First, a question: what is the most important part of character creation?

I like to view character creation as the Game Master and the player sitting down with a bunch of tools and using them to build a character. Sometimes you need a hammer and sometimes the GM needs to hold something in place so the character can hit it. And when you're done, you have made a character.

A couple of important distinctions that come from this analogy are that characters are not made alone and that characters built using the proper tools are better then characters that have little or no tools. Making a character without the Game Master's help is like trying to cut boards without a saw. You don't get a clean cut. The same can be said for the player that doesn't know how to use a saw. This being said, we would all like to make the best characters available to us, right?

But there are some notable challenges that players often face in the task of character creation.

First, creating a good character will require work - even if your playing in a easy rules system like Over the Edge. In fact, the rules light systems can actually make character creation more work, as nothing is laid out for the player. They don't have in depth rules to control social interaction or the characters personality, all that stuff comes back to the player and his effort to build the character. Rules heavy systems like Hero or Rolemaster suffer from the opposite situation – they offer so much that it seems that putting the numbers on paper is good enough. You have numbers - it must be a character.

We know it isn't that easy.

The second challenge facing players building the best characters they can is the emotional commitment to the character and the character building process. Players want to make the best character they can, but when they face the likelihood that their character will not last more then a few sessions, they have little incentive to truly participate in the process of building their character. They will cut corners and make sure to get the numbers right, but may leave out the pieces that moves their character to greatness. The player feels that the emotional commitment would be wasted and the risk is too great. Getting players to emotionally commit to the game is hard enough for the GM when the specter of character death looms over the character creation process. Survivability of the character is truly not a function of the system but of the Game Master. The Game Master is ultimately in control – the GM decides who lives and dies, even if that decision is just to uphold the rules as written.

It should be relatively clear that there is an inverse relationship between the survivability of a character in a campaign and the commitment of players to the quality of their character. There are others barriers to emotional commitment, of course. These include fear of ridicule by fellow players, fear of the players own ability, a lack of empathic ability, and just plain laziness.

So, let's spend a little time in “GM World” analyzing what the Game Master can do to help their players make better characters.

Rule 1 - Give characters the right tools

Anyone who has happened to read my previous articles could certainly have guessed this rule.* My original seven rules and goal matrix are designed to be tools that players having trouble building good characters can use for help. But they are certainly not the only tools available. The most common of these are the questioning techniques, such as Shadowrun's famous “twenty questions” or Legend of the Five Ring's “Game of 20 Questions”. But really anything we use to facilitate the creation of character is a tool. Everway used to have players draw a series of tarot-like cards to help describe their character, and anyone could use a similar tool today – just throw down a tarot spread and suddenly you have a skeleton character concept to fill in the details.

Tools really are the most basic building blocks for creating character. Probably the most used character creation tool is the “background.” How many times do players, when asked to make a character, go out and just write up a background? Is the character finished after the background is complete? Of course not – the background serves as a tool to build the rest of the character.

Along the same lines, the rules themselves are a tool for character building. Classes and skills help the player construct the pieces of their character into the whole that they have envisioned. Rules are one of the places that players may often lack the skill to adequately build the character they want – and are capable of creating. It is the province of the GM to moderate these situations by helping the player know which end of the rules' hammer to hit things with. This might be the most important thing a GM can do in the entire campaign – make sure that the numbers that get put on the paper actually reflect what the player has in mind. If they don't, the player will see a character in play that doesn't match the one in their head. This will quickly lead to rules bashing and a general dislike for the system, even though it is likely capable of accomplishing what is desired. (Oddly enough, most systems are.)

Rule 2 - Develop a “character friendly” campaign world

As was mentioned above, if your campaign kills characters quickly, don't expect to see players working on grand and exciting character concepts. Expect to see them pouring through the rulebook looking for new ways to min/max the rules and, hopefully, survive. Usually, this is the exact sort of behavior GMs want avoid, yet they often create such an environment by focusing on “realism”, “deadly combat”, or spending hours devising nasty traps. Hackmaster is a classic example of a system that actually encourages all these behaviors. It is fitting that Hackmaster is really a humor game at its core – essentially making fun of min/maxers by giving them everything they could possibly want.

Players will say that they have created great characters in these environments. And it is very likely they have. I refer to this as “second-hand greatness.” They played a bunch of characters until they finally had one survive, then the player started to establish personality, goals and even background to the heroic framework that had been built by the system to survive. Of course the character is powerful – it managed to survive after all – and becomes ideal reward for the min/maxing player. It would be relatively easy to argue that this survival of fittest role-playing is a means of creating great characters. And it will work – if your players are willing to put in the work.

There are many things that GM can do to try and make is world be more friendly to the characters. These range from simple “death's door” rules to Deus Ex Machina interventions (such as a fate or luck point mechanic.) Many systems have these as “optional” rules that can be implemented. Simply put, the idea is to give your players as many advantages as possible without sacrificing believability and risk. Death still needs to a be a believable and realistic penalty, just not likely on any given night.

Along with the system considerations, it is best to design your world with survivability in mind. Build non-lethal traps, focus on courtly intrigue and role-playing, avoid instant killing effects and whatever else you can think of. One specific method is to avoid all but the important combat. This not only reduces the chance of characters dying from a stray arrow, but also has the added advantage of giving players more time to actual role-play their character instead of waiting for their turn to come about in the initiative sequence.

Rule 3 - Invest work and emotion into the character

If the GM wants a player to invest time and emotion into their character, the GM had better do so as well. Simplistically, this means just being involved in the character creation process. It amazing what can grow out of the player and GM putting their heads together instead of each working on their own to build the character.

This also means involving the character in the campaign. The GM meshes the plot into the character. Suddenly, the GM has taken time and effort, as well as their emotional commitment to the campaign, and transferred that energy into the character creation process. If the GM takes a risk (usually by assigning the character an important part of the plot) they show trust in the player and in that player's ability to role-play the character. The player suddenly has both incentive (I am the plot!) and responsibility (I am the plot!) to do their best with this character.

The GM should also be giving suggestions to the player during the character creation stages. This is not as much to get the player to adopt any of them, but to set the realm of possibilities for the player. If the GM suggests playing a godling trapped in a mortal body, the player suddenly understands what may be acceptable in the campaign and can send their creative juices in the correct direction, the same direction as the GM's campaign.

This makes for better campaigns as well, but that isn't what my column is about, so I'll just skip it and move on.

Rule 4 - Reward good characters, but don't punish bad characters.

I stop for a moment to digress about The Riddle of Steel. For those who have not heard of this role-playing system, it has a simple claim to fame – having the most realistic combat system ever published in a role-playing game. And (at least as far as two people hacking at each other with swords is concerned) they are undoubtedly correct. Of course, the side effect of this combat system is that if you sneeze wrong, some peasant with a pitchfork will stab you through the neck and it is all over. This would seem to be an obvious anti-thesis to rule 2.

But The Riddle of Steel also has a unique development mechanic that will not allow you to develop your character without role-playing. In fact, the only way to develop your character is to role-play your character traits and complete your character goals. On the surface, this is pretty exciting. Imagine playing in a system where you were forced to role-play. You could bring players in and they would have to actually try out role-playing their characters instead of playing numbers on a piece of paper.

But there is always an “or”. Giving out a huge role-playing bonus for good characters may seem like a good idea, but it isn't. Giving out small role-playing bonuses for good characters is a good idea. But when the rewards get too large, you are actually punishing bad role-players more then rewarding good role-players and that just leads to dislikes and frustrations. The bad role-players literally are not able to keep up and, more importantly, don't see themselves as ever keeping up. So they get frustrated and quit, or even worse, become disruptive to the game.

Now, driving away bad role-players might seem like a plus. But how many of you suffer from “too many people to game with” syndrome? And above even that consideration, remember that bad role-players are people too. What you are really after is giving small ways to nudge bad character builders into building better characters, and then actually playing those characters.

From a character building perspective, the most obvious reward for building a better character is the all too common Talent/Flaw system, where a character can actually gain more power by deciding to be anorexic, under the assumption that they will actually role-play being anorexic. (And that it will add to the character and the campaign.) Most of these systems fail to work because they are not attached to actual gains during the role-playing session – the player has no reason beyond character creation to role-play the flaw. The standard fix is to give some experience point award for actually playing the flaw in game.

Still, rewarding with numbers and points doesn't actually encourage number crunchers to role-play for the sake of role-playing. They learn the minimum required that they need to do to get the points that they need to have. So, another tactic is likely to be more successful at encouraging good characters – in-game rewards.

Good characters talk to the NPCs more often. They make alliances and powerful friends, earning in-game power – the sort of power that doesn't sit on a character sheet. But they get to stay at the castle whiel your in town and get to find the adventure hooks and plots and bring them to the rest of the party. And all of this because of the character the player built. Suddenly the character (and player) has the rewarding benefit of being more immersed in the game because of the effort he put into building his character, which is really what he wanted in the first place. His swashbuckling bravado actually gets women to come and pay attention to him. He actually gets to rescue damsels in distress. These things that he built into his character's idiom actually happen in the game. Suddenly it dawns on the players that just the mere act of designing a character will actually influence the campaign in the direction they desire. What greater reward can there be?

And what about those players that spent little or no investment in their characters? They still get to do what their character is designed for – they participate in the fights and get to make skill checks and talk to barmaids. But when they see the subtle benefits that the others players have because of character creation, they are likely to adopt them as well.

The risk to this in-game system is going over the top – if those benefits become more then overtly subtle, the GM has once again swung back around to punishing the players who built standard characters by not allowing them to participate in the game. There isn't really much worse that you can do to a player. (Within reason, that is.) So, while the rewards are likely to be greater for in-game benefits, the problems are actually likely to be more severe. Instead of blaming rules or numbers, the player will blame the GM with words like “favoritism”. And, the player will be right.

So the word on rewards is simple – lots of small things to nudge players. Don't beat them over the heads with large mechanic hammers.

Conclusion

Obviously, I have been quite wordy in getting these ideas across. I echo Sandy's soapbox comment and wonder how many of you readers will actually make it all the way through the column to reach the end. But that's why I started out with a question. I hoped you would keep reading in anticipation that at some point I would actually answer the question. Or at least give my answer, which is bound to be different then your answer. “Most important” is a solidly loaded couple of words. But here is my answer and you can take it or leave it.

GMs should give players what they want.

*I once again use the word rule to describe role-playing activity, opening myself up to role-players that are offended by the implication that there might be a right or wrong way of doing things. Let me just say that I use the word rule here for the same reason I have used it before - to convey that the rule has some meaning and it is the sort of information that should be assimilated and understood before it is ignored. Just like those pesky laws governments keep coming up with.