This is important. Don’t feel you need to create full character sheets for your characters. In general that will be a waste of your time. I have found that the more time spent on preparing the game the less useful it is. It is not just a matter of diminishing returns (though that is a significant factor). Overpreparation can lead to stagnation and a feeling that you have painted yourself into a corner. Always leave yourself room to add more. Without an established character sheet, who is say that the ancient wizard doesn’t have some skill in painting or that the vampire might have taken a train tour of Europe in the 20s and made friends with some Russian werewolves. Interesting stories can come out those gaps and leaving room in the character’s background for those surprises can be helpful when designing an adventure.
For example, perhaps one of your preconceived NPCs is a cult leader intended to be a major villain. One of your players comes to you with the concept of an adventurer on the run from her abusive father who is an evil half elven cultist. At this point the party knows nothing about your villain, only that there is this mysterious cult. A quick switch of race and suddenly the PC now has a much closer connection to the NPC.
The same thing can occur in play. Perhaps you have a premade adventure you are adapting or a concept you have come up on your own but you need someone with certain connections or skills. With the freedom of a minimal character design, you can more easily write that in.
Now you could always change facts of a character later, assuming that they have yet to come up in play. But I've found it to be very hard to change one's notions of a character once you've committed yourself. By limiting the detail you more easily preserve that flexibility.
An additional factor to consider is that most of your important NPCs will never be in a straight fight or need to use most of their skills, no matter how long the chronicle. Even in a combat heavy game, such as D&D, what 2nd level spells the 9th level wizard has will probably not matter and what knowledge skills he has will never come up.
So what details do you need? In my mind there are two categories of NPCs (at least of those who have speaking roles): extras and developed characters.
By extras, I mean the characters who don't matter in the larger plot: the stable boy, the villain's goons and unimportant henchman, the police officer. If the character isn't supposed to drive a plot, then they probably fall into this category. For these characters you only need minimal amounts of information: a basic description (name, general age, game specific details such as class or race) and basic roleplaying guidelines (like alignment or vice/virtue, perhaps some notes on what they want, and connections to other characters).
For example, in my Prelude game, one of the PCs had a boss named Douglas Chao. Mr. Chao only matters for a short segment of the adventure so detailing him was a bit of a waste. So my notes for Chao consist of:
Description: Asian American MBA, Dr. Sorenson's manager, has a tiny office, relatively easy to persuade
Roleplaying notes: wants to protect Dr. Sorenson, fears upper management, wants to be safe
If I was detailing things for a Vampire: the Requiem game and Chaos was a vampire I would add his clan, covenant and perhaps any allies or enemies he has. If I thought he might matter for more than an adventure I would either add some more notes like his Vice and Virtue or upgrade him to a developed character.
For the minimal cast of my Corrupted Transmission game, I want them to be developed characters. These are characters that should be the spring boards for many of the adventures of the chronicle.
Developed characters can range all the way to full character sheets but in general you should aim for a minimum amount. I break things down into a few crucial sections: background, description, roleplaying guidelines including a secret, and basic mechanics.
The background section is similar to the background notes above but more detailed. Typically I write two to three paragraphs detailing the character's history to get a sense of where they came from. In the World of Darkness context this will typically include a paragraph about their pre-supernatural/heroic life and include a line or two on how they Awakened/were Embraced/came the Vigil. The second or third paragraphs will then focus on what they've done since then. I find the act of writing the background helps establish the personality of the character and can also suggest how they will develop or respond to events in game.
The description section is relatively self explanatory. consisting of a paragraph describing what they look like and what their mannerisms are. If they have a magical style or effect that visible when they use their powers, I'll add that here as well.
Roleplaying guidelines basically are a short paragraph telling you what the character wants, what they like and dislike, and how they approach issues in general. One side item I include in this section is the idea of a secret. Every important character should have a secret, something that the PCs can find out and which can be used to drive stories forward. In the past I've used secrets ranging from being a bandit leader to covering up a murder to having an affair. They can more exotic too like fleeing a doppelgänger, having a dark destiny, or building magical items in their sleep.
Lastly the mechanical traits section details any abilities that need tracking. This includes things like Blood Potency/Gnosis or Arcana/Disciplines. If the character belongs to a legacy/bloodline or other Z-splat that should be noted. Notable traits like Striking Looks also go here.
One thing I've been using recently is to detail the character's rough capabilities with the short hand of Mental, Physical and Social traits. These (roughly) determine the maximum dice pools for a character in that area. This is adapted from Block by Bloody Block. I tend to add reasonable equipment modifiers to these as necessary, as even a feeble grandmother should be more dangerous with a shotgun than with a kitchen knife. I've also added a Resistance trait to cover a character's health (both mental and physical).
Spoiler Alert: Warning to my players, stop reading here to avoid spoilers.
For example, Mavis the wife of Frank and the company secretary:Background: Mavis is a Seattle native and often visits her sister’s family in Eastside. She married her high school sweetheart Frank in 1971. Though they never had a family, she helped Frank with his detective firm One of a Kind Investigations, working as the secretary and working on the side to make ends meet.
She was terrified when Frank went missing and when he surfaced he barely remembered her. Between her daily visits to the Hillcrest Mental Health Center, she throws herself into her work as a distraction from her situation.
Description: Mavis’s hair may have turned silver but she keeps herself fit and young with constant activity. She keeps a box of tissues handy nearby for when things are quiet.
Storytelling Hints:
Virtue: Fortitude is what has seen Mavis through the years and is what keeps her steady now. She plays it off as faith in her husband, in luck, or providence but really she relies on the steel inside her.
Vice: Wrath. Little indulged, Mavis can be a terror when wound up. She keeps it down but she can fly into a rage if provoked.
Notable Traits:
- Office Management (pool 5): Mavis has worked as a secretary for over 30 years, first for her husband Frank and later under Shaw. She is skilled at keeping records, managing schedules and generally keeping the business running.
- Office Chatter (pool 4): Mavis goes out for lunch with secretaries from nearby firms and hears a lot. She has contacts throughout the business district.
A more complicated character is the Silent One:
Background: The Silent One has existed in Seattle for decades. Even it doesn't know its true origins. Its memories were fleeting, swiftly vanishing as it consumed them for sustenance.
Then it discovered the dream machine. There amid a debris of thousand thousand dreams lay a memory of the world as it was. It devoured the memory and it sustained it. Now it can subsist on passing thoughts, forgotten childhoods, and hours of lost time. Moreover, it can remember the events of day-to-day and plan and plot its next move.
Its next move is find more true memories, memories of vast machines that drive the universe, of impossible feats of magic, and of things that never were. Already it has learned to control more of its kind and to make tulpas, thought form agents formed out of imaginings and memory. It knows that a secret lies beneath the Hillcrest Mental Health Center, a secret guarded by its own thought forms. They oppose it for now.
Description: A tiny emaciated figure cloaked in darkness and wearing a long white silk robe. Androgynous, its fingers are spider-like, it whispers and moves in silence, and its eyes are black orbs.
Storytelling Hints:
Vice: Greed, it wants more memories, more power.
Virtue: Prudence, it is careful and cautious.
Secret: The Silent One controls the Dream Machine whose influence secret covers much of Seattle. It also knows a powerful secret about the God Machine which has given it abilities beyond that normal for its kind.
Notable Traits:
Attributes: Mental: 9, Physical: 7, Social: 7, Resistance: 5
Disciplines: Auspex 1, Dominate 3, Obfuscate 4
Powers:
- Forge Tulpa (able to create fully real seeming duplicates of people or even imaginary people)
- Out of Sight, Out of Mind (Wits + Resolve to remember seeing it once it leaves your sight)
- Healing (has 20 memories worth of healing)
- Steal Memory (Wits + Dexterity – target’s Resolve, successes deal Bashing damage, every 3 successes steals a skill)
Of course this isn't the end of detailing a character. As the game progresses they may learn new skills, make new enemies, and gain or lose allies. Be sure to make careful notes of these changes in your notes. You will often find that important characters will grow more and more background and detail with time. For example when I started my online Mage: the Awakening chronicle, the mentor of two of the PCs had exactly the amount of detail I outlined above. Now, 3 years on, she has a full character sheet and a page and a half of background and description.
An excellent book on the subject of NPC design is the Game Mastery book: NPC Essentials. Much of the above notes come from that the equally good Dungeoncraft series. I hope this helps you in building your own characters and setting.
No comments:
Post a Comment