How Fantastic Roleplayers kill my Roleplaying Games

By T.R.S. Burns

I’ve been playing Dungeons and Dragons since 1998 or so and once we got past the teenage hack and slash that our particular group didn’t enjoy and waded into the political webs that would be our later life gaming we encountered the issue I’m writing about today.

I’ve had the privilege over the years to game with some truly phenomenal roleplayers and it saddens me that at the time of my life I’m writing my most intricate plots and stories the people who could truly benefit from them are no longer available to play for one reason or another. However, straying back to the point at hand, each and every one of these people brought to the table deep, rich and nuanced characters.

The distinction here  between my roleplayers and the rest of our groups is that each time they came to the table they brought a _new_ character, not a re-badged or rebuilt version of their previous character and this made them terribly unpredictable. I will go into some examples in a moment.

In my current game one of the players decided that the Eberron setting would lend itself well to playing a Wizard/Academic working out of Morgrave University, the rest of the group had settled on an expedition to Xen’Drick motif so his character fitted fine. As is his penchant he intentionally wrote a character who was less useful in combat than he was out of it and yet, the more sessions we play the more the plot and the other players linchpin on his decisions and now three sessions in _his_ goals have become _their_ goals because his compelling and skilful portrayal of his character has convinced the players and thus their characters that he is right and just in his goals.

Which he is not. His character is a bastard whose only real goal is finding something in Xen’Drick which will get him either a position with the university or a transfer to another university with a better reputation. He has absolutely no care for the other characters goals and needs and is willing and able to walk away at the first sign of trouble. But the other players have no idea, why?, because he is hiding it all behind fantastic roleplay.

Will it kill the game when it comes out? Will the interest in his goals fade? Is it just a phase at this early stage in the campaign?

I don’t know. I honestly believe it is possible to play your character too well.

So this past weekend I got together with my long standing gaming group and we wrote characters for a new campaign set in the world of Eberron. I wanted to try and capture the dark noire feel that the author of that setting intended as well as the pulp flavour of our usual games (which he also intended) what I got is not exactly what I was after, but close.

Over the rest of this post I’ll detail the characters that were created and there tie-ins to the setting. This will require some Eberron knowledge on your part. I’ll also touch on the method we used to ge there.

I had the players each take a scrap of paper and write down five interesting things about their character, anything at all they felt was relevant was fine and then they handed those scraps back to me and I read them over and handed them back. I had them flip their scraps over and write four interesting things that happened in their character’s past and hand them back to me.

I took those four things and factored in the original five and used those events to tie the characters together. You know bill because you were a mercenary during the war and bill was a forward scout whose platoon you were assigned to type stuff.

The characters we got are;

Charles Banks – Geologist, Botanist, Wizard

Charles Banks is a rising star of House Vadalis, having been sent to Sharn to study at Morgrave University he return with high accolades in both Botany which was immediately useful to his house and Geology which would only prove it’s worth in the years that followed when he invented the Sonicprobe.

Harnessing his magical ability to make sonic blasts into a technology he could use to detect caves and pockets of air below the surface of the ground. Armed with his prototype he made a lengthy and dangerous geological and botanical survey of the Eldeen Reaches and began to compile a system to chronicle botanical samples by family and strain. It was on this survey that he uncovered Naan.

Naan – Warforged, Cast-Off, Druid

Naan was a relic of the last war a fiercely loyal and trusting Warforged and a perfect example of House Cannith engineering and so when she was ordered to Guard a forward camp in the Eldeen Reaches late in the last war she did and when her unit did not return she stayed in place, unmoving, un-breathing for more than a decade, lonely but loyal.

It was here she was found by the Gatekeepers a circle of Druid’s dating back to ancient times who saw more in the Warforged’s mossy rusted form than a weapon and trained the highly intelligent living constructed in the ways of their circle. Naan became the defender of the grove she had been set to guard and stayed there until she encountered Charles Banks on his survey and agreed to accompany him on his survey of the Reaches, when the survey concluded Naan continued on as Bank’s Assistant.

Perrin d’Thuranni – Thief, Would be Assassin, Dragonblooded Heir

Perrin is the half-blooded son of the offshoot house of Thuranni and operated out of their secret holding in the Lhazaar Principalities where he served as a guard at one of the houses fronts topside. He is as he knows highly expendable to his pure blooded house and works hard to make himself an asset to the family.

He recently capitalised on seemingly unrelated events when he thwarted the framing of a travelling artificer who murder attempt had gone awry and left the Principalities with that Artificer. Having overheard the previous night artificer’s intentions to visit the lost continent of Xen’Drick Perrin saw the opportunity to make a name for himself in the house and a small personal fortune besides.

Haptash Ka-Nala – Kalashtar, Dreamer, Artificer

Haptash was born a Kalashtar in the nation of Adar. Beset on all sides by the Riedran forces led by the Inspired intend on blotting out all of the Kalashtar Bloodlines. He fled the monastery forts of Adar as soon as he was old enough to understand the threat posed by so many Kalashtar close together and carefully made his way out of Sarlona. In Khorvaire he discovered his gift for Artifice and became a well respected Artificer serving a short time with the House Cannith Tinker’s Guild before the agents of the Inspired made an attempt on his life and he fled to the Lhazaar Principalities.

Haptash had been working in Lhazaar as a general purpose tinker for almost two years before they found him again and uncovered his secret nature as a Kalashtar. A battle was fought that that spilled bloody and terrible into the street with his magic beset by Inspired steel resulting in the death of his opponent. Haptash was taken into custody by the dark cloaked authority and was set for a short dirty trial and hanging as a troublemaking outsider when a local captain spoke in his defence. The same captain was charged with escorting him out of the principalities and continued on with him afterwards.

Rick Barry – Mixed Blood, Wrestler, Barbarian

Rick is a half-orc born into a human family who prized martial accomplishment and spent his youth as a prominent star in the greco-roman wrestling community. His family took his mixed heritage in their stride taking into account his lack of a particularly orcish appearance and his feats of strength and cunning which brought honour to the family. When he was old enough Rick marched off to fight in the Last War and fell in with the House Deneith Blademark’s Guild.

Serving as a Mercenary in their employ Rick fought for more than a quarter of the last war and served under the banners of all five nations. He was left suddenly jobless and destitute when the war ended and found himself wandering back to the Blademarks hoping that there would be more work for mercenaries in the broken kingdoms that were recovering from the war. He was in luck, JackBox Maul in hand he set out for House Vadalis to protect the travelling son Charles Banks as he undertook his research.

So there you have it, these are my players and soon I will reveal their story. I will post up an appendix to this post which includes their original notes from the character creation session and their descriptions and Biographies as I get them but for now I leave you to ponder.

This is my first attempt at writing for Eberron so bear with me;

The Khorvaire Courier

In the wake of the last war Houses Kundarak, Vadalis, Sivis and Orien banded together to form a company called the Khorvaire Courier.

In essence a newspaper controlled by its contributing houses the Courier holds a distinction over all other newspapers because of the nature of its patronage. Distribution. The Courier is created in mass quantities by House Sivis who move it into customised House Kundarak vaults which have been enchanted by House Orien to move their contents to identical Vaults in every major city on Khorvaire. From these depots the Courier is collected by the local agent of House Vadalis and delivered to its target audience by couriers on Magebred mounts.

The advantage here is that from the moment that the Courier is printed it can be in a city on the otherside of Khorvaire in seconds and delivered to the local populace within the hour. It also implies that the Courier has informants and information gatherers inevery major city on Khorvaire to keep the information relevant to all readers.