Writing CRPG Characters

I've come to have very strong opinions about how characters should be written in CRPGs.

Here's the rule: the character needs to engage with the player.

This is a funny thing about a CRPG. The game can have terrible writing and unbelievably poorly written characters... as long as the characters properly engage with the player. Similarly, even if you have wonderfully written characters voice acted by legends, if they don't properly engage with the player, they're background noise.

So here's the exercise:

Don't write a backstory. None of your characters have any backstory.

Now your writing will radically improve.

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In order for a character to feel real, they have to exist in the same time and place as the player character. They have to talk to the player character. Negotiate, exchange ideas, come to a shared understanding of the world they exist in and their places within it. Their relationship has to evolve.

Backstories are poison to this, because a backstory exists in another time and place. Dripping a backstory into the player's ears as they earn relationship points doesn't establish a shared reality, doesn't involve negotiation or an exchange of ideas, doesn't improve the character's understanding of anything, and rather than evolve the relationship, it happens after the relationship evolved!

Some games try to bring the backstory into the present. This is possible, but it's more likely that you'll screw it up.

The basic rule is that you should never close loose ends without opening at least as many.

Most character backstories come into the present to close off loose ends - essentially ending the backstory and closing out the character. I have no idea why this is common, but it's just the worst approach.

Since I've been playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker, let me give some examples.

(Keep in mind that this game is written abominably.)

There's a warrior you'll use as your primary tank. I think every player uses her. Her backstory is that she's just so gosh-darn pretty that she was adopted by the religious order of beauty. She got angry with everyone telling her she was pretty, and quit.

Seriously.

Her "loyalty mission" is a character from her backstory showing up, fighting her, and scarring her face. The end. She's apparently no longer pretty and apparently the church no longer cares about her. All the loose ends are tied up and her character is now in limbo. No more interests, no more goals, no more looming threats, no more opinions.

There's another character that's undead. Her loyalty mission involves figuring out who killed her and, again, tying all the loose threads up so she has no more plot.

There's a character that's a ranger. His loyalty mission? Murdering innocent trolls because a troll killed his family. Again, it's tying the loose ends and closing the story of his life.

There is one character that qualifies, that passes the "loose threads" test. That would be the dumbass barbarian poseur.

Her backstory is that she ran away from her tribe because they didn't respect her. Her loyalty mission? Earning your respect and her self-respect at the same time by hunting a monster and taking the lead against it.

That's how you do it.

You and her are in the same time and place, discussing something happening in this time and place. It's not a monster from her past, it's just some random monster-of-the-week threatening your kingdom.

You and her are negotiating and exchanging ideas, finding a good balance between her heritage, her need to prove herself, her desire to belong, and the very blunt threat of a giant monster.

She grows as a person, having proven herself to herself. She's a little less of a poseur, and has found a place that accepts her.

You and she have an evolving relationship: you're no longer just 'a baron of some land I happen to be on', but her adopted tribe leader. A more fun and unusual relationship than the normal "strangers->friends->lovers" route!

I won't say her character is good or interesting. It's written with all the subtlety of a freight train... falling on another freight train...

But the structure of her character beats is solid, and therefore her character seems to exist and be a part of my story. She didn't close any loose threads off, she just joined my story as a living, growing person.

Could you adapt the other character beats the same way?

Sure. If the fighter's beauty is so great, let her lure in an ever-increasing volume of ever-richer and ever-more-aggressive suitors. Eventually it gets out of hand, and you have to choose: do the two of you get married in name only just to keep the suitors off, or does she carve a scar into her own face to stop them from coming?

It's not great writing, because the premise is dumb, but it's a situation that exists in the present and evolves your relationship to each other.

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If we look at other characters from other games, we can see the same basic premise.

Did you, like everyone, like Garrus? Well, guess what? He's the one that followed these rules. His character beats were always about something happening right now, he grew as a character, you negotiated and exchanged views with him, and your relationship steadily evolved.

Did you like Aeris? Well, guess what? She followed these rules.

Did you like Celes? Well, guess what? She followed these rules.

Even characters like Solas, weighed down by a ponderous backstory, are popular not because of their backstory, but because of how they bring their backstory into the present. How their backstory creates more problems, more loose threads... rather than resolving any.

I think there may even be some compelling characters whose names don't end with S. Try to find some, and see whether they follow these rules. I think they will.

So, my take:

1) Character beats should take place here and now, about things that matter here and now.

2) Character beats should involve debating, exchanging ideas or opinions, not just listening.

3) Character beats should evolve the character. Remember that weakness is strength, and that their place in the world is changing.

4) Character beats should evolve your PC's relationship with the character.

If you follow these guidelines, even if you write terribly, you'll at least have a compelling character!

At least, I think so. Let me know what you think.

Ys: Memories of Crap Writing

I'm going to spoil the ending of Ys: Memories of Celceta. Trust me, it doesn't matter. There is nothing interesting about the plot.

The ending of YMOC is the same as Lord of the Rings. I don't mean that it is similar, I mean it is literally beat for beat identical. You have to destroy the one ring - er, the "sun mask" - in the fires of the hottest volcano. Climbing through fire and quake and goblins, you reach the top and are faced one last time by a member of your own kind, twisted and stretched thin by the dark powers of that you seek to destroy. Then you toss in the ring and the volcano explodes. You are rescued by eagles. Er... I mean "flying mecha".

Now, in the case of Lord of the Rings, the ending was... well, it wasn't the strongest ending ever, but at least it felt like the heroes were doing a task that needed doing.

The problem with YMOC's ending is that there is no reason to do any of it. See, you're tasked to climb the mountain and destroy the mask, and you are forced to accept. But the catch is that "Gandalf" is, in this case, a flying angelic creature. While you could theoretically see him being corrupted by the one ring - I mean the Sun Mask - it's already clear that the "dark" personality of our Gandalf-equivalent is driven solely by the desire to free humanity from his own tyrannical rule and force them to pioneer their own path. So even if he did go "dark", the destruction of the planet would be something he would also want to avoid, and he would be very happy to destroy the mask and claim freedom for humanity.

What, physically moving around a bit much for our crystal dragon Jesus? Well, his main sidekick is a perfectly human lady with a FLYING MECH. She's flown us around on it several times. She's incorruptible - we know because she's held the mask of the sun before and didn't suffer any qualms. And she literally has nothing else to do. She's just hanging around in the background.

Actually, after we're forced to accept the task, she flies up to us halfway up the volcano, kills a few goblins, and then's like "I'll cover the rear, here. Don't worry, if it gets dangerous, I can fly away!" Sigh... then she rescues us from falling into the caldera, so it's pretty damn clear she could have done this whole operation without endangering anyone. I guess Adol could have ridden with her, just for closure's sake.

But is it too much for her? How about the pixie that flies from one edge of the continent to the other dozens of times over the course of the game? No?

Well, we have two rangers on our team - heroes from deep forest villages, masters of stealth and speed. So we can rely on them to - what, they're staying behind to guard Crystal Dragon Jesus? WHY? They're perfectly suited to scrambling up a mountain and not at all suited to holding the line against an army of shadow-goblins. Instead, let's take the child, the hulking brute, and the refined lady in the evening gown. Those are definitely the ones more suited to scrambling up a mountain!

What I'm trying to say is that the ending sucked.

It's not very often that the ending of a game can completely ruin a game for me. Most games have pretty weak endings, and I've come to expect that. But when the ending requires dozens of people to simultaneously fail to notice that three of them can fly, that's pretty sad. It's on the same level as sacrificing yourself in Fallout 3, when you have radiation-proof party members that can do the same task completely without risk.

I don't think anyone is asking for perfection in writing, but this game looks like it took at least a million dollars to produce. Maybe spend one whole day thinking about the ending?

Aji Again

I use a concept called "aji" when thinking about game narrative design. Here's a good explanation: Unlimited Hyperbole. That's ten minutes long, but the explanation is about seven minutes in.

I'm going to describe my version, but you can listen to his version if I bungle it. I think they're the same basic concept.

"Aji" is a term from the board game "go" (or wei'qi, baduk, etc). Very roughly, it translates to "potential". The idea is that you put down a few stones in a loose configuration. The idea isn't to finalize the capture of the area. You don't build a solid wall. You just put a few stones down in a good configuration. Then, when the enemy approaches, you can use those stones to support your response. That may end up being a solid wall, or a tentacle monster than destroys the region for everyone, or even an inversion, where you force them to waste turns taking those initial stones while you play lightly and aggressively elsewhere.

To me, plot in games is the same.

You put down a few elements in a configuration. You want the configuration to have good aji - good potential. As the players act, you want the initial elements to flex and bend but support the new elements that arise.

It is similar to go because the play style is similar. The player makes a move, the game makes a move. If the game makes too many moves, then the player feels either lost or stifled, depending on the situation. If the player makes too many moves, they feel like they are boxing air rather than fighting against an evil mastermind.

Now, Pinchbeck is probably focusing more on the idea of vagueness, of leaving things open to interpretation. I tend to focus more on the idea of pacing and player agency. But the two are, in my opinion, very tightly linked.

Establishing too much, too fast is a great way to lock the player into a boring, trite plot they feel nothing about. On the other hand, establishing just enough to make the player go "and then?" will keep the players interested and invested.

In games with a GM (tabletop RPGs), the lack of detail is a huge asset because it allows you to flex and turn when you need to. If the players aren't sure whether Darth Vader is a good guy or a bad guy, you can establish him as one or the other when play demands.

In theory you could do something similar in a computer game, but it would probably require a lot of scripting. But the vagueness and openness still pays off, because the player spends a lot of time thinking about the various possibilities.

That's my philosophy on narrative design in games. Put down pieces. Places, people, concepts - just a few. Allow them to be established as the player moves through your world, rather than trying to force them on the player. You only rarely need to spell things out - that's usually too slow, boring, and laborious.

It's really not that hard: it's mostly just a matter of self-restraint. I know you want to show off all the details of the cool bad-ass you invented. But don't. Or do it later. Let the player breath.