Ars Magica Character Questionairre

There are more sweeping statements in there. Personally, from being an alpha storyguide for some time (and off and on over the years) I feel I can take the viewpoints of different characters. It's what you have to do.

I don't feel the need to explore the background of Callum le Bleu to know that he's a Merinita more interested in his position as a faerie knight than his mundane self. That he's a hoplite because it's the closest he thinks he'll ever come to the adventure he seeks.

I don't know WHY he thinks like that, and frankly, until my players meet him again and start asking questions, I won't know. I have a few loose ideas and I'll pick the most appropriate at the time.

Okay, so that's an NPC but the principle scales up (for me) to a player character.

I stress again, if you guys enjoy putting in the time to work up such a complete background, more power to you. I love reading that stuff. I've just never found the need to go into the same detail. Sure, I've written background stuff and all but the "List of Interminable Unending" posted above is, for my money, beyond overkill and verging into imminent brain death.

:laughing:

I agree that it is 'to each his own', I'm just surprised by the effort some people make prior to game play.

I've played a Magus who has his apprentice beaten regularly. His origin was about 6 sentences. A paladin who die for his friends, but not holy relics. His origin was three sentences. A Robin Hood like theif, his origin was about four sentences. My Feng Shui character is a kick boxing idiot.

I don't think any of these characters are 'myself'. In fact I go out of my way to avoid speaking about my characters in first person. "I" never stormed Coreis. "I" never duked it out on top of shipping crate in Hong Kong.

I point this out to support the notion that my characters are more like applied experiments rather than 'me'.

That's another thing. I have noticed a trend for some players to be given an NPC, then regardless of what the NPC's personality is suppose to be like the player plays themself. That is not the case with me. Tell me to play an cajun alligator wrester, and I'm confident that he will not be like me or the apprentice-beating magus. Simply material to think about.

I think the fictional written history can give you fodder for roleplay and help you gauge how a character might react to events. It can help make the character feel more real.

And some people are closet writers, and character histories are a great writing exercise.

It performs different functions for different people, and so manifests in different forms.

V

Well, yes (you have to make an adjustment) and no (playing by feel does not equate to playing yourself IMO). You have to make that adjustment, then play by the feel that that adjustment makes. Playing by feel doesn't mean playing by how I personally feel, it means playing by how I feel that character would react from the different mindset I've tried to adopt.

As an example, one of my mages has an extreme pathological fear of water, particularly, but not limited to, deep water. The sort of character that curls up huddled into a whimpering ball when he finds himself in a rocking boat. I personally have not yet come across anything that makes me react that way, so I have to have play what I think such a fear might be like. Its lead to some pretty stupid situations where the character won't wade through an ankle deep stream but will instead trudge 5 miles up the road to a bridge for example (well, if no one is around he'll just 7LS across). To me that is irrationally stupid, but to the character its the most logical thing to do.

I don't think that having a detailed history helps me make that adjustment. For me, I need to sort of make that adjustment once first, throw in a few bits of rough background to provide some non-detailed basis for the adjustment (the half a dozen lines or so of background that may not even be written down), and go from there.

For the above character, who also has several flaws in his magic relating to water, the background is just "some traumatic event in his gauntlet or apprenticeship related to water". I don't need to detail it. He won't talk about any events pre-gauntlet, doesn't acknowledge any pre-gauntlet history or name, counts his age only from gauntlet etc etc. Obviously there is something really deep rooted and painful/scary there, I don't know what exactly but all the responses have come from my 'feel' of the character... It might end up being something the ASG can use some time in the future, it might be a continuing mystery to all. By leaving it open I find it easier to play as a general deep thing and have more options for the future.

I lean very much on the design-your-background camp-- that's just to help a storyguide better design the campaign and to put the sort of details that let a saga be more personalized, more driven towards the characters.

If you go completely vague and off the cuff with your background, how do the stories relate to the character? Why does the person bother participating? Loot and vis only go so far, in my mind.

Yes, being adaptable is good, and having leeway is good, but one's background shapes how decisions are made, affects reactions to various situations. How did those flaws get there?-- Personally, that's the best thing I've found; in our game, you have to explain each flaw, the how, the why...sure, some are "I was born that way," but others are more in depth.

The better you know your characters, in my opinion, the better you'll play them.

-Ben.

There's a danger in assuming that we're talking about black and white. I think we're really thinking in terms of shades of grey.

I don't know any gamer who only turns up to a game and thinks about his/her character for just those few hours and then switches off. I don't, none of my regular gaming pals do and I shouldn't think you do.

What's being discussed is the investment of time up front, the commitment if you like that an individual makes to "rounding out" the character (for whatever that phrase is worth).

You asked about how stories can relate if the player hasn't worked out his background? Easily. Very easily. It's the stories that can provide the imeptus to flesh these things out. If all I know about a character flaw is that it is a "Tormenting Master", I can explore that with the player. I don't need to know about it before play begins as I can explore that during play. That way we all get to explore that communal mythology.

You're doing yourself a disservice if you can only imagine that an absence of write-up means that a player is left only with "loot and vis". That's nonsense and I'm sure you realised that after you wrote it.

I agree that a player shouldn't just "roll up" and roll up to the session but then I don't think anyone was suggesting that. Just make the character internally consistent. Even if you don't know what the "character's first traumatic exposure to violence" was, I don't care. I probably won't make an issue of it unless the story calls for it.

The deal is in all this, just do what works for you. For my new character for the next saga we're looking to start I'm going to write little intro fiction bits. They certainly don't explore his background but instead concentrate on what type of man he is. His goals and ideals are more important than, I don't know, the colour of his birth parents' eyes. Well... for the moment anyway...

I won't argue with you there... moderation in all things.

You're right, I don't just switch my character musings on and off. Some people do, but I find them to be more of a casual player, and I don't think ArM lends itself to the casual gamer.

As far as time investments are concerned, I'm saying that with a decently fleshed out background you only help yourself and your storyguide, and I agree with something Bryan Register mentioned-- just because I have a detailed background, I'm not referencing it in play. When I write up a background, I think it's better for plotlines because you're not just picking something that suits the moment. Detailed backgrounds give SGs hooks, links, ways to personalize stories.

It's not the only thing I can imagine the absence of a write-up implies, but let's face it-- a background can provide motivation that might not have been considered beforehand, it allows for the "twists." I don't find my comment nonsense at all. We have a player who espouses this very paradigm in our troupe. His magus is the least involved, the least concerned of the magi. He's always in the moment, which is great on one hand because it makes for an entertaining character who's unpredicable, but for SGs trying put hooks out there, we're left with baser options. Why? Because the detail's not there to draw from as we do the preparation for a session. When I have to elicit that detail and it's a loose idea, well, it makes it harder to prep-- which also, quite frankly draws back to a fundamental difference in SGs. Some of us can just run completely off the cuff, others need it all written down, and some manage somewhere in between. It's analogous to this thread.

I concur with you here, and I think it's important to clarify that I'm not suggesting the complete cataloguing of every bit of trivia for a character. That's silly. I'm saying that taking the time to put some details on paper, answering some fundamentals about where a character came from and how they got where they are, what they have in mind for the future, having that sort of thing written down gives a Storyguide a heck of a lot more fuel for the muse.

-Ben.