What You Know or What You Learn?

When you make a new character for WoW, how much do you know about that character and how much do you discover about that character? Some RPers write volumes upon volumes of their character’s life before character creation. Other players let the RP they involve themselves determine what occurred before they entered the starting zone. Most RPers find themselves in between these two extremes: A basic family background, some early childhood history, some personality traits and a quick summary of what occurred just prior to the character was created. The question about what to script and what one should explore about their character is a question of RP and personal preference.

If one fics out their character’s entire background–from their character’s parents meeting until the current day–one has a number of advantages when RPing the character. The player should know the character quite well, and should be able to express the characters personality, quirks and ideals with ease. With a ficced background, one can easily define what the character knows about their world, their personal history and the history of their family and friends. The more scripted the background, the more the player simply knows about the characters.

Yet a ficced background can diminish one’s understanding of a character’s past. Fic, even a beautiful, polished novellas, is a self contained event. A character’s background, from their quirks to their family background has no real context until the first interaction. No one but the author (and those who have read the author’s work) will know what a tragic/happy/strange/wonderful a character had until AFTER the first RP sessions. And while those facts may be written down, they are not living facts. They are self-referential. They mean something only to the player and the character. In order for those aspects to truly drive RP, those facts must be shared. Once they are shared with others, the RP can begin to change the character’s–and player’s–understanding of them.

For instance, if it is in a character’s background that their father was “a stern hand,” this fact will come out in RP (eventually). But as the character describes what they mean by, “a stern hand” they may discover that what they felt was Stern was actually abusive (or possibly lenient). This changes the understanding of the character’s background. A perfect example of this comes from This American Life. From the website:

When TAL contributing editor Jack Hitt was 11, he did the worst thing his father could have imagined. Neither Jack nor his four siblings will ever forget the punishment.

Jack wrote a few curse words on a public wall in his home town. His father told him, “This is the worst thing anyone has ever done in our family.” After his father’s death, and all of Jack’s brothers and sisters gather to reminisce, Jack discovers that this was, in fact, not the worst thing ever. This made Jack rethink his childhood. The same occurs in RP. Discussing our character’s past changes our views of it.

A completely ficced background can only develop through ret cons. For instance, when thinking about what I wanted to play in WoW, I remembered the history of Stratholme. I wanted to play a paladin who survived that tragedy, but was altered by it. After RPing on Feathermoon for three years, I ran into another paladin survivor of Stratholme, Jolstraer Taborwynn. Our takes on the event in WC3 were similar enough that we could take another look at our characters background together. This could not have occurred if we had ficced out Bricu’s or Jolly’s background completely. Discussing Stratholme with Jolly has been one of the greatest moments of development in Bricu’s RP career (second only to the introduction of Threnn and the across-stormwind-yelling insults at Tarquin).

RPing with a character with a similar background is an obvious benefit to gradual development. But RPing development–keeping certain aspects of a characters background open–also gives a player a different kind of opportunity for learning about their character. RPing with others can provide a different kind of lens to view one’s own character.

Any interaction between two, or more, characters can provide insight into a character’s background. Bricu makes an off hand comment about a baker, which leads Threnn to remember someone she would rather forget. Tarquin, three sheets to the wind, mentions something about his brothers–which makes an orphan (or an only child) wonder what it was like to have another child in the family home. These interactions can help the player flesh out and understand the character’s background.

The key to developing a good character background is balance. Some has to be set in stone, yet those hard facts do not preclude allowing the RP to help expound on the character’s background. My suggestion is simple: Establish enough to start your RP, and let the character tell you the rest.

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