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Old 03-18-2017, 08:08 AM   #1
Anders
 
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Default Character arcs

Do you plan character arcs for your characters? How do you go through making them develop in a satisfactory manner?
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Old 03-18-2017, 10:00 AM   #2
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Do you plan character arcs for your characters? How do you go through making them develop in a satisfactory manner?
Never. I often give them a starting situation that implies unresolved issues, but I don't know how those issues are going to be resolved, and I don't plan for it.
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Old 03-18-2017, 11:49 AM   #3
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Never. I often give them a starting situation that implies unresolved issues, but I don't know how those issues are going to be resolved, and I don't plan for it.
What about your own characters? Or do you never play?
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Old 03-18-2017, 12:33 PM   #4
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What about your own characters? Or do you never play?
It's my own characters that I'm talking about.
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Old 03-18-2017, 12:47 PM   #5
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Default Re: Character arcs

I'm much like Bill. I give characters goals, but I don't plan out an arc to achieve it. My characters are about as likely to decide their original goal was misguided as to follow a path to achieve it, and I like the situations I'm faced with to surprise me with that decision. A lot of characters of mine wind up going on some damn fool idealistic crusade that I didn't even know about during character creation.
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Old 03-18-2017, 01:12 PM   #6
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Default Re: Character arcs

Same here.

In an RPG, the story emerges from the collaboration of all the players and the GM. You can't really write the arc for your character. Even though it's "yours", you own the character, and you have agency, you're not the only agent that affects the future. Unlike an author, you're not in charge of everything that happens (and also don't get to rewrite to make it fit after the fact). Players have a lot of control over their backstory, but much less so over their "forestory". So, you can certainly have ideas about what might occur, and things the character thinks they want to accomplish. But you also have to plan or allow for multiple possible future paths, including alternatives to what you thought was going to happen, including frustration of those goals and substitutions of other ones.

A strong character concept is going to suggest interesting stories about to happen, but an RPG concept has to stop short of insisting on them -- and the player for that character has to be willing to accept that not everything is going to work out exactly as they imagined when they first thought of the character. If the character just wouldn't be fun without a particular story arc and resolution, it's probably a better concept for a novel than for an RPG.

This is actually true even of the backstory as well, if to lesser degree. If it's too specific, it can often constrain you and the GM. Mysterious pasts of orphans are popular for a reason, if a bit of a cop-out. But often you can isolate the bits of backstory that are important to making the character who they are, yet leave some of the details on how things happened that way loose enough to help the character fit the GM's setting.
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Old 03-18-2017, 01:12 PM   #7
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Default Re: Character arcs

I'm much the same. I give my characters starting conflicts and goals, but I never plan out how they'll achieve such goals, letting such things develop naturally. Many of my players are the same, which is why I hand out "sub-plot XP" when a character progresses their own character arc during the main plot of the game.

And then there was one GM who didn't quite get the "running sub-plot" idea... but that's a different rant.
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Old 03-18-2017, 02:29 PM   #8
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Default Re: Character arcs

Mostly I don't plan any such. In a recent campaign, I did try to plan, and the campaign reached an abrupt stop right when I started making the first serious steps onto such an arc.

In general I have something of a bad luck history with long-term campaign plans in general as a player.
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Old 03-18-2017, 05:34 PM   #9
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the campaign reached an abrupt stop
I've had that happen, too. The possibility does tend to put a damper on the amount of effort it's worth investing up front. Sort of a vicious circle, as a campaign is usually better and more likely to continue with more player involvement.
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Old 03-19-2017, 05:57 AM   #10
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Default Re: Character arcs

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Never. I often give them a starting situation that implies unresolved issues, but I don't know how those issues are going to be resolved, and I don't plan for it.
Same here. Of course, once the campaign is underway, my characters often make plans, short- or long-term, and try to act on them, but that's the character's plan, not mine.

I think of my characters as people within the setting, rather than components of a drama. Real life doesn't have plot arcs, and people usually hope to carry on living after dramatic events.
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