The New Old-Fashioned Way

There are many ways to roleplay. From the rather painful efforts of people involved in management training games to the cosplay and active roleplay of LARPing, the variations are endless. In terms of tabletop roleplay, however, there has always been a rather narrow set of parameters within which my friends have learned to game.

The roots of our hobby lie with the publication of Dungeons & Dragons in the early 1970s. Over the years since, many gamers have taken forth the flame of tabletop roleplay and lit new fires, revealed new vistas of possibility. And yet, some 40 years since the beginning, we find ourselves right back at the place that we began.

As a gamer who has been near-constantly reading, writing, playing and experimenting with tabletop roleplaying since at least the early 1980s, I’ve learned a thing or two over that time. That being said, it feels as though I have learned very little when I reflect on the impact of a single lonely session of character creation that happened to me yesterday.

The Futile Quest

There was a time when I was obsessed with the rules of the game. In fact, this obsession was a very long one. It spanned years, decades even. I was on the Quest. Somewhere lay the Grail of all roleplaying rules: my very own ultimate system.

Don’t get me wrong: although I feel as though the Quest was ultimately a futility, there were many insights and truths to discover. Yet, as long as I was engaged upon this Quest, there was a wholly different understanding that eluded me. In short, the rules were merely the vehicle. The real adventure begins with a character.

Character Roleplay

The charm of roleplaying games is in the attempt to take on the role of a heroic character. Our play is within a fictional setting, but the playing piece is the hero. Each of us comes to the table with a different character. Or, at least, that is the theory.

Yesterday, while dabbling with a very old and much-maligned system, I began to rediscover something that I’d forgotten from a long time ago: that the joy of roleplaying lies in the characters we create.

Although the rules may help us to form them in our imagination, giving shape to what might otherwise be a chaotic clash of ideas, the character lives outside of the mechanics of the game system. Like a gestalt entity, the roleplaying character should not be merely a puppet of the rules: they are the reason for the rules to even exist.

All stories, even roleplaying tales, begin with a character. Not a collection of numbers, nor an assembly of abilities and powers, but with a character. How we arrive with that heroic alter-ego is far more a matter of taste than we’d like to admit. But if we give in and let he game dictate the form our character will take, we give up what makes roleplaying games so rich.

If your chosen game doesn’t let you breathe life into your very own character, then it’s not good enough. If your group doesn’t take the time to give birth to a party of unique and interesting heroes, then they are missing out on the real fun. In the moment of play, without a compelling character to roleplay, you are merely scratching the surface of what tabletop roleplaying can really be.

The Death of a Character

The other day, as we played a fantasy game at the school roleplay club, a character died. Through a tragic underestimation of the effect of a Burning Hands spell, the comatose and bleeding hero was engulfed in flame and died. This kind of thing, of course, happens often in Dungeons & Dragons.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it. The next day, however, was an eye-opener. The student who played this deceased character came to see me clutching a hand-drawn picture. There, on the page before me, was a sketch of the old and the new characters side by side; it was almost like Yoda and Obi-Wan, in their blue-enlightened forms. I was struck silent.

For this player, new to the hobby, the events of the evening before were not just another moment in any old roleplay session. This was the death of a hero: their character, burned alive in the Caves of Chaos, far from home. It was a personally engaging demise in a story they were invested in. In that moment, as I pinned the sketch onto the classroom wall, I realised the cruelty of what I had so casually done.

I had killed their hero.

Yes, you can simply roll up another character. But you can’t replace a hero. Not a truly role-played creation who has faced fantastic challenges forged in our minds. It’s deeper than that.

That’s how it needs to feel. That’s why I need to start with a really cool character. That’s how it needs to end: victory or death, with events that make me want to sketch, write, or tell the tale a thousand times over.

That’s what roleplaying games can be.

Yesterday

Alone and curious, I started out thinking I was rolling up another character. By the end, I had created a character I want to play… or at least, want to play with.

Some games allow you to play any kind of character in any kind of setting. I used to think that was what my ultimate roleplaying game would let me do. But I was wrong.

Yesterday, having immersed myself in a setting over several weeks, I finally sat down to create a character. In fact, I created two. But one of them ended up meaning more to me than expected. This hero took over my imagination and grew into something a little larger than I intended.

What happened?

In short, I took my time. It wasn’t by my design, rather it was by the game designer’s intent, but it worked. As the minutes became hours, and the character grew and changed through the many stages of creation, I found out that the old-fashioned ways that many malign really do work.

Randomly rolled attributes. Choice of class. A mix of die rolls and selection. Yet, this hero came alive on the page. He’s a blend of cheesy heroic stereotypes, rolls on various charts, and an evolving set of decisions made to shape him… but he’s my character. No one else’s. Oddly, I wouldn’t really want him to die.

It doesn’t matter that you want to know the game I was playing or the details of the character. You need to focus on the process and the outcome you want from your gaming. Is it enough to knock out another quick bunch of “heroes” in whatever setting takes your fancy tonight? Then you’re missing out.

A true hero grows out of our deepest imagination and arises from a setting that you care about. You might not have all the details worked out, but the character you play should be bold and matter… at least to you.

Do you want to know what really hooks kids into playing roleplaying games? I believe it’s compelling characters. To the jaded old GM, he might seem be just another collection of stats and powers. Yet, to them he must become a hero they care about.

And, if we’re to serve that player well, they must become a hero to us too.

Game on!