Player Characters- Intelligent Design
I've already scared some people, I'm sure. No, nobody is getting religious or handing out pamphlets of any type, and no, I will not ask you if you have "heard the Good News?" Not what this website is about. Today we're talking about designing and creating your characters with intent and a purpose. We'll look at the process of taking your character from session 0, to the table and into play. Though, what I have in mind may surprise you. Whether or not you believe in the concept of intelligent design, there is key principle that you can use when creating a character in Dungeons & Dragons. But before we can really appreciate this key principle, it's best that we look at what often happens at character creation. Let's get metaphorical, shall we? An awesome metaphor would be the movie Young Frankenstein.
(Frederick Frankenstein rolling stats, Young Frankenstein, 20th Century Fox)
Fraun-ken-shteen's Monster
What does Frederick Frankenstein, excuse me, Fraun-ken-shteen have to do with character creation? If you're not familiar Young Frankenstein, I'll fill you in. Young Frankenstein is a comedy by Mel Brooks that tells the tale of the grandson of Victor Frankenstein, Frederick who seeks to recreate his grandfather's work in human reanimation. He does the calculations of what sort of body, or man, he'll need to use to re-animate and with the help of his hunchbacked servant Igor, and his comely assistant Inga, restore a stitch-work corpse to life, with one major setback. Rather than using the brain of the brilliant man Frankenstein intended, he accidentally uses an "abnormal brain", thanks to Igor's clumsiness and oversight. The story from that point on goes, something a little like Mary Shelley's original work, but much more amusing.
Frankenstein's plight is somewhat reminiscent of what tabletop gamers go through in character creation, and then wind up at the table. They create this fantastic character, and someway, somehow, their plans for this character go much differently than they expected. Some GM's who have lived D&D or other gaming horror stories may be inclined to believe the character or player's brain was replaced with an "abnormal one". In some cases, the player creates a character that just doesn't fit somehow in the campaign, or they have nothing "useful" to do for the party. Even though your 5th level Cleric can turn any sort of undead and your whole build is based on it, seven game sessions later, you realize there probably won't be undead in this game. EVER. Your abilities that you were so excited to use are now useless, you feel outclassed by the rest of the party and the entire set up of the campaign makes you feel like the character is useless. It's a bad feeling. We've all been there. Especially if you have ever been a precision damage character in a room of constructs and undead in D&D 3.5.
"This is a nice boy. This is a good boy. This is a mother's angel. And I want the world to know once and for all, and without any shame, that we love him! I'm going to teach you. I'm going to show you how to walk, how to speak, how to move, how to think. Together, you and I are going to make the greatest single contribution to science since the creation of fire!"
The "Intelligent" Part
Where does the intelligent design aspect come in? Well, sadly the player isn't the core aspect of the character creation process- the Game Master is! When the GM says, "I have this in mind for a campaign, do you guys want to play?" That is the key ingredient. Intelligent design is the idea that rather via random and convenient mutation, life is what it is because it was planned, and designed to fit the world where it lives. A good example is the arctic fox. According to intelligent design, thanks to the work of a deity that chose the fox's trait of having a coat that turns white during the winter as part of its survival method, the fox can quite adeptly fit into its surroundings. That is the key principle. Don't create whatever character you feel like creating. You might have an awesome idea for a character, and it might be really fun. Though, players and GMs alike forget that character creation cannot happen in a vacuum. It is a good sort of meta-gaming to know what kind of character has the potential to succeed in the game your GM is creating. That's what intelligent design sounds like a type of positive-geared meta-gaming!
Sometimes, your GM might ask what sort of character you want to play and incorporate those aspects of your character into the game, but there's also a major issue when they do that. They need to wait for the players to decide what kind of characters they want to play and then respond to that. The more indecisive a bunch of players are, the harder it is to start a campaign based on those characters' individual abilities and back stories when nobody can decide what it is they are doing. Now, this doesn't mean that these opportunities will never spring up if the players create characters based on the GM's idea for the campaign, or you'll never be able to be a little more "sandbox-y" with where the campaign goes. You can still find something you want to play within the bounds of the campaign. Save that cool idea for when a game that works. The more that you and the GM collaborate on the framework for your character the easier it will be for your character to become a part of that world. Frederick Frankenstein's creation may just about what he envisioned, but how the monster fits in with the rest of the world or said villagers is what makes him a monster in the eyes of the villagers. As I use the phrase "part of that world." I am inclined to think that an out of place character is almost like some sort of half-fish teenage girl on land. How could that possibly be relevant?....
Special thanks to Cory Strain, @iamcityfolksoul on Twitter, for the inspiration for this very article. I'm pretty lucky to be part of a community where people have awesome things to say and they inspire me to share my acquired, learned, and accumulated wisdom, as you guys do for me. Tomorrow we'll take a peek at creating fast and easy NPCs on the fly.
Til then. Happy creating everyone!