Reflections on Character Deaths

Different tabletop games have different likelihoods of player character death (Call of Cthulhu has a particularly treacherous likelihood) while games which are the "tabletop game version" of a media property (I played the Firefly ttrpg many years ago and found it very, very gentle). But in all games, dying is a big deal. You've made a character, and you presumably care about them and their goals, and you've spent considerable time with them, even if just in creating them. Character deaths are the thing of story and legend for better or for worse. 

I honestly have tried not to think too hard about the character deaths that I've been party to. I understand that it's necessary to have serious consequences for risky actions, and I don't think a deathless game or story would be more compelling than the alternative. I do believe that death should be a part of tabletop games . . . in theory. It's good that the option is there for when it's the right thing. But I think very frequently in the gaming community, character death is used by GMs as a way to tell a "shocking" story (rather than coming up with an idea that would be interesting, just kill somebody). 

Let's say that you are in fact using good wisdom on how to deal with character deaths. It's still going to be one of the defining moments of the campaign, so it needs to be handled gently and with consideration. In order to really fully get at my experiences with death in tabletop games, I'm going to reflect on the characters I've seen who didn't make it to the end of the quest. 

My first GM was a gentle man, a neighbor and father of a school friend who graciously invited me to learn at his table. He became something of a surrogate father to me, and I think he saw me developing as a GM even as I learned to play. My second player character ever was for an evil campaign, a horrifying self-scarring grim reaper-inspired orcish Barbarbian. My teammates mocked her name (Morana, which they said was basically "Moron," which they said she was) and me for having a female character (I would, many years later, come out as a transwoman). During the climactic fight that was to define our opening session, I charged forward to save an ally; the ally retreated, and the rest of the party fled and left my character to be overwhelmed and killed. It was awful. 

What stung the most was the intentionality of it. My party's players wanted to hurt my feelings, so they seized on the situation and maneuvered so that I would die. I never saw it coming. Morana was torn down by enemies (I don't even remember what type at this point), and my DM decided that perhaps this party was not the best home for me. He created a new group--fostering my interest in the game--with one of my best friends where we had our own evil campaign. I played a nasty little gnomish Wizard who terrorized the countryside and always figured out a way to stay on top, and his named was Loki (I was a high schooler, okay?). 

I have so many stories of Loki that it's impossible to know where to start. I mentioned wanting a castle, and my GM presented an expansion on elaborate keeps, and I took one over and began a trade empire. I met a man with a beautiful gold ring; I shook his hand and cast Incinerate (3.5E), plucking the ring from the ashes. My evil deeds spread, and an Inevitable was sicced on me; I tricked it into believing I was dead, survived its "just to be sure" attack, and went on being evil. Loki was everything you could dream of as a first real tabletop game character--he was bound only by my creativity, I was in a friendly, safe space (the GM really made me feel at home), and Loki was the star of the show every time I played--I got to see my little character be truly powerful. 

After high school, I did some scattered GMing; nothing was professional or refined, but it was quick and fun tabletop action. Later, when this scattered fun grew tiresome, I tried more ambitious projects. I set out on an experiment to see if I could get a party to assassinate an entire royal regime (the result: not at all). This party was, as an out-of-game construct, very turbulent. We began as a group of four: my best friend, my brother, my girlfriend, and my roommate. As the game continued--and it lasted nearly two years--we added more people--more friends, friends of other players, etc--and it swelled to eventually eight players by the end. It was, in a few words, entirely chaotic. 

This is especially true when you consider that the story ended up being about the division of the city where it was set splitting in half in a compacted civil war that destroyed the ruling class. The players ended up splitting into loyalists to the throne and anarchists trying to overthrow the city, and the result was something of a compromise: a democratically run council to replace the monarchy. The wrinkle is, with all this conflict built into the game and the long campaign time, there was a practical issue. 

I said in the end eight players finished this campaign. One did not. An original player--the guy who had been my roommate--and I ended up in a difficult situation. We were living together, working together (I was his direct boss), and our social circles all overlapped. We couldn't get away from each other. Eventually, things snapped, and I threw him out of the campaign. It was, I will admit, a childish move. I should have talked things over with him, I shouldn't have let my feelings get the best of me, and I definitely shouldn't do what I did next: I killed his character in a really mean way. Specifically, I said he was run over by a stationary cart, hoping to make a cruel joke at the expense of the character and the player. The party laughed, and every so often people who played in the campaign bring up the death. I feel awful about it, honestly. I was immature, and I turned character death (something heavy and not very funny) into a careless punchline. Looking back, I was an unconfident GM who felt like something shocking would work. To a degree, it did, but I'm happy to not do things like this anymore. 

I had a vision of what I wanted my tabletop games to be like--collaborative stories, though I couldn't have articulated that yet--and I had the skills to develop and improvise open world, so I set off running. I ran an audio actual play podcast and live radio broadcast of D&D in the early 2010s called Listen Check, and while we stretched what was considered possible in the artform at the time, we didn't stray into character death scenarios. They entered on many dangerous scenarios, but there was never a moment that placed them at death's door. I consider that a blessing as a GM since I wouldn't have known how to deal with it. 

I turned my focus on a mad quest that would span three campaigns: how could I grant the most possible control of the game to the players? I made a critically wrong assumption (that the empowerment would come from outside of the game) and set to work. I made a campaign in which each player submitted a storyline specific to their player character, each of which I would tie together. I made a campaign of mishmashed references, bits, settings, and comical NPCs for an antics party based on their insane list of inspirations (one of which involved me watching the National Treasure series for reference). I developed a mystery story using themes and details from player input. Their scrapes with death were unique and taught lessons not specific to death. 

In the first campaign mentioned, the Eastweald campaign (named for the large region of the map I created where the campaign took place). One player, my best friend, in fact, told me towards the very end of the campaign that he was dissatisfied with his character. He felt that the best thing that could happen was for his character, a somewhat disillusioned Paladin, to succumb to the depression and commit suicide. I was opposed to this for a lot of reasons. What I told him was this: we can change your character. The point is to have fun. Don't feel shackled to it. Change him in a way that feels fun. And shockingly to all of us (I think including the player), the Paladin threw himself at Vecna in the final moments of the campaign, only to find Vecna unwilling to defend a former Paladin, and the fallen Paladin was slain by the rest of the party. 

To have this Paladin kill himself accomplishes nothing narratively or for the character. Having him believe that darkness would enrich him and finding no hand to support him has a similar result--the Paladin dies--but with a more interesting choice and with an end that actually fits someone who would make the choice he made. To be honest, it's clumsy compared to something I might have come up with if I hadn't only found out about the Paladin's intention to defect as it happened, but it worked, and the player who made the Paladin maintains that it was a fitting end he doesn't regret. 

What makes the Paladin's death fitting is that it takes a meaningful action (siding with an evil deity) and provides it with a meaningful reaction (he is left to deal with his betrayal of his teammates alone). Had he committed suicide, there would be no meaningful action or reaction. And keep in mind--the player chose the betrayal. He called out to a trickster deity, asking for help without anything meaningful to offer. It was a desperate plan, and it didn't work, and death was unfortunately the only option I could offer him. 

The National Treasure campaign, as it was sometimes called (along with the Western campaign, the Goofball campaign, and other various nicknames), had no character deaths. I had essentially set up the large Western continent to be a sightseeing tour--a dozen unique and interesting places with story possibilities and colorful characters. The goal was not for them to be in danger so much as free. It didn't go as planned. The Goofballs earned the name every moment of every session (they were, for instance, permanently barred from ever returning to all but one of the towns they visited), but that was the point--they were having fun by being chaotic and wild and full of surprises, and making the world dangerous wouldn't contribute to that. It was a deathless campaign, as well it should have been. 

The mystery campaign was also deathless. To be fair, it was something of an experiment. To begin, we were using D&D (a system mostly focused on combat rules) to investigate a mystery (something that could have been done more easily with something like Call of Cthulhu or another more investigative game). Next, I knew from GMing experience that you can't make one piece of information that's especially hard to find and call that a mystery--there had to be a network of escalating clues that carried them from uninformed to the solution, and I had never done that before. Combat was rare, and we limited antics to a pretty rare frequency--we were really trying to tell a story and roleplay. There were death close calls, there were meaningful NPC deaths, and there were deaths that would change the gameworld, but the trio of player characters survived. 

In the interceding years, I got to try a handful of tabletop games that strayed from the D&D style to different degrees. I played characters in Don't Rest Your Head, Call of Cthulhu, Geist, Exalted, and the Firefly tabletop game, and fortunately for me, all of those characters survived. Not all my party members were so lucky. I saw Don't Rest Your Head allies fall to risks that went bad. I saw a Call of Cthulhu ally killed, it seemed, because she pissed off the GM. I saw a near party-wipe in Exalted when our GM fostered a party split and incentivized a player to snap. For the Don't Rest Your Head players who took one too many risks, I respect it. That's how the game is designed, and we accept those risks when we play. But the other two instances I mentioned--what amounts to GM malfeasance--it's awful. It should be avoided. Remember, the point is to have fun, and this kind of behavior is not fun. 

This brings us up to my most recent work, something I am immensely proud of. I call this campaign Of Gods and Dragons, a name that at once tells you that this will concern the most powerful forces in the setting with a linguistic flair, an indication that this is literary in a sense. And in fact, the party was abducted in the opening moments by an oppressive dragon, then rescued by another dragon, all before being set loose on a gameworld I've spent almost 20 years building. It was, as the mystery campaign was, a roleplaying and storytelling game, which was important given than I gave my players immense power to begin with (level 12 at session one--they easily could have wrought hell on almost any target if they'd chosen to be more chaotic. As it was, they chose to bring kindness. For one hundred years of epilogue, all three player characters improved the world. It is the peak of my GMing career so far.

No player characters died, but characters who were as important as player characters did die. I cast a group of ten characters as dragons, people empowered and made nearly immortal by their dragonhood. Seven survived. One of the three that died fell into an unfortunate scenario, catching the party at a time where she couldn't leave them alone and they couldn't leave her alive. Another was planned, the assassination of the man scheming to bring down the forces of reality in the name of destruction and empowerment. The last was a matter of closing loose ends, taking the last truly evil dragon out of commission so that the world would be, at least at the level of dragons, more good than evil by a greater margin, and so that the world would be safer from his potential threats. These dragons had been the source of conversation and planning for an out of game year, and finally facing them was unavoidable. 

Looking forward, I don't know what to expect when it comes to death in my campaigns. I'm eager to run other systems, and death is not a huge part of every game. I am especially intrigued by running a tabletop game I created in which players explore historically accurate versions of important times and places like 1750s London and 1930s Chicago (not to mention my projection of Washington D.C. in 2050). I don't suspect I'll be encountering a lot of player deaths in my future. 

So this next part isn't really for me. This next part is for GMs who are free with player death. I'll work backwards. Of Gods and Dragons taught me as the GM that death and danger are not necessary for a high stakes game. My various tabletop experiments taught me that when used irresponsibly, player death can ruin an experience. From my experiments as a GM with radical freedom, I learned that a well-earned consequence (including death) can enrich a story, and a poorly-considered consequence (including death) can ruin a player's experience of the story. My time DMing on the radio taught me that the story cannot precede the players and their experience--I often had to be changing game expectations based on radio broadcast, and I let the story and the listeners be more important to me than the players. My civil war campaign taught me to let the players define everything except reality. My clumsy DMing in college taught me to go beyond the cliches. And my time with my first DM, my neighbor and the man who spent weekends making popcorn and hosting movie afternoons in the basement, taught me that deaths are awful. 

Seriously! I spent a lot of time develop Morana. She was this fearless warrior who I wanted to be like, and she was strange but didn't care what people thought (something I was and desperately wanted to do), and she was covered in decorative scarring, not unlike tattoo art, which I was obsessed with (currently, about 50% of my upper body is tattooed). I cared about Morana. I looked forward to playing with her for weeks. I painted a mini for her, something that took endless hours and painstaking care. Watching her get hacked to bits while my supposed friends got away with the treasure was the kind of experience that would have turned a lot of people away from tabletop games. Most people, I would wager, would take that experience and decide the whole thing wasn't for them. 

But I didn't. I was hooked. D&D was a doorway that peeked in on the ideas of storytelling and roleplaying and imaginary play and game design that I couldn't just decide wasn't for me. The fact that my DM saw that and was willing to help me is one of the great kindnesses of my life. I didn't burn out because my character died--but I almost did. It was a bad thing that only happened because my DM's hands were tied--there was no way to fudge that my character survived. A separate campaign for me was the solution he had, and it still strikes me as incredibly generous. Because of my initial interest in tabletop games was strong, because I was given a kind recovery when I was betrayed, and because my interest was then fostered, I recovered. Lots of people aren't so lucky. 

Look, if a character straps explosives on themselves, runs into a goblin den, and detonates it, that character should die. If a character makes a few bad rolls and suddenly die from factors shouldn't really be deadly, that character realistically should not die. The dice and rules might say so, but you're the GM. You are empowered by the game to decide in the end what happens. Don't be afraid to do something. 

Ask yourself a few questions. First, what's best for the character? Does a death here serve a purpose? Has the character achieved everything they were designed to and this death would fulfill them somehow? Does the character still have unfinished business that would be unresolved if the character were to die? Things like relationships with other characters are less important here. 

Another vital question is, what's best for the story? Does this character still have some vital role to fulfill? Are there things later on you can think of that would be complicated or prevented by this character's death? You're not eagerly looking for an excuse to kill the character so much as looking for evidence that the character might benefit from a death; think of it like how juries work--you must be totally convinced that the character must die to kill them, otherwise they are innocent. 

Lastly, what's best for the party? If a character's death is going to have a major impact on the party, it's important to know going in that an issue is going to occur. One example, for instance, is if the party's sole healer would be killed, in which case all manner of complications could occur. Similarly, if the party leader is killed, the trajectory of the party could be massively affected. Or as I've had happen as a player, a crucial party member missing can stop the party from completing part of a quest. Any of these can affect a decision on what to do as far as a player character's fate. 

And finally, ask yourself what the player's experience will be if the character dies. Is this a hardened player who took a risk knowing the consequences, or a new player still learning the ropes of a complicated new game? Is this player being treated poorly at the table in a way that might affect their willingness to keep playing? Will this player keep playing tabletop games if their character dies? You may recoil at the idea of factoring this in, but our goal should be making more happy tabletop game players, not less. 

I made Morana when I was 17. I'm 35 now--that's half my life ago, plus a bit. Morana was, to be honest, a pretty hollow character. She was, like so many characters made by teenagers, meant to be cool without much thought as to roleplaying or anything beyond the lethalness of her scythe. But it still hurts to think of what I lost. Morana played one session before dying, and that meant that months or even years of gaming with her could have taken place. She could have been the character I carried with me in my heart as special, and instead, she was a fallen character who never had a story to tell. Her death hurt, and it could have driven me from the game. 

Instead, I stood my ground. I got some help from a good GM, and I set to playing and learning. Tabletop games slowly became more than a fascination--an obsession, and then a way of life. This website came together. Experimental campaigns happened. Tabletop games were created. My interest in D&D became something so much larger, and all of that could have been lost had I been shaken by Morana's death. There is a timeline in which D&D became "that thing I did in high school," in which I don't return to the stories and dice, in which that world is lost to me. I'm glad it wasn't. 

For a character to die in a tabletop game, you've got to be 100% certain it's their time. Think like a juror: is there no question that this character should die? Or is there reasonable doubt? The stakes are too high to make this decision without caution. This could be a defining moment for the player. Be gentle, be kind, and be reasonable--deaths are remembered, and you want to be remembered well.

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to not get weighed down by worldbuilding, reflections on the campaign of a lifetime, and what perfect GMing looks like. Until next time, happy gaming!

My D&D-Inspired Fantasy Novels Are Available Now

Readers! Over the last several years, I’ve written a series of novels. At various times, parts of those novels have appeared here on this site. That’s because these books in some sense belong here–they are writing about D&D in that the main character of these books is my most recent D&D character, Asp. I’ve posted elsewhere on this site about the process of discovering and writing about this character, and after writing over 600k words in the series, I’m finally ready to try self-publishing. So if you’re intrigued by how Asp came to be, check out that little guide to her creation and the writing process. If you want to check out the novels and read the series, you can check out this page for the whole series. 

Beyond that, I think that what really remains to be said is in the pages of Asp’s novels. She’s a crafty, clever, kind at times, smooth overthinker who loves getting in over her head, or at least, constantly does. I hope you enjoy spending some time with her as I have.

 

 

 

One More Chance Saga (the entire series)

Book 1. Nobody Knows Me

Book 2. Two Different Things Can Just Be Different

Book 3. You Changed Too

Book 4: I Wanna Do It Right

 

How to Connect to Your Characters

Most of what I discuss here on this site revolves around how to be a successful Dungeon Master, but I also think that playing the game is an important thing to address. A while back, I wrote about how to go about creating a player character, which serves as a guide for developing the base ideas that help create the foundation of a character. But that's not the end of the process. Once you have the basics of your character, there is still more work to be done if you want to get everything possible out of your gaming experience. With that in mind, the following is a guide on connecting with your characters. 

In order to illustrate the steps I suggest for connecting with your character, I'm going to use my most recent character, who also happens to be the character I have developed the most (and also the one I feel most attached to). So to start, let's talk about the foundation I created before taking this step--connecting with the character. 

Many years ago, I developed an idea for a character who was a Charisma-based rogue: a con artist with a stubborn streak and the skills to back it up. It was a long time before I had the right campaign to put her in, so I spent a lot of that time imagining who she was and what she was like. Eventually, I had solidified this character into a young woman who had fallen in with a gang but chafed under the unequal weight she pulled compared to her colleagues. My character sheet's space for backstory included this as well as the detail that she had left the gang amid turbulence in order to start over on her own. I liked this idea and thought it was pretty complete even though I hadn't taken all of the steps I suggest in the article linked above. 

I was wrong. 

As soon as we started playing, I realized a few things about my character. 1: Without a more detailed backstory, I had little conception of what motivated my character--Asp, named for the snake whose bite is so pleasurable that the serpents were once used as a form of "humane" execution--beyond greed and ego. 2: Asp's independent streak made it hard for her to work with the party in the campaign; in an early session, she bothered everyone else in the group by pulling a quick con for essentially no reason. 3: An extension of this was that our mission was a good-aligned one, and Asp's independence and Neutral alignment complicated this. And finally, 4: I wasn't getting the experience I had created Asp for--getting to con people; our main quest involves diplomacy, but diplomacy among elves who don't trust halflings like Asp. All of these issues meant I needed to readjust. I needed to connect with Asp (and quickly) or risk messing up the campaign for everyone. (This is part of collaborative storytelling: you need to compromise with the rest of the group.)

So I set about connecting with Asp. The first thing I did, and the first thing I think most any player should do with a new character, is imagine what they look like. If you're artistic and want to draw them, you absolutely should. But many of us are not artistically inclined, nor do we have disposable income to pay an artist to draw our characters. Fortunately, there are ways around this. I personally recommend the site Hero Forge, where you can design custom miniatures and potentially pay for them to be manufactured. I used the miniature-making software to create distinct appearances for Asp--each of the personas she uses while running cons. You can see each of these images on this short profile on her. Because I developed such an attachment to Asp over the course of trying to connect with her, I ended up buying a mini for each of her personas (it's really cool to see all her identities side by side on my gaming bookcase), but even just having images to share with your party is the most important thing. In fact, after I shared my images of Asp's identities with my group, our DM requested that everyone do the same for their characters. It's helpful for having a picture in your mind and sharing that with your group. 

But it's not just about having an image. Designing every detail of your character's appearance gives you time and space to consider who they really are. One such example: the Hero Forge system gives you the ability to add various items to spots on the character's body--for instance, what will you character place at their sides or on their back? You can place weapons and other items in those places. The value of this is that you are essentially being asked, "What kinds of things would this character find useful/regularly important?" This helped me imagine how she portrays her various identities: her reporter character carries writing tools and hides her hair in a cap; her diplomat character wears fancy jewelry to appear more upper class and highlights her long hair; her inventor character has practical tools and tied-up hair that makes her look male. I had imagined the personas before along the lines of what role they served (each persona has different benefits and drawbacks), but I hadn't really thought about how she would differentiate these appearances to keep from being caught. Making these character portraits allowed me to really get into the practical reality of her life in a way that I hadn't considered until I put thought into it. You never know what you'll learn about your character when you add details to them, and appearances are no different. 

I treat appearances as the first step because it's usually one of the more basic parts of a character. Having a good, accurate image of your character is a great start. But it won't give you everything you need to really connect with your character. For that, you'll need to get into their head. I'm going to address two ways of going about this--they're more complementary than interchangeable, but you should do whatever will work for you. These two methods are writing about your character and imagining hypothetical scenarios for your character. Writing is more intensive and requires patience, but it gives you more tangible and helpful results; imagining hypotheticals is easier and less intense, and it helps you stay on top of your character as they continue to develop. I recommend beginning with writing (you need a solid understanding to get started in the game) and staying fresh by imagining hypotheticals. Here's why:

Writing is labor-intensive and can be intimidating to a lot of people. But here's the thing: it doesn't have to be good. It's really just for you (unless you want to share it like I do). Try to forget any anxiety you have about writing. If you have that anxiety, it's probably because the circumstances in which you've written before were forced and about something you didn't care about. (I say this as an English teacher.) This won't be like that. Here's my challenge to you: write one short story about your character. It doesn't have to be good. But it will allow you this huge benefit: session one won't be about figuring out who your character really is--it will be about sinking into the world, the campaign, and the group. That's a huge advantage. 

Before I address how you can start writing about your character, I want to show how writing about Asp helped me solve all four of the problems I mentioned above. Problem 1: I didn't know what motivated Asp. After writing about her, I had an incredibly clear picture of what motivates her. I wouldn't have known it until writing about her, but her stubbornness comes from a combination of insecurity and having to live completely on her own for a long time. This in turn allowed me to play up the wavering between recklessly bold and anxiously insecure moments, and it also helped me understand how she would fit in with a group. I discovered as I wrote that her old gang were people she also struggled to fit in with at first, and that helped me to figure out how to connect to the party. 

Problem 2: Asp was too independent to work well in a group. After I had written about her, it became clear that she actually was very good at working in a group, but only when she understood the expectations of the group. In her old gang, she became one of the most beloved parts of the outfit after some initial growing pains. She also struggled with the leader of the gang--she didn't always listen to the consensus, but learned to over time. This helped me to make her more inclined to work with the party. After the moment where she pulled a con unnecessarily, she apologized for disrupting and upsetting the group and vowed to not act criminally as long as they were together. In the party, she was cast as group leader, meaning that she suddenly had a new perspective on working as a team. These ideas allowed me to help Asp become a key element of the party rather than repeating her previous mistakes (which wouldn't have really existed had I not written about her). 

Problem 3: Asp was true Neutral in a good-aligned campaign. This was a really key problem to fix. Our mission in the campaign is to defuse a mounting war between the elves and orcs of my DM's homebrew setting is an important action which requires constant and pure motivation to do the right thing, no matter the cost. Given the character backstory I initially imagined, this would give Asp little incentive to participate in the main quest. Her independence and amorality were not good fits for the story. So I adjusted. As you know if you read the above-linked profile on Asp, I ended up writing two novels' worth of material about her life leading up to the campaign. At the beginning of the novel that leads into the campaign, Asp really is a true Neutral person whose only interest is herself and her (few) loved ones. But as she worked with the gang, she began to learn to appreciate and trust people. She had a meaningful romantic relationship. She began to enjoy the warmth of positive interactions and began to feel guided to do good things. After some very rocky times at the end of the novel, she gets to the land of the elves and orcs and quickly gets cast as a diplomatic savior of the orcs. She went back to the independence and amorality for a while on her own, but getting placed in the group quickly strengthened all her desire to be a better person. She is now the most outspoken force for goodness in the group and has even become a Cleric of Light. This wasn't the goal I had in mind when I developed Asp, but both my imagining of her life and the campaign itself demanded that she become more good-hearted. And beyond the mechanical necessities of her being less amoral, it's also been a lovely experience as a player to watch my broken little liar become someone who primarily cares about the wellbeing of those around her. 

Problem 4: I wasn't getting to con people like I wanted. This was difficult for me at first. I had so badly wanted to use the D&D system to run various cons on NPCs--I've always been fascinated by con artists, and I brought my desire to portray one to the early sessions. After the first job she pulled with the group, she recognized the offense to the party and promised to not do it anymore. But I still had the itch to see her pulling the wool over peoples' eyes. So in writing about her, I scratched that itch. The novels and short stories I've written about Asp are largely developments of relationships she's had with NPCs (a much more important detail than many players recognize since those relationships inform the ones formed in-game) or about her pulling off incredible cons. In one such story, she plays both parts of a two-person con in order to prove a point. This was so much fun to write, which is its own reward, but I also got to get the con artist stuff out of my system. The campaign we're in clearly has no room for a self-interested criminal, so I cut the cons from the game. I wrote about them instead, and now my imagined version of Asp is rich with a history of diverse and exciting cons. This is a problem I really couldn't have solved without writing about her. 

So writing helps us in a variety of ways--but how do you start? With Asp, I started with a conflict. I knew that she had broken off relations with her family and that her stubborn streak meant she'd probably be slow to join a gang like her backstory called for. So I made one conflict lead to the other: her mother sold her out to the guards, and she had to run to a gang that could help me stay safe. So I wrote a short story (only about three pages) that depicted her clashing with her mom, pulling a con, getting sold out, and meeting the head of the gang. That might sound a little crazy--covering all of that in just a few pages means lots of action in a small space. But it's really all you have to do to get great results. From that short story, I learned so many things about her. 

One such discovery was that Asp was a lot more vulnerable than I thought. I envisioned her as being someone who was very closed off in general, but writing about her changed that. In that first short story alone (which ended up becoming the first chapter of a novel), I realized that Asp cared deeply about her cat, who she loses in that chapter. She had enough of a tie to her mother that her mother could threaten her safety. As much as she wanted to do everything on her own, she needed a gang to help her start over after getting burned. I very suddenly realized that I had been thinking of her being a con artist as a powerful strength, but it's also a weakness--she's susceptible to all kinds of threats. I wouldn't have figured this out without writing about her, or at least, I wouldn't have figured it out until I'd been playing her for a while, and that's too late to know in my opinion. 

Another discovery was that the cons are actually difficult to write about. In order for things to be exciting, there has to be risk and tension. That means that at least some of her cons have to just barely work in order to be engaging. That meant having to find the sweet spot between being in control of the situation and dealing with realistic dangers. Finding this delicate place between these ideas was difficult at first. The con Asp pulls in the first chapter goes off entirely without a hitch, which I used to establish her skill as a con artist, but I had to add complications to later cons to keep them exciting. And this meant realizing that Asp is something of an adrenaline junkie. In one passage later in the novel, I wrote about the way she thinks about this danger inherent in conning people: she both dreads the uncertainty of it and revels in the thrill of it. She's wary of getting caught, but lying to a person's face and being believed is pure excitement. This revealed a new element of her behavior. Now, when I play Asp, I make her a bit more reckless than I originally imagined her. This makes the game more exciting, obviously, but also serves just who she is as a person. 

The short story is a great way to get your head around the big pictures. Continuing to write is where you get even more out of the situation. When I finished that first story, I was overwhelmed with how much I had learned about Asp. So I kept going. I wanted to know what life was like with her gang. It turned out to be very rocky. But I knew that she would become one of the crew before too long, so I wrote more. Soon, she was beloved in the gang and operating like a real member of a team. I needed this dynamic worked out in my head so I could know how she works with the party. And with all that momentum picked up, I pushed into how she ended up leaving the gang. It ended up being a complete revision of my initial backstory. She ended up not leaving the gang because she thought she was above the rest of the gang, but instead because she was (due to complicated circumstances) forced out of the gang and had to move on. This was--and I can't stress this enough--a vital realization. Knowing that she was coming into the campaign with a feeling of loss changed everything. It informed the decisions she made and the relationships she formed. 

Now, obviously the writing I'm talking about is more work than most folks will put into this process. That's okay. I know that I got fairly carried away with myself--you don't need 1,100 pages of writing to understand your character. In the "creating a character" article I linked above, I suggested writing general notes about character history (I again went overboard with the amount of this writing, but the point still stands). If you are 100% opposed to trying to write short fiction, I recommend the notes method. Good questions to ask yourself include:

• What important and defining events have occurred in the character's life? 
• How did they feel about these experiences? 
• What are common experiences that the character has often? 
• How do they feel when they experience those things? 
• What are things they enjoy doing? 
• Why do they enjoy these things? 
• What kinds of relationships (good and bad) has your character had? 
• How have these relationships affected them? 
• What does your character want? 
• How does your character plan to go about realizing these goals? 

Don't just think about the surface level things or the life-changing events--think about your character's internal world. What they think and feel is just as (if not more) important as the events themselves. Once you have answered these questions, revisit the idea of writing a bit of short fiction. Putting these ideas into an actual scene will undoubtedly show you dimensions you hadn't considered. 

Whatever writing you decide to do, you will have given yourself an advantage in knowing who your character is at the beginning of a campaign. But the campaign continues long after that. To stay on top of your character as they grow and change (or even to just stay in touch with your character), begin to imagine hypothetical scenarios involving your character. Many players do this unconsciously--it's fun to imagine what your character would do in various situations. But it goes beyond fun; you can also learn things about your character. Let's talk about what kinds of situations to think about, and then I'll illustrate some of the benefits using hypotheticals that I have used with Asp. 

A good place to start is by looking ahead in your campaign. What sorts of moments are likely to occur? How do you envision the conflicts ahead happening? What do you want to happen? These situations shouldn't just be considered in a descriptive way--you should try to imagine them as though you're really playing the game and your imagination is the DM. As you imagine the scene, roleplay it like you would a moment in the game--what comes naturally? Pay attention to what you feel about how it's happening. This is actually how I realized that I needed to make Asp stop conning people. I ran one small job in front of the party, and they voiced their displeasure at it. I kept daydreaming about the con element of her character, though. I would try to imagine situations where she could use her skills, but I always felt bad about it because I knew it would rub the group the wrong way. That's where I got the idea to write about her doing those things instead. So it can be a really productive place to begin imagining your character in hypotheticals. 

From there, you can branch out into less campaign-based thinking. Unless you've chosen to play someone with literally no attachments, there will be people in your character's life who evoke strong feelings from them. Family and friends are great for this, as are respected competitors. Try to imagine what your character would say to them if they ran into them. What kinds of feelings would meeting again bring up? Does your character have any new desires or plans after meeting with them? Does anything change about your character's feelings about this person? These are all deep mines of inspiration and discovery. With Asp, so many big ideas have come from imagining scenes like this--not to mention genuine enjoyment. As I wrote more and more about her story, she formed a lot of complicated relationships, especially the one with her partner. I have spent a lot of time thinking about what she would say to her ex if she got to see her again, and it all started with my DM dropping a character from her backstory into the campaign for just a moment. I thought, naturally, that Asp would ask about her ex. Learning where she was now was something I noted but didn't think much of at the time. But later, as I imagined their next meeting, I noticed how much affection Asp still had for her ex. As I kept imagining what she had to say, I began to see that she truly intends to track down her ex and talk things over, and that's put a completely different perspective on how Asp feels in the campaign. Her mindset is now, "I have to do this important and dangerous thing, and then I'm getting out of the game." It's added something tangible for me, and it came from just thinking about Asp talking to people. 

One last recommendation I'll make for hypotheticals is consciously seeking out a particular thing you find interesting, meaningful, or just confusing about your character. This is also especially helpful as a tool when you feel like something isn't working completely at the table; this exercise will help you diagnose the problem. What I mean by thinking about this particular detail of your character is to try to describe what this detail is. It might be something like, "I feel like I'm not expressing my character correctly," or "I really like how my character wants to stand up to people." These are big picture issues that many of us face. So devise a situation that would challenge or stress that detail. For the player who's afraid they're not expressing their character right, imagining a similar scenario to one that challenged them can be a great way to reevaluate what's going on. It also gives you the chance to think about these things in advance and come to the table more familiar with their character. Or for the player whose character is so willing to stand up to people, flip the tables on them: how would the character react if they couldn't stand up to somebody? What do you learn about your character when the strength that defines them is taken away? 

This is actually a scenario I've put Asp through a number of times. At various points in my writing about her, she gets very close to getting caught (and closer still in the book about the earlier years). But part of her character is that she's cool, confident, and in control of any situation she's in. So even in those moments, I didn't really get a sense of who she was when things really went sour. That's about when our DM introduced our main quest: bring an end to the coming war between the elves and the orcs. Our "final boss" (diplomatically speaking, of course) is the High Queen of the Elves, who seems fairly predisposed to war. When Asp first met the Queen, she panicked a little. I was really curious why that was, so I started to imagine her having other conversations with the Queen as well as other situations in which she had dealt with important people. Something I noticed was that she tended to get more anxious the more powerful a person was. I realized as I thought about this that she knows the consequences of getting caught grow exponentially with the status of the person you're conning (and yes, she does kind of view diplomacy as con artistry). So her anxiety was natural, and I didn't necessarily need to change that about my performance with her. But without noticing all of this, I never would have realized that I would need her to get more comfortable with the royals if she intended to succeed in her mission. And that's why I've roleplayed her as getting slowly more comfortable around royalty, which I think reflects that she grows and learns quickly, so increased exposure to dealing with royals is making her less anxious. And being aware of this change--even guiding it--allowed me to really enjoy it as an element of the story. I have easily a dozen more examples of ways that I've used these hypotheticals to explore characters, even before I consciously realized what I was doing (and how it helped me). 

Here's my last word: you read this far because you wanted to be able to connect with your characters. As a lifelong gamer whose first character was made for me and whose second character featured customizations in every possible way, I really do understand the drive to connect to these products of our minds. And if you feel the same way, I want you to know how rich and rewarding it is. It does take time and work, but you're here, seeking it out. I know (again as an English teacher) that not everyone loves to write. But at a certain point, it's worth the work to really familiarize yourself with who they are. 

Oh, and as a bonus suggestion, I suggest writing a journal of the campaign and doing so in the first person as your character's actual thoughts. Not only does it keep you engaged with the character throughout the session, but rereading your notes from the previous session before starting a new one is an excellent way to get back into the right frame of mind. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: clothing by culture in my homebrew setting, how to figure out your style as a GM, and lessons from 15 years of my GM notebooks. Until next time, happy gaming!

How to Deal with Player Character Deaths

It's a possibility that looms over every game: what if the players die? No matter what kind of game you're playing, there's a chance that the players will die. But how do you get there? And then what happens? Those questions can decide how a player feels about their entire experience as that character, so we need good answers for them. 

In short, I say don't let characters die unless it's deserved. That can mean different things, and I'll get into them in a moment. But for now, I want to repeat this: if someone has carefully made a character and made reasonable decisions, they shouldn't die. If you're playing a brutal variant of the game where character deaths are common, that's one thing; but for a full campaign, player characters should survive until they shouldn't. 

Let's dig into the details. The conditions under which we let a character die are all related to the idea of being deserved. One element of that is in making reasonable choices. If a character does something truly stupid, and it puts their life in danger, that is an acceptable death. Let's consider an example. A character is warned repeatedly to not enter the cage with the displacer beast in it. They enter the cage unarmed and with low health "to pet it." The displacer beast is of course going to attack the character. If that character is brought to death conditions—negative 10 hit points in D&D—then I wouldn't do much in the way of intervening. That player was deliberately reckless with their character, and so we let the conditions kill them. Note here that I'm not talking about "punishing" the character for being stupid by creating dangerous conditions. I'm not fudging all of the displacer beast's damage rolls for the higher. I'm only allowing existing dangerous conditions to do what they do. 

But that's a rare instance when players actually care about their characters. More often, you encounter a scenario where something unfortunate happened to the characters. Perhaps they were taken off-guard, or they just got bad dice rolls; what matters now is that the character is dying. Now we have to ask a difficult question: does the campaign improve (including the experience of the player with the dying character) if the character dies? This might mean, "Is this death dramatic and narratively satisfying?" or something more like "Does this wrap up loose ends and allow the player a new route?" It's context-specific, and you'll need to use your best judgment to decide whether a character death actually works. Remember that we are trying to avoid having players feel like they're not in control of their characters. We're trying to avoid taking a character away from a player before they're ready for it. There's always a way to save them (more on that below). But if the conditions are right, a player character death can be very meaningful. 

By way of example, the Eastweald campaign ended with Carric turning to join the evil Vecna against his former party members; when Gerald and Ell defeated Carric, it was a satisfying dramatic moment. The conditions for this character death were perfect. Firstly, it was good timing. This was our last session in the campaign, and the players knew it. This moment had big finale energy, and it made Carric's player willing to make a move like switching teams. There was to be no missing out in future sessions. Keep this in mind—deaths in finale sessions are more open game than earlier in campaigns. 

Secondly, Carric's death was earned. He had chosen to turn against his allies in a fight to the death. Speaking logically, either he would die, or they would. Since he pitted himself against the rest of the party, there was no avoiding dying. So when Ell and Gerald began to win the battle, I felt no need to intervene with DM assistance. I would like to say more broadly that it's a bad idea to mess with the outcomes of player versus player conflicts, though. For fairness sake, and for the sake of making everyone feel empowered, allow those fights to unfold by the numbers. 

And thirdly, this was a dramatic death. I had no idea going into that last session that Carric would turn to Vecna. Carric's player had given me indication that Carric was being corrupted, but I had no idea how that would unfold. I have to tell you, reader: the look on the other players' faces were incredible. I'm sure mine was too. Carric was part Paladin, after all! We reacted in a big way because it was a big action. And with a turn like that, there were only two things that could happen: Vecna and Carric win, leaving them to negotiate in the wreckage, or Ell and Gerald win like they did. The dice favored Ell and Gerald, and seeing Carric perish as a resolution to his turn was very satisfying—it may even have been the only satisfying way to end the campaign at that point. 

So now let's address the tools of hastening or preventing deaths, now that you know what you want to do. The first route, and the easiest to use, is fudging rolls. I've handled this topic in detail before; here’s the quick and easy guide. First off, in battles where you suspect that there’s a real chance of a player character getting close to dying, start rolling privately. Unless you have a policy of showing every roll for fairness’ sake, hide your rolls in combat. I would argue that hiding your rolls constantly is best. This is especially a good idea if your players will notice when you are and aren’t hiding your rolls.

Write down the Armor Class or similar information for all of the player characters. Saying, “What’s your Armor Class? Oh, it’s that minus one. They miss,” is not satisfying. Conversely, don’t let them get a bead on enemy armor classes if you can. I give identical enemies slightly different armor classes to keep them on their toes. And give them more information than they need when it comes to rolls. It distracts from whether or not the number is real. I’m talking about information about the attacks by way of description—specifically where attacks hit or how they miss. There’s a big difference between the above example of an unsatisfying description in combat and the following: “Wow, they rolled a sixteen; just missed you, Horace. Their axe head swipes through the air, but you lean out of the way, and you can feel it touch the whiskers on your chin.” A player who hears this is probably not thinking about what the DM actually rolled.

My favorite tool for fudging is a simple question to ask players with low health. If a character with low health gets hit, you should already have decided that they either are fair game for a death or you’re deliberately getting them close to death for a dramatic fight (but without killing them). If you want that player to stay on the verge of death, roll the damage against that player (hidden, of course) and then look at the dice. Then, ask them, “How many hitpoints do you have left?” Leave them with between one and three hitpoints. It’s very dramatic, and it works pretty much every time. You can of course strengthen this gambit by knowing how many hitpoint they had and skipping the question, but it’s difficult to always know that information. You can occasionally gather that information (and keep it recorded along with the Armor Classes) by asking for hitpoint checks every few rounds—this is a pretty innocuous question that won’t seem like a fudging tool to most players.

But then, maybe you’ve gone the other direction: you’ve decided to kill a character. As mentioned above, this isn’t a problem necessarily if it’s the end of the campaign. But if your campaign is ongoing, you've got a characterless player on your hands. There are two main solutions to the problem, and solving it means inspecting your gaming situation closely. You might want to seek a way to resurrect the dead character, or you may decide to go the route of creating a new character. 

Let's talk about resurrection. When I was first learning to play D&D as a teenager, I played an elven monk named Algar. Algar suffered a bit in combat; his 3.5 build meant his elven frame was less hardy (low constitution score), and being a monk means being in the thick of battles. He survived for a long time due to careful battle tactics, but then he went up against a vampire in a room by himself. Algar rolled very poorly, missing every strike in two consecutive Flurries of Blows. The vampire slashed him up viciously. At that point, a party member entered the room, summoned a massive fire ball, and walked out. The vampire was badly wounded; Algar was dead. 

I was pretty crushed. Algar was my first character. My DM could see that I didn't want anything except to have him back. When the party finished the dungeon, he set them on a path to a high cleric who could resurrect Algar. And though the party complained about the time and money wasted, they resurrected Algar, and he went on to live out a peaceful life tending to a monastery garden deep in the forest. It was more satisfying than Algar dying—he had been a bit reckless in fighting the vampire alone, but that had come from being abandoned by his allies. My DM saw that Algar didn't really deserve death, so he push the party (which included his daughter) to resurrect him. 

You can go the same route my DM did: have them seek out a powerful spellcaster who can bring back the character. Maybe they're at a beautiful temple; maybe they live alone in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by animals; maybe they run a healing and resurrection shop in a major city. The choice is up to you, and you should pick whatever best suits your world and your story. There's also the matter of payment. You might decide on a large sum of cash; you might have them pursue a magical item; you might make them complete a quest in payment. Again, it's about what suits your world and your story. 

Once you've decided on who's doing the resurrection and for what, it's time to decide the conditions of the resurrection. The official spells in various versions of D&D specify different types of resurrection. Let's look at the 5e versions up close. 

• Revivify: This spell only works on creatures that have died in the last minute, but it's lower level than other resurrection spells. Storywise, we can use this as the idea that resurrection costs more the longer it's been since death. 
• Raise Dead: This spell only works on creatures dead for less than ten days, but it takes a full hour to cast. Storywise, we can use the idea that a more powerful spell extends its usefulness, but also expands how long the process takes. This might not be an issue sometimes, but it couldn't be used in the middle of a battle. There is also an extended sickness which lowers skills, which we can interpret as the body struggling to return to its former self. 
• Reincarnate: This spell also allows for creatures dead up to ten days, and it also takes an hour. One significant side effect is that the character is randomly reassigned a race, which changes the game no matter your approach to it. 
• Resurrection: This spell extends the time limit to one hundred years, and it also takes an hour. As with Raise Dead, there is a significant penalty over time to rolls following the reincarnation. This spell also specifies that body parts can be regrown and diseases and poisons can be cured, adding the story detail that higher level magic actually makes the body healthier too. 
• True Resurrection: This spell again extends the time limit, this time to two hundred years, and it still takes one hour. The spell can do everything that Resurrection does, but without the penalties after being resurrected. It also lifts curses and doesn't require a physical body. Storywise, this shows us that the most powerful healing transcends physical nature. 
• Wish: Because Wish can duplicate any other spell, you could use it to cast any of these spells. 

But beyond these rules, let's talk about resurrecting a character. The moment the character returns, you're going to have to answer some things. What did the dying character feel? Did they experience an afterlife? Do you grant them an audience with their god? (I have any character who dies roll a d100 and have them speak with a random god before reaching any kind of afterlife; a roll with a "meaningful" number means an audience with their god--meaning however likely you think their god would want to speak to the character.) And as DM, you're going to want to stand back narratively. Let the players talk about their reactions to the character's death. There's going to be a lot going on, so let the players work it out. 

And then there's the final option: rolling a new character. If a player is truly finished with a character and they need to begin again, work with them privately to make the new one. Try to grant them privacy from the rest of the party to develop their new character. And let them guide their introduction to the group as much as possible. 

There are things to consider when rolling this new character—how will they relate to the party? What reason does the party have to take on this new character? How will the new party balance affect the story/combat/social dynamics? When you answer these questions, you're going to be affecting the path of the campaign, so be especially mindful. But also don't dismay—sometimes the changes that follow a new character can be for the better. 

By way of example, back when I was playing Algar, I created a second character, Morana, a frightening orc with a scythe who had carved the symbol of the god of death into her body. She slayed monsters and intimidated foes for one glorious session, and then the rest of the party abandoned her in an ambush. My DM—the same DM I mentioned above—couldn't get me out of it. Morana was tragically slain before she even began. 

But the campaign, my first evil campaign, carried on. I needed a new character. I devised a mischievous gnome spellcaster named Loki, and he entered the evil campaign with some fanfare. And Loki became the mastermind of the campaign. We captured castles, we slayed heroes, we even avoided death at the hands of an inevitable. The party had not wanted a big clunky slasher; they wanted a devious murderer with designs on owning the world. I didn't realize that when I first got invited into the evil campaign. But after seeing Morana fail like she did, I knew I needed something else. Loki was that something else. 

My DM had the wisdom to see that I had created the wrong character for the group. He also had the faith to let me try again. And I think it's fair to say that everyone at the table benefitted from having Loki around rather than Morana. I'm glad, in a way, that my DM let Morana die, because Loki is still a figure lurking in my homebrew setting—little gnomish kids in my world tell boogeyman stories about Loki the mage, who comes to steal your breath in your sleep or trick you into a terrible bargain. My DM is as much responsible for that legacy as I am, in some ways. So don't be afraid of rebuilding a party. If you're in doubt, follow this guide to getting a good party together so you can address any changes you might need to make. 

So there you have it. Now you can control and write around character deaths. Just don't forget that these decisions are more weighty than others, so when death starts to loom its head, just slow down and take your time. Your players want your best judgment, not your fastest judgment. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: stereotypes in my gameworld, how to balance plot and exploration, and how to use dreams and hallucinations for storytelling. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Write for and from Tabletop Games

As I've grown more experienced in tabletop games, I've started to see that the process of playing a story-rich campaign (one where the players and GM work together to create a story) is very similar to the process of writing fiction. I think we might use a working definition for fiction writing as "deciding what the characters do and what the world is like," and those are the respective duties of the players and the GM. As someone who has spent considerable time as a GM, a player, and a writer, I can vouch: being a fiction writer is like GMing for yourself, as you are in a way presenting scenarios to your characters. So what's the real relationship between writing and tabletop games? 

In my experience, the two reinforce and enrich one another. And the relationship works both ways: writing can improve your tabletop game experience, and tabletop games can improve your writing experience. I want to explore how things move in both directions with some ideas as well as ways that I have personally used writing and tabletops together. 

Sometimes in the game, it makes sense to create in-game documents. I think it can help immersion and the dramatic impact of things, but it also of course allows you to connect the game and writing. Over a decade ago, when I was running Listen Check, an early D&D podcast, I offered a reward for a contest near the end of our run. The reward was that the winner would get to pick any NPC from the entire campaign, and I would write a personal journal for that character and present it to the winner. As it happened, our number one fan from early in the podcast won, and she picked a character who had largely played comic relief and had a few heartfelt moments. I set to work, and what I ended up with was a 99-page booklet that spanned most of the character's life (CW: parental neglect, parental abuse).  

In the course of sitting down to write for this character--Caspian, a small young man with tattoos of every god on his forearms ("just in case")--I wanted to find something that I had struggled to find during the show. Caspian was, as I said, a very comic relief type of character. I modeled his personality on a loose combination of the characters Master Shake and Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, both of whom are over-the-top big-mouthed goofballs, and as a result, I didn't feel like they were moored to any kind of serious foundation. I didn't want to hand our number one fan a series of goofs that wouldn't even be funny and leave it at that. I needed to find the dramatic heart of the character. 

If you read that booklet, you'll probably agree that I did. Mild spoilers: because I established in the show that Caspian was illiterate, we had to pretend that this was the journal he would write if he were literate, and I also needed to account for how he had never been taught to read. I did so by making his parents negligent and abusive so that he never really had the chance to learn. I chose to make it so that Caspian was never discouraged by anything that happened to him; this allowed me to retroactively make his silliness a defiance of the pain that he had come from. I personally like how it came out, and I wouldn't have had the ability or context to write that if I hadn't worked with Caspian as an NPC for years before that. 

But the writing doesn't have to find its purpose in being a part of the D&D world like Caspian's journal did. Sometimes, you want to write to just figure a character out. How often in a tabletop game do you approach the table with an "idea" of a character, only to find out that it's a little undeveloped when you actually play? I'd say that that's happened with every character I have ever made. And yes, that is coming from the person who once wrote 80 pages of material on a character, his family, and his friends. Because all that writing happened after I had already started playing. I created that material in response to my need to characterize, not in anticipation of it. 

And so of course I found myself in the same scenario when I recently started playing a character in a roleplay-centric campaign. I had toyed for years with the idea of a con artist character, and I felt that because I had dreamed of this character for so long, I would be able to just drop into a session and be a fully realized version of the character. I learned from my intro session and the first session or two with the party that I mostly had a concept and an attitude. I needed more if I wanted to develop a meaningfully complex character, and that is more or less the aim in our roleplay-centric group. 

So I started to write. I figured that I could write a short story or two and figure out more where my character, Asp, came from. I wrote that story, and I had, in a small way, accomplished my goal: I had a better idea who Asp was. But for two reasons, I kept going. Reason one: because Asp has been in my mind for so long, I am truly invested in making her a special character. Reason two: I enjoyed the process of writing about her. She's fun to write about, I have found, and I changed the story or two into a series of five connected stories. As of the writing of this article, I have written ten of a planned twenty-five chapters of a novel. 

Yes, I am saying that in order to develop my character, I decided to write a novel about her. Do I think that this is an advisable first step for most people? Absolutely not. I've been writing consistently for years, and I get something out of the process even when I don't like the result. I know that not everyone has that experience with writing. I'm not giving advice here; I'm telling you one of the possibilities that tabletop games present with writing. It is entirely possible to create writing that helps you in the game and that stands on its own as entertainment. 

The above examples handle how you can write for tabletop games--but what about the other way? It's quite possible to writing from tabletop games. One of my first longer writing projects was a novel (yet unfinished) that used tabletop games as the core mechanic of storytelling. This came at a time when I was really beginning to get interested in the relationship between tabletop games and other forms of narrative. 

The novel's format relief on what I had experienced as a D&D player. The first chapter (out of nine total) would be the story of one character going up against a powerful evil foe and failing. The second chapter would be the story of an entirely different character going up against the same evil foe, but this time, the second hero wouldn't make the same mistakes as the first. They'd try something new and get a bit further, but still perish before the evil foe. This process would continue, each character getting closer and closer, until the ninth character would vanquish the evil foe. The end of the novel would suggest that each of the nine characters had been tabletop game characters played by the same player, hence their learning from their mistakes. Each new character would be a new character rolled when the previous one died. And for a philosophical angle, each of the nine characters would have a different moral alignment, which would guide the ways that their personalities were different. 

As you can probably see, the only meaningful connections to tabletop games come from the mechanics of how the story is told. The concept behind the story is something that relies on some knowledge of tabletop games, but this novel could easily stand on its own as a compelling fantasy story. I bring this novel-in-progress up because it illustrates the relationship between writing and tabletops in a new direction. This novel, which has the working title of How the Stars Align (a reference to the astronomy fascination of the evil foe), aims to tell a story that couldn't have been conceived of without tabletop games, and to do so without relying narratively on them. 

And although I haven't experienced this myself, I would posit it as a distinct possibility: people who need to understand a character, from writers to actors to students, can use tabletop games as a tool to understand them. It stands to reason that if writing about a character can help roleplaying (because it generates information and perspective about the character), then roleplaying should also help writing (because it generates information and perspective about the character). Ask any serious roleplayer to describe a character of theirs, and prepare for a torrent of information--information which most any writer would love to have about the characters they're working with. 

So now, the actual how of it: let's give you some ideas to start writing if you're not sure where to begin.  One fact you'll need to face is that you're flipping some of the role you'll be playing. If you're playing a tabletop to learn about a character, you'll be controlling only your character and responding to the world around you; if you're writing about a character so you can play a tabletop more fully, you'll be doing the GM's work as well as your own. The thing that matters most is how you view the challenge, so consider these ideas:

Playing a Tabletop To Learn About a Character

You are basically putting on training wheels. That should be your thinking--rather than complicating the scenario with having to control the entire fictional universe, you're putting all your effort on just the character. That means you're free to really consider things in depth. Allow your curiosity to run wild--Why does your character feel that way? Does it open up their backstory? What does your character want to do (versus what they feel they should do, versus what they're compelled to do by the game)? You're now free to investigate the small details that you'd otherwise have to ignore. 

To get started, I advise that you make sure your character sketch is as complete as you want it to be. Then, once you're in the game, do your best to balance what serves your character work and what serves the party (the other players want to have their own fun too, remember). And once you're in the groove with your character, you get to enter the real reward for this approach. As your fellow player characters and the GM create new situations that you could never conceive of, you're getting inspiration for writing. The heavy lifting of creating dramatic scenarios is off your back, and you can just sit back and watch your character become more and more detailed, and more importantly, more familiar to you. 

Writing About a Character to Enrich a Tabletop

You're taking control into your own hands. This should be your mindset. Yes, you have more responsibility than you do when you play a tabletop game, but now you have the ability to tell the story in your own way. Who hasn't had a character-defining moment in mind for months that never came up organically in a session? When you're writing, you can add that character-defining moment wherever and whenever you want it. You want to help your character shine, so go ahead and shine all the light on them like you can't when you're sharing the spotlight with other players. 

To get started, try to imagine scenarios that would be interesting for your character. Maybe you want to see them when they're stressed out; perhaps you want to show them strutting their stuff; you may want a quiet moment for reflection. Your goal in writing is to create as much of a distinct impression in your mind of what this person is like, so try to vary the situations you put them in. If it helps, you can use a writing prompt to jump-start your creativity. And don't become overwhelmed by the writing process. If it feels like too much, just clear your mind and begin imagining the situation you want. Note the details you think of and allow yourself to revise as you go. Don't be afraid to go to your favorite books, games, shows, and movies for inspiration, but have fun making it your own. 

A final word on writing and tabletop games: some of us in the worlds of writing and gaming forget at times that the goal is fun. We should work harder to embrace that fun, and don't forget about it when you're trying on more character development. Tabletops and writing like this shouldn't be homework--they should be part of the fun as well. So certainly give it an honest try, but don't make yourself do any work that isn't rewarding. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a guide to food in my homebrew setting, tips on pacing your game, and how to deal with player character deaths. Until next time, happy gaming!

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A List of Ideas for Character Backstories

For me, one of the greatest joys in tabletop games is making a character. By that, I mean the whole process. From choosing a class and race or the equivalent information to developing that character's personality, there's so much to decide. But the backstory is probably where I've classically spent the most time. You may have read about how I created 80 pages of backstory documents for a cleric I played or read a chapter from the novel I've been writing as a backstory for a rogue I'm currently playing. I say this bashfully--I acknowledge that admitting this to a non-tabletop gamer would get me some weird looks. But to me, it's a huge part of the fun of the game. 

But for every player like me who wants to develop every detail of the character, there is another player who is so daunted by the idea of making a person up out of nothing that they don't know where to begin. That's why I thought I'd share some of my extra energy in this arena with you, the overwhelmed player. You came looking for backstory ideas, and I've got you covered. 

Below are 25 ideas for backstories to get you started. I don't want to take away the fun of getting into the details--that's for you. Remember that you can take parts you like from any of these and rework or combine them! Your goal is to end up with something you're passionate about, so get creative and have fun.

1. The Hero Out of Time - You are descended from a long line of nobles who have always done right by their people. But as time has worn on, your position of power has waned, and now you are being ignored like you have never known. The time has come to leave your defunct holdings behind and either set right what took your power or make your fortune anew. You might be begrudging, hopeful, or determined about your plight. 
2. Mistakenly Involved - You are certainly capable in your own right, but you had been pleasantly living a quiet life. Then suddenly, some new twist seems to have upended you. You are stuck with a group of unpredictable people (perhaps the party). Your involvement might be because people in power think you're part of the group or because of some coincidence. Part of your struggle will be in either returning to your quiet life or learning to live a little louder. 
3. At War with the Gods - You've explored a handful of religious beliefs in your life, but none has ever given you more than anxiety. But the more you come to resent them, the more life's troubles seem like punishments from the gods. Part of you isn't sure if it's all in your head. You may mask your anxiety well, or not at all. (Be sure to check this one with your DM, who may have their own agenda when it comes to handling gods-related things.)
4. The Troubled Parent - You're a good, attentive parent to a wonderful child. The problem is that your child is very sick. You've tried everything, but they only get worse. You're in search of a cure, and you'll work alongside anyone who can help you. You can portray varying levels of stress depending on what the context calls for. (Check in with your DM about the details of the illness--they'll probably want to consider how that storyline plays out.)
5. The Simple Farmer - You grew up on a farm without ever straying too far. You only know about the big city because Pa told you about his trip there as a boy. But that story never faded from your mind. All those days out in the fields, you dreamed of more. And now, it's time to find out what's out there. You may be a naïve wanderer, you may be searching for something, or you may just want something different. 
6. The Lone Survivor - You lived on an outpost on the edge of civilization. Something from beyond the edge came to visit, and it killed everyone--everyone but you. You're sharp from years of growing up on the edge, but you know you can't get revenge on your own. It's time to gather the forces you can and get ready. (Actually returning to your home is of course up to your DM, but as a driving force, it will keep you motivated.)
7. "I Just Want a Good Book" - You are a voracious reader. You've heard talk of a legendary text that no one has seen in centuries. You've taken to searching tombs, dungeons, and lairs for traces of it. Every new discovery of a scroll or spellbook means you are poring over its pages, insistent on learning just what it holds. You may be obsessive in your quest, or you may just know the text would be worth a pretty coin. 
8. The Young Ace - From a young age, you just got it. Even though you're still young, you're already out in the world being trusted with adult responsibilities. But getting responsibilities isn't the same as being treated like an adult. You're driven to prove to everyone that you're capable of being trusted. You may play this struggle as a serious clash between identity and society, or you may decide to take it in an altogether sillier direction. 
9. The Salty Dog - Something about life on the sea drew you in during your youth years ago, and you've spent those many years on ships, rarely docking and never straying from a port city. And though your life on the waves has been good to you, you've realized it's time to move on to something new. You've set foot on dry land and decided to find out what life here is really like. You may play this as a fish out of water comedy or a more serious coming to terms with the changes you didn't expect to find. 
10. The Disillusioned Veteran - You grew up mimicking soldiers and fantasizing about serving in battles. Then you got older and did those things. It was nothing like you imagined--there was no honor, but only carnage. It changed you, made you more empty. Now the war is over and you're back in society with everyone. But no one listens to what you say you've seen. You might play this more as someone trying to change peoples' minds or more as a victim of paralysis. 
11. The Delinquent Student - Your wealthy parents have always given you the best of the best. So too with your education--only you didn't go. When they sent you off to the fancy university in the mountains, you skipped out and have been carousing across the continent on their money. Part of you wants to see how far the coin will go, and part of you is ignoring the consequences. Your reluctance to get an education may be humorous or a genuine resistance to being ordered around. 
12. The Curious Writer - You've spent your life writing, learning about new things and skills via the writing of others. But in your most recent project, you realized that certain things must be felt firsthand to be able to satisfyingly describe. So you've set out to begin experiencing those things, aiming your work at the ultimate goal: to meaningfully change the world and learn what that would feel like. 
13. "I Just Want to Start Over" - You had a good life. But then tragedy struck--someone close to you, someone you were nursing when they were sick, died, and everyone thought it was your fault. At first you tried to explain, but nobody listened. Life got hard for you. You decided to move away and start over. You picked up what you could and dropped yourself into life in a new place. But will you really be able to leave it all behind for good?
14. The Protective Sibling - Your parents died years ago, and you've been watching out for your little sibling ever since. They're kind of an odd one. They have a made-up language that only they speak, and sometimes you catch them staring at people in weird ways. Perhaps that's to be expected; they're the one who killed your parents. How and why they did so is for you to decide, as is why you keep protecting the murderous sibling. 
15. "I Just Want to Fit In" - You were raised in a secluded culture in which you were marked as a special person at birth. All your life, everyone you know has treated you like you were more than mortal. You have come to hate this--you want to live like anyone else. You fled from your secluded society and entered the world. Now you must learn what is normal in your new home and learn to be just like anyone else. 
16. The Watcher - You've seen lots of people claim to have everyone's best interest in mind. You think it's obvious that they don't really. Before, when you were growing more powerful, you saw through their act, but now you can do something about it. You're starting to watch the people in charge, and you're going to make them actually do what they say. You might play this as a realistic take on a superhero or more of a paranoid type for humor. 
17. The Dearly Departed - You were married for years before it happened. You were holding their hand one minute, and then suddenly, they were gone. Disappeared. No one had heard of anything like this, and they assured you that they were just missing. No one just disappeared. But you know it--they were there and then gone. You've got to find them. But where do you start looking, and who will listen? (Work with your DM here--they'll want to have something in place for the disappearance.)
18. The Penny Pincher - Years of just barely scraping by have left their mark on you. You're painfully hesitant to part with any amount of money for any reason at all. The people in your life know now to ask you for financial help, more for your reaction than the lack of help. You've realized it's destroying your relationships, so you're experimenting with better sources of income. You may also decide to experiment with changing your ways. 
19. The Performer - You're not dishonest--you're just putting your best foot forward. You've noticed that people tend to be happier when you're happier. If only you could help people see the truth of the matter--but no one listens unless it sounds good. So you've just taken to giving a little shine to the truth, even if it makes it a little less true. You may learn the folly of your ways, or you may carry on sugarcoating things for people, but it affects the way you experience the world. 
20. The Lonely Immigrant - You left your homeland behind to make something of yourself here. But something about you marks you as different from the people here, and you are held at a distance. As you struggle to make a life for yourself, those around you make it harder for you to survive. Will you fight against what marks you as different? Will you prove yourself unworthy of their assumptions? Will you find others like you? (Work with your DM to determine how your character will be different from the people around them. Be willing to compromise here.)
21. The Imaginary Friend - Something happened to you that made you a little different in the head. Ever since, you've had a friend only you can see and hear. It sure puts people off when you talk to your friend, so you've learned to keep that kind of thing private. The thing is, though, that ever since you learned to blend in, your friend has been talking about scary things. Dangerous things. You may play this invisible friend for humor or horror.
22. The World Traveler - The world is a big place, and you want to see it all. You want to taste every cuisine, hear every local tune, feel the pulsing of every city known to humanity. But travelling is pricy, and it can be dangerous, so you've learned to finance your travels through creative means. You've done odd work wherever you can find it because you know adventure is just around the corner. (Work with your DM to get a good sense of the gameworld so you can determine where you've been and what you know.)
23. The Captive - You led a pretty normal life. Exceptionally normal, in fact, until you were kidnapped. Your captor or captors held you for over a year, feeding you only enough to survive and performing strange experiments on you which you only discovered via the marks left on your body. And then, just as suddenly, you were released into the woods. What will you do now that you've regained your agency? And will you ever be able to find out what happened to you?
24. The Fine Artist - You've always had an eye for beauty. You've had your adventures, and you've begun to paint, sculpt, and otherwise memorialize your achievements. The art catches peoples' eyes, but do you do it for their attention or for the satisfaction of the perfect expression of something? Part of you thinks that the adventures are just an excuse to create the art, and part of you thinks they're both good enough reasons to adventure. 
25. The Tale Teller - Everyone knows a few good stories, but you know them all. You collect them--folk tales, urban legends, secondhand retellings of supernatural happenings--and you tell them again. This has earned you a reputation as someone who knows about the strange happenings of the world, both earning the ire of common people and the love of other strange folk. You may use these stories for deep lore into the world (with your DM's help, of course) or something sillier (imagine a conspiracy theorist who sees connections between everything in the gameworld). 

There you have it: 25 unique backstory ideas to get you started. Any of these should give you a pretty interesting time at the table. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a guide to nature in my homebrew setting, how to use divination in your games, and how writing and tabletop games enrich each other. Until next time, happy gaming!

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