Thoughts on RPG Character Development

Tabletop role-playing games have a number of gateways for new players to pass through. First is the complicated rule-set that they are responsible for. Obviously, unlike computer games, tabletop RPGs rely on the players to keep the rules in order. Even the most seasoned player will have to look up the odd rule or just simply ignore a rule here and there. For new players, they may feel obligated to memorize the entirety of the rule book, which is often hundreds of pages long filled with very situational information. Like what's the hardness of a barrel? How thick is the average door? How much gold can a yak carry? At this point, it's up to the dungeon master to inform the new players of the basic rules a player should know. How attacks work, how skill checks work, etc. The rest can be left up to the DM to either know, omit, or flub. Another major gateway I have seen new players struggle with is creating their first character backstory.

Many new players have asked me “what's a good character to play” not realizing how broad that question is. It really depends on your definition of “good.” It's a question that's impossible to answer, which sometimes frustrates players. The next question will often be “what's the easiest to learn?” The problem with that is each race and class might be more complicated for one person than it is another. Someone might be able to pick up the nuances of magic easier than someone else, or they might understand the tactics of melee combat better. It's really hard to say what might be a good choice for a new player. But the most difficult question to answer is “what should my backstory be?”

The first thing that should happen is the DM should tell the player what the setting is and where the characters begin their adventure. Perhaps even give a little hint as to what the campaign might bring. Will there be a lot of ghosts? Ogres? Orcs? Is it a political intrigue adventure in a city? What brings your character to the location where the campaign takes place? Are they from there? Do they already know the other adventurers? What is their link to this story's opener? From there, the player can construct a character.

One pitfall I've seen players fall in to is having an underdeveloped character at the start. Much of tabletop role-playing games is, well, role-playing. Not knowing your character's motivations can often create a confusion at the table. One moment your character is a law abiding citizen, the next they're murdering a shop-keep because they're charging too much for consumables. Then suddenly they feel bad for slaughtering a bunch of goblins. Understanding your characters starting morality is important, would they be OK with killing a civilian to get what they want? Would the be OK with the blood of dozens of goblins on their hands? Not knowing a basic background of your character can also damage the role-playing elements as well. An NPC in conversation asks “you from around here?” and you're like “uh... time out, I actually don't know where my character is from yet” can derail the game a bit. Being forced to improvise happens often, and certain elements of your character will reveal themselves in improv, but having a basic knowledge of your character is a crucial building block.

The opposite side of the coin is true as well. Having an overdeveloped character limits your character's growth. It also puts an incredible amount of pressure on your DM to include your character's background in to the main story. Then when your backstory doesn't have a satisfying end, or your backstory ends up being irrelevant to the main story, it can lead to player frustration which is unfair to player and the DM. Creating a background is a balancing act in making sure it's open enough to evolve, and developed enough to expand upon.

You also have to remember, as a player, most campaigns begin with your character at a low level. It's unlikely that your character is the personal guard of the queen, or the dean of the magic school, or a legendary mercenary swordsman. Instead, those things could be the goal of your character. Or perhaps they used to be those things. Perhaps they were the personal guard of the queen but due to injury or age they were forcefully retired. In the meantime they ate and rank too much and their skill has diminished and your story is one of redemption. Or they were once a student of the magic school but were kicked out of trying magic more powerful than they were capable of wielding and now you resent the dean. Or you're a wannabe legendary swordsman who embellishes their tales of heroic deeds and your story now is developing an actual résumé of heroism.

In the end, your character is always yours to play with and develop. In the game I DM I've seen a lunatic chaotic bard transform in to a spiritualist who can communicate with ghosts. A druid who didn't care for society and especially hated goblins turned in to someone who acted as a defense attorney and even gave a group of goblins safe refuge. My own character in Starfinder started off as someone curious about timelines and dimensions and turned in to almost a nihilist without fear of death. None of us saw our characters developing in this way but we had interesting foundations from which to build. If you give yourself the right tools you can surprise yourself with how your own character develops.

10 Board Games in 10 Days - Day 4 - The Legend of Drizzt

DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: THE LEGEND OF DRIZZT

Wizards of the Coast - 2011

picture from BoardGameGeek.com

Growing up, my brothers had all kinds of Dungeons & Dragons books. Not just rule books, but tons of novels from Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Greyhawk, and probably others I can’t recall. I didn’t get around to playing Dungeons & Dragons until I was about 13 or so, but as a kid I would flip through the bestiary just to look at the artwork. I remember thinking Mind Flayers were rad as hell and when I saw a beholder I was like, “Oh, that’s the thing from Big Trouble in Little China!” When I was a teenager one of my brothers decided to set up a D&D session with me and some friends. It was mostly just a free-form improv session because we didn’t have any dice, no character sheets, we were just role-playing for the sake of it. I later dug out the rule books and created a character because I wanted to try an actual game but we never got it off the ground. I had an opportunity to play in college and I was able to recreate the character I had made when I was a teen. From there I was completely hooked but I hadn’t realized it, the seed sat dormant in my brain for years. I didn’t think about D&D much until I was about 30 when my other brother asked if I wanted to play. So, I recreated my character, again, and we played a few sessions. It was great! In my research for more ways to get D&D in my life I rediscovered the novels from my childhood and one book cover in particular stood out. That book was The Crystal Shard by R. A. Salvatore.

picture from Wikipedia

When I saw this book cover I had an immediate flashback to being about 7 years old and going through all of my brothers’ books. This one in particular stood out to me, the barbarian standing there ready to wreck stuff with his hammer, the dwarf nonchalantly leaning on his axe, and the elf using his senses to track whatever it is they’re after, I never knew because I never read it. Turns out these are incredibly popular characters created by an incredibly popular fantasy author, so picking up my own copy was as simple as going to The Strand and pulling it off the shelf. After 30 years I finally learned the story behind these characters. Wulfgar the barbarian, Bruenor Battlehammer the dwarf, and Drizzt Do’Urden the drow.

The story is a fish out of water tale for all involved. Wulfgar is a barbarian from the outskirts of society who is indentured to the dwarves in a region called Ten Towns after a failed barbarian attack. Bruenor, king of the dwarves of Mithral Hall, adopts Wulfgar, in a way, and constructs amazing weaponry for him. On top of that, he is best friends with Drizzt, a drow, who are usually enemies to the dwarves, and a halfling named Regis who uses magic to influence those around him, which is something dwarves typically condemn. There’s Catti-Brie, the adopted human daughter of Bruenor. Her father was killed by a goblin attack repelled by Clan Battlehammer. She was found by Bruenor in the rubble and taken to Mithral Hall to live with the dwarves. Regis is a halfling and not much is known about him before arriving in Ten Towns other than he’s from far in the south. He makes a decent living making scrimshaw trinkets and sits on the Ten Towns council. The reader knows Regis is a bit of a trickster, Drizzt and Bruenor know too but forgive him for it, and he uses these tricks for personal gain on a regular basis. Drizzt is a drow, a race of elves considered evil. Drow are feared for the cruelty and vengeful behavior. Their worship of Lolth is enough reason for most to fear the drow and keep them at a distance. Drizzt is different. He left the underdark, something unheard of to the drow, and attempts to make a life above ground.

I didn’t realize this until later but the fish out of water aspect of the book is probably what resonated with me the most. I went to college 1,300 miles away from home and after I graduated I moved to New York City. I didn’t feel comfortable at home, so I left. I didn’t feel comfortable where I went to college, so I left. Despite settling in NYC and living here for over a decade I’m not entirely sure if I even feel comfortable here. All of the characters in the book yearned for adventure. While they loved their homes and wanted to protect them they simultaneously didn’t feel as though they totally belonged. I think a lot of people feel this way but it wasn’t something I had thought about much until I finished the book.

After reading a few of Drizzt’s adventures I required more Dungeons & Dragons in my life. Board games as a hobby had recently become a part of my life so I wondered if there were board game alternatives to D&D. Sure enough, Wizards of the Coast were way ahead of me and had, at the time, three D&D board game adventures available. As luck would have it, there was even one based on the adventures of Drizzt Do’Urden and friends.

As usual, I bought the game and called Joe Donnelly to come play. This is the first time, I think, where we were setting up the game and whipped through the rules because there were mechanics we were already familiar with. Primarily the modular board, which works similarly to Betrayal at House on the Hill. The board isn’t so much a board as it is just a stack of tiles. When you start the adventure you place a specific starting tile on the table and place your characters on it. Then find your destination tile and grab a number of random room tiles as determined by your chosen scenario. You then grab 2 of the random room tiles and shuffle in your destination tile, then place those 3 tiles at the bottom of the tile deck. This means you’ll know when you’re close to your destination but you aren’t exactly sure just how much farther you need to go. This method actually does a great job of recreating the dungeon crawl experience. The modular board means even if you run the same scenario multiple times the map and the order of encounters will never be the same. There are also many characters to choose from. Of course there are the characters mentioned above but also a few side characters and you can even play as some of Drizzt’s most famous rivals, all with different stats and abilities.

Joe and I recruited our friends Bryan and John and our goal was to play through all of the scenarios in the book. And we did! A few times! It was great! While it’s not exactly the same as playing Dungeons & Dragons it certainly scratches a similar itch. I even went out and bought the other D&D adventure board games, Castle Ravenloft and Wrath of Ashardalon. While The Legend of Drizzt stands out because of its familiar characters I think of the three I prefer Wrath of Ashardalon. The Legend of Drizzt contains a set number of scenarios for you to play through, none of which lead from one to the next. Once you are done with a scenario you reset and move on to the next one, nothing carries over. Wrath of Ashardalon, on the other hand, has campaign mechanics that allow you to keep loot and experience from one scenario to the next. The scenarios also more compelling, the monsters are more varied, and the experience overall feels more like playing Dungeons & Dragons.

As much as I love these games they each suffer from a major flaw. On your turn you can choose to explore, when you do, you pull a tile from the deck you built earlier and place it on the table. Most tiles will either have an event, a trap, or a monster to encounter. The monsters and traps always go first unless your character has a specific ability or item to negate it. Unfortunately, that is not the case for most of the characters, and thus you are at the mercy of the dice at that point. This creates a sort of bunny hopping situation for the players. Example - Joe uses his to explore, revealing a new room and a monster. The monster attacks Joe. Bryan uses his turn to move then attack the monster and kills it, his turn is over. Jon enters the newly revealed room and explores more. A monster spawns and attacks Jon. Now it’s my turn, I use all of my movement to get as close as I can to Jon, who is now 3 rooms away, and I may not even be able to attack because he’s so far. My other option is to explore in a different direction and go at it alone. Another option is to split up in to twos so the bunny hop isn’t so far between turns.

Revealing a new room with a monster or a trap is also almost guaranteed to do damage to the explorer. Most of the time your objective at the end contains a boss character who will take multiple rounds of combat to kill. Along the way you might be unlucky enough to spawn a min-boss, like a troll, which will also take multiple rounds of combat to kill. By the time you reach the final boss you’re almost dead and almost out of spells. It is nearly impossible to mitigate all of that damage before arriving at the end, it can be pretty frustrating. But when you make it to the end and kill that boss you can’t help but cheer. Each roll of the dice is do or die by that point. The four of us spent hours drinking beers and playing these games. I have a vivid memory of playing at John and Bryan’s apartment in the middle of summer with no air conditioning, sweating our asses off but determined to kill that bastard Artemis Entriri.

Now that I’ve been performing the duties of a dungeon master weekly for the past 3 years I’ve realized these board games actually recreated the D&D experience about as much as one could hope. I often try to deplete the player’s resources before encountering a big boss so they too can feel the joy of overcoming extreme adversity. Battered and bruised, most of their spells gone, probably walking around with some sort of disease, but still defeating that stone giant necromancer makes the victory that much sweeter. These board games give you little bite sized D&D experiences in an accessible way. No need for half a dozen rule books, no need to make the “sacrifice” of being a dungeon master, no need to set aside five hours of your day. Just open the box, grab the D20, and roll.