Rounding Characters

You're not perfect, you know. Not even one of us was born complete, with nothing to learn or change, without any kind of a flaw. Not even one of us leaves without something that makes him/her mad. We're imperfect human beings, and it makes us better persons, much more like able. A famous writer once said: "All perfect families are similar, all flawed families are flawed each family in its own unique way..." We all want to create like able characters, characters that are both easy to play and deep. The easiest way to do this is by giving the characters flaws and internal conflicts.

A flawed character is much more alive than a perfect one. When a character has to deal with a situation that confronts her flaws, she gets empathy from us. More than that, she is immediately reminds us of living people who had to confront with the same things. A character that has colour blindness gets our empathy when she attacks the wrong side, in the middle of a battle, because of colour confusion. A character that is afraid of dark places will remind us of Uncle Albert who used to scream for help whenever there was an electricity failure.

But flaws are only one of the ways. A much more interesting and deep way to make deeper rounder characters is by inserting internal conflicts into them. The judge who is haunted by his memories of sending an innocent man into his death, the pacifist who has to fight for her country to prevent her kids death, the champion who came to an age when the army doesn't need her anymore but who doesn't know how to do anything else... Suddenly, it's a richer character. We get a personality, a snippet of a life story, and a conflict that can help the character seems unique every time.

How about you? How do you make your characters richer?

Death Is Not the End

Let's go for an experiment, won't we? Find a partner and play "Word at a Time". I'll give you a proto story: "You go to the dark mountain cliffs and meet a monster. Something happens between you and them. Go!" I can wait, try it, it's also fun and rewarding to tell a story like that. 

Anyway, whether you tried it or wanted to read to where I'm going, what I wanted to prove was that almost none of you would have killed the monster, not to mention being killed by it. The confrontation with the monster might have gone like a meeting and then running away, with you drinking tea (or coffee) together, with a short fight that ended with a few scratches...

A scene that ends with a dying character, whether it's you or the monster, not under your watch... The reason for all of this turning and turning around, is that death is not the end of the story. A story can be kept going after the characters die, after the monster dies... 

A dead character can become a ghost that follows the characters, helping from afar. A player that his character died can play a different character. A dead monster's revenge can be taken by another monster. There are no limits to this thing; a dead character is not the end of the story, but a door or a veil to the next stage of the story.

I'm not trying to tell "kill all characters", but to tell that you should not think about a dead character as an end point to the game. Death is a great dramatic term, and if there's always the possibility of death, every decision will be so much more...

What about you? Do you use death in your games? If so, how?

Kick the Realism Out of the Door...

We all like to build worlds for our games. It's fun, it's rewarding, it gives a great feeling when finishing it... But there's a thing that always crops to my mind when I read other people's worlds. The heavy place that realism takes in the games and it can go quite extreme sometimes. 

"If the sun doesn't move and lights a certain country all the time, what's the temperature there?"

This, at least to my eyes, is wrong question. Why? Because it doesn't help to make the game or the story better, and because it talks about the last question that should be asked about a world that the GM is building: "How this X is real?" Realism should be the last thing to think about. After the world is complete and the sun shines there, then it's time to think about realism. 'Till then, it's an easy way to both distract the writer from the world building job, and also to destroy the initiative of build such a world.

So please, whenever you come to someone who builds a world and asks for remarks on it, leave the realism for the end. It's not that important...

14 First Time GMing Tips

Yesterday I was asked about what tips do I have for a first time D&D GM. I thought about it a lot, and ended with 14 little tips and thoughts about what should be done and what shouldn't be done. A quick examination of them shoes that I talked less about fights and battles, and quite a lot about the entertainment values of the game. Anyway, without much of exposition, let's delve into the little tips.

1. Show enthusiasm. If the players will see that you're enthusiastic about the game, the enthusiasm will get to them also.
2. Start with a cool event. It doesn't matter what it is, a battle, a ceremony, a burial; it must be a cool thing. If you start with a cool enough event, the players' attention will get to the game, and they will be enthusiastic through the entire game.
3. Give your best for the game. If you come to the game like it's nothing, the players will think also that it's nothing. If you don't put your best to the game, your players (and you also) shouldn't play it, you can use the time better.
4. Be ready for the unexpected. No adventure survives first contact with the players. Don't let it upset you; understand instead that from this comes all the fun.
5. If they went out of what you planned, find a way to creatively use what you planned in the game. If you planned a cool fight with the orcs from the forest, the fact that they went to the cliffs shouldn't stop you from using it.
6. Don't railroad them, though. You should bring those elements into the game if they fit the circumstances, and if it's cool, not just because they were prepared from beforehand. More than that don't stop your players from doing a cool thing. 
7. Don't go for fights only. Fights can, like every other element in the game, become tedious. Don't go for fights only and the game will remain fresh and entertaining.
8. Bring many one-scene NPCs to enhance the atmosphere. They can be the town's fool, the great cleric, the queen regent or the perfect soldier. It doesn't matter as long as they enhance the atmosphere of the game.
9. Don't let them to steal the limelight, though. Always remember that the PCs are the protagonists of the story, and as such they are the ones who should confront the adversary and prevent the apocalypse.
10. Learn what kind of movies and books your players like, and make your games according to that.
11. Finish with a BANG.
12. Ask for feedback. This will give you the information you need in order to know what you're good at and what you should improve.
13. Remember that it's only a game. What happens in the game should be kept in the game, and what happens in the real world should remain in the real world.
14. If the players suggest a cool thing, say yes and add a little something of your own. It will make the game better and far richer.

So, these are my 14 tips for a first time D&D GM. What about you? What tips would you give this GM?

Is the GM there to Lose?

Yesterday, over at "Troll in the Corner" they posted about the GM's role. This made me think about it. We talk a lot about how to be a better GM, how to roleplay the NPCs better, how to improvise... But we never ask the most important question about the GM: What is the GM's role?

For me, the role is quite simple: To entertain everyone at the table. The GM isn't there to lose or to win, to look totally badass or to look like a wimp, to tell a great story or a lousy story. The GM is there to be the leading entertainer of the group. The GM has tools in order to fulfil this purpose, but the tools are not the GM's goal. It means that the GM doesn't have to tell a great story, but it can surely help the GM in his/her role. It means that the GM doesn't have to be a great actor, but portraying the NPCs can help to enrich the game. 

It also means that the GM is not there in order to win or to lose. There's no connection between the GM's role and the win/lose ratio. The GM isn't losing there, and the players aren't winning there. The characters sometimes win and sometimes lose, and the NPCs and monsters sometimes win and sometimes lose. But there's a clear distinction between the GM and the characters s/he plays and between the players and the characters that they play.

In a future post I'll probably delve into the little details of this distinction, but it's enough for now to say that there's a distinction between these things and that these things should be looked as separate things that are part of a whole and not as the same thing.

How about you? What do you think the GM's role is?

They Should Win Sometimes...

Sometimes, you have to let them win. They can't lose all the time, can't run away all the time, they sometimes have to win, to feel that they are advancing, and that they are getting better. Even in horror games, where the premise states quite boldly that they're gonna lose most of the time, and maybe even to lose in the end, little victories should be achieved (albeit sparingly) in the story.

There are 2 reasons for that. The first is story wise: It's far more powerful to strike the characters down from a mountain than from a hill, and especially from a short roof. If you bring a character to a higher point, the fall will be more powerful, more harming, more dangerous, and more dramatic. There's a reason that usually, in tragedies, we have high-standing persons- the fall is more powerful, the contrast between the start and finish points is far greater. Giving the characters a victory here, another one there, serves this purpose.

But there's an even more important reason: If they won't win once in a while, it will be a game of frustration, and no one wants to play a frustrating game. They want to sometime feel frustration, but for short intervals only. Giving the little wins, the little successes will give them a reason to go on ("hey, we do win sometimes...").

It also gives hope, a lot of hope, if sometimes the villain loses. Think about it: If the villain wasn't defeated ever before, there's no real powerful hope in the situation. Sure, if done sparingly it empowers the victory, but if done all the time, it will bring the opposite of hope; it will downgrade it, resulting in a death spiral.

One thing to remember, though, is that the victory shouldn't feel given. We're a little bit cheating here, even big time sometimes, we can't let it be understood by the players or we'll get the other side of the spectrum. 

In conclusion, the PCs should, at least sometimes, be victorious in order to bring hope to the players' hearts, but it should look like it was justifiably won and not because we gave the victory to the players.

What about you? Do you sometimes give your players victories? How did it go?

An Even More Personal Layer

The victory should come with a price. The more important the victory, the bigger the price should be. I've watched yesterday, again, the season 2 final and it just shows it as clear as crystal light. Victory should come with a price. Not a procedural price but a dramatic one: The character has to sacrifice her life, the heroine has to be shunned by society, or even the character has to lose a loved one.

Buffy took it to the extreme. Buffy was way too close to killing Angelus and to close the gate with his blood. Willow, in the meantime, was casting the spell that will restore his soul. A moment before she killed him, his soul came back. Buffy, who throughout the season had to fight her inner demons, knowing that he won't come back to be Angel, who learnt that she has no other choice but to kill him, received the thing she wished for: She got Angel back. On the other hand, she knew that she has to kill him in order to save the world. Buffy had to sacrifice the thing that she wanted the most, in the moment that she got it, in order to save the world.

I think that all of us who watched this episode know what I'm talking about when I say that it's an example, a great example, for drama at its best. This end is both memorable and tragic, and it raises the finale a few places.

We can see it in other series finales, and in movies. In the end of Casablanca, for example, no one got what s/he wanted. Rick wanted Ilsa, Ilsa wanted Rick, and Victor wanted to be with a woman that loves him. In order to save Victor, Rick sent Ilsa with him, lying that she wanted to be with him. Rick knew that without Victor, the war is gonna be much harder. Everyone's happiness was sacrificed for the greater good.

In the end of American Beauty, on the other hand, Lester has to die in order to truly understand how beautiful the world is. In the end of Sunset Blvd, the screenwriter dies in order to get his pool, and Norma kills in order to get her close-up.

What I'm trying to show here, is that finales have to come with great costs, especially victories. The higher the importance of the victory and the more personal the cost is, the greater the drama. Dramatic endings are remembered for a long long time.

In games, it's not that hard to achieve. Going for things like the previous examples is one thing, and an easy one (relatively, of course), but RPGs is the only medium where the audience is also the creators, the storytellers. This enables the GM to come with a different kind of price. From confronting the PCs with their characters to even nastier ones that words can't tell. You've got another layer, far more personal than any TV or movie will be ever able to get, use it.