DUNGEON MASTER’S GUIDE TO ROLEPLAYING

We explore a few tricks you can put in place to bring your players’ characters to life

Words by Richard Jansen-Parkes Art from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything courtesy of of Wizard of the Coast

It’s the middle of the night. Your character is walking home through empty streets when they hear the crash of breaking glass and a hideous, blood-curdling scream coming from a nearby house. “What do they do?” Okay, it isn’t the most elaborate set-ups to adventure out there, but this little paragraph of schlock has turned out to be one of the most helpful tools in my GMing kit.

Why? Because this isn’t really the hook for a quest. Not really, anyway. Rather, it’s something I like to ask to players when they’re making their first few characters. It’s a little session zero getting-to-know-you exercise that doesn’t require anybody to invent ‘interesting’ facts that they’re willing to show off in front of strangers.

Despite its simplicity, the way that the character – and, importantly, the player – reacts to it can help to highlight a few opportunities and avoid some common pitfalls, especially in people who haven’t played many tabletop RPGs before.

ARE YOU A HERO?

The first and most obvious hurdle it helps to overcome is to try and identify players who have accidently made bystanders to the plot rather than active participants in it. Or, to put it in slightly gamier terms, NPCs.

One of the most important things about getting a game to run smoothly, after all, is to have characters who are willing to follow plot hooks and venture into dangerous places for the sake of achieving their aims, whether that means greed, heroism or simple curiosity. You want the characters at the table to be proactive, not passive faces in the crowd.

If someone responds to the midnight scream test by having their character stick in their earbuds and scuttle away, or by finding a nice phone box to hide in while waiting for the police to arrive, that’s a good sign that their character is going to need to be forced into the action rather than exploring it themselves. Getting passive characters embroiled in plots isn’t an impossible task, of course, but it does create a pile of extra work for the GM. The worst circumstances can cause the character to spend a night quietly nursing a pint in the tavern while the rest of the party have fun with the actual game.

And don’t think this is only a problem with players who are looking to be actively disruptive, either. Plenty of attentive and genuine roleplayers can fall into the trap of playing their character like a real human being rather than the focus of an action adventure or a mystery story.

DON’T PANIC!

The first time I introduced my wife to D&D she made a wonderfully rounded character with pages of backstory and a charming personality, but when she struck out on her first adventure she refused to enter the evil temple that might as well have been lit up with neon signs saying “PLOT THIS WAY” because it looked dangerous.

She wasn’t wrong. The temple was filled with cultists and demons and all manner of ghoulish monsters just waiting to eat her cleric’s eyeballs. However, the nature of the game really rather relied on having characters who are willing to investigate that temple and fight the monsters inside.

In the same way, Call of Cthulhu characters ideally need to be curious enough to prod the dangling threads of the mystery before them, rather than stick all the artefacts in a box and toss it off a bridge like and half-way sensible person would do. Even straightlaced Star Trek Adventures crews need to be willing to seek out and explore, rather than fire off a probe and continue on their cargo run to Starbase 328.

The midnight scream test can help to flag up these kind of issues early, and allow the GM to suggest a few changes to the character before these kind of traits get too well established to easily change.

Of course, these things to need to be approached with a bit of tact. Simply telling players that they need to go away and come back with a PC next time isn’t always that helpful, especially if they’re already attached to the character they spent so long creating.

Rather, try and help the player to modify their character’s personality and motivations in a way that would allow them to actually pass the test. Perhaps they’re playing a cowardly mage, but their fear of the unknown can be outweighed by an unhealthy quest for knowledge – they are frightened of what might have caused the scream in the dark, but they just can’t stop themselves from trying to find out what it was.

APPROACHES AND MOTIVATIONS

In all honesty, when I first started asking players this question the main aim of it was to cut off potential problems. However, as I began to actually use it with my myriad groups, I realised that it could have other, purely positive benefits too.

The reason for this is because when you ask what their character does, you’re really asking how they want to respond to a potentially risky situation. The way they do this can help you to see what kind of character they want to be, and in turn this can help you to tailor your adventures and campaigns around them.

Do they just charge in through the front door and start yelling if anybody is hurt? Maybe give them a chance to approach problems directly rather than assuming the entire party will stop and think their way through a dangerous situation.

Do they call their buddies before going in? Well, then you probably have a strong team player who wants a chance to coordinate the team’s response.

Do they stake things out and look for an unconventional way to get into the building? Congratulations, you have a player that wants to look for secret passages and hidden routes to their target – try to always remember to leave the back door of your villains’ lair unlocked.

On top of this, the motivation your players’ characters display can also reveal a lot about their personality and what they’re after – even more so that when you ask them a straight question.

Sure, the backstory your player just wrote claims that all their paladin cares about is clearing her family’s name, but when she rushes into the gloom in search of injured innocents to heal you can probably guess that there’s a bit of heroism lurking under that gruff exterior.

This can all help you get to know your players’ characters before the game properly begins, and at the very least gives you an idea of what to expect from your first few

sessions.

It helps identify players who have accidently made bystanders to the plot