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When it comes to characters, I’m a big believer in starting simple. Get a few things in mind, and build the character through play. One thing I like to do to help build characters along the way, however, is to give my players…homework.
Yup. Good old fashioned…homework.
I’ve worked the cookie into it, of course…I assign each homework assignment a ‘story point’ value and then if I get the assignment before next session the players who turned it in get that total. The story point is good for one re-roll of whatever.
If this all seems a little grade-school to you, let me explain my motives.
In the twenty-years or so of gaming I’ve amassed, I’ve learned one thing. Player investment is the most important thing to running a fun game. If players are invested in a game, any number of smaller sins can be overlooked, and play drives forward. Without player investment, every technique you try is pretty much useless. Players must ‘buy-in’ to yuor game before you can truly scare or hurt or delight them in your games.
There are many ways to build this investment, but the secret ingredient of player investment is getting players to think about the game when you’re not sitting at the table. Some of that occurs naturally in a good game, but you can cultivate that ‘in-game’ mode by compelling players to put some thought into their characters and the game world when they are not on the other end of the screen.
This used to be hard. You couldn’t always rely on players to have e-mail or even net-access. The Internet-rich days we live in though make this a complete no-brainer. If you haven’t, make your players an account on google-groups. you can coordinate when game is/is not happening this way, of course, but you also now have a vehicle for sending out these homework assignments to your players.
What will you ask? you don’t want to ask anything that will take your players more than a half-hour at the very latest. something that could be answered off the cuff or after a few minutes of thinking is ideal. Think small and you’ll get big results. Ask open-ended questions. Ask your players to define not only their characters, but their character’s relationships with other characters or other events in the world. Get character reactions to the events of the story. Be tricky, as well –ask questions from odd angles. Atypical questions can get the brain working in some wierd ways.
Here are some questions to start you off.
Sketch out a sub-plot for your character. Sketch out a sub-plot for another player (this works best if you delineate at the start who makes a sub-plot for who)
- What would your character have done differently, if anything, in recent events?
- What was the happiest moment of your character’s past? Why?
- Name your character’s saddest memory.
- What is your character’s biggest flaw?
- Find a theme song for the campaign. Find a theme song for your character. (I recently did this one and the responses were awesome!)
- What does your character envision himself being? How has he progressed towards that vision thus far?
- Which of the other party members does your character like the least? Why?
- Which of the other party members does your character like the most? Why?
- What does your character think will happen next in the story?
What would you ask your players?
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A Jack of All Trades ,or if you prefer, an extreme example of multi-classing, Gamefiend, a.k.a Quinn Murphy has been discussing, playing and designing games straight out of the womb. He is the owner and Editor-in-Chief of this site in addition to being an aspiring game designer. As you would assume, he is a huge fan of 4e.
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I still think assigning homework would turn me off as a player. I prefer laid back role playing, without too many rules, and homework just seems too much like school
I’ve done similar things in the past, usually with decent results. What is funny about this post, is that I am currently on a similar kick to increase ‘player involvment’ and have been using a roleplay points in much the same way you’ve been using story points.
Good post.
I can see that. In my games, I dont actually call it homework (avoid triggering all those bad moments) and it’s completely, totally optional. Some of my players get into it, some don’t. I give incentives, but don’t demand that anyone do it. The other part that I should have mentioned in the article is to make it low-pressure.
I really like the idea of the homework, as long as there is some incentive to it. I doesn’t really need to be points or something. Even a neat ingame result is cool. My only problem is sometimes you get to busy and you just don’t have the time to think about it away from the table. Thats why low pressure is important. If the DM starts docking rewards because you didn’t do your homework, then there is a problem.
When I’m the DM I insist that he PCs have some kind of back-story and motivation for adventuring. The 6 guys in my regular gaming group have played D&D for 20+ years. We need to keep things fresh and interesting to get more out of the game. By coming up with these little details we’ve found that we have a lot more fun. Plus it gives the DM something to work with when creating side-plots and larger story arcs.
We’ve gained a lot of character development by creating a campaign blog. It allows the PCs to do things outside of the weekly session that are strictly for character development purposes and it works great.
One item I found that is a great resource to pull homework from is the PC’s diary. It’s a writing journal with 365 questions for your character to answer- one for each day of the year. Just pull out one of these each week and give it to your players.
http://www.errantdreams.com/files/365charques.pdf