Personality Goes a Long Way

They call them roleplaying games because, like an actor, you play a role. Unlike an actor, you might speak in character, or you might describe what you say or do, or you might speak in the third person. At the root of it, though, is the idea that your character has their own personality.

A TTRPG should provide some guidance on what that means. My experience is that a nice structure goes a long way in guiding players. How far should that structure go?

I ran a poll yesterday asking which of these three options folks wanted, a hard set of rules, soft guidelines, or nothing at all.

Only 16% of people wanted nothing at all. That might sound low but remember it’s about one out of six voters. The average gaming group might have at least one player who feels this way.

Next up, 26% wanted hard game mechanics that enforced roleplay. If your character is greedy, they wanted a rule that incentivized you to act that way.

Coming out ahead at 57% were soft guidelines, suggestions that help players with roleplay but lack mechanical heft behind them. The game expects you to write down a flaw like greedy, but leaves portraying it up to you.

My thinking is that a structure is good, but build it so players can ignore it or add more teeth to it. It’s an area where there’s no harm in giving people options. My experience is that roleplay varies by group. Trying to mandate it, like saying you must always roll stat randomly or can only use point buy, might be too specific to get everyone in the group onboard.

Personally, I like the flexibility of making all three approaches work. For one shots, I can use hard incentives to make the characters more vivid. For a pick up game, we can ignore it to get into the action quickly. For campaign play, soft guidelines give a starting point while also allowing characters to evolve over time.

So what does the system look like? Here is what I am thinking.

Aspects

Each character has three aspects to their personality.

Drive

Your drive reveals what pushes you ahead in life. What makes you take a risk? What keeps you moving ahead when things are at their worst? If you could have anything, what would it be? This aspect includes what you want and why it is important.

A good drive explains why you adventure. It’s specific enough to give you focus, but also general enough that you can apply it to a variety of situations. They are typically phrased as “I want X, because I believe Y.”

Examples:

• “I want to overthrew the Red Tyrant, because I believe that freedom is for all.”

• “I want to lay (edit: the next word was supposed to be low but I left it out in the original post... man to each their own!) the dragon Rexevor and reclaim the Hall of Gold, because my people’s greatness must be restored.”

Impulses

The other two aspects are your impulses, a pair of traits that captures the tension between good and evil. What makes you the best version of yourself? What tempts you into becoming selfish or leads you down a destructive path? These two aspects are meant to be in conflict. One is your strength, the other your weakness.

Examples:

• Protect the weak (good), crush those who oppose me (evil).

• Aid the needy (good), dictate how others must act (evil).

• Promote justice (good), get rich at any cost (evil).

Good and evil don’t have to be extreme takes on those traits. It’s enough to consider that one, your good impulse, makes you the best version of yourself. The other leads you down a road where you put yourself and your own desires first, at any cost to others.

Stack Ranking

You then rank those three aspects in order of their effect on you, with the top one serving as your primary driver and the lowest one serving as the one least likely to move you.

On your character sheet, you have a table that has three slots for your aspects attached to a d20 table.

Your most important aspect covers results 1 to 12. The second one covers 13 to 18, and the least important one is on 19 and 20. I think most players will put their good impulse and their drive in the first two slots, and their evil impulse at the bottom.

You can use those aspects to guide roleplay and determine how your character might act. When in doubt, you can roll on the table and use the result as a springboard.

Adding a Little Bite

If you want to add a hard, mechanical expression of this concept, in a stressful situation the DM can offer inspiration. In return, you roll on the table and act according to the result. In most cases you act as you expect, but sometimes your dark side comes out and takes control. In return, you get the mechanical benefit of inspiration.

Ignoring It All

If you don’t want to use these rules, they are limited in their scope and effect. None of the other parts of the game tap into them. Like alignment in 5e, it’s a descriptor that none of the rules refer to. If this system works well in play, I’ll consider some optional rules to tie it to mind control effects and similar. For instance, a confusion effect might force you to roll on your impulse table each round.

So, that’s what I’m looking at. Nothing too heavy, but hopefully useful at the table and a good prompt for helping people get into character.