Creating Campaign Characters | Advanced Gamemastery

[@SamGGClayton]

Enjoying your advice and can't wait until your book arrives. Thanks for the donation link. I live locally and have a property that has koalas and koala habitat. It's been a really tough time environmentally with fires, then floods damaging habitat and chlamydia also a real problem .I hope your wildlife copes with the terrible heatwave conditions occuring there. Thanks again.

[@TheAlexandrian]

Pinning your comment because I think it would be great for more people to help the koalas! (Link the video description!)

[@TangledLion]

I tend to play online with friends, and sometimes this helps to virtually extend the session 0, especially regarding creation of characters. We usually set up a discord and the GM gives guidelines for character creation and the theme of the game. Then as the players are brainstorming their characters, we talk with one another in the chat and bounce ideas off of one another. For example, I am a player in a playthrough the Pathfinder 2e adventure path Kingmaker. This is a level 1-20 adventure so there's a lot to handle. While we had a formal session 0 to discuss boundaries and expectations, our characters were mostly done as we'd been discussing details for weeks since the GM shared the excellent official players guide which has some solid recommendations for party creation. One player character started off as just a Barbarian Wolfkin, but when it became clear the character concepts the rest of us were pondering wouldn't make for a good leader of a Kingdom(something of great importance to an adventure called Kingmaker), she decided to add to her backstory that she's the pack alpha of her Village, and thus a shoe in for leadership. This idea only happened because we had that back and forth in character creation.

[@gregwisniewski9604]

Normally a GM, I am literally have been doing this over the last couple of weeks with a new campaign as a player. It feels really good to know what we are all getting into, and what kind of personalities might be in play as soon as the curtain goes up on session one. I've talked to some people who feel that an established gaming group doesn't need to do this, but I really think it is worth taking the time to get to know new characters and the scenario. This is entirely different than the players knowing one another.

[@TheAlexandrian]

100%. Players knowing each other is completely different than characters knowing each other.

[@CromwellTheArchaeologist]

I have been following your blog for freaking years, dude! I am excited to see you in this new format!

[@TheAlexandrian]

Great to have you here, too!

[@thatcanadianguy7699]

Thanks for laying all this out! My players created their characters separately and it shows. Thankfully I've been able to figure out ways to fit them all in, but it took a lot of work on my part. Definitely doing it this way next time!

[@TheAlexandrian]

Once you do it collaboratively once, you'll never go back! Glad to hear you've got your campaign on track!

[@Swan-may]

Thank you thank you thank you. I think there is a widespread problem in GM spaces where people have learned to say "the only solution to this problem is communication!" and "have a session zero!", with little detail other than "use safety tools" and "talk about your expectations". As if that is all there is to setting up a campaign for success! GM-Player expectations mismatches and PC-setting integration are actually complicated and time-consuming things to solve, they are not something that can be solved in one short conversation or by waiving around platitudes. An actual procedure to make that happen is way more helpful than a passing blurb in an options book.

[@StepBackHistory]

The campaign doesn't start til next week but we started off by using a system like fiasco to have every character in some kind of relationship with two other people. We got a pair of twins, two teacher/apprentice relationships out of it

[@patrickmullen9485]

Magnificent video. I have always said, not being there one on one, at the very least, for PC creation is GM Malpractice. The ideal is that everyone does it together at a table but that isn't always possible or practical. In that case the GM *has* to be the connective tissue.

[@satiricalbard1]

Such weird timing - I was literally thinking to myself yesterday (about 12 hours before this video dropped) that I should email you to suggest you make a video breaking down the actual mechanics of weaving character backstories & arcs with published adventures. It's something that gets talked about a lot, but often without a clear 'how to', and at first I used to be really unsure of how to go about it. I imagine many DMs/GMs who are moving from beginner to intermediate proficiency are the same. So this was amazing timing, as well as being a really clear and excellent guide. Thanks! I think one barrier, at least in the dnd/pf communities, is that there is a culture that thinks any involvement of the DM/GM in character creation is an infringement on the player's agency and creativity. In extremis, this leads to completely misplaced characters that clash with the campaign premise, and a bad time all round. Even without that, from observation I think a lot of DMs/GMs are afraid to suggest that players only write concepts and ideas at first, and then collaborate on details like actual NPCs, factions, etc that the PC knows from their backstory. And some players probably recoil at that idea too. But I've discovered this is the secret sauce for truly integrating characters with pre-written adventures, and it leads to so much better immersion as well as both character AND PLAYER motivation for the campaign!

[@raggarex]

Bought your book on blind faith after seeing reviews from other KZbinrs. Found your channel through the About the Author description at the back of the book. It's all coming together. Lovely stuff, the lot. Cheers! 🍻⚔🛡🍻

[@diegotartaglia]

As always, such an in depth and insightful video. Thanks and keep rocking. Looking forward to read your book.

[@TheAlexandrian]

Thanks! Hope you love the book!

[@AvengerYouT]

Saving to watch later. Liked it already to help the algorithm. It's Justin stuff so probably really helpful anyway.

[@TheAlexandrian]

We who are about to face the algorithm salute you!

[@DrogoMistweave]

Poor koalas. People keep referring to them as bears (they are marsupial, not placental, mammals) and their international reputation is chlamydia and being high on eucalyptus leaf. And in an RPG context, you should really use Drop Bears which hunt by ambushing ground dwelling animals from above. Great vid as always.

[@emjtucson]

Yes, yes, yes! Thank you for detailing these procedures.

[@TheAlexandrian]

You are so welcome!

[@michelettovolpe]

Hey Justin! Not related to this video (which was great BTW)., but Questing Beast just covered "Barkeep on the Borderlands." A fun "pubcrawl" adventure. When I watched his video, I immediately though that this was something you could use/put your own spin on.

[@TheAlexandrian]

I'll check it out!

[@northvikingman]

I love ALL Alexandrian videos.

[@TheAlexandrian]

As all should. ;)

[@ericjome7284]

I am reminded of Chill or Masque of the Red Death. A starter adventure finds strangers thrown together against a mutual threat and the experience ends with them being invited to join an organization opposing supernatural forces. I think this would work in things like Delta Green too.

[@MrDizzywolf]

Amazing as always, your advice has helped me so so much in running my Star Wars campaign! I regret not doing collaborative character creation like this, as it seems there is always a character that "Well, you guys wouldn't know them", making it really difficulty to fit them in.

[@TheBurgerkrieg]

timing could not be better on this one

[@TheAlexandrian]

I actually subscribe to the Elf on the Shelf data-mining reports, so I know EXACTLY what GMs need to know and when they need to know it. ;)

[@zachsaphone6810]

Good video! On a somewhat related note, I’d be interested to hear thoughts on the session 0 concept in the context of inconsistent players. For example, I’ve played/ran 8 campaigns in the last 2 years and only 2 had the same players from start to finish.

[@TheAlexandrian]

I'm a big believer in orientation sessions for new players; I don't just expect them to jump in. It's also not a bad idea to summarize the conclusions/information from Session 0 (for example, what lines and veils were established) for easy future reference. These are documents which can also be provided to new players joining the group.

[@zonegamma8197]

very useful video thanks

[@gendor5199]

I wonder if he has already covered it, but I find myself in a spot where secret societies have started popping up in suggestions for me, and I have been looking into ways of doing it but so far my searches give very few ideas, and I would at best consider them incomplete, at worst, product placements.

[@TheAlexandrian]

I'll probably be doing a video that's at least secret-society-adjacent soon, but if you're not already familiar with node-based scenario design, it's my go to for that sort of campaign: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/7949/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-1-the-plotted-approach Night's Black Agents also includes some really slick clues for PCs vs. Conspiracy game play: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/49659/roleplaying-games/review-nights-black-agents

[@benl4198]

I was mostly fine with the Mass Effect ending(s), I'm gonna probably be just fine with this ending, bc that's how stories work. I'm still trying to keep a caution to my optimism, but man I'm hyped for this lol

[@estebanrodriguez5409]

I still remember, years back, when I got everyone excited to play Planescape. Everyone was familiar with the setting, but I can't remember if we made the characters with Pathfinder. Cutting the story short, I got cero idea where to take the adventure after I had a cast of characters with differents walks on life who didn't knew each other. So yeah, for some types of games you want to work this things out BEFORE the players make their characters. Learned my lesson that day.

[@drdm2446]

Eternal lies! How did that campaign go? A worthy comparison to CoC’s Masks?

[@TheAlexandrian]

I am possibly the world's biggest Masks of Nyarlathotep fan, and I actually consider Eternal Lies to be even better. I've done a full Remix of the campaign, including a breakdown of how my own run of the campaign went: thealexandrian.net/wordpress/37078/roleplaying-games/eternal-lies-the-alexandrian-remix

[@flyfly376]

Question - how does one PREVENT players from making characters beforehand? Like, what do you do about players who already came with a pretty fleshed out character to session zero? Assume character is made based on the premise provided beforehand, so the character does reasonably fit into the premise.

[@ErikLevin]

If the character fits and the player is on board with integrating the character into the party and the setting, does it need to be prevented?

[@TheAlexandrian]

I've usually found that just saying, "We'll be creating characters together in the first session," seems to head that off at the pass. If someone comes in with a bunch of work already done on a character, that's probably fine most of the time. (There are specific games like Dresden Files or Burning Empires where it's just not going to work; but that also probably means they didn't do it.) The key thing is that they still need to be flexible in adapting and continuing to develop the character. They can't lock themselves in stone and refuse to participate with the rest of the group. (And, if they do, that may indicate a deeper problem in terms of collaboration.)

[@geoffdewitt6845]

Hey Mr. Alexander, I'm looking to have my players create the pitch for my next campaign. Do you have any articles or tips for collaboration on that front?

[@TheAlexandrian]

I don't have any specific articles for that, but Jonathan Tweet gives some great advice in the 3rd Edition of OVER THE EDGE that can easily be universally applied, so you might want to check that out.

[@geoffdewitt6845]

@@TheAlexandrian Thanks!

[@TheAltansar]

Dresden Files or Dresden Files accelerated?

[@TheAlexandrian]

Dresden Files Accelerated is supposed to be mechanically more streamlined, but I found the campaign creation elements to be pretty anemic compared to the original game.

[@BlueTressym]

I love this but I always run into one particular issue, both when playing and GMing. I completely get why it's good to have the PCs know each other but I find that doesn't seem to work in practice because the PLAYERS don't know each other's characters so they can't really RP that knowledge the character supposedly has. Heck, half the time, that character's player doesn't know the character, given that they've only just been created. So, how do you deal with players not having knowledge their characters should have about each other? How can you RP a scene between Alice and Bob, who have allegedly known each other for years, when Alice and Bob's players have only just started getting to know their brand-new, fresh-off-the-farm PCs?

[@satiricalbard1]

If character creation began at your session zero, then every player knows at least something about all the other characters. You can also have this happen before & after your actual session zero, via group chat on discord or wherever you want to chat between sessions. The point is that as players are dreaming up and then fleshing out their character ideas, they are doing so publicly. They might also work on secrets with the GM, but the other players at least should know some core information about them. I think this holds even if the _characters_ are going to start as complete strangers. To give you a concrete example: in my current Pathfinder 2e campaign everyone is from the same city - this was part of the campaign premise. Player 1 is playing a noble swashbuckler from a family that owns the city's main shipyard. Player 2 is a boxer fighter with a mechanic background. Once they knew that about each other, it was simple for one of them to propose, and the other agree, that the fighter works at the shipyard and knew the young noble to be ok, even if he was a 'toff'. Then player 3 says is a medic, so player 2 suggests that the doc attends boxing matches and fixes people up for some side income, while player 3 suggests that since he's thinking he's from a line of doctors, maybe his family is the family practice for the noble family. Done. We had a little more trouble with the halfling bard with a satirist background, but then the noble player remembered his PC's interest in the campaign premise (a revolution against a tyrannical regime that enslaves halflings) is that he is an anti-slavery abolitionist who has quietly been helping some of his family's slaves escape, and he's also a dandy so he loves a good time - so he suggested he's attended some of the bard's performances, and even anonymously donated money to her as a silent patron. She didn't know him, but her knew her. I also suggested she would likely have played in a tavern that the fighter frequented, that was burned to the ground about a week before the campaign began. The fighter had an emotionally strong connection to the tavern as a strong bond and campaign motivation for himself, with the player deciding his lover had died in the fire. So those two at least recognised each other by face, and the fighter certainly knew the bard's name, and that had something deep and meaningful to talk about straight away. In this way, every PC knew at least 1 other PC, and 3 of them even had a web of relationships (not all straightforwardly positive in this case, but it obviously works easier when they are). When things went down in act 1 of session 1, they thus all had at least some basis for acting together, and it wasn't a huge stretch to say they ran off in the same direction when the city guards came out in force. In that first combat, they mainly fought by themselves rather than as a true team (through a combo of not knowing their own abilities well yet, let alone each other's, but also some good roleplaying from my players). Then when another encounter was sprung upon them, they were already a group - and from there, trust was built.

[@missmeaghanj2482]

Thank you for supporting trans rights!!

[@MisterSam007]

dude i love propaganda in my hobby videos

[@rynowatcher]

I kind of feel the session 0 is situationally useful at best, and it is remarkably bad for games where exploration or uniformity in play is expected. In example, adventurer's leage, pathfinder society, or the Cult of Chaos are organized play venues that you are supposed to just come with a character of x qualifications and just play. They are modular by design, and by the numbers, they represent the majority of Runequest, d&d, and pathfinder players. Discussing future plot arches is an exercise in futility if you are playing call of cthulhu, dcc, or paranoia, so making a cohesive group does not matter in the slightest. Dresden files uses FATE, which is a semi-story game to start and Blades in the Dark (though I like it) has such a narrow scope of play in a specific genre that it is not even worth mentioning in the same breath as Gurps or D&D. They require session 0's due to their niche nature, but a session 0 works against any game that relies on mystery, exploration, or horror as the base concept.

[@timothymallory6706]

Organized play is just a way of arranging one shots, not an actual campaign. So campaign advice for that doesn't matter in the slightest. But I strongly disagree that they represent the majority of such players. I would love to see any evidence of that. I don't know about pathfinder, but most players playing D&D and Runequest are NOT reporting in to their corporate overlords via organized play. I suspect Pathfinder is the same. DCC is an example of a game that already has a very narrow, specific group creation premise: the lvl 0 funnel. That level 0 funnel IS the session 0 being discussed. Paranoia already has your group premise inherent in it too, just like Blades in the Dark. Character creation produces troubleshooters for Alpha Complex. You aren't going to have to worry about someone showing up with a character that isn't a troubleshooter for Alpha Complex. But Call of Cthulhu and most mystery games certainly benefit from session 0. If you are expecting these characters to stick together over the long term, you should establish WHY they are doing so. And why they are at the starting position of the game, whether that is Uncle Jack's cabin in the woods or on a cruise ship in the Caribbean. Why are they there? Why are they going to want to deal with the mystery that is about to unfold? And, most importantly, why would they trust the other players on this adventure and continue to associate with them in future adventures? Even if you are running a published adventure path, it makes a difference if you are doing Beyond the Mountains of Madness or Horror on the Orient Express. Different character types fit those two adventures. If you don't make a character that has any reason to get hired by (or accept a job from) Miskatonic University to go to the Antarctic, you are kind of screwed with Beyond the Mountains of Madness.

[@rynowatcher]

@@timothymallory6706 I mean, numbers for organized play exist but numbers for home games do not. Not sure what you are arguing there. Talk to your local game shop to get concrete numbers on organized play; there is no one collecting info on home games so maybe more, maybe less; who knows? Session 0's are for narrative based games. I did not go into an exhaustive list, but the OSR is a genre of games that does not use a session 0 because it is very likely you will not survive one game.

[@estebanrodriguez5409]

Yes, if you are playing an OSR kind of game, you don't need that much deeph for PCs. That's because OSR usually is high stakes and low level players tend to die. Organized play is also it's own kind of beast.

[@rynowatcher]

@@estebanrodriguez5409 you are cutting out call of cthulhu, the 3rd biggest play group of of your general rpg, and you are ignoring organized play that takes the majority of home play versus organized play... Either way, more people have played Curse of Straud in snow organized play where your background does not matter versus the DM who noted the number of your eyelashes of your original character *do not steal*. Most rpg's are generally purposed; it is strange for a dm yo actually care about your back story, which is Mt primary criticism of the video as this is is niche sub group of most rpg players that is divergent from the norm.

[@TheAlexandrian]

Organized play and dedicated campaigns are completely different beasts in terms of how they're organized and what the expectations of play are. But: 1. The claim that the majority of players are playing in organized play is just not true. There's no way to make those numbers add up for any of the games you mention (or the hobby as a whole). No publisher has ever claimed that. The numbers that we do have directly contradict it. 2. Session 0 is for, among other things, creating characters, introducing mechanics, and/or establishing safety tools. The idea that you don't need characters, rules, or safety tools for mystery, exploration, or horror games is... Well, let's just say it's a really weird claim.

[@gmross9265]

Hey, been watching here and there. Thanks for the video. Do you have a discord severr?

[@TheAlexandrian]

I do! You can find a link on the Alexandrian: thealexandrian.net