Confessions of a Tabletop RPG Player: Adding Depth to your (Roleplaying) Characters
Roleplaying, like writing or even running tabletop games, is a skill you have to hone. I'm still working on it.
I am a bad TTRPG player. I've run and managed several one shots I'm very proud of, and even hosted a handful of campaigns (some of which reached a conclusion!) but have had difficulty remaining engaged as a player, especially with combat focused games. I lose focus when it's not my turn to act in initiative. I forget the details of the narrative stringing together our combat encounters, but when those encounters arrive, I only do as much damage as possible before ending my turn.
I want to tell an awesome story with my friends, and use dice to see where the hiccups are on our adventures. Instead, I often feel lost or aimless when trying to justify my characters actions in the fiction, because what is actually happening is I'm trying to cripple the enemies' action economy. Why does engaging with the mechanics of combat effectively override role play for me in this way?
Here's the thing: if you're not interested in part of the activity despite wanting to be, it isn't entirely your fault. Sure, with enough willpower or discipline I could wrack my brain and force myself to completely define my characters and the themes of the story I want to tell. I could, as a stenographer, take constant notes of every detail my game master paints about the dungeon walls, and their mysterious sigils. The problem lies in those being work. Intense work, even. Instead of trying to browbeat myself into working that hard, I tried a different approach to building back up my interest.
As a celebration of the breadth of tabletop games out there, I read through 5 different games' systems (and a bonus 6th game for comparison) that were built to flesh out and detail your player character. Its by no means a comprehensive list, and no system is perfect for every person and use case. Still, each system intrigued me and helped me figure out what exactly I was looking to do with my own game of Pathfinder 2e.
Kids On Bikes
Kids On Bikes 2e, by Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski, is an excellent game. Its all paranormal coming of age stories, like everything from Scooby Doo to The Goonies and Stranger Things. In character creation, each player asks every other player a series of Relationship Questions. The book recommends asking each other character your character knows two questions: one detailing a positive aspect of their relationship and one negative. A character your character doesn't know gets one question, usually about the rumors or reputation of that character in and around town.
In my time with Kids on Bikes, I played the single mother of another player's character that worked the front desk at her daughter's school; this way, my character had at least a vague relationship with or understanding of the rest of the kids, even though she hadn't met some of them. It was exciting for my character to overcome the preconceived notions she had of the so called delinquent kids, all while overcoming her own struggles with the (almost certainly possessed) head principle of the school. It helped that they needed her around since she was the only one who could drive, let alone reach the pedals. Almost all of those details came out of this questions section of character creation, which had great pages full of example questions to ask.
Despite being a fun and genuinely thought provoking way to help alleviate the "you're strangers in a tavern" problem, I still have one main nitpick with the system. Kids on Bikes' question system is only used in a session zero, and otherwise doesn't have any other mechanical implementation, meaning there's not really a framework for using the details you learn during character creation during play. This isn't necessarily a bad thing: the focus of the game might lean against interpersonal strife in the party, and kids' relationships aren't always the most complicated parts of their lives. Teen and Adult characters will probably have their intra-party relationships matter
to them a lot more, though. The Relationship Questions start and end before the game begins, and don't necessarily help the players tell stories about the changing interiors of characters over time.
Because I'm looking for a way to scaffold more narrative play into a combat focused game, Kids on Bikes' Relationship Questions reveals that I'm looking for a system with more ongoing mechanical elements. A system that has more gameplay elements can prompt me in creating narrative arcs for my character, since I've already resolved the circumstances in their backstory that started their adventure in the first place.
Apocalypse World
Apocalypse World 2e, by D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker, has been on my radar for a while, although I've never played it myself. The game implies a vaguely Mad Max style post apocalypse, but has the players detail the world during character creation, so that world building is built into the game and shared around the table.
Later, players determine their Hx, or history, which each other player character at the table. Instead of detailing the nature of each relationship, Hx is an asymmetrical stat each character has with everyone else. Rather than show how long you've known another character, or how positive or negative your relationship is, Hx runs from +4 to -3, with the score representing how well you understand someone else. You then use that score whenever trying to help or hinder another PC's actions. The better you fundamentally get someone, the easier it is to anticipate them and either set them up for success, or impede them. Likewise, a relationship with negative Hx has a harder time predicting what someone will do. Each playbook in the game has unique Hx questions, that way each character feels like a unique part of a social ecosystem. Importantly, Hx also helps determines which stats each character has "highlighted," picked by other people around the table, which counts as an XP trigger each time it's rolled. Finally, whenever Hx reaches it's upper or lower limit, either through special moves or a post-session recap, that relationship is recontextualized by a secret, and Hx is reset back to +0.
Hx is a complex mechanic, interwoven with the rest of the systems of Apocalypse World. Just like any other attribute, character relationships affect the outcomes of rolls, and shift and grow over time. Since Apocalypse World helps tell dynamic, dirty stories of people on the brink, the fact that Hx affects both helping and hurting one another means that trying to understand one another in the apocalypse is one of the easiest ways to have more agency in the world you build together. Hx reads as a triumph of design incentivizing a kind of narrative play I haven't experienced before.
That said, it too is not without some nit picky issues. Hx quantifies a level of understanding one character has of another, but after the initial question during character creation, doesn't actually include any detail about that relationship. Hx doesn't inform anything about a character's relationships. This lets Hx be a central stat used in a lot of ways, but that detail agnosticism is also frustratingly vague. In a campaign of Apocalypse World, I imagine this wouldn't be an issue, but prevents it from being meaningfully adapted into a different system. It also doesn't help you write a more fleshed out character after a character has been created, asking you to change them all by yourself.
A mechanic more system agnostic would be easier to bring over into a different game, and I personally would love one that, like a good writing prompt, pushed me to think in new ways about my character as often as possible.
Dungeon World
Dungeon World, by Sage LaTorra et al., is Powered by the Apocalypse, meaning its built off of the ruleset put forth in Apocalypse World, yet has its own unique ideas for creating depth in your player characters. Dungeon World uses the narrative toolset from Apocalypse World and streamlines it for more traditional, sword and sorcery fantasy stories many tabletop role players are familiar with.
In Dungeon World, the things that make a party more than an assortment of adventurers is the Bonds that tie them together. Bonds are simple statements that relate your character to another in the party, and describe the feelings, thoughts, and shared history that makes their relationship unique. When creating characters, each class gets a few bonds to start with, and each player is allowed to "Resolve" one bond at the end of every session. If a bond isn't "a big factor in how [you] relate" to that character anymore, its a good time to Resolve it. If both players agree a bond is Resolved, then you mark XP, and write a new one with anyone in the party. Since writing evocative and forward-moving bonds is central to getting the most out of the system, Dungeon World recommends that you pick an event relevant in the last session, create a thought or belief your character holds that ties the two together, and to finally add an action, what your character is going to do about it. Here's some examples the book gives for some good Bonds:
Mouse’s quick thinking saved me from the white dragon we faced. I owe her a boon.
Avon proved himself a coward in the dungeons of Xax’takar. He is a dangerous liability to the party and must be watched.
Valeria's kindness to the Gnomes of the Vale has swayed my heart, I will prove to her I am not the callous fiend she thinks I am.
Xotoq won the Bone-and-Whispers Axe through trickery! It will be mine, I swear it.
Bonds are wonderfully verbose, describing both the past and how your character is thinking about the future. Eloquently, they always concern another player, so that they are engines for generating connection, drama, and strife through dramatic irony: each player knows about each others bonds, but the character's thoughts are their own. Bonds also Resolve simply and regularly, meaning players are frequently asked if character relationships have changed in significant ways, and if they get stale, players are pushed to redefine their bonds more concretely. Bonds are also always present and directional, so no character is an island.
Unfortunately, there aren't many mechanical reasons to engage with the system, as rewarding XP doesn't work in a combat focused game. By trading away a stat focused system like the one in Apocalypse World, Dungeon World gets a more verbose, yet less mechanically integrated take on gamifying connections. I think both systems have merit, but it shows me that there's a middle ground that I'm looking for in my own Pathfinder game, where the system is both verbose and not fading to obscurity behind the rest of the game.
Armour Astir: Advent
Another PbtA game, Armour Astir: Advent, by Briar Sovereign, is a game about magical mech pilots and their support personnel fighting in a war between an oppressive Authority and the Cause that opposes them. I ran a one shot in this game where a team of wizards raided the secret asteroid lab of the ruling class of vampire lords that ruled the galaxy with a propaganda machine powered by their vampiric charms. The party uncovered a horrific weapon that would cement vampires as galactic overlords, and broadcast the truth of the vampiric class across the stars (they ate a lot of people,) finally igniting the spark of revolution.
In AA:A, GRAVITY is a system of clocks representing relationships and attachments with other player characters, rivals, and other factions. Instead of a measure of the tone or quality of your relationship, or even how well you understand another, GRAVITY clocks are countdowns to a reckoning between characters that changes their relationship in some way. GRAVITY works best when its highlighting the specific relationships and dynamics you want to explore in play, so you won't have GRAVITY with everyone you meet. Instead, make a six step progress clock, give it a score of +1 and then define that relationship with a short phrase, like Zealous Rivals, Fated Lovers, Nervous Friends, or Chasing the Same Boy. Whenever you take action concerning a character you have a clock with, advance it one tick, and optionally add your GRAVITY score to that roll, rather than the regular bonuses. Whenever a GRAVITY clock fills, you and the relevant party get three choices, all of which increase your characters level:
Redefine your relationship with that person, writing a new phrase for the GRAVITY clock and increasing it's score by +1 up to a max of +3.
Commit to the relationship, cementing it in place and increasing it's score by +1 up to a max of +3. The GRAVITY stays the same until an action ends the relationship, like a sacrifice or a betrayal of some kind. Ending the relationship this way guarantees a success on the relevant action roll.
Abandon the relationship, freeing up one of your limited 3 slots for GRAVITY clocks.
GRAVITY is a delicious system that has the makeup of a truly iconic mechanic in a game: firstly, GRAVITY clocks are DEFCON warnings for incoming relationship drama. Everyone at the table knows when GRAVITY clocks change, and each change is an opportunity for juicy story details to emerge from play. This signposting is one of the most important things a tabletop game can do, because when everyone around the table is on the same page, you become a well oiled machine spitting out story details like the most experienced writing rooms in show business. Secondly, committed relationship are ticking time bombs of mechanical usefulness. Think about Baldur's Gate 3 handles Divine Intervention: each 10th level cleric gets one opportunity for a very powerful ability, and your whole brain warps around this new power. GRAVITY reflects this feeling back onto the psyche of your player character as well. Each committed relationship they're in can be sacrificed for rolls whose success matters more than anything else; every gargantuan task becomes a test, asking your character what they're willing to sacrifice when the chips are down. The final important part of this hall of fame system is that it drips with momentum: engaging in any moves regarding people you have GRAVITY with advances the story forward, creating tension purely out of the rules of a game, and constantly pushing you to engage with that system because each finished clock earns you an advancement: narrative revelations get in lockstep with mechanical ones.
I cannot rave enough about what a success GRAVITY is, even outside the context of its larger systems. I would say that these driving narrative systems work less in game of epic length, as many mythic heroes have only a handful of dramatic relationships in their own stories. That being said, the speed of GRAVITY incentivizing shorter, more exciting relationships over long, growing partnerships isn't a bad thing, and actually more to my taste — especially in tabletop games — where a short arc finished is always worth more than a long arc lost to time. Play Armour Astir: Advent. The only reason we didn't end up using GRAVITY in our Pathfinder game, if I had to give one, was that it didn't prompt answering one of the most fundamental character questions writers need to answer about their characters: why adventure?
Beam Saber
Austin Ramsay's Beam Saber is Forged in the Dark, built off of the excellent Blades in the Dark,1 made to play mecha anime straight out of Gundam. Beam Saber continues in that tradition of excellence, telling stories of people just trying to survive a war that consumes every facet of life. For people on the ground, the only way to win a war is to make it out intact, mentally and physically.
Beam Saber uses three interconnected concepts for its character depth system: Drives, Connections, and Beliefs. Drives represent the ability to change the world your character is in, and each character gets two four-step drive clocks in order to enact that change. Your character's Drive is a sentance that explains what your Pilot wants to change about the world. Everything from killing the man who destroyed my hometown to becoming a famous pop idol and develop a weapon that could end the war can be your pilot's Drive, and every action that moves you towards achieving that gives you a tick on your Drive clocks. Then, players can spend their Drive clocks to permanently change their circumstances. Importantly, enacting that change on a scale that affects more than one person, like a squad or even a whole faction, costs more Drive clocks than an individual player character can have, meaning they will need to pool them together as a party to have lasting power at that magnitude. Drive clocks can't end the war, though, because of how many different factions and forces drive it.
Beam Saber's other character focused narrative systems are Connections and Beliefs. Each player character has Connections to their squad mates, and they are everything from mutually cordial to intensely one-sided. These Connections determine "how Stressful it is and how competent you are when you need to assist your fellows." Each character has a four step connection clock with everyone else in their squad, and each tick in those clocks has a corresponding Belief about the pilot the clock is tied to. When the clock fills, you ask that pilot for a truth concerning one of the Beliefs connecting you, then you reset the clock back to one tick as you see that character in a new light. In Beam Saber, the only way to destress your characters is by Cutting Loose together, and every time you cut loose with someone in your squad, you gain one Connection Tick with them.
Beliefs are statements your character feels are true about another member of their squad. Good beliefs are something that might be shared about someone else in confidence, quickly summarized in a short sentence, and potentially true. Beliefs should be about ideas you want to explore between your squad's cast of characters, and you should always try to make everyone at your table feel safe and confident while playing together. Every playbook in Beam Saber comes with example Beliefs, but you will write your own from scratch in play.
Beam Saber's Drives, Connections, and Beliefs are complex, asking players to be verbose in describing the inner workings of their characters. They serve as complex writing prompts, tasking you with trying hard to make a character that remains internally consistent all while the storms of war rage from without. Spoiler Alert: the players at my Pathfinder table all wrote Drives and Beliefs for our characters, and I had a total blast doing it. It was difficult to come up with a satisfying Drive for a character that had already broken the chains of his oppression earlier in the adventure, but in writing Beliefs for everyone else around the table, I discovered a hidden aspect of their psyche. On the quest to save the world, a world which battered them and forced them to adapt to monstrous elder gods, my character had an ambition to power that even they weren't aware of, a need for the security of the upper class that would allow them total agency over their own life until their last moments. My character wanted to be King.
Beam Saber's systems might be less elegant and concise than GRAVITY, but crucially got me excited to explore more involved character concepts, and finally pushed me the distance to figure out just what was happening inside my character's head. When sharing our Drives and Beliefs around the table, it told our GM and the other player's what I wanted to explore out of this game, leading to more difficult and interesting choices regarding devils and their promises of power, which would have been simple meta choices beforehand. One of the juiciest parts of this whole exchange though, was finding out that the trust my character had with another was almost completely asymmetrical: we were allies in the fight against evil, but their vision of the world after we would save it was so opposed to mine that it became instant dramatic tension that we could tear into in our next session.
So that is a look at the process I'd gone through to try and find a way to force myself into writing better, more interesting characters, and I think it really has helped me buy in more completely at our weekly sessions. Role playing is a skill you have to cultivate, and playing one character well over time is completely different than keeping track of the world outside of the current scene like I enjoy as a GM. Hopefully you enjoyed the design analysis in the article, and are pushed to try new games, and to try and hack your old ones in more exciting ways.
I'll leave you off with a look at a more familiar system and it's complete lack of those hall of fame qualities I mentioned before. If you're like me, you've even forgotten some of these rules exist despite playing with them fairly often.
Dungeons & Dragons
Wizards of the Coast's D&D 5e is a combat focused game built to have exciting battles between mythic monsters and larger than life heroes. 5e uses a tapestry of tables and prompts in its character creation to try and help you paint a clearer picture of who your character actually is. Most of them might as well not exist.
Every creature in 5e has an alignment, which describes its moral attitudes. Alignment matrices are so ubiquitous that its one of the internet's oldest memes, yet its not something that anyone I know has ever meaningfully used in a game before. While many people rightfully write off Alignment for their own games, I don't want to throw this baby out with the rest of the bathwater. In the mythopoetic mode that D&D thrives in, stories of good and evil are commonplace, and let everyone feel justified in fighting to the death in that setting. Announcing to your table at the very beginning of your play that you intend to be Lawful Good is an important and useful step in aligning everyone's expectations of the time their going to spend together. That is one of the most difficult parts of a good tabletop experience.
That being said, Alignment is the racism rule: some races are designed "evil" by evil gods, and will struggle against that nature their entire lives, even if they're "one of the good ones." It is literally the text of the Player's Handbook2 that some people are inherently worse than others, due to the circumstances of their birth. Like many parts of D&D, there has been a reckoning about Alignment that was long overdue.
Each character also gets personality traits: simple things that set your character apart from everyone else. The PHB pushes you to use character traits to try and explain which stats might be your best and worst and why. These traits are neat prompts for coming up with your character, but usually fall away quickly due to the lack of any meaningful connection with the combat rules that make up the bulk of the pages that make up the game. Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws all fall into this category, and each comes with a table of potential options for you to choose or guide you in making your own.
The exception, and part of this system that the most people have actively engaged with in their actual games around a table, are the Background rules. Player characters get a background — a verbose but generic description of the history of your character. Backgrounds do more than just add flavor to an otherwise math focused character sheet; they prescribe proficiencies with tools and skills, expand the languages a character might now, and most importantly, add unique feats and starting equipment for your character.
Since the background actually ties into the central mechanics of D&D 5e, its by far the system players care about the most when trying to detail who their character is on the inside. It still matters very little after you've made your character, but it shows how important tying these ideas together is for a rounded, engaging design. If those traits had more mechanical integrations into the combat besides the sorely lacking inspiration3 system, D&D might actually scaffold interesting narrative play on top of its sprawling tactical engine.
Blades in the Dark is award winning for a reason; try out the second most popular tabletop role playing game ASAP. That's my review.
It is describe as part of myth within the setting of D&D, but the text reads as such: "Most orcs share the violent, savage nature of the orc god, Gruumsh, and are thus inclined toward evil. Even if an orc chooses a good alignment, it struggles against its innate tendencies for its entire life." (pg. 122)
Inspiration, as described in the PHB on page 125, only lets you store one point at a time, and trade it to other players or spend it on getting advantage on a roll. Compared to systems that integrate narrative as stat bonuses, or incentivize drama with level ups, inspiration is incredibly flat, and I've never played with a non-homebrewed version of it. Even in Baldur's Gate 3, they allow you to stack inspiration for use after a roll has failed making each point way more exciting and valuable.