Two Questions for Character Creation
I have written so far from the GM's point of view, but I'm also a player and I have been trying to improve my skills in that role as well. To that end, I'm refining my approach to character creation with each game and I've taken to asking myself two questions about any PC I expect to play for any length of time:
- What important thing is my character wrong about?
- What is my character seeking that they could never find, or would make them unhappy if they found?
I've found these questions very helpful for giving me characters that are immediately more complex, with built-in conflicts and the potential for growth. I wrote about this a little already on Bluesky and will flesh it out more here.
Hugh Thomson's 1896 illustration of Jane Austen's 1815 Emma, of Emma Woodhouse and her good friend Mr. Knightley, with whom she wrongly believes she is not in love.
What Important Thing Is My Character Wrong About?
The character diamond is a template, found in mass-market scriptwriting instruction materials, to establish characters beyond their surface-level attributes. Essentially, you make sure to give each major character four traits according to which they interact with (or generate) the plot: a Want, a Need, a Ghost, and a Lie. A character's Want motivates them for most of the film. They must fulfill their Need to succeed in the plot's central thematic conflict. Their Ghost is a past event that still haunts them, often to the point of establishing the other character traits. And the Lie is something they believe, about themselves or the world, that's wrong.
I don't think it's valuable to determine a whole character diamond for each of your PCs. (In particular I think you shouldn't decide on a Need until you've played your character for a while, figuring it out in response to the game's emerging themes and character dynamics. Ginny Di has the right of it in this video.) But the Lie is a valuable trait to establish for your character from the start. When the GM of a Tachyon Squadron Fate game told us in session zero that there would be no aliens in the setting, I immediately decided that one of my character's defining traits is that he believes fervently in UFOs. I began building him out from there: why did he believe in aliens? what did he do about it? how did this belief impact his relationships with other people?
When I told my brother that I had started building characters out of an initial Lie, he observed that it gives the character "some kind of conflict with the world around them right off the hop[.]" I hadn't thought of it that way, but the framing is right and explains why giving your character a Lie can be a successful approach. Or at least it's often right: if they believe something wrong about themselves, then their conflict is more internal. Either way, there is conflict, which can help propel the story–especially early on, when you as a player are still getting your bearings in the game.
Now, I think you need to be careful with your PC's error: it has to be important enough to matter in the game, to actually create conflicts, but not so important that your character can't engage with the world at all. So far I have found some success with lies like, "My father really was abducted by aliens like he claimed," and, "I am a rare good man among sinners." You might also try falsehoods like, "Most people are altruists," or, provided it is actually false, "I value other people's freedom as highly as my own." Something like, "Ostriches bury their heads in the sand," likely won't produce anything interesting in most games, while something like, "I am an ostrich," is going to make it difficult to interact with other characters in a meaningful way (assuming that your PC isn't in fact an ostrich).
What Is My Character Seeking That They Cannot, Or Should Not, Find?
I don't think it's unusual to decide early on what your character wants; indeed, I think it is a pretty natural place for ttrpg players to begin once they have much experience at all. I, however, am drawn to characters whose overarching goal is doomed. This might in part be a result of my melancholy temperament, but I do think this question helps make a fun and engaging PC in a few ways. The answer simultaneously gives your character a reason to be proactive in the early game, when players are especially prone to hesitancy and directionlessness, while also communicating to your GM that you don't expect them to write your PC's goal into the plot if they don't think it fits. This is especially imporant if, at the beginning, you are not sure that you as a player really know where the campaign is going: you need to give your character some kind of motivation, but you also don't want to be locked in a direction that may no longer interest you once you've learned more about the setting and the table dynamic. And like the Lie, it gives your character something in themselves to overcome (or to fail to overcome, if your character's arc turns out to be tragic), either because what they seek is unattainable or because it would ruin them if they did find it. Whether and how they overcome this flaw is something you can decide as you go; it can emerge organically out of play.
Note that, while this seems very similar to the Want of the character diamond, it strictly speaking doesn't have to be. A PC's Want might be, for example, "To protect my hometown," and so they are seeking a rumoured artifact which can cast an aegis around the settlement, but the artifact never existed, has been destroyed, or doesn't work as expected. In this case they could still fulfill their Want, even though the thing they are seeking cannot be found. Of course, I prefer the version where their Want really is unattainable, or is incompatible with their Need: there are no aliens to find; he will never establish a village of holy men in this accursed jungle because no one will ever be interested and he is not himself holy.
However, if you are going to do this, I think it is important to be open to the possibility that your PC can find what they seek after all, and maybe it will go well for them if they do. It's also important to let your GM know that you're open to such a surprise. After all, your GM might know something about the world that you do not, something that makes your character's objective far more attainable than you think, or they might see that your PC's success would make for a better story overall than their failure.
Some Parting Notes
First, despite all I've just written, I haven't answered these questions for the most recent long-term character I've made. Since he's searching for a miracle cure for his sick sister, and he's looking for it in a place where I as the player suspect there are necromancers, it seems straightforward enough to say the thing he is seeking but cannot find is that cure. However, I'm not sure I want to say that he can't find a cure! I think I want him to find it after all, despite my taste for the maudlin. Perhaps I need to practice being open here to any possibility. (As I was writing my first draft of this post, I realized a good arc for him might be to realize that what he ought to be doing is spending what time remains with his sister, not scouring a distant jungle for a desperate hope. I would have to retire him from the campaign when he got to that point, but that's not such a bad thing necessarily, since it's a West-Marches-style game. It's easy enough to replace PCs in those.) What I haven't got for him yet is a false belief, and not for lack of thinking about it. So I'll have to see whether this is a method I can always keep up, or always want to.
Second, although I've had successes with these questions, some things I've learned about character creation came from my mistakes. I have not yet had an opportunity to try out the lessons I've learned from these mistakes, but in my next post I will share two other approaches I'd like to try implementing in character creation going forward.