As anyone who reads the blog regularly knows I’m planning a new campaign for Tuesday nights. Today’s topic is character development woes. To play ARPS as written (and well, I’m writing it, so I should), a player is intended to spend time working on a Background and Profile (B&P; the latter detailing the character’s personality elements) before attempting to translate the character into mechanical terms. ARPS goes so far as to provide 10 DP (Development Points) as a bonus to the player as a reward.

Our game has three players. Their initial character concepts included an Elvish druid, a human knight, and a human something vaguely conceptualized as “something like Robin Hood” (and even getting that out of him was a bit like pulling teeth). The third character was intended to fulfill the thief/rogue role to balance out against the cleric/mage and the primary fighter. Since the initial concepts were submitted and approved, I’ve received one complete B&P (our wood-elf druid of the Rowan Clan), one that I know enough about that I’m simply waiting for the write-up with all the details (the second son of an Earl whose title and lands were divested by the Crown now making a living as a knight-errant), and one B&P from our Robin Hood type.

Unfortunately, our Robin Hood profile was lacking. The background ended up vague and the profile was essentially missing other than knowing the character is scruffy-looking and right-handed. This brings me to the primary topic of today’s entry.

The Man With No Personality

When faced with a similar problem, how does a GM approach the problem? There are two main issues on the table. First, the GM needs to address the problem with the player. Second, the GM needs to compensate for the lack of information when planning his campaign.

Addressing the Problem With the Player

The first step is to simply address the problem directly with the player–talk to him. Make sure he knows what the goals for the campaign are and why we’re going through the process. Make sure he knows that he’s letting his GM and his fellow players down. And, most importantly, make sure the player is on-board with the character concept. There’s a good chance that his lack of detail or interest comes from a desire to play a different type of character.

Furthermore, if the character is suffering from a lack of detail, ask the player if there’s more information he needs about the world/setting and if he has any questions. Sometimes, detail suffers for lack of enough information to build upon.

If it turns out that the player’s on board with the ideas and concepts and is simply not delivering, it might be a good idea to lay down the law a little. In the case of ARPS, this may mean allowing the character development process to proceed anyway and hope that the technical details flesh out the rest of the character shortcomings. In this case, I’d simply withhold the bonus DP since the player didn’t do the work to gain the reward. (Especially since I’ve made it clear in my case that I wouldn’t hand the bonus out if the B&P wasn’t done this time.)

In the end, however, make sure that you aid your player toward something that not only makes him happy, but also makes you happy as a GM (read: fits well into the campaign you’re planning/designing) and fits in well with the rest of the characters in the party.

Addressing the Problem in Campaign Planning

The other problem with a lack of character detail is planning your campaign. Unfinished characters mean you don’t have the information to plan out a character-centric plot line and it delays your campaign start date. This, in turn means that your players may be expecting a game on your scheduled game day, but you may not be ready to deliver one.

An enterprising GM might take this as an opportunity to try out something different, potentially running a one-shot off-the-cuff or using a published adventure. This keeps your players engaged.

The other option is to simply delay your game and make it clear that since you haven’t received final character details you need more time to plan things. Sadly, for most of us who want to put in the appropriate effort as a GM, this is the likely scenario.

Of course, if you’re planning a sandbox campaign, are planning on using more published adventures, or are simply planning a campaign that doesn’t focus on character as much, you may be able to proceed with less detail. Only you, as GM, can gauge your players and your original plans and figure out what’s right for your group.

Sometime in the last few days, I had mused on Twitter that I had forgotten how much work planning a campaign was and that I’d gone “all player.” The title of the article was something that @thefreerpgblog commented to me at the time and it just seemed so apropos that I’m stealing it.

Recently, we decided to dedicate some of our ARPS development time on Tuesday nights to a second game so we could have a consistent gaming experience (to my weekend gamers: I love you guys, but you frustrate me). I volunteered to GM the game. I had a good experience recently with a “snow day” one-shot and with all my recent writing inspiration, I felt I was ready to jump back into the fray. (Some background: I’ve been gaming for 27 years or so and I spent most of that time as DM, GM, Storyteller, or whatever it was called in whatever game we were playing at the time. In the last few years, my campaign pacing and inspiration was starting to come apart at the seams so I decided to take a sabbatical from GMing.)

This time out we decided we wanted to do some more character-centric gaming rather than focus on the world-spanning, epic plots that have been the staples of our other games. These types of games not only require the players to put more effort into their character backgrounds, but also for the GM to do the same, as well. I had forgotten how much work that truly is.

Like many of you, I spent most of my gaming career GMing on the fly having learned that excessive planning fails the second the players and the plan meet. This time out, however, for gamecraft reasons on the design and writing side, I have been reading a number of books and blogs on the art of GMing and the art of adventure planning (Robins Laws, the Kobold Guides to Game Design, Chatty DM’s excellent exposition on Robin’s Laws, Open Game Table #1, etc.). This means I wanted to it “right.”

At this point, I am spending my time on the dramatis personae for the campaign and the small town that will serve as the (initial) base of operation for the PCs. Once I have all the character backgrounds, I will work with the players to weave them into the backdrop for the campaign. Then I can spend the time working on the meta-plot for the series (campaign) and break down the plot into episodes (sessions) and focus on the specific encounters and pacing for each adventure and the overall campaign.

For any of you who have never run a game, let me tell you: this is a lot of work. Learn to appreciate your GM. For any GMs out there: I’m not sure how we fit this into our (adult) lives, but we need to not only care, but have the “GMing bug” or we would never succeed. To this, I salute you all.

Sidebar: For whatever this is worth, blogging is a new thing to me. Bear with me as I figure out how to put together coherent, thematic posts. I hope this one gets me closer; if anything, this process could turn into a series of its own. Let me know what you think either way.

Over at A Better RPG, there’s a great article 10 Tips for Amateur RPG Writers. I’m luckily already doing all of this, but I wanted to share the wisdom.

In my case, I’m using Subversion to version all of my documents, but anything you can do on that front is your friend. I’ve been saved many times by being able to look at older versions of my docs.