To Be Resolved

Making a Character You'll Enjoy Playing

I saw this question asked in a comment thread responding to Seraphim Seraphina's Pawn Stance is Objectively Correct post and it finally inspired me to hop on Prismatic Wasteland's Player Advice Blogwagon. I don't think of myself as a particularly good TTRPG player! I enjoy playing games but I'm not a grand tactician/logistician, I'm not particularly instrumental, and I'm not always great at holding a character goal at front-of-mind during role play. I think I'm good with riddles and puzzles, I enjoy playing around traps and physical problems, and I'm pretty good at drinking the goo. My most impressive stupid human trick is mid-session stenography (another skill somewhat obsoleted by LLM tools), but when I focus on notetaking I often take an audience role within the game.

So I think my credibility in tackling this question is that I am not a noteworthy player and I have made many characters that I did not particularly enjoy playing.

Let's look at a couple of layers of play and we can think through the types of questions that you should answer about yourself and your preferences when you make decisions. Where appropriate I will try to make my assumptions clear about the types of games applicable to the discussion topic. If I am talking about tactical combat decisions, you can assume that part of the discussion will be less relevant to Under Hollow Hills.

The Mechanical Layer

Lots of tabletop games allow for some level of decision during character creation that will affect the mechanical complexity of play. In 5e D&D lingua franca terms, there is a significant difference in the average round of player decisions between a Barbarian and a Druid, but a Barbarian and a Druid can easily be imagined to have similar upbringings, cultural norms, and goals. Mechanical complexity in tabletop usually boils down to:

So the questions you need to ask yourself at a mechanical level when you are making a character mostly boil down to:

  1. What is your personal appetite for mechanical complexity? If someone at your table is experienced with the game, ask them about what makes some options more or less mechanically demanding. Ask them if there are any options that start fairly simple but develop more complex options over time.
  2. What is your, and your table's, appetite for non-optimal play? Do other players expect you to play at the top end of the power curve in order to "carry your weight"? Does the GM's prep tend to expect you to play at a certain level of proficiency?
  3. What is your relationship to optimizing? Are you making choices that give you sufficient space to exercise your optimization tendencies?
  4. Sometimes your vision and goals for a character are incompatible with your appetite for complexity. If you are already agreeing to a system where the baseline undifferentiated character is at the upper end of your comfort level, talk to your table about how you can engage with narrative objectives you find compelling within the context of a character that is easier to mechanically pilot.

I was in a long-time game of 5e and by level 13, I was completely overwhelmed trying to play my Cleric character - there were too many options at my disposal during challenging fights and the power curve of the campaign was not allowing for non-optimal play. I found that a Zealot Barbarian vastly reduced my decision space during combat, which let me play more effectively and required almost no change to my core character interests.

The Group Dynamic Layer

With game mechanics out of the way, we can get to something more interesting and broadly applicable. The historically popular play structure for tabletop RPGs is one gamerunner and multiple players, each of whom pilot a specific and named character. I'm going to talk about two levels of group dynamic and how you can make decisions that will deepen your enjoyment of playing a character.

The Whole Group

The thing about fitting into a group is that it's often about fulfilling roles, and those roles are responsibilities that serve the overall needs of the group. How big is your party/play group? How many people are in it? There is probably a TVTropes page for just about every size of group that media has portrayed, but let's start at a classic group composition as a case study. One GM, four players - the players decide to organize themselves into a four-temperament ensemble. The four-temperament ensemble is good because it tends to be leaderless and because when one person is missing, there is typically a notable imbalance. In humour theory, this imbalance is what led to out-of-pocket behavior or illness in people.

The key to a group dynamic is that it is a path to achieving some level of equilibrium that can (and should) be somewhat disrupted when one voice is louder than the others. The other key is that it provides clusters of traits and behaviors that are recognizable and coherent when played straight and recognizably fun when subverted.

Having a stock characterization to fall back on when you're struggling for a handhold in play is invaluable! It's a great foundation to build on.

My recommendation is that character creation happens in a group setting and that you drive some level of conversation about temperamental composition of the group, at least to start. As people discover their characters over time, it's fine for this composition to be backgrounded or go away completely, but it's a useful tool for getting into play. For examples of various group size compositions to use as starting compositions, I like this page on Cast Calculus.

As for picking where you fit into the cast so that you will enjoy it, you've sort of got to season to taste. You can either self-assess and pick a temperament that is natural for you to play, or you can pick one that feels out-of-character and develop some decisionmaking heuristics for "what are my character's lowest-potential-energy behaviors". If you are naturally melancholic but you want to play a choleric character, write on your character sheet a couple of notes about your impulsive tendencies and try to exercise at least one per session!

Dyads or Subsets

There was a lot of discourse last year about writing rooms, encounters, and hexes in pairs. I think at the VERY least, players should be creating characters in pairs. Pick another player at the table and talk to them about what pre-existing relationship your characters have. Lots of games formalize this at some point in character generation, but it's often too late in the step to drive big decisions. I think you should do it before you pick a single element about your character. Define your character decisions in harmony, contrast, discord, or relief to the decisions of another player and talk to them about how their character is informing your decisions.

The first time you write down a feature or characteristic on your character sheet, make a note about how this other character was the person who drove you to that point. Earlier this year I wrote a post about making your entire character sheet relational or relationship-based; while that's a fun thought experiment, this is actionable in the game you are playing right now. When you use a feature on your character sheet, you and your character should be thinking about and narrating how it is only possible because of the relationship that you have with your ally/rival/sister/ex-lover. When your play and your ability to contribute feels deeply entwined with other players and their characters, it will be more deeply exciting to play at the table.

Most importantly, these are just the relationships that are forged before play began; you have the entire game ahead of you to build new character relationships and see them change over time. Experiencing and seeing that change is what makes play enjoyable!

The Narrative Decisionmaking Layer

I saved this for last, but I think it is the place where the most ink has already been spilled. It is most enjoyable to play a character who exists within the context of their setting and their environment. This is why character generation that happens in a vacuum, decoupled from the table, can so easily lead to a character whom you love but is not enjoyable to play.

  1. Talk to your GM about the setting and what they have in mind. They should be excited to help you place character goals into the game.
  2. Once you have that goal, think about the things that you can do this session, or during the next downtime, that will propel you toward your goal.
  3. Talk to other players about their goals. How can you make a decision this session or during the next downtime, that helps them achieve their goal.

I tend to be really hard on the concept of the baroque backstory in my blog, but it's because I only personally care about the part of your backstory that gives you something to work toward.

I think my conclusion here is that, if your character has:

Then you will have a hard time not enjoying playing that character.