On Playing a Character

I'm writing this to force form onto something formless in my mind. This isn't an assertion, but an exploration.

When I got into TTRPGs, the dream of creating interesting characters that take part in memorable moments was the spark that kept me coming back. I started playing with 3.5 and later Pathfinder.

Those moments weren't a steady fire, but brief flashes. It irritated me. I wanted to figure out why these games felt like waiting for a puzzle I couldn't see to click into place. Language started to develop to describe certain things that explained why these moments were so spread apart.

Railroading

This is the classic problem where the GM puts the folks playing and their characters on "tracks" so the story, game, and adventure run the way the GM intended. The memorable moments here exist only when you accept the path the tracks are on and the GM can create them.

Metagaming

The character, new to the adventure, has never "seen" a goblin before, but the player running them has. Metagaming is about this dilemma. The gap between player and character is where metagaming takes place. The player contrives a way to bring their knowledge to their character.

This happens the other way too: the character should know something the player does not, and it impacts the game.

Rules and Rolls

Your character is one thing, but the rules and rolls never let you live up to it. You wind up stuck in a box created by the game, and peace only exists when you can live inside of it, which means knowing it.

Another way to put it is that your character is defined by your sheet more than anything else.

Nearly every game I played involved these three things, and they kept that spark from turning into a bright flame. So here's what is stuck in my head: is it possible to play a character-driven game that isn't narrative while also eliminating these issues?

I don't know.

Railroading: Stops not Tracks

I think railroading is the most addressable of the issues. If the game is about the characters, then the story must also be largely in their hands.

The GM, then, has to accept their position in only representing the world and how it responds, and not the chain of events the players must follow.

Okay, so that's tricky.

The GM can create locations, NPCs, and encounters. These are backdrops, settings, and stops along the now torn up tracks. These can be oriented towards who the characters are so the characters can develop, struggle, and flourish. But what cannot happen is a plan that requires anything of the characters.

The world moves on independently, but there are opportunities for the characters if they choose.

If your idea depends on specific characters doing things to advance the story, the train is coming down the tracks.

Rules and Rolls

I think this one, at face value, is obvious. Different games encourage different types of play. If you want a game that focuses on character play, you need a game that is tailored to that. But what does that look like?

Here's an observation. Character development in many games covers a number of characteristics like:

• Who you are
• What you can do
• Who you were
• Who you know
• How you behave

Let me break this down a little:

D&D: Who you are, what you can do
Troika: Who you were, what you can do
Fiasco: Who you know, who you are
Cairn: Who you were

It's not perfect, but that's not really the point. The point is that when the game needs answers to these questions, your freedom exists in the questions it does not ask.

A classic struggle in D&D, which tells you who you are in terms of stats, is figuring out how to represent your character with low intelligence. This might be a fun challenge, and it might not.

Different games encourage different types of character play, and add friction to others, but generally speaking, the empty space outside of rules says more about that than the rules themselves.

Metagaming

So this is the one that hurts my head the most. It sucks, to me at least, to constantly have to arbitrate what my character would do based on what I think they know given what I as a player know or can figure.

It is tiring to do this, and I think the friction adds nothing to the fun of the game.

Here are examples:

• Player knows the creature's weakness, but the character doesn't.
• Player heard a conversation that his character did not.
• Character has a secret other players don't know.
• Character knows something about the world the player doesn't.

There are a lot of things going on in metagaming. They all stem from a gap created by risk and knowledge. The greater the risk a player perceives, the bigger the benefit they get from metagaming. The greater the knowledge gap between player and character, the more obvious it is too.

I read a lot of advice and theory on this, and certain games are built to handle this topic in different ways. You'd be right to think this is a big deal.

One option is the OSR style, which says player skill matters as much as character skill, so metagaming doesn't factor in. This is one reason I favor this style.

Another is more story-based, where players and characters author world facts alongside the story, so metagaming is mostly removed.

Another is mechanical, where your character exists in mechanical terms that punish and reward behavior, like compels in Fate.

Another is for the GM to obfuscate things by palette-shifting what was known to something that looks different. Reskin a monster or magical item, for example.

Here's the thing. Almost all of these options read to me like saying, "Don't go to that part of town."

I don't want to have a story game to avoid metagaming any more than I want to constantly reinvent things to obfuscate. I also want the rich characters that OSR tends to diminish in favor of player skill.

So I'll offer an idea.

Imagine the players are confronting a room with something like cloudkill in it. The GM dutifully describes the room in loving and complete detail. The players know exactly what this is. They also know their characters will die depending on what they do next. One of these characters is carefree, but lucky. The player has to decide whether to act uncharacteristically or to stay true to their character, who wouldn't sweat the small stuff, and go in.

There are a million other variables but hopefully you get the dilemma.

The player makes their character hold back. They have just metagamed.

Now, here's the idea and opportunity. The player and GM catch the moment. This isn't about policing, it's about development. Their character must now change.

Maybe they have a fear they've never known until now. The once carefree character now knows fear, and it's part of who they are going forward. The character might still not know what cloudkill is, but the character is afraid all the same.

Why this? I can't keep folks from reading, remembering, and thinking. I think re-skinning is exhausting and will only delay the moment. What I want is a way to play with folks where the friction, tension, and fatigue around metagaming can stop being a problem and start being an opportunity.

I think this does that.