Role-Playing: How Character Creation and Advancement Works

Last time I talked about the underlying principles of static RPG rules. This time I'm going to look at the rules which are repeated – in one form or another – in almost every role-playing game. As I've said, understanding these ideas makes picking up a new system much quicker and easier.

There are four key sections that will be found in pretty much every RPG you'll ever play. These are Character Creation, Character Advancement, The Core Mechanic and Combat. In this article I'll be looking at the first two of these four cornerstones.

Character Creation

Any rules system that goes beyond a simple coin flip does so in order to reflect the varying likelihood of success in different cases. When you start considering the factors that will influence that probability, the first thing that comes to mind is usually the competence of the character. An arthritic pensioner just doesn't have a 50% chance of beating up a Navy SEAL. Resolution rules therefore reference the traits of the character performing the act, so the traits in question need to be numerically defined before the game can begin.

Character Creation systems vary, but most are comprised of the following stages:

Concept, Race and Class

Role-playing is first and foremost about portraying a character, not winning a game. When assigning numbers to your character's traits, the emphasis should be on accurately representing who he is rather than creating a set of numbers that provide the optimum strategic advantage. Accordingly, the first step is to decide on a Concept – who your character is and what he does.

Players with very grand concepts may find that they can't make their character as universally potent as they would like due to the limited points available. Players with humble ideas might wind up giving their character very generous ratings in order to use up the points available. This is is fine – the whole point of the Character Creation system is to ensure that everyone gets an equal share of the action.

Many games permit the player to play something other than a human. Usually the choice of race will have some affect upon a character's abilities and options, so it needs to be made early. RPGs that are designed as games first and foremost will attempt to make each racial option equally powerful in its own way. Games designed to accurately represent a pre-existing fictional setting sometimes have to compromise on this or apply some arbitrary leveller. In The Lord Of The Rings an average elf is much more powerful than an average human – so human characters are generally more exceptional among their own kind than elf characters are among theirs.

Games work best if each member of the player party specialises in a different area. This requires some consultation when characters are being created. Many games seek to simplify this process by adding Character Classes. A class is a broadly drawn stereotype which defines most of the Character Creation choices for the player. If each player picks a different class, each is assured of a different role. The downside is that members of the same class are hard to distinguish from each other, leading experienced characters to stereotype each other in ways that are hard to justify within the setting (“you seem like an athletic knife fighter – help me pick this lock!”).

Attributes

Attributes are qualities that all characters possess in varying degrees – such as IQ, physical strength and sensory acuity. They are used to determine a character's basic aptitude for all actions. Many games do not allow attributes to be improved after Character Creation and almost all make the process very slow. This makes Attributes key to defining the strengths and limitations of every character.

Early systems determined Attribute vales by a random dice roll, reasoning that real people didn't get to choose their natural aptitudes. Unfortunately this created a permanent disparity of power between high-rolling and low-rolling characters. These days the usual system is to give each player a set number of points to assign.

Skills

Raw potential is not usually enough for success in challenging conditions. Skills represent specific training and experience that not everyone possesses in any degree. A game will usually have a limited list of skills and players assign points to raise them above 0. Class-based systems may charge extra for non-stereotypical skill choices, whilst combat-heavy systems may base the number of points available on the character's intelligence to balance out the advantages of physical power.

Skills typically increase quite fast during game-play as the characters are taken outside of their pre-game experience by the story.

Merits

Merits (also called feats, assets and many other things) serve two purposes. Firstly, they represent advantages that occur at random in the population, and which are better described in yes/no terms than with a sliding number scale. Is your character ambidextrous? Does he have a photographic memory? Is he naturally immune to the zombie plague?

Secondly Merits represent advantages that aren't physically part of the character at all, but which are still his alone. If you want your character to be fantastically wealthy, powerfully connected or simply famous enough to pull a groupie now and again, you might have to take a Merit or lose that facet from your concept.

Many games also include negative 'Merits' (usually called Flaws). These work the same way, but actually give extra points for Character Creation rather than using them up. You can therefore create a character that is more powerful than everyone else, but will be burdened with extra problems. Some games even insist that all Merits are paid for with points gained from Flaws.

Equipment

Since characters will buy, sell and steal many items in the course of their adventures, the inventory they carry around is never fixed. However, most characters will start with a few useful items in their possession. Selecting starting equipment is the final touch on a character sheet, but one that can take as much time as the other steps.

Some games allow a character to spend Merit points on owning a rare or special item. This can still be lost or broken, but it is bad GM practice to take such an item away from a character permanently without good reason. Such equipment can be subtle and characterful (Edmund carries the only flashlight in all Narnia) or character-defining in scale (the Green Lantern Ring makes regular human Hal Jordan into Superman's League-mate).

Character Advancement

Having established the initial traits of a character at Character Creation, most games include some method of improving them during play (even if the game world makes prolonged survival extremely rare). Players earn these advancements during play, meaning that a years-old character will be much more powerful than a starting one.

When the player group is constant, this system is used to allow the characters to take on ever greater challenges and become ever greater heroes. If one character dies, the player will usually be awarded bonus points for his new creation so that he can keep up.

If players enter and leave the game all the time, this isn't done. Instead, characters who have been part of the story for longest simply get a bigger share of the action than the new recruits. The advanced characters are aspirational figures and players are encouraged to eventually retire them so that rising stars can take their place.

Most games treat Character Advancement as a shopping list, with players free to take any advance when they earn it. Class-based games sometimes use 'levels' instead. Characters remain fixed until they pass a certain threshold, then receive multiple advances at once. These are largely prescribed so that the class stereotypes remain valid at higher levels.

There are three leading methods of awarding advances, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.

Achievement-based Experience Points – Under this system, players are awarded points for succeeding at tasks. Any kind of challenge may qualify, although combat is usually a leading source of EXP. This creates an obvious correlation between learning experiences and increased skills.

Unfortunately such a system encourage players to make 'winning' decisions rather than characterful ones. Additionally, the vagaries of Character Creation sometimes produce characters that are slightly stronger or more immediately useful than their fellows. Such characters will earn EXP quicker and the disparity will increase as play continues.

Performance-based Experience Points – Alternatively, players may be awarded Exp according to how entertainingly they portray their character and how much they contribute to the game and the enjoyment of the group. This is entirely appropriate to the goals of RPGs and encourages good play.

The main problem with this system is a social one. Most GMs are uncomfortable with being too critical of their friends in an activity based on mutual enjoyment, so awards tend to be uniform. The characters will therefore advance equally until life forces a player to miss a session or two. That player's character will then be permanently de-powered with no chance of catching up, effectively punishing the player for circumstances beyond their control. This makes it more likely that they will drop out rather than renew their commitment to the game. Since most RPGs need at least 3 players to work and get very unwieldy with more than 6, keeping your players is a serious concern.

Downtime – some systems forgo EXP points entirely in favour of narrative skill improvements. To increase a skill, the character must spend enough time training (usually weeks or moths of in-game time). Such stories generally include long quiet periods for characters to train up in, which are skipped over very quickly. This system combines realism with an epic feel.

The problem is that you are rewarding the characters only for the portions of their story that are too dull to play through. Three months in the training yard may improve your skills, but three days on the front line typically won't. Indeed, characters who actually go out and do things will advance more slowly because the travel disrupts their training schedules.

That's all for this time! In the next article, I'll be explaining the common structures of the rules that use all of these carefully assembled traits.