So, this blew up. The positive responses humbled me and I’m thankful for the critical ones regarding writing so I can do better. This is a follow-up with more practical thoughts on how to set up an OSR table where deliberate characterization is encouraged, divided in two parts.
Before I get into it, I’d like to clear up some doubts: it’s not reactionary or coward to play without deliberate characterization or character identification because you don’t enjoy it, or because it isn’t a skill you are interested in testing. What I found reactionary and motivated by fear was elevating that preference to an ethos inherent to OSR, which may confuse newcomers about what OSR play is about at core.
Our challenges for this topic are how to conceptualize the emotional risk of investing in a character, how to make character creation procedures more useful to getting the table on the same page regarding expectations, how to understand characters within the world, how to manage characters during expeditions/scenarios and general survivability.
On How to Deal With Pain
Let’s talk the hardest part first. The pain of losing a character they felt invested in is something everyone will find their own ways to deal with. While it’s correct to say you can revel on the risk of losing a character and enjoy them more due to the fragility, that’s easier said than done when they die. “Git gud” isn’t actual advice. “Just learn to enjoy it and move on” isn’t helpful.
It isn’t because we decide “well, the fact that they can die at any moment makes it more meaningful so let’s go” that we can actually get into that mindset at once. There’s a reason why the discussion exists at all. Some may want to bring more active characterization to their adventure gaming but can’t quite start without guarantees they can deal with it. I can’t offer a universal answer because it’s just so personal to each player’s emotional landscape, but I do think there is a very easy practice we can do: revel in the fact that we are in a group.
I recommend everyone read Muster for many reasons – I believe that it is the best text on wargame D&D we currently have –, but specifically because Eero Tuovinen (and Meguey Baker) wrote perfectly about the most practical answer: the group will comfort the player and show that their frustration is valid.
The insightful RPG theorist, Meguey Baker, once classified the variety of gaming group social contracts into two classes:
Nobody gets hurt is a game where the emotional stakes are low, technical guard rails are effective, and punches are pulled. If you do bruise another player’s feelings, it’s your fault, and you should say sorry and adjust to it.
I will not abandon you is a game that, in a certain sense, seeks the hurt. The players consensually commit emotionally and play hard, and it is possible that you will get upset. This is all right, we expected it; the group will not make it awkward or disassociate from your hurt, we’ll work through it together.
Eero Tuovinen
Eero correctly identifies wargaming D&D groups in the second category by and large. If everyone agrees about tackling more deliberate characterization in their OSR game, I believe everyone is aware of the possible frustration and there for each other, however the group prefers to express solidarity. The need for teamwork is already there for any TTRPG (it’s a group activity), even higher in such a tactical game that demands everyone to work together against genuine challenge, and at an apex where challenge meets an effort to give a voice to characters and worry about them. So, I don’t think anyone needs to worry too much about managing to “embrace pain” in a masochist manner. It’s not like they are alone.
I would remind you that when we talk about more deliberate character portrayal, that doesn’t need to be deadly serious or aim for what we understand as bleed necessarily. Joke-y characterization, a few quirky mannerisms, or simply a higher awareness that the character thinks and has relationships are already that, and while it still sucks to lose a character with that energy put behind them, it isn’t a monumental task. How your group prefers to do characters will depend on the campaign’s tone and comfort level. You don’t need much to make them stand out from pieces for interacting with challenges. The Nihilistic Void will vary in intensity.
What Characterization Means
Let’s assume there are three different things that constitute a Character (uppercase letter intentional) in RPGs: Quirks, Objectives, and Passion. This taxonomy is not meant as any universal theoretical statement (don’t take it as such, I beg you) but a practical approach to how OSR characterization can go.
Quirks are the external qualities of a character that don’t necessary relate to their meaningful actions within the game, but that give them a recognizable identity on the table. Voice, gestures, small physical details. They don’t need to be reenacted at the table like actually making the voice or gesticulate, but they can be described in your narration. Things like backstory, mentioned hobbies and even thought narration can be Quirks if they are never made relevant to the game itself and their actions, or at least important decisions. This goes back to the principle that “if it doesn’t happen on the table, it doesn’t count”, although I argue that having a clear picture of your character, even if it isn’t relevant to their actions, counts if you have more enjoyment doing it.
Quirks are the easiest way to bring deliberate characterization into OSR play while keeping the usual wargaming models. They make the character colorful. They may even evolve from Quirks into things that do shape decisions and play, but they are assumed external to the gameplay loop the table wants. Using an extremely crude metaphor, Quirky characters are like wargame minis you brought to the session who are painted and personalized, that bring very vital aesthetic pleasure to the activity, but that are to be played in much the same way, without rolling to check if your general would indeed do that like narrative wargamers sometimes do. If you are unsure what kind of characterization you want to bring more intentionally into your adventure gaming, thinking about Quirks is a good start and might be where you want to stop.
Objectives are things the character wants to achieve within the game world. The characters use the in-fiction aspect of the gameplay loop to gather resources or opportunities for it. In customary OSR characterization philosophy, the character will acquire gold to complete those objectives during downtime, and that’s where the bulk of their personality is shown. There’s a division of character psychologies between in- and out-expeditions. Objectives often emerge in play, as the character and player “know each other” and the world presents possibilities.
What can we talk about when we talk about objectives in deliberate characterization? First – and this also includes Quirks! –, starting play with an objective doesn’t mean you have to be legally married to it during play. Objectives will change during gameplay, which isn’t a reason to not bring a starting one and be invested in it. Objectives that show up at the table aren’t more “meaningful” than expected objectives. Indeed, starting objectives should be fairly simple and concrete, which gives a head-start to understand the character as something else than an avatar for problem-solving. In a next post about hooks, I will discuss the creation of Objectives in more detail.
Objectives are a rather easy way of defining a personality for the character. First, what one desires says a bit about what/who they value. Second, it brings a rather interesting situation: OSR characters can retire from adventuring and be replaced by others, so it’s an interesting gamble to see if the character, once they achieve their initial objective, would prefer to settle down and be replaced by another adventurer, or if fate has other plans. The long-run level grindset isn’t necessary for play, especially in a style where the party and the world are the campaigns instead of specific figures. That’s a nice balance between organic characterization during play and a formed personality from the start.
Objectives are, usually, easy to bring to the table just like Quirks, but they have subtleties that may change play. For example, is the objective achievable simply by participating in the loop and getting resources (such as gold) to achieve the objective, or do they demand direct gameplay action related to them such as specific political intrigue at a court, going to a specific place or reaching an emotional breakthrough? More traditional OSR campaigns will go for objectives that fit the first category and don’t stop the dungeon loop, with the advantage that doing the exact same activity will allow everyone to engage with their separate objectives instead of splintering focus. I will also talk about the second category of objectives in a later post.
Passion is a character moment that immediately changes play. The character acts according to what seems proper to their defined psychology instead of what would be optimal from a problem-solving perspective, and that may bring either further problems or directly put them into opposition with the desires of their own party. I don’t need to explain to you that, if PvP and such were not already discussed by the table, it’s good etiquette to not do it. I also don’t need to explain that “it’s what my character you do” as answer to doing something that shifts the session away from what the group agreed to be their preference is shitty. This applies to any play culture, not just OSR. The issue here is, how to conciliate the possibility of Acts of Passion from characters (that echo many such occurrences in sword-and-sorcery fiction, although other fantasies are possible) with the strategic playstyle of crawling? How to mesh Passion with operations, if we think each adventure or expedition as a commando skirmish?
This is harder to suggest than anything else because it’s so deeply specific, but I do have a proposal that can help you think about how you want to do it in your table: there is a difference, to my eyes, between Acts of Passion complicating a present operation, and Acts of Passion complicating downtime and future operations.
Of course, this doesn’t mean you can’t have players doing Acts of Passion during the crawl if the whole table agrees that is more fun and enjoys the possible disaster or thinking on their feet to solve the whole thing being possibly jeopardized, but for many tables I think the following character personality assumption can be applied to every adventurer: “no matter how intense I feel over this, my camaraderie comes first and I will not put my companions in further risk” regarding what happens during the operation. The party are people who trust their lives to each other, after all, and it’s reasonable to assume a character will hold such feelings. I suggest that OSR games with deliberate characterization would be able to accommodate Acts of Passion that will bring future trouble instead of undermining current effort. The session/adventure is at its end, but you do the thing that defines your character, and that will certainly bring issues to be solved during downtime or future adventures. But none of your companions’ efforts were made vain.
If you need the alliance with the cannibal goblin faction within the dungeon to survive this operation, swallow your pride and follow through. You can, when leaving, shit on their door knowing full well you will have problems in the future, but the operation was successful enough that the party will likely be ready to tackle it.
Finally, if you aren’t doing it, I would like to suggest a conversational procedure that applies not just to OSR but a variety of games: when you want to do something, ask the party if they are ok with it before proceeding. Explain why your character would likely do it, keeping in mind the personality assumption of “my camaraderie comes first” as a backdoor if needed. Other players will be more open to it than you might expect, especially if you asked first. You all negotiate tactical operations inside the dungeon before declaring your actions to the referee, why not negotiate Acts of Passion?
On Mechanics
I talked about how you don’t need to change mechanics to get more deliberate characterization in OSR games, and I stand by that. In fact, things like random generation, the cruelty of the dungeon and lethality can, with a mental shift, offer further opportunities and incentives. However, I also said that is valid to try and change them if the group would feel more comfortable that way. In fact, I will do an argument about why you could consider changing mechanics to give characters a boost:
Older games assumed larger adventuring parties with more hours per week for gaming. Modern games assume one character per player with less time per week. If you are going for deliberate characterization, it is quite possible players will prefer to have fewer characters in play at a time. A different sort of balance may be necessary to support the shifting priorities. This is often done to help a more heroic feeling or to protect the players from the risk of losing as they learn the ropes of OSR, but I’m musing on how to allow them to focus on a single character while still being able to conduct dangerous exploration effectively.
You don’t have to, and I’m not quite recommending you do it, but it’s food for thought. If the players feel like using multiple characters and hirelings for the kind of characterization they are going for, no alteration is required. And, of course, other rulesets that match OSR gaming will require close to no change in that case.
Possible changes are many. One can adapt bits and pieces of the Kevin Crawford solo toolkit Black Streams instead of the whole box. Higher ability scores and HP. Some social or material advantages at the start. You probably have an easy way of doing it. Just keep in mind the rules you are already familiar with are perfectly fine for such.
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In my next post I will address character creation, hooks and player stances.
Roll to Doubt 