Basic character premise?

From: Jane Williams <janewilliams20_at_...>
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2005 22:33:51 -0000


One thing I've learnt from this discussion is that there's a basic assumption I've been making all along, and it seems that some others don't share it.

That is, that when you take a campaign premise and design a character for it, what that character will be doing for most of their time in the near future is something you're interested in playing.

So if the campaign premise is "farmers who've just been invaded", you're interested in your reaction to the invasion (and how totally unsuited you are to dealing with it!). If it's "you've just arrived in new lands and need to settle them", that you're interested in exploring, negotiating, solving what are probably basically economic problems (where's the wood to build with?). And if the campaign premise is "peaceful farmers who spend their time farming and don't get attacked", it's because you're interested in farming. Or because you're dropping an effete Sage into it, or a violent warrior, and wondering how he'll get on.

It now seems that we also have "people to whom something interesting to the players happens once in a blue moon" as a character concept, which simply isn't something I'd ever considered. I can quite see that that would make the time pass faster, as you skip from high-light to high-light. I'll have to give it some thought, since other people seem to find it such fun, but as a general rule, if I'm playing a character, it's because I *am* interested in what they do with the whole of their life. If I wasn't, I'd play someone else.

The "saga system" of advancement sounds like it would be vitally important, though. And as yet I don't feel I understand how that works in practice anything like well enough to try this sort of thing out.

Powered by hypermail