damn point and they can look at that number and think, wow.  The items they've collected, the pages they've drafted up over time, the sheer volume of detail they've added session by session ... it's concrete, despite it being imaginary.  A book is imaginary.  A movie is imaginary.  But they're real too.  It is a pipe and it's not a pipe.

That is the point.

This formula doesn't work, however, if the players don't earn their sheaf of paper.  If it's only the same one-sheet character after two years of play, then nothing's been accomplished of value; the player has never invested.  The player has never worked.  The player has never suffered.  Without suffering, it's just empty time spent.  Thank gawd kayaking hurts.  It reminds me I did it.

So, point two after being willing to plan is that the player's got to be ready to suffer.  This makes planning easier.  I will plan, I don't know for sure what the dice will do, but when they do their shit I'm ready to suffer.  Bring it on, baby.

Stronger characters make bigger plans and suffer just as much as weaker characters with smaller plans.  Skill sets, class and race choices, the fallacy of "loss aversion" — making the wrong choices in deciding what the character can do — is an ideal that apply to people who think they can play this game without suffering.  Which they can, just not in my world.  I've removed those avenues.  I can't be bought, I can't be intimidated, I can't be wheedled.  And if you want to live, you'd better make a plan.

Sorry, I rushed that.

If you regret making the wrong choice with your character further down the road, because you can't do something you now think you ought to be able to do, you're playing the wrong game.  You're playing a game where you think what you do matters.  It doesn't.  What matters is how well you do it.  Whatever it is.

And if you ain't suffering, you ain't doing it well.