Exchange of Realities

In any setting where there are battles to be fought and adventures to be undertaken (and in how many settings is this not the case?), there will be those who once dared. The ones who went out and came back, whether they’ve decided never to go out again or are just waiting for the next time when they are needed. For the story creator, they can be mentors, antagonists, supporters, naysayers, almost anything—even, perhaps, protagonists in their own right. They are an archetype, but with enough internal variation that it may as well comprise a civilization of its own.

There’s no one true way to look at them. Sure, a number of novels fall back on the battle-hardened veteran with the scars and the gruff exterior covering up a heart of gold, who tell the little dunderheads how stupid setting out to be a hero is and teach them to survive first and engage in heroics later, and who suffer from old wounds that twinge when it’s too hot, too cold, undergoing rapid temperature changes, or been too long since the wound itself was mentioned. But that’s not by any stretch of the imagination all of them.

There are the ones who saw battle—but not enough. Or those who saw it pass them by and wished they had been its path. There are those who met battle halfway and changed in the process, and those who thank their gods and their luck each night that “there” was always someplace else. Those who left others on the field, or who were themselves left on the field. For every one who had the luck to return untouched, there is another who actually died out there but has somehow managed to lose her grip little by little rather than all at once, and hundreds in places in between. There are those most wounded by their enemies, but there are also those most wounded by their allies. Those who in good conscience couldn’t continue, and those who in good conscience couldn’t stop (possibly until they were forcibly removed by their superiors.) Some who found purpose when they had come back home, and others who lost theirs on their return.

Best of all, unlike so many of the archetypes that pop up in speculative fiction novels, this is one from which you’ve probably actually met people. We all know people who once dared. Some might even be willing to tell us what it was like. And while we cannot necessarily find people who have been in the exact situations we want to write about, it’s the emotions that count; the rest is extrapolation.

Don’t sell these people short. Everyone has a story, and theirs may well be more interesting than you can imagine.

To my Stateside readers: enjoy your Veteran’s Day.

I spent the last couple of days talking about differentiating between characters’ reactions to other characters, both in making different people’s reactions to the same character different and in finding ways for one character to react differently to different people. But most of those assume that you’re dealing with a situation in which a character can react as she feels, and that isn’t always the case. What might keep a character from reacting the way she ordinarily would?

Cultural mores are a big one. Sure, it might not be something you can always expect to affect player characters (often, they don’t know or they don’t care), but they’re still a good source of standardized reaction. In most fiction, this takes the form of cultures that expect visible emotion to be kept to a minimum, but why limit yourself to that? It might be that the situation calls for a certain definite and obvious emotion, or there’s a ritual way in which one is supposed to deal with another person of a certain sort. Set these sorts of situations loose, and watch the layers fall.

Dealing with people of different status. Going back to Buccaneer’s Guild’s comment day before yesterday, having someone of different status present can lead to wanting to stifle one’s first reaction for any of a number of reasons. If they’re higher status, the object of the game might be impressing them, and that doesn’t work too well if you’re reacting in a way of which they would not approve. Or they might, if they don’t like the way they’re being looked at, make life very difficult for whoever’s looking at them, directly or just by influencing the others present. And there’s always trying to inspire confidence in your ability to handle the situation: World going to pieces? We can handle it. A character might be trying to impress her equals by not looking all awestruck at the Powerful Person, or otherwise seeming to take something Big in stride. And then there are those people who insist on being distant with their inferiors so they will come across as unreachable, set apart, what have you. (Granted, it doesn’t always work…)

And of course, there are tactical uses for changing one’s apparent reaction. Hiding fear, feigning interest, squelching boredom—it’s all about keeping people from being able to use one’s real reaction, or possibly giving them a different reaction to try to exploit. It doesn’t even need to be limited to individual situations; a group that can at least feign a unified front looks a lot more formidable than one that interrupts its pronouncements as a couple of its members argue about their intent or bicker over semantics.

To further complicate scenes, consider how these restrictions on reactions are going to affect people’s internal reactions. One might resent having to project a different emotion than she actually feels. Characters seeing other characters’ socially acceptable or carefully chosen reactions might be favorably impressed… but on the other hand, might be frustrated because now they have to work with that. Just because the reaction isn’t visible doesn’t mean it’s not going to be relevant later, or important for you to know.

So when working with reactions, think about not just whether a character can, and whether a character would, but whether a character should. The result will be interesting, and there’s little that can’t be improved by making it more interesting.

Yesterday, I started talking about non-uniform reactions, or differentiating between different characters’ attitudes to the same person. But that doesn’t take into account internal variation—who says that one person’s going to have the same reaction to a whole bunch of different characters? Not I, not by a long shot.

I tend to take these on a case by case basis, since I’m usually trying to get into the reacting character’s head. It’s easy to start with the same sorts of basics as with differentiating multiple characters’ reactions: overall personality compatibility, shared history, that sort of thing. But once you’re through those, you’re going to want to get more closely into the character’s head, start figuring out who’s seen as different from whom and why.

One thing you might want to look at is qualities and priorities. Your reacting character probably values certain aspects of character and has little use for others, prioritizes some things and sees others as a waste of time. So sure, she’s showing disdain for both these characters here, but in one case it’s because she values loyalty and competence and he’s shown precious little of either, while she can neither fathom why nor respect the fact that the other one would choose love over duty in a heartbeat.

How do these different people interact with her plans? That’s likely to make a difference in and of itself. Often, a character will tend to have more positive feelings towards someone who can help her than one who can’t, and towards one who will help her as opposed to one who won’t. But then you have the times when that conflicts with the rest of her attitude: one character might be useful in the future, sure, but if she doesn’t like him to begin with that might only make it worse. As Buccaneer’s Guild pointed out indirectly yesterday, you’re also going to want to take comparative status into account: not just how the character reacts to the other characters, but whether her internal reaction matches her external reaction, whether it’s allowed to, and how she feels about that.

What about old debts and grudges; how do they play in? Sure, a character’s probably going to feel better towards someone who’s done something big for her…. unless, of course, they never let her forget about it, or won’t let her pay them back, or the like. How do her personality, her compatibility with the other’s personality, and/or good or ill done to each other in the past, affect her dealings with someone who should be a hereditary enemy or who did That One Thing that she feels she shouldn’t be able to forgive?

One important thing to remember is that there isn’t always an obvious link between one character’s feelings about another and the other character’s feelings about the first. Just because she loathes him doesn’t mean he has to hate her; just because she thinks of him as her favored apprentice and possible successor doesn’t mean he has to like her as a teacher. Not only do these imbalances make it more interesting, but they themselves can further affect the reacting character’s opinion of another character by interacting with her personality and the rest of the tangle-up. His unwillingness to mirror her hostility might soften her attitude, but it might also lead to further attempts to provoke him, or to something else entirely.

The end result, if you’re willing to do this for all the important character reactions, is a lot more depth and variety than you’d get from approaching everyone’s feelings towards other characters as being fundamentally the same. Removing the uniformity from the characters’ reactions to each other makes them more real and considerably more interesting. Give it a try!

This is another of those topics that branches from the idea that no two people are the same. Yes, this should be obvious, but it often gets lost in the rush when people are trying to juggle large casts of characters, and what results is oversimplified reactions. Perhaps an entire group worth of people are all reacting to one character the exact same way. Or everybody’s reactions to people seem to divide into “Like!” and “Hate!” This gets boring, and should be avoided if possible.

There are two approaches to non-uniform reactions—looking at the differences between the people reacting to one person, and the differences between the people being reacted to from the point of view of a single person reacting. I’m going to start with the differences between the people reacting: if you’ve got a single character (for this article, the focus character) standing there, and a bunch of people who’ve never shown up for more than cameos in the narrative whose reactions to her you’re going to have to figure out, where do you start?

Many differences go without saying. A person’s friends will generally have a different attitude towards her than her enemies will. People who are too different tend to have trouble getting along; so do people who are almost completely similar but with key differences in particularly important aspects of their personalities. Those who have things they value in common are likelier to get along… usually. Begin with generalities; sort these other characters out depending on how they relate to her, and assign them a general class of impression, something that can be summed up in one emotion word. Try to avoid just a loving/loathing dichotomy; look more for things like respect, envy, pride, disdain, you get the idea. This is a base reaction: how might each character view your focus character if they’ve only heard about her and never actually met?

Next, think about the general effects of whatever impact the focus character might have had on each reacting character’s history. You can still be vague here, but this makes your groups smaller, further differentiating them. Logically, this is where the time the two characters have interacted with or directly affected each other comes into play—wrongs or rights done, shared experiences, the like. But don’t forget indirect effects, where something the focus character did or was in turn did something that affected a situation involving one or more of the reacting characters.

Doing the above two steps is going to get you some pretty small groups. At this point, look at the people in the groups and try to find things that give them different versions of the same sort of reaction. Let’s say there was a grand courtly party, one of those things where everyone who is anyone is there, and your focus character is a relative newcomer trying to shoot to the top. You’ve got four people, all of whom considered her annoying even before the party, and who after that disgraceful mess involving the Earl of Chevar’s son and the punchbowl, now have no respect for her whatsoever. Here, you might decide that one had been dragooned into trying to teach her her way around the court, but the incident was in direct opposition to his helpful suggestions. Another just plain can’t take people who fly off the handle that easily seriously. A third deplores the waste of perfectly good punch, particularly since she hadn’t gotten a chance to have any of it and was about to when the incident took place. And the last didn’t mind any of those factors too much, but considers people who can’t insult with finesse to be below his notice. All the same general class of reaction, but all different flavors and thus likelier to react differently.

Tomorrow, I’ll look at it from trying to give one character multiple reactions.

During yesterday’s riff on dreams, I mentioned the idea of a character’s dreamscape—a semi-constant world created by the typical dream-patterns of a single character. It’s one part alternate world, one part character exercise, and plenty of fun in its own right.

The first thing to consider is the dreamscape terrain; what’s a world if there’s nothing to stand on? For some dreamers, the terrain is a reflection of their history; you might see landmarks from their youth or places they might want to visit, and the landscape itself might resemble one they’re used to. Others can be based on personality; a character with a generally standoffish personality and a lot of emotional control may have a downright wintry dreamscape, while one who grew up on stories may have something downright fanciful.

Then there’s the question of what populates it. Sure, you can have normal people and creatures, but why stop there? The limit is in what the dreamer can imagine—do bits and pieces of the dreamer’s personality run around wearing her shape? Are there large numbers of creatures that seem as much like scenery as anything, like faceless ghosts or flocks of butterflies with leaves for wings? Some dreamscapes have their own guardians. These might be people or mythical creatures; they might draw from people the dreamer admires or fears, from legends, from the dreamer’s ideal self, from combinations of the above.

In some dreamscapes, even the laws of physics might vary with the dreamer’s personality. Imagine one where there is no gravity, or gravity is variable depending on where you are. What about a place where people’s physical abilities don’t matter, and it’s mental flexibility and force of personality that help you in a fight, because that’s what the dreamer values? Does it take a longer or shorter time to get from point A to point B? Might people be replaced by their shadows? Does conversation come out as music? In a sufficiently trippy dreamworld, who knows what might be possible? For a lesser version, people with more rigid minds might have harder dreamscapes to shape, and the more compassionate may have more habitable dreamscapes.

I had occasion to play with instant dreamscape creation last week, when my players were trying to learn how to function in my take on the dreamworld. I needed someone to let them practice in the mind of in a quick montage, and the logical choice seemed to be my hyper deathdealer, Ruby.

Somehow, the training ends up being in her mind. It seemed like a good idea at the time, since she was known not to have any Dark Secrets, Confidential Information or particularly disturbing bits of history that might crop up in there. On the other hand, attempting to practice fighting when surrounded by small fluffy things with melting eyes and six-inch fangs and occasionally in the distance seeing an enormous flaming squid frolicking in a tranquil sea, not to mention the almost blindingly bright color scheme, the perpetual clouds of butterflies, and the near-diabetic sweetness of a lot of it, was a bit… jarring.

Says a certain amount about Ruby herself, doesn’t it? That’s half the fun of a dreamscape; along with being an excuse to describe wonders that wouldn’t occur in the waking world, you can also sneak a little character exposition into your design. Have you given it a shot?

(More for RPG Blog Carnival: Morality.)

Creating moral codes is in and of itself an interesting process. Most of the moral codes I’ve seen have been based on an existing one (often the creator’s own), with tweaks to accommodate the world. Some people seem to make their codes out of figuring out what’s going to appeal to their target audience, be they readers/TV watchers who are supposed to root for the character so designed or PCs from whom the creator wants a certain reaction. Others do it by trial and error, sticking the characters in situations first and creating the moral code from their attempts to explain why one thing happened but not another. (I’m fond of this method.) There are even some for whom it’s based on instincts or innate nature, either justifying it through morals or using the code to try to rise above it. And of course there are the ones who get it from game-mechanic behavior stats, be they Alignment or Virtues or whatever the local equivalent is.

But there’s one other way to go about it, and that’s looking at the moral code as being based around one or more important concepts. Sometimes these things are in and of themselves virtues to be emulated; the stereotypical healer-archetype’s code seems to be based around compassion, and I find many of my characters to be at the core about loyalty. Others are behaviors; self-sacrifice, for instance, or self-improvement. Still others’ concepts actually are pure concepts, like duty or justice. Yet others base themselves around the image of an individual, attempting emulation. And to confuse matters, there are the people whose codes are based entirely around their goals, or around the metaphors by which they see the world around them.

Regardless of what the concept is, most of the character’s moral decisions are likely to in some way tie back to it. In some cases, this is a direct and obvious relationship, like someone whose code is based on loyalty refusing to do something that would involve betraying a friend. Other times, it’s more indirect, like the same person making a particular point of trying to help a friend brainstorm solutions for her difficulties with her organization—that may not seem like loyalty until you consider that part of the point is helping make sure her friend doesn’t quit unless it’s necessary.

I’ve found two ways to utilize this concept of concept-based morality. One, of course, is to use it as the basis of a code, or at least as the basis when dealing with a situation you’re not sure how the character would handle. If given a situation, it can be straightforward to figure out which of the options—if any—most closely ties in with the concept behind the code.

The other is to better understand a character by attempting to take apart what she’s already done and try to find the concept behind it. The last time I tried this, it was by guess and check, assuming one concept and then seeing how well it fit for most of the really important actions. It’s also possible to do it by assigning possible concepts to all the actions one by one and then seeing where the matches are, though that can be a bit time-consuming. Sometimes there isn’t going to be just one, though often there’s one that takes precedence over another. But even just realizing the unifying concept is a possibility might make one more open to understanding how it works.

Check it out and think it through!

This one’s for RPG Blog Carnival, this month on the subject of morality in RPGs (and, it would seem, wherever else it’s relevant.)

A character’s moral code is, in my opinion, one of her more interesting aspects. It gives a good sense of what she will do in a situation, and at least as good a sense what she won’t; it provides lots of drama when strained; and not only are no two exactly alike, every difference between two or more is an event waiting to happen. It’s complex, made up of a number of factors that provide lots of room for variation. And best of all, almost everyone has one. Granted, a villain’s code may not be particularly “moral” as we would see it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there, nor that there aren’t things he would consider musts or mustn’ts.

The first factor, of course, is the behaviors that the moral code requires. “Good” characters’ moral codes often lean more towards things they will do, like protecting the environment or beating the tar out of people who pick on the helpless. That doesn’t, of course, mean that the baddies won’t, though their codes often stipulate behaviors that most people wouldn’t find ‘moral’, and it’s not unheard of for theirs to be a bit more flexible.

The second is the behaviors that it prohibits. This is the likeliest part of the moral code to show up, and certainly one of the largest potential sources of drama. Even villains often have traditional sorts of prohibitions, usually to demonstrate that they aren’t Caricature Evil and to make sure that they can still evoke some audience sympathy—or, just as often, because such and such a tenet is as much a matter of self-preservation as morals.

The third is the potential internal conflicts. Don’t pretend they’re not going to show up; moral codes where two prohibitions or a prohibition and a requirement are never, ever under any circumstances mutually exclusive are about as common as truly plain people in major Hollywood roles. More often, there spring up cases where two different tenets of the code just can’t be kept at the same time—a prime source of conflict, particularly since it doesn’t require a villain to be present or active (not that that keeps them from setting situations like that up, of course). At that point, either there are some priorities written into the code, or there is out and out moral indecision; either way, there is likely drama.

Another thing to note, though many people forget, is that in almost any moral code there is an “Us” and a “Them”: people to whom the code applies, and people to whom it doesn’t. In some people’s codes there are more, or at least there is an “Us”, a “Them”, and a “Those Things Over There”. This is one of the ways people try to stave off internal conflict in their codes; in fact, the difference between a hero and a villain may be not so much code as a difference in where their “Us”es end and their “Them”s begin. Sometimes, the “Them” is removed by behavior. Other times, they’re viewed as being not important enough to be worthy of protection under the code. In still others, they’re just different enough that the code doesn’t apply. Occasionally you even get a character under whose code it’s more dangerous to be an “Us” than a “Them”.

Complex, full of drama, and capable of differentiating characters who might otherwise be too similar, the moral code is a fascinating and often understated piece of characterization.

Remember yesterday’s exercise casting characters from one of your story/game projects into someone else’s work? You don’t have to stop there.

For the ambitious manager of casts, one fun extension to the casting exercise is bringing in the characters who were so cast and getting their opinions—on the characters at first impression, on the characters in general, as they actually watch the show/play the game/read the story/etc, or even on the costumes if they’re expected to actually wear them. If you’ve got multiples, you can get their opinions on that as well.

First off, this allows for more looking at kernels by examining what the characters consider their own (and each other’s) kernels to be. Odds are decent that the character is going to prioritize an aspect you didn’t, or be surprised by one you did, and that’s half the fun. How would they react if the character was a perfect fit but they wouldn’t be caught dead in the costume? What about if they wanted a role that someone else got? Is there someone who’s sick of being the rescue object all the time? If the casting contradicts the existing group dynamics (particularly if you’ve got people who can’t stand each other in a canonical couple), how do both those cast into the relationship and those outside of it react?

Second, it’s a chance to listen to voice, both singularly and in a group dynamic. There’s potential for individual complaints, people tossing a string of commentary back and forth, contrasting opinions—basically, it gives you not only the characters’ opinions, but a chance to watch the characters interact, pick on each other, form little social mini-alliances, even get a chance to see conversations and impressions between characters who wouldn’t actually meet each other otherwise.

And if you want to go really meta, or just play with the fourth wall and the roles a bit, there’s one further element that involving the characters themselves allows for: claiming one of them did the casting. You might do this at the end, when you realize that not everyone’s been slotted into a role; you might do it at the beginning, and do all the casting based on what that character would call for rather than your own opinion; maybe in the middle, when there’s one character you just can’t explain the casting of without it being a practical joke on the part of someone else who hasn’t gotten a role.

And last, exercises like this are just plain hilarious. Can’t you see one griping about the role he’s gotten, or another loudly agreeing with a line delivered by the character she was cast as? Maybe two of them colluding to rewrite the script? There’s a lot of chance to watch a side of the characters that might not show up in their actual stories.

Give it a try. You know you’re curious now.

Yesterday, I talked about the kernel of a character, those parts and attributes that make the character herself. A lot of people try to get across kernels by comparing characters to other fictional characters, either equating them and then noting changes, or picking aspects of those characters. (Sometimes, they even do it the other way around; a friend of mine sold me on a series by describing one character in terms of a couple of my creations.) But there’s another way to play with that, one that’s already recognized by comic artists everywhere: taking a small group (or more) of characters and assigning them into character roles from an existing story.

What does this have to do with character kernels? First, you have to understand the characters whom your characters are being cast as—essentially, attempting to intuit their kernels. What parts define this character?

Then you start comparing your characters to theirs, and figuring out which traits are relevant in casting—and, more interestingly, which aren’t. If you’re looking for a heavy-meta analysis instead of just a thought exercise, you can follow it up with self-examining on why one character was a perfect match for one of yours or another just wouldn’t work under any definition. (While anyone could tell you that it usually ends up being a combination of plot role, personality, skills, and occasionally relationships to the other characters, often one of the above features has more impact than the other. Finding out why is a key to understanding.)

Moreover, tracing the ones that aren’t dealbreakers tells you a lot about what you find important in defining a character. Would you find yourself in a situation where all the main roles in the story end up being filled by minor characters because your main characters’ approach to life better fits people who are vital to the plot but don’t really get screen time until near the end? Or when most of the main characters cast as main characters just fine, but because of plot context the role of the outspoken, outsized-sword-wielding hero-boy is best covered by that quiet NPC girl who relies on small, concealable (and concealed) weapons and almost never fights her way out of trouble? Are you the kind of person for whom the gender of a character trumps anything else, or do you tend to ignore it in favor of other considerations? In short, what’s important enough to be worth ignoring those traits, and why?

As an added bonus, doing this over a prolonged period of time might show you a few more of your own patterns. If a character tends to crop up regularly in a variety of role that you wouldn’t expect to fit her, what might be causing her to do that? Do you often find yourself consistently putting the same pairs of characters in shippable roles? Granted, it’s not always easy to get a large enough sample of stories, particularly with a huge cast to account for: sometimes, there just aren’t enough of the right kinds of roles to keep from breaking suspension of disbelief or just making the exercise impossible.

Best of all, this doesn’t have to just be a characterization exercise. When I first started doing this, it was as a fun little time-waster game, usually with my boyfriend but often with whoever else seemed interested. Webcomic artists often use it as a filler gimmick. And what’s not to like about an excuse to spend ages playing your favorite game or watching a show you really liked and call it necessary prep for a writing exercise?

Have fun!

What defines a character?

Trying to get a decent answer to that question is fraught with difficulties; if any two people can agree on it, it’s probably because they haven’t gone into enough detail yet. Sure, there are shorthands like Alignments or Natures or Instincts, but that’s not going to be enough for most characters to cohere. But most will fuzzy-agree on a number of traits that basically boil down to the minimum of information it would take to teach someone else how to act as that character convincingly. I call the information it requires the kernel of the character.

And needless to say, being able to figure out the kernel of a given character, or at least what the kernel should be, is vital to getting the character across to other people as it’s meant to be gotten across. How many writers have discovered that a character they meant to be creepy, annoying, or just plain evil has become a fan favorite, or that their intended-to-be-heroic main character is seen as a Mary Sue at best and downright sociopathic at worst? If you know the character’s kernel, you can figure out how best to represent it so the audience doesn’t get the wrong idea. Similarly, most gamers would do well to understand their characters’ kernels, whether they actually project them in character or not. How else is the GM supposed to know which sorts of plot hooks to use?

It’s also useful to be able to figure out what the kernels of other people’s characters are, particularly if you’re the kind of person who plays with other people’s worlds. When writing fanfiction, or when playing in game worlds with canonical characters, one of the biggest risks I’ve seen is too much clash between how the adapter portrays the character and what the audience thinks the character should be like. Some people expect it so much that they shy away even from situations where the original creator of a character (or someone who presumably knew the creator well enough to know what would have been acceptable) gave license and carte blanche for a successor’s interpretations.

Some people design characters kernel-outward. I don’t; mine never reveal themselves to me early enough. Instead, I hunt for kernels by tracing the characters backward from what I’ve seen of them, sometimes testing them through counterfactuals, sometimes just describing the character to someone else and seeing if they can get an image, sometimes asking my players what they think after seeing these characters in action. When I’m explaining a character’s kernel, I don’t just stop at age/sex/physical description/brief backstory. I start with age and sex (sometimes), but then I move into other things. Cultural context. Qualities they admire (I’ve noticed my own characters often have extreme senses of duty). Skills and abilities they have, or at least the ones they use, and how they use them (and when relevant, the ones they have but don’t use, and why not.) And voice—not just slang or timbre, but acidity level, sense of humor, approximate idealism/cynicism, and mental/emotional age (apparent and real, if they differ). Then I try to see how concisely I can explain it to someone else.

Many people come up with their own forms of shorthand. Some compare their characters directly to existing ones (“like [name], only….”), or to attributes of existing ones. Others use convenient game-mechanic shorthands—even when the system they’re playing isn’t the one it’s a mechanic in, or when they’re doing a story instead. And of course, there’s always going through TV Tropes and stringing together trope names like it’s going out of style.

How do you go about looking for kernels? (For those of you who didn’t see the message on Friday, comments are indeed back open, so do feel free to answer.)