New screenshots from Cyberpunk 2077 lay in a pile on my desk. I lit a cybercigar and thought. Three weeks of uninterrupted exposure in the worlds of anime girls speaking in grunting bass voices broke my spirit. On the next street, an advertisement for a Korean MMO flashed in sharp neon, and I once again remembered the kind words of the meteorologists who predicted clear skies by night. My Japanese waifu smiled at me with her charming pixelated smile from the alarm clock screen, reminding me that I haven’t written my blog for a long time. I frowned. The time has come.

So, after almost a month’s break, you and I will once again plunge into the worlds of NRIs in order to have a good time and diversify our leisure time. I’m Ilya Verbitsky with you, and today we’ll talk about what precedes the start of the games themselves. I mean, of course, character creation. Despite the fact that this process is very different from system to system, the creation of backstory remains independent of systems. Any rules, using numbers and parameters, try to give a clear idea of ​​what your character can do and how the world will react to it. But exactly how you will demonstrate this character’s interaction with the world, if regulated by a system of rules, will only be in a recommendatory tone. This part of the NDT has historically remained entirely on the shoulders of the players and the presenter. And in order for the gears of history to turn as they should, and the next goblin not to make you want to go do something else, you need context.

You and I will create it today.

Chapter 17: Preparing to Create Characters.

The presenter will mainly have to work here. Pre-prepared ideas about a character can seriously hinder the player, as he cannot take into account the ideas of other players and the direction in which the GM would like to take the story. Thus, wonderful plans for a cyberninja with a mechano-dog may be dashed by a party of Greenpeaceites who hate technology. No, I don’t mean that the combination of incompatible things in a game is necessarily something bad, but in order for this not to turn into an incomprehensible mess, the participation of all players in the creation of all heroes is necessary.

What can the presenter do?? Determine which story elements should be tied to the player characters. The players themselves are great guys – you’ll be surprised how many good ideas they can give you! – but they themselves will be more pleased to exist in a world where their characters have already been doing something for some time and have left their mark on local places in your scenario. To do this, run your eyes over your entire plot and try to create questions that, when answered, would force the player to personally explain how the hero got involved in your plot.

There can be a lot of approaches here. After trying different options, I eventually came up with two variations that can be used as a convenient tool for helping players create interesting heroes.

First, simple: leading questions. I never prepare them myself, since this is more the work of intuition and experience of the presenter. You’re still struggling with them, so writing out such questions in advance would be a good idea. The player, when starting to talk about his character, will either leave out important details or try to leave him irresponsible for his actions. Not because the players themselves are terribly afraid of responsibility; it’s just that from the very beginning they look at their character as an alter ego, which they try to protect from disturbing and ambiguous details. But you and I know that disturbing and ambiguous details are the most interesting! Therefore the strategy is:

We ask questions that can help the player come to interesting thoughts themselves. Let’s say a player told us that his hero is a former cop who was fired from the department for combating Internet crime. It doesn’t really matter what character he came up with, we can ask him:
“Your hero was born in this place or came from afar?“- the player probably hasn’t thought about this yet. Now he’ll think. First of all, he will look at the map and try to select some area or region. So much the better. “What does your character remember about this place??"- a good way on behalf of the player to enrich the still empty world.
“What did your hero do as a cop??"- most likely, when answering this and similar questions, the player will touch on the personality of his hero. Did the character find the job unpleasant or enjoyable?? Did his superiors make controversial decisions that he condemned?? You can dig in this direction for a long time. The player has only technically chosen a vocation for the character – now he will fill it with something personal.
"Have you ever worked for Ozymandis??“—you remember that in our story these are the creators of weapons? Well, you don’t have to remember that. It’s just that such questions for the player pass without unnecessary pressure. Don’t be afraid of the simple answer "No". We still have a lot of organizations left, and this same question can be addressed to other players.
“How did your character incur the wrath of the Yakuza??"- a slightly more arrogant question that can no longer be answered with a simple “No”. It is unlikely that he will directly upset the player, but if you see that he does not like such questions, it is better to be careful with them.

If you got an answer to your question, keep asking new ones! If you feel that you and the player have reached a dead end, move on to the next one. Try to make it clear to everyone at the gaming table that everyone can influence everyone’s story. Ask everyone if they would like to be part of this character’s story? Use leading questions, among other things, to unobtrusively lead one character to another! A hacker hero has appeared – did he meet the ex-cop hero when he was still hunting hackers?? The main thing is not to get carried away. We ask questions to help the player with character creation, not to turn their characters into what the host wants to see.

The second is questions with a statement. I almost never met them in advice to young presenters, when I myself was still trying to gain experience on the Internet. If the rules of any system formulate something similar, then they do not separate it into a separate category. But, in my opinion, questions with a statement have a serious difference from leading questions. They are aggressively sassy. You give the player no choice but to accept a statement about their character, even if they don’t like the statement. And the questions that follow, although they should leave some freedom, still constrain the player within the framework. Players often have to scramble their way out of a situation with a good deal of brainstorming.

But that’s why they are beautiful! The player thought seriously before the start of the game – an unprecedented thing! In order to create a special atmosphere and highlight these questions into something even more special, I called them “Juicy Questions.”. Why "Juicy"? Because such a cheeky tool can only be used in one case: to add a feature to a character that no player would ever dare to do on their own. Something juicy. dramatic. Conflict. Ambiguous. What makes characters in movies, books and games interesting.

“When one of your shifts was https://4crowns-casino.co.uk/games/ coming to an end, you couldn’t stand it and snapped at the kid hacker. The bosses were pleased with your work, the investigation department tried to ensure that you were left with clean hands. But that boy’s face still appears in your nightmares. What happened that fateful night? Why can’t these memories let you go?“These are the kind of questions I try to prepare before creating characters. For each hero, I try to allocate 3-4 Juicy Questions and leave another 2-3 in reserve. A dark episode from our cop’s past can clarify why he left the service, give the player the opportunity to create doubts in his hero about his actions (it’s not for nothing that they can’t stand paladins in role-playing environments – they are famous for their lack of doubts!) and, importantly, will create a point in history that we can refer to during the game itself. The kid might have guardians or friends who harbor a grudge against the police officer; the bosses might want to bring back to work a person capable of such actions.

But how to formulate such questions?? I try to make them sound like questions from “What? Where? When?». The player should always have room for imagination. There is no need to immediately stain the hero’s hands with blood; the player himself will think about it first. Or maybe, after thinking for five minutes, come up with an elegant way out of the situation. Don’t make your character a murderer and give an answer that satisfies the conditions of the Juicy Question. However, the statement must create dark and disturbing images. Before this, we created a past that explains the character’s current state. Now we create a past that haunts him.

The statement can be as detailed as you want. It’s a good idea to build a Juicy Question around an important plot element. But remember that players’ memory is not unlimited. They’re not pros at what? Where? When?"to retain tons of letters in your memory. But the questions themselves should be short and unambiguous. It will be better if the questions address the character’s emotions. Or they will make the player understand that the answer is never “right” and can be tricky. Provocative questions are also suitable. Important: To prevent players from going on strike, explain what Juicy Questions are and make it clear to players that they can refuse them. For added intrigue, allow Juicy Questions to be abandoned only before they are announced. Players will most likely enjoy this whole carousel, but it never hurts to be on the safe side.

Chapter 18: Generozhka of the first batch.

Generezhka – the essence is jargon that describes the creation of a character from and to. I use this word to describe the first game, when the players and I all get together and create heroes collectively. Oddly enough, we usually don’t touch on the characteristics and skills of heroes on this day. Not enough time! Creating character backstories is not a quick process. If you don’t rush to finish it quickly, it can suck up 5 to 8 hours of your time! If you can’t allocate a whole day for this, divide the generation into two batches. For many players, the process of coming up with ideas can be exhausting; there’s nothing wrong with that. I know good players for whom generation is a painful process, when nothing can be thought of and answers to Juicy Questions are very difficult. A good backstory doesn’t mean good acting! And vice versa.

Here we are all gathered. Yennefer asks everyone to come to roll20.net so everyone can see the world map. We will need it. She includes pre-selected ambient music in the background. Calm, not distracting, but creating the right atmosphere. Funny conversations with jokes are behind us, everyone looks at their monitors with uncertainty and waits for what will happen next. Before the first questions and answers are heard, Yennefer goes to an empty tab and draws a table with two columns. For what. In one she writes “What will happen”, in the other “What will not happen”. At this stage, a “Common Imaginary Space” should arise. Remember this? This is everyone’s abstract idea of ​​what is happening in the game, which does not conflict with anyone else. That’s why it’s common. If it’s broken… uh. At best, one of the players will end the game in a lousy mood. At worst, the party will be hopelessly ruined.

Everyone in turn must fill out this table with something of their own. This creates a list of things that should never appear in the game and a list of things that should appear in the game one way or another. Since Yennefer has a pre-prepared story, she filled the first rows of the table with those things without which her plot would seriously suffer.

Step by step we get a world, the elements of which are expected for each participant in the games. This is cool! It wouldn’t be nice if our game included some fantasy element that would cause one player to spit furiously. But he informed us in advance that this would spoil his impression of the game. Keep this in mind! The column “What won’t happen” has priority over “What will happen”, because a player can do without a cool idea, but he’s unlikely to tolerate an uncool idea.

After this, Yennefer chooses the first player – it turns out to be Anna Petrovna – and asks her to talk about what kind of character she would like to create. I’ll give players tips on how to come up with character ideas in the next chapter. Moreover, Anna Petrovna immediately declares that she wants to create a corporate monster, a boss with a capital “B”, who has a huge staff of employees, a bank account, an entire floor of a parking lot under her command… What to do if from the first words the player envisions a Mary Sue with limitless possibilities? The player himself must be ready to make concessions. I recommend that the presenter separate the game’s narrative from its mechanics. A player’s claim to incredible wealth sounds ridiculous when the rules seriously limit the size of his capital at the first level. The player can achieve narrative advantages, up to the appointment of his character to the highest positions in the corporation, but he can only get those opportunities that are regulated by the rules during the game.

Yennefer immediately began with leading questions. It doesn’t try to put the player who makes the first mistake in their place; its tasks allow the player to come up with “meat” for himself, due to which it will be easier to play a role in the game itself. Those same questions: where the character comes from, how she perceives corporate life, whether she is related to any side of the conflict, etc. Gradually, the hero developed a conflict with the Board of Directors of the Jinsei subsidiary, drug manufacturers. That’s enough for now – Yennefer moves on to the next player.

After some time, the composition of the party was determined: a corporate boss, a former cop, a cyborg mercenary and a drug dealer. At this stage, Yennefer did not impose a plot conflict, it formed itself – Jinsei screwed everyone in one way or another. The ex-cop never completed a case involving Jinsei hackers, a drug dealer lost his business because of them, a cyborg was hired by a corporate boss who spent her last money on achieving a key position on the board of directors. This became a party-forming event: they all want to achieve a better life through Jinsei.

After that, Juicy Questions came into play. At their expense, without any violent manipulation of the characters’ motivations, the remaining participants in the conflict arose: Ozymandis, Kokkingu, and Ultra-Neon. What’s more important is that the characters are connected to them in one way or another. Some want revenge, others are looking for opportunities to atone for sins. For some, there are simply more reasons to sleep with a gun in your hand. The presenter now has enough places where he can begin to unobtrusively introduce the main plot. It’s normal for players to immediately move on to something else!

Speaking of which. We, right here in the generezhka, will determine what adventure the party will immediately rush into. Why is there such a rush to do this?? Because that very “moment of the heroes meeting in the tavern” usually turns out to be unbearably burdensome and awkward. This seems like something unobvious, but in fact you quickly come to the conclusion that it is simply not necessary. The heroes are already together! And they don’t need to figure out how to start a conversation, they don’t need to look for excuses to be together. We went through all this on the generator. So soon the idea is born to rob the Jinsei warehouses and pin it on the current board of directors of their subsidiary. And as a starting point we will take the moment of penetration into these warehouses; If a discussion of the infiltration plan can become an interesting topic of conversation for the whole party, then the road to the warehouses can become that very “moment of the heroes meeting in the tavern”. We don’t need this.

Well, we’re ready for the first games!

Chapter 19: Tips for Generating.

What can a player do to make generating a more controlled and enjoyable process for himself?? The first thing is to relax the buns. The generation is not something separated from the subsequent role-playing, but an integral part of it. A full-fledged game, where there is a place for active discussion of certain issues, role-playing, and plot twists. Yes, it is unlikely that at least one die will be thrown, you will not need to monitor your parameters and evaluate the enemy’s parameters. But the right generation claims to become one of the most memorable and fun games in the game. After all, this is an acquaintance with characters that not a single person at the table even suspected! That very first impression, pleasant or not, from which everything else will begin.

And this is the most important thing. You don’t know what kind of hero you’ll make by the end of the campaign. The worst case scenario is for each character to appear in isolation from the others. There is a chance that by chance your motivations for being together will turn out to be reinforced concrete. But Immolate is improved! It’s better to do everything wisely and exclude the element of chance from it. When another player approaches you with an offer to influence your story with the story of his character, don’t turn your nose up. Better cooperate with him, in the end you will get something greater than each of you could create separately. It would be very good if all players would cooperate in this way! Then you won’t have questions like, “Why is my character hanging out with these bastards?”?». They are not splattered! And the comrades with whom the hero shares years and decades of common adventures and stories.

But for the initial breakthrough, the first ideas, it is quite possible to prepare. You don’t need to write any detailed stories, just come up with a clear archetype that can be adhered to throughout the entire generation. Only cultural experience can help here: what you watch, read, play. There’s definitely no need to be shy about taking some very popular and cliched archetype! For role-playing games, the most important thing is bright characters and memorable features. Even the character bases that have been trampled far and wide will not be useless here.

Be careful when choosing your setting. A character that is appropriate in one universe may not be appropriate in another. We chose cyberpunk, so you need to look for inspiration in the works of punk (not necessarily cyberpunk, it shares common motifs with all other punks!). For fantasy, images of fantasy heroes are suitable. The result is a notorious Legolas? So much the better! Typical Han Solo came out? Amazing! During the general training and during the game itself, this image will be mercilessly changed and supplemented. This gives us unlimited freedom of choice. It’s a sin not to use it.

Chapter 20: Quenta and how to ignore her.

The last thing I wanted to talk about is the pre-created description of the hero. This is how it happened in the recent past: the player set aside a separate evening, sat down, wrote whatever he came up with about his hero (the result is called a quenta, in the language of Tolkien’s elves – history), sends it to the presenter. He makes his own adjustments, helps with problem areas, and accepts her. When the host receives the last quenta, he announces the day of the game. Everyone gathers either in the tavern or at the nearest NPC, and the host begins to describe to the players what story they are in this time.

In fact, they still generate characters this way. However, in my words it is easy to find some disdain. It’s all about my experience: I so often received an amazing quenata in my hands, and after it I watched a very mediocre game in the game, that I inadvertently had to draw a conclusion. A good quenta does not guarantee good wagering. On the contrary, these are independent phenomena. You can both learn to write a good quena and play the emotions of your character well. But one will not flow into the other, skills will have to be developed in parallel. Which for some reason is not at all obvious to either players or masters. You can still find a demand for a good quenta from presenters or players who write good quentas and then relax during the game.

For myself, I concluded: I’m here for the games themselves. Therefore, I now don’t want to organize a short story competition (and a good quena is considered to be a kind of mini-story that supposedly reveals a character), or leave the creation of characters to the player’s mood on a particular evening and his command of short prose. I try to select players in the same way as people are selected for a job – in a natural conversation. The general, being a full-fledged party, copes perfectly with all the tasks that the quenta performs, but in addition demonstrates how the player will roleplay. Well, the time spent writing a generation book is in no way comparable to the time spent writing a quenta! One is leisure, the other is creative work. I’m not saying that one is necessarily better than the other. But one is definitely more fun than the other.

But if you still had to write to the quent, what should you do?? It is best to write not a biography, but a history. The best quents are those written from the character’s point of view, with his thoughts and experiences. So the conclusion is simple: we take an important event in the character’s life and describe it from his point of view. If you know how to write stories or have repeatedly received praise for your essays from a literature teacher, most likely your quenta will be called excellent! If the last time you wrote something literary was at school twenty years ago… well, it’s not for nothing that almost all modern role-playing systems are switching to the generation method. Previously, such people were not welcome.

Here’s another blog written. I hope the long break created a hunger inside you or made you miss my long descriptions of incomprehensible things. I really miss you and writing this blog turned out to be a great pleasure. Don’t be afraid to join the roleplaying community. Where can this be done more conveniently?? We just have a nice discord channel: discord.gg/63m55bz To avoid confusion: it is mainly dedicated to our own game games, as well as our streams. But we will be incredibly happy if you find your role-playing party among our growing audience! Go ahead, we will help. And read previous blogs!

Good luck until next time! I won’t promise when the next blog will come out, the weekly plan didn’t work out for one reason or another; I don’t want to delay blogging so much either. Write what you found interesting or what you miss in blogs! Bye.