Reaper Miniatures: 03205: Friar Stone, Traveling Monk or is it a strong drunkard wizard?
I have recently been having a conversation with one of the players at our store’s Hoard of the Dragon Queen game. It is a familiar conversation that I have had multiple times over the course of my years playing RPGs, I’ve been the person experiencing the frustration and the hearing the frustration. The conversation can be summed up in one question “My character is boring, how do I fix it?”. This then dovetails into an important aspect of the 5E rules, the Inspiration mechanic and using it, which I see DMs asking about in my twitter feed from time to time. (I just need to remember to give it out *sigh*.)
My Character is Boring
This is a problem that plagues certain types of characters more than it does others and it also depends a bit on what the other characters in the group can do. For example if you are playing a fighter and your only default option is “I attack” and the player beside you has a default choice of 4 to 6 spells plus “I attack” your character can start looking pretty dull. Now 4E addressed this buy giving everyone (roughly) the same amount of powers, and for me it was the first time playing a fighter was really interesting, but 5E is back to having a lot of variation between classes and even inside classes for what a class can do. As a result you will see the spell casters with a slew of options and the barbarians and fighters with “I attack” as their option, and as the character’s level and the hit points of the fighters and barbarians make individual attacks less of a threat the boredom starts setting in.
The other reason that characters get boring is that they have very little to do from a narrative perspective, they can have a great back story or no back story but the thing about them is that when it comes to interacting with the story they tend to have only a simple default option. There are some character types that fall into this as a problem more than others, the brute (seriously “I am Groot” is cool for a 2.5 hour movie, but for a 2.5 year campaign?) to the strong silent type or loner character. These characters end up being ones that don’t do much, they tend to be passive riders in the story and so if they get boring in the action scenes they quickly become just boring all the time.
Now these things don’t always happen, they depend a lot on what is going on in the game and the players involved, but over the years that’s the basic trend I see; character’s with limited options become boring and boring is less fun than interesting.
Bombshell Miniatures: 10029 – Thorga the Half Orc. Is she a Princess of the Desert or a Swashbuckling Pirate?
Get A Good Hook
This is the first step, its more of an RP step than a mechanical one, but it is a thing you can do that makes your character distinct. This is time to break out your bad accents and funny voices or have a catchy phrase etc. From the basic pirate stereotype (Arrgh me hearties!) to regional accents these things make your characters unique and memorable. (I still remember running a convention session of Shadowrun in the early 90’s where all the characters were Cockney Trolls!) You may need to be careful with this depending on the players at the table, especially if you are looking at gender or race stereotypes, but these are easy hooks that can be a lot of fun if not over done (ie don’t forget to drop the accent when talking out of character or just narrating ideas),
Catch phrases are harder to get sorted out, sometimes they evolve naturally in the game, sometimes you come up with them before hand. Personally I’m not much of a catch phrase guy, but these are common in action movies (I’ll be back, never tell me the odds, yippie ki yay etc) and TV series, anime and even comics. Catch phrases might also include an odd way of referring to people, like Wolverine’s “bub” or Planescape cant like “cutter” or “berk” and so on. These are relatively easy to get into the game and make your character more than just a set of stats and mechanics, which can help stave off the boredom.
Active Story not Passive Story
When thinking about a back story aim for things that fall into the active side of engaging with events rather than the passive role. Active characters are protagonists and passive ones are sidekicks, which do you want to play?
Being active doesn’t mean dumping charisma and playing a jerk. That’s being a jerk and makes the game harder for the other players, including the DM. Interestingly Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy is a good version of the charisma dumped jerk, his hook (revenge driven maniac who takes everything literally) makes him a jerk, but as the story and character relationships evolve he stops being a jerk and becomes friendly (well as much as a revenge driven maniac who takes everything literally can) towards the other characters. So that’s something to keep in mind, you can start out a total jerk, but your character needs to be more than just a jerk.
Being active means choosing a personality or back story that drives your character to be involved with the game. Here are 2 examples from our store group:
- Amber Jane a pirate (fighter) who is pursuing the Cult of the Dragon, not because she cares about the Cult at all, but because a crew member of her ship joined the cult and betrayed the ship to them leading to her being the only other survivor of her ship who now hunts the Cult of the Dragon in search of 2 Fingers Pete.
- Tea Wreks a half-orc barbarian whose trinket table roll gave her a scabbard without a sword, this immediately became her lost father’s scabbard and now every time she meets a male human (PC or) NPC she asks “Are you my daddy?”, even if he is clearly not old enough to be her dad.
Notice that both of these characters have goals that are easily resolved (find Pete, find Dad) but entirely unconnected to the story of the module(s) we are playing in reality (neither Pete nor Daddy exist in those modules expressly). This means the characters essentially have an open ended hook that drives them through the module indefinitely. The DM can resolve those hooks, but they are best done after the characters learn for certain that the cult is trying to summon Tiamat and are close to being able to do so. Then they have a reason to stick with the story even if their individual story is resolved. (For example Amber can transfer her quest to the new Cult leaders as those ultimately responsible, Tea’s dad might be taken as a slave/sacrifice by the cult and need to be rescued etc.)
The PHB is full of great Bonds and Flaws in the background section, but when you choose one, make sure you choose one that will actually matter to the campaign, or tweak it so that it does matter to the campaign. For example the acolyte background has the bond “I will someday get revenge on the corrupt temple hierarchy who branded me a heretic.” If your campaign has nothing to do with your temple and their corrupt hierarchy that isn’t going to matter much at all, but it can be used to inform a character that is going to matter to the campaign. Maybe you replace “temple” with “cult” and you are an old school Dragon Cultist who doesn’t want the new cult to succeed? Maybe you are a Thayan monk or wizard who has realized that the alliance with the new Cult is a bad thing and while this gets you in trouble with the powers of Thay gives you common cause with the other heroes. Even Amber Jane’s background above comes from one of the PHB bonds. The key is making the bond relevant to the campaign, either by discussion with the DM before hand or, if the basics of the plot are known by giving them a broad connection to the campaign, or finally by just making them so they are driven by their own quest.
Flaws
Drax: Flaw – I take everything literally!
What did you say bout my mother?
All great heroes have some sort of flaw, their flaws are things that they over come in their journey to becoming heroes. The PHB has a bunch of suggested flaws for each of the backgrounds, but many of these are very specific and hard to incorporate in a meaningful way in the course of the typical DnD adventure. That said taking the flaw “blood thirsty” and only having it come up when a fight is happening isn’t exactly being blood thirsty. Flaws like “I never follow the plan” are easy to incorporate into the game, but can quickly become a burden on the other players if over played. Yet you need to pick something that you can use actively incorporate into the game as well.
Being a coward at heart is a strong flaw for the dashing fighter. When it comes time to make the plan he is all brave and daring, but when it comes time to actually get to the fighting he is hesitant and tries to talk his way out of the fight until forced into a fight, and he’s always willing to run away (just like brave, brave Sir Robin). Its not that he cannot fight, but that he doesn’t want to get into the fight, he buys the best armor he can and invests in healing potions beyond reasonable and so on. These are quirky behaviors that relate to the flaw, but that are not going to mess the party up when it actually comes to completing adventures. Which is important, its a flaw you can use, but doesn’t mess things up for other players.
Inspiration
So all this stuff took on a mechanical bent in 5E as well with the Inspiration mechanic, in short Inspiration gives you a reward for making a fun contribution to the game, and making a fun contribution to the game helps the DM remember to give inspiration (with some practice).
As a DM the hardest thing about Inspiration is remembering to award it. If your character is the strong silent type who really doesn’t do much what is it your DM is going to award you Inspiration for? So yes you can be the strong and silent type, but you need to be actively engaged in the game, something other than “strong and silent” needs to define your character and make them interesting for you and everyone else at the table. Having a character whose personality traits allow you to be an active participant in the game gives the DM reasons to award inspiration. This means you end up with 2 rewards, the basic reward of having a character that is fun to play for an extended period of time and the mechanical reward of earning Inspiration.