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Character Introductions
37 Plays1 year ago
In the seventh episode of Tabletop Tune Up, Mark and Ben delve into the art of character introductions in RPGs. The moment when a player's character first steps into the spotlight can set the tone for their entire journey, and crafting these introductions thoughtfully can lead to memorable and impactful moments. Discover how to motivate your players to go beyond basic mechanical descriptions and create vibrant, engaging entrances that showcase their characters' personalities and backstories. Learn strategies to design compelling circumstances and scenarios that not only give each character a chance to shine but also bring the party together cohesively right from the start.
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Transcript
Introduction to Brutalia Jobs, the Magician
00:00:00
Speaker
Worst introduction ever. Check it. I am Brutalia Jobs, the magician. I love that electro swing.
Memorable Character Entrances in Media
00:00:26
Speaker
Hey, welcome back, Ben. Mark, I have a question for you to start this week. Who are some of your favorite characters in movies or books? And do you remember when they first came on on screen? Who had the best entrance?
00:00:38
Speaker
Well, I think some of the strongest entrances I can think of, Quint comes to mind from Jaws. He's our old shark hunter, is that right? Yeah. I mean, they're all sitting there talking and yammering about this Jaws, this shark that's attacking people. And you just hear the sound of nails on a chalkboard, literally, as he is trying to get everybody's attention. Everybody looks really uncomfortable with that chalkboard sound. And then he just gives you the facts, you know, he's just this guy. He's a no BS kind of character. And I just love the way he just cut through that noise. It tells you a lot about that character right there in, in just seconds. Spielberg told you who this guy was.
Significance of Character Introductions
00:01:21
Speaker
What about you, Ben? I think the character introduction that stands out to me because you knew who this guy was in two seconds flat was Darth Vader in the original Star Wars episode four.
00:01:32
Speaker
The Rebel Cruiser gets overhauled. There's a bit of a fight. And then through the bulkhead comes this black, tall figure, robed, caped. There is no question in your mind who this guy is from Go. This is the bad guy. And that's a far, far cry from what we heard at the top of this episode with Senior Chang, given quite possibly the worst introduction ever. Yeah, I want to be gentle though, because this is a thing where people are going to get more skilled with this. I gotta say, when you first proposed this topic to me, I was like, huh? Character introductions? That's like all of, you know, like 10 minutes right up front in the game and then we move on to do our thing. And you have persuaded me, sir.
00:02:15
Speaker
I am convinced now that this is actually a really important bit of the game. It is. You never get that second chance to make a first impression, Ben. That's right. But look, I think for the people that start with these kinds of introductions, they're like, I'm a first level elven wizard, and I've got blonde hair, and da da da da da, dada and a staff, and whatever it is they've got. There's nothing wrong with it from the perspective of, well, okay, everybody now knows who you are in that sense, but there's so much more opportunity for you to actually introduce your character. We're going to try to help you tune up that introduction so that you can kind of start your character the way your character deserves to be started.
00:02:51
Speaker
We want to know who your character is just as quickly when you start a game as we all knew who Darth Vader was. So Mark, take us on the tour. How do we introduce our characters smartly? What's the first thing we do?
Action Over Description in Introductions
00:03:02
Speaker
Show and don't tell often. We want their actions to reveal that character. It's always nice to be able to talk, but this is a role-playing game. We need a little bit of action. We need a let you to show it. So stick with what can be perceived and engage those senses wildly. Verbal components could certainly be a part of it, but don't skip out on the other aspects of the entire showing of your new character.
00:03:25
Speaker
So it's more effective if your character goes over and slaps the abusive bar patron, as opposed to telling us how he's got this long backstory where his mom was the barmaid at the bar and was constantly being mistreated by the patrons and so on. Yeah, nobody's really interested in that backstory right now. They don't they will be. They will be eventually. But you've got to build up to that. They've got to earn that backstory. We want to leave some things mysterious and we want to pay this out over a long period of time. So give us the start, but maybe not the whole thing. We want to start on relatively equal footing. It's really important as a GM that you create that equal footing for your players. That could be equal footing with wealth and gear. It could be levels and also like information that your character might know. You want to make sure that everybody's kind of starting on equal footing.
Fairness in Player Introductions
00:04:15
Speaker
So when you say equal footing, what you're saying is it's important that some players don't have resources the other players don't because what happens if that happens? Although inevitably they might lord it over you or lord it over the other players. You know you want to make sure that everybody's feeling like they're equally represented in this experience. just the same way that you'll try to give all the different characters screen time and moments to shine, just the same way that in structured time, combat, whatever, they're all gonna get a turn. You wanna make sure that when they are introduced, that they're all introduced on a relatively even footing. So that's a really great note. And also keep in mind, sometimes with these character introductions, you're also oftentimes introducing a campaign. You could be very well launching a campaign. And this is the first step is who's gonna be in this this journey together.
00:05:00
Speaker
That's a really interesting point. So just the same way as I'm a first level elephant wizard is probably a wasted opportunity. Do you know how many times I've heard the you all starting in and again, that seems like a wasted opportunity too. If we're going to introduce the campaign, we probably want to have the characters doing something interesting or located somewhere interesting. So how do you think through that when you're thinking about how to set up that character introduction for the first session? I always like to think about what I want those characters to be doing.
Unifying Characters Through Events
00:05:30
Speaker
Where are they located? how is this goingnna How is this going to work when you got five or six different players all with different unique agendas, but you want to bring them together with something that can unify them. So it could be a common enemy. It could be that they're all in a public gathering. Maybe if you want to move out of the tavern, it could be a local festival. If you're in a different kind of setting, you can imagine in a space station that all of a sudden an alien fleet shows up and now
00:05:57
Speaker
Everybody's got to respond to that. So there's a lot of different ways to create a common context for all the players to emerge and make their introductions. We're kind of making fun a little bit of the, you all meet at the tavern. It doesn't have to be a bad intro. It could very well be a very exciting intro. What's going on at that tavern? I've had a game start with a earthquake that hit a tavern and everybody got dumped into the under city below it. And we had to fight our way out of there. It was very exciting. And it was just, it was just us, the players who got dumped in. Everybody else managed to scramble out. That's how we started. it ah It can be a very exciting, fun place to start in a tavern. It's a very inventive twist on that classic starter.
00:06:36
Speaker
So let's imagine we're going to mix up that starter location a little bit and make it interesting, give the player something to do, but let's talk about the players for a moment. We've been talking about how to introduce the characters smartly, using their actions, making sure they're on relatively equal footing, and then not going too heavy into backstory. We want to leave some mystery there. Now talk about how you're gonna bring them together as an event. Yeah we want to think about how to bring these characters together and have a good time doing it. In the past I've used examples such as like an Olympic style event where the players just happen to be contestants in that Olympic and they just kind of get thrown together in that group. You know what I like about that is that then every character's unique strengths get to come out. Yeah, and you could do all sorts of stuff. I've seen ones where everybody there was a fire in the city and everybody just happened to be on that fire line. And they were the ones standing there passing buckets to each other. And that's how we started the game. Now, these are just introductions. Hey, allow me to describe my character. So like we want to make this exciting. We want this to be fun.
00:07:33
Speaker
Think about whether this event is starting a campaign or just introducing the characters. I'll give you kind of an example. This is a kind of classic one. We've all kind of been in games where there's been a bulletin board where they're trying to enlist adventures.
Dynamic Campaign Introductions
00:07:45
Speaker
That's a common video game method, too. Yeah, and it's fine. And that that could absolutely work. But we could turn that up a little bit. Think about if the players happen to be together. Maybe they started in a tavern or an inn, and a group of marauders came in and attacked that tavern or inn. And the players were the only ones who actually stood up and defended the tavern from these marauders. So when they finish up that little battle, you got a chance to introduce these characters, at least visually, in the course of rolling dice and the action. And afterwards, guess what? A bolting goes up on the board.
00:08:17
Speaker
they're looking for people to handle the marauders and you guess who everybody says hey there are four guys over here who stood up against him i'm thinking back to some examples from comic books to use to see this all over the place when there were superhero meetings there was some huge titanic emergency hitting the city and all the superheroes would show up in the same place they'd all be doing their own unique thing So there may be some fun things to learn from good old Stanley at some point too. Yeah. and One of the things you really want to do with these, these kind of intros is give those characters a moment to shine. And in that shining, you want them to be able to define themselves at least a small amount, you know, showcase what they can do. My character is super strong. So in this critical moment, I'm going to use that strength.
00:08:57
Speaker
Exactly. kind of Let them play to their strengths. Let them think about like how do they want that first meeting to showcase who they are as a character, maybe as a person. Let them kind of run with
Balancing Dice Rolls and Narrative
00:09:08
Speaker
it. You're giving them that opportunity and they should be jumping at it. but Mark, what if the dice don't cooperate? What if I'm going to go do that super strong thing and then I roll a one? well We can't let the dice completely ruin a good intro, can we? Now, I don't recommend just saying you succeed because ah the dice are there for a reason. They're here to tell a story, but this might be a situation where you want to stack the dice a little bit in their favor. If you're rolling in Dungeons and Dragons, you can say roll with advantage. If you're playing like Shadowrun, you can just say one of your D6s is is a your lowest dice, maybe is an automatic success. Stack the dice in their favor. I think there's a lot of good options here. I will say two.
00:09:50
Speaker
Everybody's style is going to be different. You're going to know what is best for your players. And so in some cases, it may be that you use the dice selectively on stuff that you want them to maybe succeed or fail out, but then you give them a freebie. Or it may be that you run the dice all the way through and we're going to find out if this is going to be a game of heroes or a game of pretty comedic characters. Yeah. And I strongly recommend people be rolling dice right away. You know, you want to make this to be exciting. You don't want to start your game out with the murder mystery where everybody's slugging around trying to solve some sort of crime. You want them to be excited. You want them to be kind of like engaged right away. Session one, you all go to law school. Off to the library. No, I don't think we want that game. So we are kind of joking about this, but there are some ways you can do this wrong or miss the opportunity for a great character introduction. One of those ways we've already talked about is bear description. That's the, I'm a first level elven wizard with blonde hair and I'm seven feet tall or something. Like those simple descriptions, you miss an opportunity to bring your character out. There's another kind though, that I hear sometimes that is controversial. I won't say it never works, but Mark
00:10:55
Speaker
What about the prison escape where all the characters are like bereft of their equipment? Yeah, I'm not really a big fan of the prison escape. It's such a trope. First of all, it's been done. I also don't think it starts people on equal pairing. I don't think they're on equal footing at all. um You could have some characters that maybe be they're more physical in nature and they might be just fine with that. And then you got other characters who maybe whatever their magic items are taken away, their spell books. They're more equipment dependent. Yeah, they could very well be, but you're not giving them equal footing. I think that the general principle there is try not to separate them too much from the virtues of their character. That point you made a moment ago about letting people shine in that introduction.
00:11:37
Speaker
That's really critical and I've seen a variation on the Prison Escape sequence instead of depriving them of all their gear.
Confined Settings for Dramatic Introductions
00:11:43
Speaker
There's the Amnesia sequence where nobody remembers who they are and we're going to make our characters actually as we play this first session. If your players are up for that, I won't say it can never work, but again, the more I'm isolated from my character, the less fun I'm having. I made that character for a reason, and I want to actually see him shine in that first session as he's introduced to the other characters in the party. Okay, so tell me about the Western railroad raid. I like Strangers on the Train as a trope. I think it's a fun one. There's reasons for it that I think work really well, narratively. First of all, it doesn't have to be a train. It could be ah a ship, a boat. The idea is it's a kind of a condensed space, a place where they can't move around too much. It's literally maybe the definition of railroading, but
00:12:26
Speaker
we're gonna go with it we want them to kind of be in a place where they're not gonna straight to far where they can see each other can see each other is gonna be important for this introduction okay so you're on these railroad cars and then what happens what an event happens maybe uh maybe there are marauders in some games in the past, I've had hill people come down and raid the train. I mean, all sorts of crazy stuff. You can just get imaginative. But the idea is something's going to cause the players, those characters they've created, to to be the heroes, essentially, that they're kind of destined to be. Let them kind of step up into that role. When everybody else is kind of moving away, they're going to be ones to step forward. I did a version of this with the FFG Star Wars game. The way this one started out was the players don't know each other.
00:13:11
Speaker
But they're all on board a Nebulant Bee frigate. This is that one you saw at the Inn of Empire Strikes Back. And immediately the first thing that happens in the game is ah start a Star Destroyer exits hyperspace and begins spitting out TIE fighters. Pretty quickly the frigate is overwhelmed, its escorts are gone, and there's no way for it to escape. It's going to be overhauled. And so this is very much reminiscent of the beginning of episode four, which is always fun for the players. But also it puts them in a tight spot. What are they going to do? all of them have to get off of this frigate and so to do that they've all got to converge on the hangar bay and they're all starting from different places but they're all going to come to the same place at the end and guess what it's not that there was any good reason why this particular group came together
00:13:57
Speaker
This just happens to be the group that got in that one shuttle. And these are going to be the characters that we're going to be following for a while. It's very exciting. I love that example. So these concepts we're talking about for the players, we could apply these to NPCs as well. And as a GM, you really should be. You don't have a lot of time to spend introducing some of these these NPCs. So you want to make the most of that time and just have something that's really punchy, gets their attention. It's like a great supporting character in a movie. They come in, they have big character moments if they're doing a good job, and then they do what they're there to do and then they exit the screen. Something that I do sometimes too is I'll even let NPCs be introduced off screen.
Memorable NPC Introductions
00:14:37
Speaker
So just like you would with a movie where the audience can leave the protagonists for a moment and go zoom in on the villains. If it's not something that's going to give away anything important, but I want to let the players know, here's what's happening in another part of the story.
00:14:50
Speaker
I'll actually do that. I'll have the game leave the character's perceptions. I'll narrate to the players here in this dark CD bar. This guy comes in and I describe the guy and I give this NPC some character and I have him do some things. Maybe some sinister, dastardly things. and this is where I might have a cliffhanger or this is where I might ratchet the tension up because now the players know, even if their characters don't, that a fearsome bounty hunter is on their tail. Maybe even it could be a character that segues into the campaign. Maybe three-finger Paul saw the action to happen there and he was the one who who told the town mayor
00:15:27
Speaker
Who now wants to hire the group? So don't be afraid to use these NPCs But give them that kind of fun punchy character intro that you would player maybe not as in-depth as a player But give it a little punch. All right mark I'm looking forward to this next bit because I wasn't really at first quite aware of what you meant by character intros So we're gonna actually workshop this how are we gonna proceed here?
Shadowrun Scenario Workshop
00:15:48
Speaker
I think what we should do is do a little demo and we're going to kind of go with ah maybe something for Shadowrun. We'll do that aforementioned strangers on a train kind of idea. We're only going to really focus on one character. We'll just pretend that there are more characters. We're going to involve each one of them in turn, but we're going to set this little story up with a Shadowrun kind of edge. How does this start, Mark? You're our GM. Lead us into this setting.
00:16:24
Speaker
The magnetic train speeds to the Pacific Northwest night, leaving Bellevue's neon glow behind as it races past, rented toward Taquilla. Suddenly, an explosion on the tracks ahead illuminates the darkness of the blinding orange flare. Passengers leap to their feet in terror, their shouts cutting through the hum of the train as the train hurtles toward the broken track. Without warning, the roof at the front of the train rips open with the deafening scream of metal letting in a rush of wind and rain. Four attackers in black ultralight armor with bio-cyber wings fly in, moving with military precision. Their target, a disguised traveler near the center of the car, surrounded by plainclothes mercenaries who each draw their weapons.
00:17:16
Speaker
Civilians surge toward the rear of the train in panic as it barrels toward the shattered track. Ben, you've won a initiative. What would you like to do? Okay, so my character is seated in the back third of the car, and as the rain and the wind come whipping in, the long-brimmed hat that he's wearing gets whipped off the top of his head, and he looks up in surprise, his almond-colored eyes narrowing as he sees new threats abound. This character is an elf. He is wearing all kinds of interesting tribal tattoos that interlace in strange ways across his temple, down the side of his face, down to his neck, and presumably across his chest and back. He is someone who betrays some evidence of having had an arcane background. As people flood past him, he rises to his feet, sheds his jacket that was
00:18:13
Speaker
concealing well-muscled, tanned and lean arms. He begins weaving his hands in a strange pattern. The outside air rushing around begins to take on strange patterns as well. The rain that has been lashing everyone in the car begins to turn cold and it focuses on the four winged figures. I would like to see if I can freeze their flying apparatus. maybe destabilize them and cause them to fall. Maybe outside the train of unlucky, but at least I'd like to deprive them of their ability to fly. How's that going to work? Oh, this will be good. I like this. um I'd like you to roll some dice to see if you can succeed on this. I'm going to allow you to take your lowest roll, Ben, and that's going to be an automatic success. All right, so at least I've got one. So at least you've got one. and Let's see how you do.
00:19:03
Speaker
Okay, Mark, so that was our opportunity to workshop this concept a little bit. How was that as a character introduction? Did you like it? What would you do differently? Here's what I loved. First of all, I loved your description, how you kind of described yourself, what you looked like, you know, you you really kind of stepped into that role. You didn't say, I'm a third level wizard. No, you We knew you're a wizard by your description. Like you didn't have to tell us, you showed us in your description. What's exciting is that the people listening, the other players, they're going to get excited hearing that and now they're excited for their turn and they they're going to want to one up you. That's right. It is a little bit competitive sometimes, isn't it?
00:19:43
Speaker
And when I listened to what you were excited about doing, you wanted to freeze their wings, there's so many things that would be fun to do with that as a GM. If you were really successful, I could have those wings freeze. If you roll the crit, I might be able to say, you know what? The whole train begins to slow down, giving you extra valuable rounds before that train were to fall off that that ledge. So there's all sorts of ways we can go with this, but the the main idea is you were able to describe your character in so many words. Everybody at the table, they know a little bit about you. Thanks for that feedback, Mark. Friends, that is everything we're going to tell you about character introductions today. I got to confess, as you've heard,
00:20:24
Speaker
I didn't think we'd get a full podcast out of this, but Mark has got a deep well of interesting insight to share with us about how to do great character introductions. I hope you will do some great character introductions. And if you do, give us an email at tabletoptunup at gmail dot.com. Let us know how it goes. And if you've got any thoughts to add, we'd love to hear them. Mark, I think it's time for this week's tune up segment. Yes, we do have a tune up for today. I have a ah message from a friend of mine who wanted something tuned up for his game.
Addressing Power Creep in Games
00:20:55
Speaker
He was asking us, how do I balance backgrounds when they are innately so unbalanced?
00:21:01
Speaker
Especially when the backgrounds of with some of the newer books, I think we call those splat books um This is power creep from newer books coming into an older system And I believe he's talking about fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons, which doesn't surprise me a lot of people are playing it Yeah, this happens. This is a common thing in other games. Is it not? It's absolutely true one of my informative experiences was playing a game called rifts and by Palladium Books. oh lord You and I played that once upon a time. Talk about Unbalance. Yeah. they they sort of What's funny is when you read those books, they actually try to make a virtue of this and you know more power to them if that works for you and your players, I guess. ah What we found though was that
00:21:45
Speaker
There was a lot of power creep as more and more books came out. And it seemed like every new book gave you more powerful things than the last book gave you. yeah So yeah, this is a kind of common problem across a lot of different games, actually. Yeah. In regards to fifth edition, which is this the edition he's referring to in this question, some of the newer books have races or classes that have actual feats and stuff like that given to them at level one where other ones do not. Wow. So Mark, what strategies do you use to manage power creep in newer books? Obviously you may have players who are creating characters they like the concepts and the things that were in earlier books or let's say less powerful books, if you will. And then there's going to be other players who are really into that power fantasy and they really want to make those new characters.
00:22:32
Speaker
Well, as we talked about earlier, we talked about characters should be starting at equal footing, and that includes on character generation. So if one character is going to be getting some sort of feat that the other ones don't have access to, then you should really think about that. Either talk to that player and say, you know, maybe we're not going to be doing that feat. Or maybe you're giving feats to everybody in the group, letting them start on equal footing. There's a couple options here, and I like that you're pointing out that it's always possible for you to empower weaker characters. That could happen in a lot of different ways. We talked about house rules last time and things that we do to enhance fun, so that's great. The other thing you can do is you can always say, we're not using certain books. I think this or that book has a bunch of stuff in it that's a little overpowered for the game I want to run.
00:23:18
Speaker
yeah And you could also say that I haven't read that book yet. I don't think I could really comment on it at the moment, so let's just not use that book. That's fair to say too. There's also something to to discuss about like how you know you could even roll stats for your character in the beginning, and they could get wildly out out of balance there as well. So think about rolling all together so everybody he can see what people are rolling. Sometimes you end up having somebody arrive to the table and you're like, ah How did you world behind every single stat? I think we've all known the guy that came to the table with a fully fleshed out character that was mysteriously powerful. As important as a good session zero is a good shared character creation session if you can start that way. I don't know that you have to do everything together, but it is really helpful to have all of the randomized elements of your rolling dice do that together as a group.
00:24:05
Speaker
Don't be afraid to use things like point buy if the players can't really get past some of that. Point buy solves a lot of that problem of parody. Does it make for some characters that might be a little less interesting, at least as far as people's visions? Possibly. But the benefit of having parody might outweigh that. That's a discussion you have to have with your group. Well, Mark, that's really great insight into how to manage power creep and splat books. And I think we've wrapped up this episode, Ben. We have a lot more topics to discuss in the weeks ahead, and I hope you all keep joining us. If you have questions or comments, please reach out to us on our Gmail account. Ben, what is that? That's tabletoptuneupatgmail.com. And just as we did in this segment, we'd love to hear
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:24:46
Speaker
from you. Anything a GM does, it could be world building, it could be player management, it could be anything to do with how you're running the game.
00:24:54
Speaker
An alternative method to reach us to right now is we are on YouTube. So if you have a question, you could always leave a comment on YouTube, and we'd be happy to take your suggestion from there as well. So um we hope to we hope to read the comment section. Be nice. Did you just say be nice to the internet? you know You can only ask. You can ask. Well, friends, that's it. And we'll see you next time on Tabletop Tune Up. And until then, keep those dice rolling.
00:25:22
Speaker
See how it's done
00:26:39
Speaker
Tuna, Tuna Tuna, level up your fun
00:27:12
Speaker
Your quest has now begun Tuna, we'll show you how it's done