Understanding Your Player Characters

Presenting a few methods you might be able to use to get in sync with your players, and understand their characters’ goals and objectives.
Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership!
www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
02:13 - The Character’s Backstory
03:55 - Visualizing the Character in Action
05:06 - What the Character Wants
06:27 - What the Player Wants for Their Character
08:16 - A Bit of Worldbuilding Advice…
09:55 - Where is the Character on Their Journey?
13:24 - What the Character Needs
14:58 - The Lie the Character Believes
16:26 - Final Thoughts
News Theme Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
Investigations Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/b...
PATREON: / supergeekmike
DISCORD: / discord
NEWSLETTER: www.supergeekmike.com/newsletter
____________________________________
WEBSITE/BLOG: www.supergeekmike.com/
WISHLIST: www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls...
Address for Packages:
Mike Christensen
100 W. High St., #1326
Moorpark, CA 93021
- PLEASE don't address things to "SupergeekMike"; I need to show I.D. when I pick up packages, and that isn't the name on my driver's license
Address for Letters:
Mike Christensen
P.O. Box 1326
Moorpark, CA 93020
TWITTER: / supergeekmike
INSTAGRAM: / supergeekmike
TIKTOK: / supergeekmike
TWITCH: / supergeekmike
____________________________________
More Links, including my One Funny link: www.supergeekmike.com/links

[@RobearRich]

I am on my first full campaign. I came up with a rough pitch of the campaign I wanted to run. I then talked to my players about their backstories individually and had them come up with at least 3 NPCs from their backstories. These NPCs didn't have names yet. I looked over their backstories and linked up NPCs that were similar. One player had a dad who had disappeared when his adventuring company went to hunt down a necromancer. I have another character whose wife was murdered by a shadowy assassin. I made it so the father was captured and corrupted by the necromancer and is the villain who murdered my PCs wife. The necromancer is the BBEG and he was responsible for murdering another PC's father (yup, lots of orphans haha) Not all of these connections were as dramatic as this but it did make it so the players have meaningful connections that they discover. Most of the quests are built around the player's backstories. One of my favorite moments was when the players started arguing about what order they were going to Complete backstory quests.

[@ShadowPa1adin]

That WorldAnvil ad made we want to wear a cloak and keep my worldbuilding notes in it.

[@bristowski]

This is a good channel. I like Mike. I'm glad someone is finally paying Mike to make videos.

[@manueltorresart2345]

Oh boy, the sponsor videos made me laught pretty loud. Some pretty solid advice, this is a cooperative game and if you want to achive that everyone is having fun, talking and having into account their opinions is important. It may be true that not all of their ideas might be included, but we as DMs could make the effort to add at least something so your players feel like they're part of something.

[@ShadowPa1adin]

Something I do at my table is that I have the players use the intro to the tv-series "Burn Notice" as a template for writing down their character-backstories. For those who do not know, simply search youtube for "Burn Notice intro." It explains itself). Not only is it short (the show's intro lasts only a minute) but it focuses on all the important bits that a backstory should have: character premise, how did they get to where they are now, where are they on their journey, relationships (both within the party and to NPCs) and motivation/wants. The DM doesn't have to read an entire book before the game, but it also leaves plenty of room for expansion and can be filled in more during gameplay.

[@Autumn-Muse]

4:15 Instead of a movie trailer, I even go more abstract and think about what the anime OP would look like. For example, I imagine my bladesinger mousefolk being posed back to back with our goblin runeknight. It would have the mousefolk facing the audience summoning shadow blade, then do a 180 degree swivel to face the goblin the shot widening as she transforms into her large form.

[@kelpiekit4002]

I like character creations as a discussion that encourages introspective creation. If you have a character with the backstory "Character grew up on the street and joined a thieves guild to survive" you'll have the joy of recognition when you encounter that guild in the campaign. But "Tell me why you regret a lie you gave" or "How badly did your first theft go?" are going to have emotive responses as well as recognition joy. The difference is the first thing is creating a fact while the second ones are creating memories. Think of how well you know novel or movie characters compared to historical figures from a textbook. (This questioning introspection shouldn't stop when the game starts either).

[@TwilitbeingReboot]

I like the little scene transitions. It's funny to see them after all the more recent videos where they don't feature.

[@AkaiTsume]

My god, I love these topic transition graphics. XD Well done, and a very informative video!! I love the idea of the "character intro image". Not only will I give that a shot with my players, but I may pass that on to another DM friend of mine who's struggling a bit to get the players to flesh out their characters.

[@mkang8782]

I am getting ready to start a campaign and this will help during our Session Zero.

[@bristowski]

This is great! I'm about to start my second campaign and I'll certainly use some of these!

[@starsapart9311]

I spend a lot of time thinking about all of this for my characters as a player. As a DM I've definitely asked some of these and my players fall into two camps: the overthinkers like me who can talk about this stuff all day long and the people who give me blank looks and answer, "I guess they want to... You know, be good adventurers? I guess?" 🤣

[@honoratagold]

This is also important for players to be aware of when writing backstories or pitching characters to their DMs as well. When what I want for a character's narrative and what the character wants are in conflict, I usually try to communicate that to my DM before he asks, because we had a bit of a snafu really early on with this kind of thing (he'd added some stuff to my backstory I wasn't thrilled with because I was trying to play a more down-to-earth character and he hadn't picked up on some subtleties). I'm not saying come in and demand to be famous in-game or whatever, but I often find myself writing backstory bits and then adding parentheticals that are like (I don't want this issue solved, I want them to learn to live with this issue), or including a bit explaining the vibes or whatever. I guess some DMs might find this too forward or demanding, but at least with my DM, I think it's useful for directing conversation.

[@bernadmanny]

The Cloak of Notekeeping is genius

[@brophwyd]

Played a character based around a literal "Lie The Character Believes" in that she had a literal devil lying to her and emotionally manipulating her into thinking nobody loved her (because she was a Tiefling who made a pact with a devil). Party got a ring of wishes and and used it to break her pact, causing her to become a Wild Magic Sorcerer.

[@dolphin64575]

Thank you for helping me flesh out my upcoming character! He's run away from a home where he wasn't allowed to do much, and he thinks he wants to explore and experience a bunch of different cultures and stuff, but he's determined to prove himself and won't hear "no", and needs people who will listen to him and figure out how to teach him moderation/limits. Like "kid, when the hot sauce comes with a waiver, it's not cowardly to rethink your decision".

[@SupergeekMike]

Glad I could help!

[@Dlnqntt]

If you're interested in some diverse, randomly rolled, backgrounds then hunt down a copy of Central Casting. Far as I know the book is out of print, so it may be a challenge to find (I have a .pdf of it from a friend, for example), but it is easily the best background generator I have ever seen. You do need to modify a few things in the book where it gives stat bonuses, or additional money, but those are easy enough to adjust to whatever system you are running with.

[@sunnygcat13]

Definitely want that video on incorporating back story. Also the transitions are a little bit much lol

[@phill8156]

Great stuff man. Thanks for the inspiration.

[@johnobrien7562]

so what you're saying is if your players indicate that they don't know what they are doing, you should hit them with multiple dragons? solid video. my new campaign is running Call of the Netherdeep, but I already have a PC tied into one of the rivals for backstory. I think the book does a good job of telling you what the Rivals want, and I hope to elicit the same from my PCs.

[@anne6448]

love this ad read

[@charlesmayes7020]

A little late to the party here, but wanted to say thank you for putting this video together. It's helped me solidify some of the things I wanted to implement in an upcoming campaign to weave my characters' stories into the existing module in a meaningful way. Great content!

[@__-vb3ht]

Honestly, that ad got me interested more in the cloak more than the World Anvil subscription

[@syvajarvi2289]

The table I play at, we are all former forever DMs so when we generate our characters we look at it like a dossier. We start with stats, lineage, class, and a concept for progression like The character will start out as one class because that was how they grew up but as they grow within the story they might shift into a second class. An example: Akamu Moana is a water Genasi from an archipelago west of the continent and was raised to be a hunter/warrior for his island. Part of the island culture is to go on a walkabout, jumping on a ship and traveling the world to find their place in it. His base class is ranger…. As he traveled he fell in love with the stories and cultures he has been exposed to as he has traveled and has started to collect the stories. I took the far traveler background and set my skills accordingly. I talked to the DM and when we looked at what he has for skills and proficiencies the DM had me add the Aquan language and navigation (water) for free as we discussed the characters early and near mid years before the upcoming session zero. Since we are starting at lvl 10, we continued to talk about his travels and dove deeper into the concept behind his culture. The upcoming campaign is also the beginnings of world building for a home brewed world, so in digging into the culture of the character we developed a few sea ports in the world as well as a chain of islands that has Tritons, sea elves, and water genasi as residents. We also did some minor adjustments to their visuals to give the three species a Pacific Islander feel to them vs the fantastical magical appearance they have in the books. Those discussions help the DM build the world the players would like to experience. We have a player who lives in Spain, he is bringing that feel into the world, our UK player is bringing Glasgow and London esthetics to the world and adding to the lore. All of us have traveled in the real world so our characters are explorers. It’s a fun dynamic within our group and we each plan on hosting sessions as DMs so we all have a chance to explore the world with each other.

[@SupergeekMike]

Sounds great!

[@SupergeekMike]

What other methods can you recommend to better understand player characters? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike

[@Vaati1992]

The first time that chapter single played I thought: wait, I didn't accidentally clicked on an episode of Cody's Showdy..? Also could you do a video on how to adjust oneshots for the player characters?

[@SupergeekMike]

The Cody’s Showdy reference was not accidental 😉

[@martinboyle7347]

This is a really good episode of your videos. From a players point of view would any of the topics help their DM in a module ie like curse of strahd?

[@SupergeekMike]

I think any of them can work, depending on your DM’s style - maybe the backstory wouldn’t be as relevant as the others because Curse of Strahd is often disconnected from anything else, but depending on the DM, the others might be really helpful!

[@celticdenefew]

I really enjoy your videos. I just have a tiny nitpick - I tend to listen to talking head videos like yours when I'm moving around and doing other things. Hearing a transition alert, but not hearing what it is is odd to me. I mean I could rush back to the screen to see - but that defeats the purpose of listening while cleaning or whatever. Any chance you could do a verbal transition as well? Otherwise I really enjoy your content! It's because I am interested that it's jarring to feel like I'm missing something.

[@tafua_a]

2:12 F*** Kona- sorry, wrong video... All jokes aside, I do some of these things for most of my campaigns... except the one I'm running now (although as it's slowly developing into an actual story, I think I will do that). I'm currently running a campaign whose name I'm not sure I'm allowed to say on this channel. Basically, the whole point of it is, everything is randomly generated. The villains, the setting, the world, the encounters, the towns, the dungeons. Sometimes I do however create some things without generating them randomly, if they make sense in what the characters are doing. As such, for a while there wasn't an overarching narrative until the party decided to hunt down a Lich (they came across that Lich as he was getting revenge on his abusive clan), as they felt he was too dangerous, since he had the habit of slaughtering people for fun. Now they're on an epic quest (severely underleveled, which means I'm gonna have to make it quite long) to find the Lich's phylactery

[@horseblinderson4747]

I would have to disagree that the backgrounds are well fleshed out at least the ones in the players handbook and put out by wizards. It's been 8 years or more and you have to go to E5 SRD to find a hunter background that's kind of sad

[@EdsonR13]

OK just because you showed 1 bad example doesn't mean that "You believe that character a) killed your important loved one b) but in reality the truth was plot twist c)" is always bad