D&D 5: Personality Characteristics

D&D 5 introduces a system of personality characteristics, of which you start with five:

2 Personality Traits
1 Ideal
1 Bond
1 Flaw

Before we get into talking about them, let's discuss them. Traits are quirks or unique Trivial Pursuit facts about your character. Ideals are core beliefs, while flaws are shortcomings in your personality. Bonds link you to the world in some way. I'm not seeing the system as optional, so it is needed to play and has mechanical considerations.

What do you do with these? Well, during roleplaying, if you act true to your personality, you get a one-use Inspiration point (non stacking, only one at a time) you can use to get "advantage" to any roll you choose. It's like a "reroll fate point" sort of thing, a reward for staying true to your character's personality.

My group found this system heavy and a bit distracting in the Starter Set. If felt like it focused on the character a bit much, and put a "does my trait apply?" layer between our characters and the story. I am not sold on the system because I really don't need it - this is what good roleplayers do (and more), and we don't need it so spelled out for us.

I suppose it would be helpful to teach new players how to play Game of Thrones style characters, okay, but my group found it limiting. There is a lot of mental characteristics to consider, and it felt like creating an extra statistic for something players naturally do, and puts what feels like an extra rules system between a player and their character.

Seriously, if a player just wants to play "drunken dwarf" they don't need this system, just let them play and let them have fun without having to check five mental characteristics in every roleplaying situation.

Yes, a character's mental state should probably affect how they relate to the story, but is such a codified and structured system needed for that? It feels like it takes the focus away from the shared story with a series of per-character quirks. They aren't "character story" traits either, just how you react to events. It reminds me of older roleplaying games that put mental characteristics as actual ability scores, with scores such as Bravery or Determination forcing the player to make rolls for what should be player-determined roleplaying traits.

I suppose they are taking the question of "how do you reward good roleplaying" out of the game with this system. Certain players, just by the nature of their personality type, can get all sorts of bonuses from a receptive dungeon master by acting in character, having fun, telling jokes, and being the life of the party. More passive players don't get these rewards because they hold back. With this system, everyone gets rewarded for "good roleplaying" equally with a single Inspiration point. Once you have roleplayed "good" you cannot earn extra roleplaying bonuses until you have spent that point.

Okay, I have problems with this. I want everyone to ham it up, have fun, try and outdo each other, and act crazy at my table. I shall reward them time and time again if they make us laugh and everyone gets a kick out of a player's antics. I want the passive players to step up and act just as silly as the outgoing ones. I shall reward your in-character-ness, silliness, stupidity, bad jokes, or heroic feats of derring-do as much as I want and as many times as my players keep the party going.

It's called having fun.

We really don't need a system that tells us how to roleplay or reward us for doing it "right". I don't want a system that limits rewards and possibly keeps my outgoing players from trying something else silly once they have earned their Inspiration point. As the dungeon master, I am the one who knocks, and I am the one who says, "You get advantage on that roll" because a player did something cool, acted within character, or made us all laugh. I know, you want a system in place that gives players guidelines for rewards, but I don't feel it is really needed, and it is a throwback to the old systems that told you how to roleplay your character.

Besides, I award good roleplaying with extra experience points, not Inspiration points. If a player did something the hard way, played something true to character which made it harder on them, or otherwise played things "true to character" that is worth an experience point award, not a temporary die roll bennie. You took the hard road, so that is worth real bonus XP.

I can't see us using this system much, and I am replacing it with the tried-and-true "I give advantage or disadvantage" bonus system that I decide at the table during play. Players can write all this stuff down, sure if it helps them, but I find the "fate point" style Inspiration point thing limiting, and a bit silly since it does not reward the action directly - it only gives you a freebie to be used later. Okay, so your drunken dwarf drank a lot at the inn and you got an Inspiration point which you use...the next day when you are smashing an orc's face? And you have no reason to play in character further because you have your point stored and you're waiting to use it?

Hmm. If it were me, I'd reward the roleplaying with a small xp reward and skip the Inspiration mechanic. That way, there is no limit to the bonuses I can award you, and you can keep making us laugh with your drunken dwarf antics all the way to the dungeon. If you manage to smack that orc in his face with your ale-filled tankard, I may just award you advantage on that roll.

The inspiration? It comes from everybody at the table, and we really don't need points to track it.

D&D 5 vs. OSR Games

There is a harshness to OSR (old school revolution) games such as Basic Fantasy and Labyrinth Lord that appeals to me. I am a fighter, beside me stands a cleric, behind us is a magic user, and around here somewhere our thief lurks in the shadows.

We enter a room with four goblins, and it's on.

Yes, math and numbers matter, but I am the same as every other level 2 fighter, but with only slight differences in ability scores and hit points. My gear is probably the same, a shield, a long-sword, and plate armor. Magic gear? Gravy.

I don't have a character build, the 'story arc' does not matter, there is no way to 'interrupt' game rules, and my personality traits also mean nothing. This is a game of Monopoly, where the dice are cruel and my strategy of mitigating risk versus reward is the "play" of the game.

It's easy in game design to Homer Simpson in "wouldn't it be cool" rules and systems, spells and feats, powers and character classes until you have a game that isn't fun for anyone. The true spirit of the OSR for me embodies the opposite, the harsh but basic side of the hobby, where my character is a playing piece, and that playing piece loses when it dies. You laugh at your stupid luck, chalk it up to the danger of the game, and roll up a new PC if your group gets back to town alive.

In OSR games, it is probably best if you use a colored 'bowling pin' pawn for yourself than a detailed miniature, because you're not really supposed to be that attached to your character in the first place. Lose five PCs in a module? It's fine, really, it was just a dangerous place. Laugh, have fun, and chalk it up to dying multiple times in a game like Counterstrike. It's not a big deal.

If you go back to AD&D, you only got XP for gold pieces earned. The game did not care where you got them from either, there were no story awards, thieves could earn them in town by stealing from anyone, and splitting the loot at the end of the game meant splitting the XP as well. In short, your sole motivation was pretty clear.

Monster XP and "Challenge Rating" did not determine experience points earned. Fighting a strong ogre expended critical resources, and it was better to have the thief sneak in there and grab the bag of loot. XP for monsters feels like it was a "fairness rule" adopted from video gaming.

Avoiding a fight and getting the loot and XP? Priceless. And very old-school.

Now, story games, such as D&D 5. While D&D 5 wears the clothes of the OSR, there is a heavy emphasis on story here that makes this a different game. My character has a special "background" that gives skills and other mechanical benefits. My character has "characteristics" in four mental categories that determine how I should roleplay. Uh-oh, my good-natured aunt can't know that I am a thief and steal to make a living. My fighter is in love with the princess. I have a blind hatred for my enemies. I take what I want. I am a sage and feel I should protect my students.

None of that matters to my OSR "red fighter pawn" guy. While your D&D 5 fighter is thinking about how that expensive necklace will impress the princess, my OSR guy is sitting there staring at 500 GP and 500 XP for walking away with it. That's enough for level 3, and me staying alive down here a little longer. It is risk vs. reward in its purest sense, and it is also the attraction of true OSR games.

Oh, and the Pathfinder fighter is smiling at the money too to contribute to his +2 sword fund, but wondering if the Challenge Rating of the fight would make it worth his time to fight the ogre or not.

But see how a story game requires more 'death protection' for characters than an OSR game? See how your base motivations have changed? This is important stuff, like changing the goals and motivations for on-board Monopoly play. You are growing more attached to your playing piece, which is okay, but it changes the focus of the game from "game playing" to a "story sim." It should be harder for your playing piece to die in a story based game because the death of a major hero would invalidate the story arc. You get the 'action movie effect' in story driven games because you need to keep characters alive to further the narrative of the module.

This happened back in AD&D 2nd Edition, where a lot of modules inspired by the NYT bestseller fiction series felt like they were railroading you, and a lot of them did. It is why we may be seeing a return to those here in D&D 5 when I see criticisms of modules railroading you along a designer's preset story arc. In 1st Edition AD&D? Most of those modules were sandboxes, monster X with treasure Y, and you figure out how to separate them. They were simple, yes, but there was an old-school charm to those, and they also supported the simple XP for GP motivation built into the game.

With D&D 5, a lot of modules feel like they are making the AD&D 2nd Edition mistakes. Yes, story is important and the focus of the game, but it's not the module writer's story that should matter. The module's narrative should support the characters' stories. With D&D 5's generic and random character motivations, it's hard for a general purpose module to fill specific character motivations, so a lot of dungeon master interference is needed to create opportunities for those situations to mean things to specific character motivations.

I feel this is why our experience with the Starter Set fell flat, nobody realized that this on-the-fly DM story to character interpretation and 'interface layer' was needed, so the story and roleplaying parts fell flat for us. The motivations for each character never really came into play, and they were ignored for the action parts. Coming from D&D 3 and D&D 4, we were expecting to be blown away by the mechanics, but we weren't - since that isn't where the focus is now. I'm feeling for D&D 5 modules to be great adventures, they may need pre-gens with a set of story-friendly character motivations to use with them, and these motivations will have an impact during the module's story.

Story is much more important with this game. This needs to be highlighted in the rules and in the modules they publish. This is probably one of the disadvantages of having the DMG come out so late, it is hard to know how they want you to run this game for maximum enjoyment, so there is a lot of guesswork and going by previous editions. A lot of these assumptions are wrong.

None of this should be taken as one game is better than another, but it is a great study of the hidden motivations built into the games we play, and realizing that will help you find the game that matches your expectations of what fantasy gaming should be.

Expansions: The Car Wars Story

I am always wary of expansions, especially for role playing games. Too often than not, at least in my group's experience, an expansion for a role playing game has completely changed what made the original game special and cool. New rules will be introduced, new equipment, new magic items, monsters, starships, worlds - all of this stuff changes the game world when introduced after you get going. Let me cite a one example, the legendary game Car Wars:

Car Wars: We started playing this game a long time ago when it was just a pocket box. All that existed in this world were poorly armored cars, with nothing larger than a van being able to navigate the roads of a distopic USA, a Mad Max like future of no gas, limited energy, and brutal gangs that ruled the roads. Couriers had to make due wit hshoving cargo in station wagons, and you had to keep some room and weight in your vehicle for salvaged tires, ammo, and the car parts you looted from your 'kills.' There was really no weapon more powerful than a high-tech laser, and even the one-shot heavy rocket was a deal breaker. Cool stuff, and it made you think.

Along comes the expansions, and all of a sudden, 18-wheelers took the road, capable of carrying 20 tons of cargo, a house, and several of the cars in the garage all at ones. These behemoths had armor as thick as tanks, and could mount an arsenal of high-tech weaponry. Helicopters took to the air, and even giant cargo choppers could haul cargo to the far-flung fortress towns without navigating the hostile highways. Autoduel arenas made the sport of dueling popular, and what was once necessary road survival became commercialized and commonplace - even celebrated.

The original idea was lost, and the game became less fun - for us, at least. there were plenty of hobby-shop groups running commercial duels for prizes and fame, and granted, that is an easier setup for a hobby shop to run and sell games with. For us, our original idea was survival in a hostile world, where fast cars ruled the roads, and motorcycle gangs stalked the dangerous zones. If a VIP needed to get to the next fortress town, they needed to hire a fast car - with an expert driver. No helicopter could fly them there, and they couldn't hop in a land behemoth armored bus to take them there either. Later on, blimps, boats, and even tanks took to the battlefield, the shark had been jumped, and the game just became a wreck. The focus of the original game was on the cars, and that's where we liked it.

Later expansions almost entirely were devoted to autodueling sports, or new vehicle types. We can't complain, since George and I did one of the original submissions for aircraft rules back in the day, and still have the original rejection letter from Steve Jackson himself. But for us, there was a feeling that something was lost, that the game was moving away from what we liked about it, and we grew apart from the world and the game. The game was changed by the direction of the expansions, and the world was changed.

It is an important thing to think about when you introduce an expansion to the game, and I can relate some of this with out current Arkham Horror play through (see an earlier post). More on the effect of expansions on that game in a later post, but for now, think about the above experience we had, and how your game design could better prepare players for what you may have in mind in the future. How would you handle an expansion to your game? How would you design it to not shock players with new material? Would you design your original world any differently? Think, prepare, and then expand - but try to keep what players love about your creation intact.

It's Not a Game If You Can't Lose

One of my favorite answers to the question, "What is a game?" is "An activity you can either win or lose." The key definition here is the ability to lose. Under this definition, Farmville is not a game, nor are most PVE-MMOs. In those games, you may win or lose at individual actions, but there is a steady progression upwards, there is no losing - only if you quit. PVP-MMOs allow wins and losses, but in the general scheme of most of these, no ground is lost, and the same battlegrounds will be there for everyone tomorrow. In a large sense, PVP-MMOs are not games, they are activities. In a PVP game where wins and losses mattered, and the game's virtual battlefront was shaped by the individual results of thousands of battles, you would have a better case to say that is a game (i.e. Eve-Online).

An activity is something like knitting, coloring, or doing a crossword - there is no chance of losing, and you are just passing the time.You may or may not get something after you are done, such as a pair of socks, or a high-level virtual farm; but there are always more levels to get, or a new pair of socks to knit. The value of the socks is probably higher than a virtual good, but nowadays, you never know what people will pay for the time other people spend.

With the "games needs loss" theory applied to most pen-and-paper games, you can say most RPGs are truly games, with a couple notable exceptions. It all depends on the definition of "loss" in these games. In most, loss equals the death of your character, and thus the loss of the time invested in that character. Some RPGs discourage player death (the original Marvel Super Heroes), or even make it very hard to die in (D&D4), so these move more towards the "activity" than the "game" deifinition. Of course, a lot depends on how the referee runs things, even a super deadly RPG can be run "soft" and be considered an "activity" like a Farmville.

If we define loss softer, and rule it a reset or setback, you could still fall within the game definition. You are still losing something, be it time, in-game resources, or some other variable. The lowest common denominator is that you lose time, and thus can't keep up well with others, or have to replay a section to get back to where you were. This is a valid loss, and fits the "game" definition. Now, the magnitude of this loss matters too, if it is just a one-minute setback, you could argue the loss is so small that the "game" definition is more like an "activity" and be correct in your analysis.

Is this definition important? I feel it is, for something to be considered a game, you need to be able to lose. Otherwise, there is no risk or outcome - good or bad. The line needs to be drawn clearly, as many so-called game companies are merely pushing virtual activities, and the line starts to blur when these theories are applied to pen-and-paper games. Yes, you can consider pen-and-paper RPGs activities, but there is always that chance you lose your character, and the weeks or months put into that creation are lost - thus, you are playing a game.

Character Design as Choices

George and I had a great talk about character design opening up a series of choices during play. In a way, character design lays out the choices the player will make later in the game. Is my character strong? Do I envision my character doing a lot of strong things? Does my character know magic, and if so, what type? Design guides later choice.

Now let's look at less-optimal character design. These are choices you make during development that have no effect on the game later. A good example is buying the Craft (baskets) skill in a sci-fi game where basket weaving plays no part in the game later. Bad choices can be player afflicted, or they can come from the rules by design. Consider a derived character statistic that plays little or no role in the game, maybe it is a saving throw versus a particular class of magic item (rods), or a character statistic that is calculated but has an esoteric or specific use (the original Top Secret had Evasion and Deception statistics that were never described how they were used).

Another thing to watch out for is pigeon-holing a character in design, which would be like making a technician in the Original d20 Star Wars rules. Of course, your character was useful, but many players did not like being the character who was forced to stay behind and fix the starship while everybody else went out to explore the alien world. It's an extreme example, but it highlights a choice made in character design that puts your character in a disadvantageous position when it comes to play-time. This is a tricky subject, since you need to have a feel for the game's theme, how good the referee is at including fringe builds, and what the typical adventure is for the group.

In most pen-and-paper games, you can never go wrong with a combat-oriented class, but that is often the lowest common denominator in RPGs. If you think of more cerebral role-playing, like old-school Star Trek or even horror-based Call of Cthulhu, you can build characters out of the combat-trap. In the end it comes down to player choice and what's easiest for the group to support. If combat is the challenge, you will get more combat-geared characters. If the game and the group feel other non-combat play is valid, you will see build and adventure support for less traditional builds. When you think of 'choice' with character builds, you often have to consider the environment those choices are made in.

A key tactic to preventing pigeon-holing and meaningless choice is to tightly link character design to the world's theme. If you are playing intergalactic space pirates, focus the character designs on roles that would be active participants in the game world. Of course, space pirates have mechanics and cooks, but those classes are not central to the 'space pirate' theme you want for your game. You want classes that are out there, piloting ships, leading boarding actions, stealing cargo, and being a space rogue in the game world. Active roles beat passive roles - especially when playing with a group.

An interesting contrast are games like Pathfinder and D&D, where the referee needs to allow players to create 'adventurers' from any class printed in the books. Many times this turns out to be a challenge, as the referee is trying to figure out what a forest druid, inner-city thief, and paladin of the sanctuary are doing together. The theme of D&D type worlds is dungeons and treasure seeking, so many times these games assume a broad 'adventurer class' exists in the game world, which I have always felt is a little artificial and forced. I prefer my adventurers to be forced into being a hero, it inherently is more heroic and appealing, at least to me.

Think about motivations for creating characters, how things fit together, and the theme of your world. As an exercise, try designing a group of D&D characters who belong together, united by a single theme or purpose. Design should drive choice, and also focus on the fun.

PCs as Actors or Stand-Byes

Some roleplaying games have something for players to do right off the bat, like Basic D&D. Here is a dungeon entrance, now go. The game assumes you are actors, in that the PCs are the ones taking action, causing trouble, and getting out there and doing something. In the case of the dungeon, there's not much choice, you either go down the hall deeper in, or bug out back to town.

Some roleplaying games start the PCs off as stand-byes, where the PCs wait for something to happen. A lot of storytelling games are like this, as are some generic systems. If you create characters and the players are sitting around wondering 'what's next?' you are probably playing a game where players are stand-byes (unless the referee is horribly unprepared). In these games, the referee needs to provide more motivation to the players, or the players need to be incredible self-starters.

A good game to examine is Shadowrun, where players can create a wide variety of character types. If you stick to the premise, where you are all a group hired by a patron to complete a mission - the game is focused, and the PCs are actors. If no one wants to take the mission, or the referee lets the players find their own trouble, the GM needs to provide direction, and the PCs are stand-byes. If the PCs take an active role and motivate themselves, they are actors again.

Different games provide different reasons to play, and some are easier to motivate players than others. In an open Sci-Fi game, such as Traveller, there can be millions of motivations and missions across the galaxy. Putting a group of players that don't self-start well into a game like this will make them stand-byes, and the referee will need to work hard to get them interested and motivated.

A variant of this actor or stand-bye theory comes from fiction, and a third role is added, the ally. Players as allies are doing missions for a group with motivations, such as the Rebels in Star Wars, soldiers in a war-themed RPG, and secret agents working for an spy agency. The motivation is the motivation of the group they work for, and motivating the group is easier (provided the players want to play along).

Understand what motivates your players, and pick games better suited to your group's ability to self-start, get motivated, and become involved with the world.