#26: Which Came First, the Character or the Story?

http://www.rpg.net/columns/kosher/kosher26.phtml

Summary:

Designing characters before the campaign, and the consquences thereof.

Go to the column for more information.

[Bartmoss]

I could not agree more with the general theme of your post.

I and the rest of my group are a bit odd however.

We know one of the reasons why our games do not work is because we do not sit down and discuss what the game is/will be before hand or create ideas for characters before hand.

However one of the reasons this is so hard is due to one of the players. He needs days to come up with a character. It is impossible for him to create a character concept let alone a simple background and stats in the space of one afternoon. Therefore after the discussion about what the game will be about some time passes.

This of course creates some dissonance. You see we have not all walked away with the same understanding of what was said. Therefore we will not have a best fit. This would be ok if we had the balls to admit we made errors and had misunderstandings, but more often than not the GM just accepts some of the issues and moves on. The game goes on for a few sessions and then the problems begin.

The other issue with the same player is that once he has a concept and creates it he always says "remember that I am not sure if this character will work. I need a number of sessions before I can say it will stay in the game." He means this too. Therefore the GM can work on fitting the character into the setting set loads of plotlines and relationships and fit them to this character that it has probably taken the guy a week or more to come up with. Only for him to announce that the character is "boring" or "something I have done before" and drop it. Now at this point he has probably caused massive issues by playing a whole session with a character he does not want which has created some problems and so everyone is a little frazzled. By the time of his announcement your a tad angry if your the GM.

Interestingly enough he is the only player who never GMs and states he wont and does not like it.

Now the problem is he will need that week again. So in some respects you need two weeks before the game starts because the GM needs time to integrate his character.

However.

I do have an opportunity this week.

I want to start a new campaign, I know it will be Shadowrun (4th), but I do not know what we will be doing in it. I plan to talk to my players over the weekend and leave them with some notes and guidelines about what I like as ideas for the game. However I want them to come up with character concepts, what they want to do and what interests the players (ie what do they wish to do with these characters) and then when I return plan the game around their ideas.

It will be an interesting experiment.

[Arath Dynast]

So let me see if I've got this straight:

1. You've got a player that's really excited about playing game X.

2. That same player has already generated character Y and he's equally, if not more, excited about playing character Y.

3. You agree to GM game X, but then deliberately decide to design the campaign in such a way that the player can't play character Y.

...

Why would you do that?

The players who came to your low-power supers game and created bizarro heroes are problematic, too. But they're problematic for the exact same reason.

If someone is unhappy about playing a particular campaign, they should just be upfront about it. You're describing extremely passive aggressive behavior on both sides of the table: "Sure, I'll run that game for you... I'll just deliberately run it in a way that I know will thwart your desire to play it." "Sure, I'll play in your game... I'll just create a character that deliberately undermines your prep work. And, if that doesn't work, I'll conspire with my fellow players to ruin the campaign in some other way."