Wizard Quiz
We talked about this in the comments section back in Bickering Gods, but I thought it deserved its own space up top. The question: Do you like character questionnaires?
A quick google for “RPG character questionnaire” will give you any number of examples. These are the pre-campaign worksheets that GMs will often assign to players. They’re full of questions like, “What does your character want most in life?” and “What is your character’s favorite food?” and “Does your character have any regrets?” Answering these questions can be a useful exercise, resulting in more complex personalities and richer backstories. However, as in today’s example, I think it’s possible to go overboard.
We all want interesting characters, right? The in-depth questionnaire is one strategy for getting them. However, I find that if I’m trying to remember who my childhood friend was and what my special object is and whether there’s something I’m scared of and why I got my distinctive tattoo and if it’s relevant to bring up my internship with a medieval barber, I’ll wind up conveying a schizophrenic character rather than a compelling one. It’s the circus lion swatting at the chair legs. You can’t decide which one to hit, so you sit there and look dumb.
Speaking for myself, I don’t want to know everything about my character when I begin play. I want that backstory to grow and change. I want to discover my character, not invent him. In practice it becomes the choice between preparation on the one hand and flexibility on the other. I suspect this is the same contrast of styles you’ll get when panels of fiction writers debate “do you outline or do you fly by the seat of your pants?”
When it comes to questionnaires, my preference is for 5-10 questions. That’s enough to give a GM some useful story hooks without turning my PC into a full FBI psych profile. What about the rest of you guys though? Do you like a long and involved character questionnaire, a short and punchy one, or none at all? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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Personally, my favorite of the questionnares is the 10-Minute Backstory from the (now defunct) Wizards forums and brought over to Giantitp: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?91813-10-Minute-Background.
I might require a bit more background information, such as where the character is from, but personally I think a good character quiz does 4 things:
1) Develops the character enough that they have a skeleton of a personality for the player to roleplay with, but…
2) Not quite developed enough that the player feels constrained by it, and can easily adapt to setting, party, story, and slight player preference
3)Has developed enough goals and backstory that they have something driving them and something for the evil DM to work into the setting and make the character feel tied to it, but…
4) Not quite developed enough that you and the DM have to basically memorize an essay of details, it becomes clunky to fit into setting, the DM has no room to throw their own twists and such in it, and in the event of a character death it would throw off the entire story
In the first campaign I ran I screwed up the very last bit. I wanted the players to feel tied into the world, but I didn’t actually have a world developed yet. Instead of using a premade world like Faerun or Eberon, I ended up sticking them on an island and constructing the island around the backstories they gave me, weaving them together to form a cohesive whole. While they certainly felt tied to the world and the players were very goal and character drive, which lead to awesome moments where goals they’d had since 1st level were finally accomplished 5, 10, or 15 levels later, I also became very reluctant to kill any of them. The setting, including the bbeg, had literally been constructed around those specific characters, and I felt killing any of them even when they did something really, really stupid would have screwed up the narrative that had been building. If I could go back and redo it, I would have made the setting first, shared a basic summary with the players, and then had them make their characters’ backstories. They still feel tied into the setting without the setting revolving around those specific characters.
I’m glad to have that link. That is exactly the sort of quiz I like.
Also, good on you for learning from past mistakes. That island campaign sounds like it was well-paced and well-structured, but the story has to go on even if a “main character” dies. In a weirdly perfect parallel, I’m thinking of a different “you start on an island” campaign when I say that. You ever read the old Chris Perkins “The DM Experience” articles?
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/DM_Experience_2011.pdf
Check out “C’est La Vie.” It’s about 2/3 of the way down at that link.
My main issue with large questionnaires of character’s traits is that to me, they don’t feel like like I’m answering questions about my character. Rather, they feel like I’m pulling a bunch of random quirks out of my Worldwound that I’m then expected to latch onto the poor, defenseless and visibly disturbed PC. Sure, the line between “making stuff up about a character” and “answering questions about a character that I made up” may seem pretty ephemeral, but to me at least the difference in how the two feel is striking.
This just came to me. After witnessing Wizard’s love of filling out countless, utterly pointless fields on his character sheet, neverending chargen, and tendency to, *cough*, overshare about the topics best left for private gatherings and Calistrian temples, I have this nagging, horryfing suspision. Though I fear the answer, and at great peril to my sanity, I have to ask. Is… is Wizard a FATAL player?!
Oh gods, there’s no comparison. Wizard questions innocently and makes sure his data is relevant. It’s like comparing the Census Bureau to a guy on a street in a trenchcoat and no pants who asks “Hey kid, want to see something cool?”
Honestly now. Let’s not bring up FATAL here. This is a strictly PG-13 comic. Handbook of Erotic Fantasy on the other hand….
Actually, you know what? Never mind. I like to think my smut is more tasteful than that.
What is this FATAL thing you talk about? Sounds like a fake thing that absolutely doesn’t exist. I think we should all agree that FATAL doesn’t exist. Because it’s not a real thing. Than anyone should ever be talking about. Because it’s fake. Right? Agreed? Ok. Glad we’re in agreement about it not existing.
What not existing?
Someone certainly wrote FATAL and published it, but that doesn’t mean that it exists.
It’s a bit like the Tsukihime anime.
Insofar as you’re bringing it up in the context of [REDACTED], I’m going to assume I don’t want to know about it. >:(
A nice three question hash-out is pretty good for me, I’ve found. “Why am I adventuring?” “What is an Adventurer’s life going to enable me to fulfill for myself?” and “Why am I in this exact location where the adventure begins?” are plentifully enough to launch into finding out the rest of everything.
As a GM, I appreciate it when I’ve got a few character hooks to play with. As a player, I appreciate not needing to make more than 1d6 of the bloody things. After all, nothing is worse than being presented with your long lost childhood friend only to forget what the name of Character Detail #87-C.
I don’t think I did a full questionnaire for my players, but the “why are you adventuring” question I think is helpful. I basically asked them for a short background for their character, including why they aren’t at home anymore and where they learned what they learned. I like to assume that even a level 1 adventurer is a bit more advanced than your average soldier or guard, so where/ how did you learn to be “special”? A paragraph or two tops; any more than that and players, especially people new to the game, can start to get bored. You can build your character out better as you play.
Right on. You want enough detail to be more than, “I am a female half-elf bard who is…chaotic neutral,” but when players start turning in 12 page essays it can get overwhelming in a hurry.
I don’t like to do character questionnaires at all, honestly. So much of my favorite characters and their development was tied up in things I had them say/do that surprised even me.
I like my characters to feel like I’m exploring a new space and finding new and exciting things the deeper in I get. I feel like huge character development questionnaires just turn the process into following a GPS. “In two years, turn right onto ‘Sacrificed his own father and ate his heart to gain his spiritual power’ Lane.”
It’s just not fun for me if I have all the details before I start.
Let me ask you this: how clear are you on your character concept before play starts? Do you know why they became [class name]? Do you have a clear sense of personality without jotting down a few ideas first? Or do you just go in with “I’m an alignment race class” and see what develops?
I usually have some basics. I knew when I made my kobold he was going to be a dual wielding gunslinger whose clan had all been killed by a dragon, and he hated dragons. I knew he was going to have a very mercenary personality and a combative approach to problem solving. Other than that, I made it up as I went along and got a better feel for the world and how he fit into it, and details came out as I played and reacted to the situations and world around him.
Nice! I said as much in a reply to Ramsus further down the page, but I’m beginning to believe that all these methods are in dialogue. Backstory and 5e style backgrounds and session 0 discussions and questionnaires. They’re all there to try to spark a character concept. You already had a strong concept and a good feel for personality as the game began. I think maybe the other methods are for people that are struggling to find those.
A question for you: how much if your character’s backstory are you ok with the DM coming up with? If, for example, you suddenly find out you had a half-fiend daughter because of a deal with a devil that went horribly wrong amd now your identical twin sibling has kidnapped her to use as leverage against your parents who are actually royalty and worshippers of Hextor, all of which is news to you, how would it make you feel as a player? For myself I get a bit irritated when the DM controls too much of my character’s backstory, but I also like it when they tie in background stuff as story hooks.
I trusted my DM to offer some interesting plot hooks, so he could do what he wanted. For example, my kobold gunslinger’s whole clan had been murdered. He was the last one, he thought – but he eventually got a message from someone claiming to be his mother, and it led into a huge plotline about the dragon that had ordered his clan destroyed and my character working with his presumed-dead mother to get revenge and prevent the dragon from becoming a dracolich by hiding an enormous flawless diamond his clan had dug up from the mountain they lived in and keeping the dragon from using it as a phylactery.
Almost all of it was made up on the fly by the DM and myself, and it was really fun.
My DM was pretty creative and fun – if he tried to do something with our characters we didn’t like, we were all able to talk it out like adults.
I like them as a tool for my own reference. Short ones are good; they are nice if you want to just fill out a worksheet and be done with it. I won’t do a whole long quiz, but I do like them because I can pick out a few questions that really resonate with me, or for which I come up with particularly good answers, to make the cut.
Glad you could chime in, MSK! It was our conversation in the previous comic that prompted this one. 😀
Do you ever ask players to fill them out when you’re GMing, or is this strictly a thing you like to do independently as a player?
Busy day, sorry i’m late! 😛
Hmm, that’s surprisingly tricky to answer. I don’t ask other players to take character quizes, but I only DM 5e games, and 5e’s background features essentially amount to the same thing. I do require players to fill this out their Background.
I think if I were to DM another edition without a built-in background section, i’d at least have them fill out something similar to 5e’s thing. Two traits, a flaw, and a goal sound like a fine start to an interesting character.
In theory I don’t have a problem with questionnaire’s and on occasion find myself thinking “I wonder how it would turn out if I made a character this way?”
But in practice I tend to find them frustrating obstacles to creating characters the way I want to. I like making backstories, which is a thing questionnaires leave out and I like figuring out little details as I play the character which is what most questionnaires demand you figure out right now.
The few times I have done character creation via questionnaire I wound up making a backstory anyway, because without one I don’t have enough context for the character.
Not particularly helpful to know you character hates haggling and orcs when you don’t have anything written down as to why that would be the case.
So at best, in my eyes, a questionnaire is a supplement to a backstory or basically just a fancy reminder of things you might want to include in your backstory.
All these methods are in dialogue, aren’t they? Backstory and 5e style backgrounds and session 0 discussions and questionnaires. They’re all there to try to spark a character concept.
For example, a buddy of mine was having trouble with his last character. He’s a great player, but doesn’t have a real talent for backstory. As soon as he saw the “sailor” background in the 5e handbook, everything started clicking for him. Suddenly he’s asking if he can re-flavor his polearm as a harpoon and describing the masterwork snorkel he keeps in case he needs to ply his usual trade as bait for leviathan hunting.
Like so many things in gaming, I think this is a “what works for you?” situation.
As a DM, I think the most background I have ever gotten from a player can be summarized as:
“As a kid I was basically adopted by these pirates, and they were pretty cool. The captain treated me as his son. I was on that ship most of my life, until one day the crew mutinied. I don’t know why they did it, and I’m pretty sure the captain is dead.” Which, compared to most PCs, gives me a lot to work with.
Most of my players have had little to no backstory, to the point where “Raise your hand if you are an orphan” usually gets a few seconds of silence and then six to ten raised hands. As a result, the starting city in my next campaign will have a dozen orphanages run by different organizations.
Well…I guess you’re still using their backstories to inform your setting? So that’s cool. :/
Alternate setting detail: What if there’s some kind of “an orphan will rise to become the chosen one” prophesy, so it’s nothing but parricidal little maniacs filling the orphanages? For example:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-handbook-of-heroes-13
don‘t like them, gives me the impression the DM wants to be able to play(railroad) me by trowing things my way and going „but your answers here say you should do otherwise“
That’s fair. How do you like to do backstory then? What’s your method for giving your GM backstory hooks?
Never done a questionnaire, but as I tend to run Hero System, the advantages/disadvantages in character creation tend to do some of the job for you. Like the PC who decided to take the most possible points for being hunted – so basically he was being pursued by an entire nation of fanatic killers on a full-time basis. This linked up with a dependent NPC and another player’s different hunted and provided a lot of the campaign backstory
Is there a link to the system in question? I’ve seen advantages/disadvantages before (mostly in White Wolf games), and they seem like a solid source of inspiration. However, I haven’t seen an advantages/disadvantages system that looked extensive enough to fully flesh out a backstory on its own.
“Weyuh a team, dat meanz we do everythin’ togethah! Do yeh like pineapplez and hayum on yuh cheezy flatbreads?”
“I-”
“Doezn’t mattah, cauze I do! So when as commandah I ohdah it we’ll all eat it az a team!”
I suspect that quite a few players don’t like backstory quizzes because they’re suffering from a form of Abused Gamer Syndrome: they’ve been taught that any connections or backstory they give their character will always and only be used as a weapon against them, relatives or mentors killed off in a cheap attempt to generate drama or kidnapped to hook them onto the railroad, and the only defense they have against that dross is to refuse to give their character any backstory or connections.