8 Reasons your World of Darkness characters might not be working
If youâve been playing World of Darkness games for any length of time, youâll probably have run into at least one character that was just bad- downright painful to roleplay with. You might have even been the one playing them.
This is not about those characters.
Lots of times, we make characters that are mostly good, but thereâs something about them that doesnât quite work. They donât quite flow, or maybe they feel like an odd one out in the game. So hereâs eight reasons why otherwise good WoD characters might not be working:
Itâs very easy, especially with more experienced characters, to just stack stuff into their backstory endlessly until youâve basically got a novel. But your ST doesnât want to read all that, you probably wonât be able to keep track of all of it, and most importantly, it will make the other players feel frustrated because your character is going to take up too more narrative space within the game. It will also lead to frustration on your end, as itâs likely going to wind up impossible to address everything youâve come up with in the scope of one chronicle.
The way to prevent- or at least mitigate- this issue is to pay close attention to the âconceptâ line on the character sheet. Itâs easy to skip over for being mechanically irrelevant and not very fun, but it helps give a core to key in on and help you trim excess material that doesnât serve what you really want to do with the character. Nature and Demeanor are additional ways to give yourself guidelines to avoid adding details that donât make your character more complex, just more complicated.
2. Poorly developed mortal/mundane life
The mortal life is what makes the character relatable. While âyoung neonate trying to fight elder tyrannyâ is a theme that can resonate with us⌠weâre not vampires or werewolves (at least I hope nobody reading this is). Weâve never struggled with the Beast or participated in a punishment rite. The part of a character thatâs going to make them believable and sympathetic is the part more of us are familiar with, so avoid the temptation to âskip to the good partsâ
3. Your concept requires too much research
This is somewhat YMMV- while thereâs a bare minimum of research you need to do to avoid shallow stereotypes and ridiculous errors, some people are much more bothered by inaccuracies than others. If youâre the kind of person whoâs going to be very frustrated if you realize in the middle of the session that you donât have any idea what a culturally appropriate favorite food for your character might be, or what that engineering term youâve been throwing around actually means, be prepared to spend a lot of time outside of game sessions checking into every aspect of who your character is an what they can do so you can minimize the number of times youâre caught flat-footed. Or just pick something a bit closer to home. If, on the other hand, youâre more comfortable winging it, this might not be as big of a concern.
4. Poorly defined or vague goals
Pretty much everyone knows a good character needs to want something nowadays. But commonly, these goals wind up being something big and broad like âfind my place in the worldâ or ârepair the reputations of the Euthanatosâ. But itâs very hard to make goals like this affect any specific action or lead to any specific plotline. Theyâre a good start, but should be narrowed down before the chronicle begins to something more concrete. âProve my worth as a cainite to the local Sabbatâ is something a lot easier to act on and use as a catalyst for action and inaction, but is still a facet of something like âfind my place in the worldâ.
5. Character goals poorly matched to the chronicle
This is going to require talking to the ST to resolve, but if youâre going to be playing in a 1st edition Chicago by Night chronicle, and you make a Toreador whose life goal is to get elected president of France, youâre not going to be able to make any meaningful progress towards that within the scope of the game. Not, of course, that characters shouldnât want things they canât have. Thatâs one of the funnest ways to torture them! But you do need to make it such that you can feel like what you do in the chronicle is actually relevant to getting or failing to get what you want.
6. Not allowing room for failure
You canât force other characters- player or ST- to react to yours in a specific way. If itâs very important that everyone in your game (or a specific character) finds your PC sexy/scary/annoying/trustworthy, you need to rethink. Traits, Merits, and Flaws can get you most of the way there, but youâre setting yourself up for a bad time if you donât make sure the character still works if you donât get the intended reaction.
Also, you donât want to set your characters up in a way that they cannot fail, because dice gods are bitches and youâll probably wind up botching at the worst possible moment. A common example of this is a character whoâs lying about their past, and this lie must never be called into serious doubt for whatever reason. Eventually, the player will fail a roll, and needs to be prepared for whatâs going to happen if thatâs the case. Finding ways to minimize these things is smart playing, but you canât eliminate the role of chance entirely, so keep that in mind.
7. Making characters that canât work with a group
WoD games do tend to be a bit more friendly to individualistic characters than many others, but if you make a character who wonât ever join up with the coterie/pack/cabal/motley/etc (or will require a contrived explanation or constant outside intervention to keep them with the group), thatâs a bad move for everyone involved. Ditto for those characters who will be actively antagonistic to the rest of the group without reasonable provocation. The other players will have a bad time as you drag the chronicle down while they deal with keeping your PC happy, and youâll have a bad time as you miss out on all the good action while your PC is off lone wolfing it.
Thereâs many ways to integrate a PC into a group, but if you want to make someone whoâs generally independent, but sticks with these people, an easy way to handle it is to coordinate with another player to establish some kind of previous relationship, be it friends, lovers, family, or simply a working partnership.
8. You donât actually want to roleplay the character
This is kind of a weird one, but once again, thereâs two facets. First, what your character does isnât actually very interesting. This is common with creative characters who want to make some kind of masterwork (although it does pop up in other places). You wind up roleplaying someone sitting in a room writing a book, when you could have just been writing a book yourself and it would have been a lot more fun. This isnât to say that creatives canât be fun PCs, but you need to give them something to get them out of their studios or off their computers.
On the flip side, sometimes youâre not comfortable roleplaying your character. A personal example will be useful here. I had a Vampire PC at one point who was a Follower of Set. During her mortal life, she had been involved in a sexual relationship that was very taboo by many peopleâs standards, and the psychological effect this had on her carried through her Embrace. It affected how she fed, how she viewed the Cult of Set. But I donât really enjoy erotic rp and actually get very uncomfortable roleplaying the heavy sexual themes. And while the concept didnât require explicit sex scenes, there was a lot of focus on her sexuality and sexual themes. I wound up feeling like I was constantly walking a tightrope, trying to portray the PC in an authentic way that was true to how I envisioned her mind working, while also never getting too far into sexual situations. I actually wound up having to retire her. Not because she was a bad character, but because she was a bad character for me.
If for whatever reason your character requires focus on something you feel uncomfortable roleplaying, you should really just skip it. It might get easier, it might not, but you donât want to put yourself in a situation where youâre forced to retire them in the middle of a game because itâs just not working. If youâre unsure, try saving the PC for a one-shot or getting your ST to run a detailed prelude for you, which will give time to explore a bit without the pressure of making this an ongoing thing if you donât like it.
Thanks for reading! None of this will save a totally crap character, but all of them will help take concepts that are OK and elevate them to something useful.
