Re: new character creation

From: me1stra <melstra_at_...>
Date: Tue, 25 Mar 2003 21:56:03 -0000

> > I feel that the 100word thing only works on reasonably heroic
> heroes who have
> > a few tales to tell. I certainly wouldn't use 100words for a
> Heortling not
> > adult as they really haven't got a story to back them up.
>
> I would tend to agree with you on this. It is not for everyone -
> though on some occasions, my 'list' folks have asked to write
> narratives.

At the risk of a) shooting my mouth off where I know nothing and b) disagreeing with my darling soon-to-be husband, I actually respectfully disagree. Perhaps I don't understand the 100word method quite well enough, but from what I have been able to understand, the idea is to write something that will give you a feel for who the character is, in order to figure out what abilities they have and what "class" (to use the vulgar D&D vernacular in a more abstract sense) they fit in. In my opinion, such a thing is a matter of character and not a matter of age. Any human over the age of 5 (and before, but i doubt role players would start characters that early) is going to have a very distinct personality and the beginnings of certain skills. Sure, they won't be initiates yet, and they won't have huge exploits to write about, but even kids have things that make them different, and things they feel strongly about-- even personal "tragedies" (though these might not seem so tragic to us...ask your nearest kid and you'll find they have lots of life-or- death stories to tell).

The absolute best character generation I've ever done has been with my friend Shannon Kalvar's invented system of Faery. In this system, you start with a bunch of questions directed at the group. For example:

1. you enter your room after being gone all day and see a purple iguana on your bed. What do you do?
2. What's your character's favorite drink?
3. Someone stole your favorite hat. What do you do? (Hunt them down and kill them? Buy a new hat?)
4. How does your character get along with his parents?
5. When would your character get up in the morning if he didnt' have to work?
6. A movie is being made about your character-- in the climax, you're chained to a cliff and a boulder is falling down onto you. What do you do? (pick the handcuffs? magically cause the boulder to crumble? use your strength to pull yourself free of the cliff? whistle for your magic monkey?)

Questions of this type could be answered by even a non-adult and if you answer without thinking about it too hard (we were never given long to write down our answers), you end up with a pretty good picture of what kind of character you have ended up creating. (Btw, most of our games were either modern-day settings or victorian, so the questions might change for Glorantha...but wouldn't need to change drastically). For non-adults, I would imagine the 100 words resulting from such brainstorming to be far less backward-looking and more introspective/hopes&dreams oriented. But there will probably still be formative experiences upon which the teeny-somethings could draw.

With all of that said, I DO agree with Jeff and the others that 100 word narrative character creation is not for everyone. To be blunt, some simply lack the imagination and others are too dependent on rules and structures for tthem to be comfortable with it. To each his/her own.

Back to lurker mode...

-
Melanie