stepnix | Design Drabbles

I fully believe that you can't really know a mechanic's implications until you see it in the context of the total system, and then see that total system in play. But also I'm hoping that making a habit of sketching out little things will help me sketch out bigger things too

Every player fills out the following questions as they create their characters:

Name someone who hates you

Name what they're afraid you'll take from them

Name someone who loves you

Name what they're afraid you'll take from them

Name someone who's using you

Name what they hope to gain from you

This was inspired by my reading a few weeks ago where character creation prompted strong connection to the world, laying seeds for the greater campaign. This was also inspired by my starting to watch foundational shoujo drama Dear Brother, and seeing how the protagonist is a subject of extreme interest for several characters, but for totally contradictory reasons.

I can think of a couple variations on this concept. You could require every player to come up with their own independent supporting casts, or you could encourage them to reuse NPCs in a couple different slots on the PC sheets (so the NPC loves X but hates Y). You could also give each playbook its own set of questions, and highlight thematic concerns of the playbook that way... But I imagined these applying to every player character, laying the groundwork for a campaign where everyone is forced to confront the price of their ambitions.

Giving players NPCs to create like this makes it easier for a GM to run a campaign from scratch. Or maybe it gives them a dozen characters they now don't know what to deal with. I imagine it getting especially frustrating if you already had strong vision of the campaign you wanted to run. In which case, it becomes the designer's job to make it very clear that character creation, not the GM, will determine the campaign premise.