It pains me to say that, because it flies in the face of decades of roleplaying wisdom and tradition. One of the core tenets of the RPG is the player’s ultimate authority over their own character. The thoughts and actions of a PC are sacred ground and the one place a game master is absolutely forbidden to meddle.
On the whole, I agree with this philosophy. It’s very easy for an undisciplined game master to fall into the habit of railroading the players. I’ve stumbled down that dark path myself more than once, and I’ll spend a good portion of Part 3 of this book discussing how to avoid making
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that mistake. However, I think there is something to be said for the GM stepping in to add direction to the character creation process.
In fact, there have been a number of instances already where I have suggested telling the players “No, that doesn’t fit my pre-conceived notions of what this game is about”. So I want to make this explicit. The rules that apply in the design phase of a campaign and after play has begun are fundamentally different. In the name of a coherent narrative, I feel it is legitimate for a GM to set boundaries around what type of PCs are to be included in the game. However, once the game starts the GM needs to keep his or her dirty mitts off the PCs.
This is not to say that a GM should ever tell a player, “You must.” Referring back to the Axiom of Roleplaying, fun always comes first; a GM can’t just tell the players what to do. On the other hand, I don’t feel that it’s acceptable for a player to say, “This is my character, I’m going to make whatever I want and you can’t do anything about it,” either.
Within that context, I feel there is a specific window where it’s acceptable for a GM to put specific limitations on what is allowable in terms of characters. To that end, there are four rules that I recommend employing in the character creation process, regardless of the system or setting.
The 4 Golden Rules
There are a number of ways in which a player can make a character that—while not actively in violation of the rules of the game—is either expressly disruptive or generally not in the spirit of good sportsmanship. A classic example is the Sith Lord in the party of Jedi. The character in the group who is secretly plotting to undermine and ultimately betray the rest of the party.
While the “spy who is slowly redeemed by the innate goodness of the protagonists” is a trope with a long history in literature, it never seems to work as well in a roleplaying game as the player might intend. This is not to say that a player who is making a problem character is intentionally trying to be disruptive. Many such characters are made without the player recognizing that it will cause problems down the road. Still, given enough time such a character will nearly always lead to problems.
Another type of character that will almost definitely be disruptive is the mysterious loner:
a character with no family, no connections, and who may or may not even remember their
own past. Wolverine, for example. With no explicitly defined past, the player doesn’t need to take responsibility for defining the character’s identity or history in any way. Any action (or reaction) can be taken on the basis of “a feeling” without justifying or explaining it. With no personal connections, there are no hooks for the GM to entice the character into doing anything.
The mysterious loner is basically the story equivalent of min/maxing.
While the traitor and the mysterious loner are two of the most stand-out examples, there are plenty of other character archetypes that are inherently disruptive to a campaign. However, we can lump all of them into two general categories: characters designed to legitimize bad player behavior5, and characters designed to circumvent bad GM behavior.
Bad GM behavior is a problem, and one that will be covered in another chapter. For right now, we want to head off the problem of bad characters, regardless of the players’ intentions in making them. The 4 Golden Rules are designed to act as a general buffer against all these sorts of PCs.
I recommend giving these rules to your players before character creation begins with a simple instruction: Any character that violates any of these rules will not be accepted for play. If it breaks one of them, don’t even bother asking.
1) The Legion of Superheroes Rule
“No two players may fill the exact same role in the party.”
The name of this rule is a call-back to the bylaws of the original Legion of Superheroes of DC Comics, although you could also call it the “too many cooks in the kitchen” rule. In the original Legion, no two members could have the same superpower. In game terms we call this “niche protection.” Each player has a role in the group, a thing their character can do that makes them important. You should never have two players fighting over which one gets to pick the lock, or quibbling over who can snipe better.
This is not necessarily to say that two players can’t both have the same class or power. If both want to play wizards, each wizard could fulfill a different party need.
One might specialize in combat magic while the other focuses on utility powers, or
5“I’m not an asshole, really. I’m justroleplaying as an asshole.”
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summoning. Regardless of what game you’re playing there are lots of different roles available, so there’s no reason why two players should be stepping on each other’s niches, in or out of combat.
2) The Scooby Doo Rule
“Your character is a person who exists in society on some level.”
They have lots of unnamed family members, old friends, or pen pals. People who they know and care about on some level. Weird things will sometimes happen to these people, and it’s up to the character to go solve their groovy mystery.
The Scooby Doo rule is a hedge against the loner orphan character who has no family, no friends, no connections, and no purpose in existing. Unless you’re a hermit living on a mountain top somewhere, subsisting on berries and small game, you have to knowsomebody, and hermits living exclusively on remote mountain tops typically do not make good PCs.
My apologies go out to those people who insist on playing The Man with No Name in every single game, but that simply isn’t going to fly. Loners, by definition, do not hang out in groups. PCs on the other hand, do.
3) The “You are an Adventurer” Rule
“You are an adventurer. You go on adventures. You do not avoid going on adventures.”
I once GMed a game in which the party arrived at the compound of a bunch of dream cultists, armed with a letter of introduction, a gift, and an appointment.
However, when no one answered the front door, half the party decided that it would be trespassing to check things out. They instead drove across town to get pancakes, while the rest of the party actually investigated the scene and fought psychic dinosaurs. After the adventure, the pancake-eaters complained that nothing interesting happened at the pancake house.
It should be pretty obvious that whatever else you put on your character sheet, somewhere on there it should say that your character is the kind of person who
goes on adventures. You are not the kind of person who says, “Let the cops handle this.” You are not the captain of the town guard who refuses to go save the world because someone has to guard the fifty peasants who live in your tiny hamlet. You are, by definition, the kind of person who sticks your nose where it doesn’t belong.
You are anadventurer.
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This is not to say that your character is magically compelled to fly headlong into every situation that confronts them, but the GM should not have to fight to get the PCs to actually go on the adventure. NPCs live the quiet life. PCs save the world, make the money, win the tournament, and win the heart of the love interest.
4) The “No Dark Secrets” Rule
“Your character is not out to betray the party. Period.”
He isn’t the Sith Lord in a party of Jedi, a cultist to a dark god secretly working for the villain, or in any way trying to sabotage the efforts of the rest of the party. You can have your own agenda and motivations, and you can be as evil as you want to be. But at the end of the day you will side with the rest of the group, even if your preferred methods may vary. In other words, Play Nice.
In a perfect world I would never need to write that paragraph, nor expect that it should need to be used; yet here we are. Any character that violates Rule 4 should get stamped with a big old red “NO” in 72 point font. I really can’t stress how many games I’ve participated in, in which one of the players eventually sides with the villain. Trust me, it ends badly. Every. Single. Time.
With liberal application of these four rules you will easily avoid a large percentage of the most common problems that plague character creation. It can be difficult to say “No” to players, especially ones who are your friends. Therefore it may be easier on an inter-personal level to point to a stated rule than to try and talk a player down when they’ve set their heart on a character you know will be disruptive to the game.