How to Create Character Arcs for D&D & Pathfinder

how to design character arcs today on dungeon craft welcome to dungeon craft I'm Professor Dungeon Master coming to you from dungeon University wearing my plus one vest protection and today we are talking about designing character arcs and on Death Bringer level up your game by subscribing and click the bell icon so you'll be informed when we upload new videos so I frequently get asked professor you tell the stories of these campaigns with these amazing stories and character arcs how do you get your players to go along with that how do you design an arc now the quick answer to that is you can't you need the players cooperation or more accurately you need their collaboration they need to collaborate with you to create a meaningful story growth arc for their character there's no way to do it without the players consent and health now I'm about to commit the cardinal sin of youtubing you're supposed to get to the content that you've promised within the first 60 seconds problem here is it's such a complex question that to understand why some players like arcs and why some players reject them you have to understand the psychology of the player's mind and then we have to talk about the type of players that like the arcs and how you can build them so you're gonna have to indulge me and go for about 10 minutes with this video I ask for 10 minutes of your time because it's one of the most complex questions I think I've ever had to tackle so the concept of the art comes from Joseph Campbell and the hero's journey the cam belly and monomyth hero with a thousand faces the idea that every heroic fantasy story every heroic story is a hero's journey you got a hero there are nobody from nowhere until a mentor shows up and tells them there's somebody and then they cross the threshold they leave their their small world hometown home planet meet a bunch of companions go through a road of trials face their fears face off against the Dark Lord learn something about themselves defeat the Dark Lord and then return home and this is key oftentimes the character believes something is true turns out to be a lie as in when Darth Vader says to Luke an Empire Strikes Back obi-wan never told you about your father and Luke responds he told me enough he told me you killed him and Vader says no I am your father everything Luke has believed up until this point has just been flipped over on itself and now he's going to have to learn a new lesson and grow as a result now here's the problem in a story that's written for the page or the screen the writer is in complete control but a dungeon master has very little control the players can always hijack the game because they have that freedom and it can end up in a totally different place then where are you imagine like you can plan for them to go to mount debt dungeon but they get sidetracked in a pet store and pretty soon everyone wants a pet and you've wasted your session with everyone buying kittens and and ferrets nor can you choose what kind of character the player is going to want to play and any kind of you trying to force a story into their lives like saying they have a girlfriend or a family at home that's starving it may be greeted with resistance because we play these games for different reasons imagine role-playing games or a spectrum you got role-playing game right these types of players are very different than these types of players on the game end you have essentially a strategy game it's a it's a glorified version of a board game and the reason why players play it is it's wish-fulfillment many role-playing gamers started as me a nerdy skinny kid now I'm not skinny anymore but it was at the time and I fantasized about being a a mighty barbarian with huge pectoral muscles or a wizard with unlimited magic magic power and everything was about that power and these players are playing because they want to win these sort of players scour the rules for any advantage that they might be able to get because they want to be able to get those those actions and bonus actions to make eight attacks around and their goal is to dominate the field that's what they're into they want to dominate and crush their enemies that's why they play the game it's part of their fantasy wish-fulfillment now over here these players play 4-story it's a totally different reason to play the game they like the drama as a matter of fact my wife is a drama teacher so when we talk about character arcs they're really down with it they're they understand that that's an important part of the character now I want to make it clear there's nothing wrong with the people over here they're perfectly fine they like playing D&D just like the people over here and we welcome them both sometimes you have a combination right you got the role players over here in the same group you got the tactical people over here but here's the thing you can't force anyone on this side to ever be on this side what dramatists no but power gamers will always resist is the idea the characters are defined by their weaknesses not their strengths Luke Skywalker is naive and unprepared to face Darth Vader he is a low-level to mid-level character going up against a high level character he is going to lose nevertheless the player if this were a game would force that confrontation now after that confrontation Luke ends up with a new weakness having found out that Darth Vader is his father he wants to defeat the Empire and to do that he has to kill Darth Vader but he can't kill Darth Vader because he loves him that is a vulnerability han Solo starts from a place of weakness he starts with a ton of debt can you imagine saying to a power gamer who wants to play a row yeah you're a rogue Oh is 40,000 gold pieces to start like they're gonna go nuts Tony Stark has a heart condition Peter Parker has aunt made a worry about all these characters are defined by their vulnerabilities so to develop an arc you have to find a player that understands that and is cool with that is cool with making their character vulnerable not stronger so in my group I have Veronica who upon achieving a certain amount of power with her wizard decided I want to have an apprentice and then one of the other players said now you don't want to do that he's just gonna kidnap the apprentice and and we're gonna have to go to a dungeon it's gonna be a big painting you don't want an apprentice and she said yes I do it's gonna make for a cool story my friend Tom plays a character called the bastard devel and he is in love with lady Claudia von Hammerstein who is one of the primary villains in my campaign she is evil but his character can't see it and is always making excuses for her she she wants to turn over a new leaf she's been brainwashed by that evil cult he can't accept that she is evil and this has led to a great deal of friction in the game because he slept with her and can murder her in her sleep and the other characters are like why don't you kill her you're betraying the party those players want to dominate the field and Tom is not letting them what Tom understands is he's giving me storytelling gold as is Veronica I can make more stories from natascha of the mage and the bastard devel that I can from most other characters in most campaigns I play with now to create a deeper character you have to ask three questions the first is how did these characters get to know one another are they related having at least who the characters related is a way to form instantaneous bonds and it explains why the characters are so loyal to one another and would lend each other money and why they care more about each other than they do NPCs and it's no secret that Game of Thrones all the characters related and the hobbits in Lord of the Rings are related family connections are just an easy way to form relationships with other characters if they aren't related how did they become friends did one save the others life for example having bonds like this is another way to create strong character interconnections in a deeper character loner characters may be interesting in fiction but less so in an RPG where it's really about a bunch of characters working together people that like playing loner edge Lord types generally tend to be power gamers and the reason it I think I'm just speculating is it has to do with being powerful enough to be independent and you don't have to rely on anyone there's nothing inherently wrong with that but those loner characters they don't lend themselves to creating stories because stories are about relationships between people question two what would you fight for what would cause you to just throw down and throw a punch at somebody is it an ideal is it a person what is it that takes your character off three what would your character I for like willingly like we they know the character cannot survive and will die right on the spot what is that thing again is it a person isn't an ideal is their religion I'm fascinated by people when I talk about clerics being potential martyrs and they say no that's not true a cleric wouldn't die for his faith like if a cleric doesn't die for his faith who is going to do that what is your character willing to die for let's take a look at the Dragonland saga which is a great series of books if you haven't read it they're a lot of fun so it starts off in the end of the last home the characters have been reunited after traveling the world for several years and they've kind of got on these reconnaissance missions and they're going to report back what they find and two of those characters are Karimun and Raceland and Karimun is a mighty powerful physically dominating fighter with a heart of gold and his twin brother Raceland is his exact opposite he is weak and skinny but he is a powerful mage who sacrificed everything to get this power and he has a heart of cold Karimun know is that Raceland would betray him for power because that's what Raceland lusts after but at the same time his whole life herman has protected his brother and could never kill him that is storytelling gold there next we have Tanis half-elven who is torn between his human and his elven heritage and he is in love with Kitty era who is the stepsister of Karimun and Raceland which forms a relationship Karimun and Raceland and Tanis are almost family and Kitty R is the one person who has not shown up and Tanis believes that it's because she must be held prisoner somewhere or the bad guys must have captured her on their journey throughout three books tennis is going to fall in love with the beautiful elf maiden lauranna and and be torn between her and Kitty era until the end when it's revealed that Kitty era did not in fact get kidnapped by the forces of darkness she has joined them but that's the thing kitty ara is the one person that Tanis can't kill because he still loves her Karimun can't kill Raceland because he loves him Luke can't kill Darth Vader because he loves him Jon Snow can't kill Daenerys because he loves her I mean eventually he does but it's not easy for him that's like the climax it really hurts for him to do that these characters are interesting not because they're strong it's they're interesting because they're vulnerable ''tis you can figure out what players you have by doing what I call the Golem test in two towers Faramir has a clear shot at golem and could just end his life if you've got players on this side they're like oh yeah golems annoying let's kill him now if you've got players on this side they're gonna be like no we can't do that that would be the immoral thing to do even though it might place our party in jeopardy in the future these people on the side are interested in the story and creating characters which create stories this side is into dominating the field they are not going to spare golem and they are going to resent any attempt for you to bring them to this side so you have to understand that and be cool with it and not force it now once your player has decided they want an ark here are five commonly used I think very effective ones for role-playing game the first is the mysterious past this is a classic Harry Potter Luke Skywalker you have a character that knows part of their past but not the whole thing oftentimes the circumstances of their parents death it's it's like a mysterious circumstance and the character finds out there's more to them than meets the eye to revenge or what I call my name is inigo montoya prepare to die Arya Stark follows this path so does Conan the Barbarian in the first movie the good one it's a common trope but it can be a little overdone especially if the the player insists that their whole family is dead and and there's no one left alive you want to do the Arya Stark thing where their other family members left alive that survived that Massacre xxx duty so Sturm and the dragon land series Frodo Jon Snow they're all driven by their sense of duty even though it's tactically disadvantage - Jon Snow's family for him to go back to the north and the watch he will go there that sense of duty is what drives him and the key here is you're going to create some sort of story situation that challenges that that sense of duty and the characters have to make a choice that's how great drama is made for debt the classic on so but also Felix in the Felix and go trick saga in the Warhammer world go trick is a dwarf troll Slayer who has sworn an oath to die in battle and he rescues Felix in a bar fight so Felix drunkenly swears an oath to him that he will Chronicle go tricks mighty death the problem is go trick is so tough he just won't die so it forces Felix to get into more and more dangerous and outs outrageous situations and 5 the tragic downfall the classic path followed by Macbeth Raistlin and Daenerys the trap here is that if you get the wrong player they can just start committing atrocities and say well it's my character they're evil what you want to do is get someone who starts off it's kind of a good character and slowly evolved and becomes evil it's something that the player should talk to you privately about and the player has to understand this this arc only ends one way with the character being dead that's part of the downfall the the path they choose which is usually a thirst for power leads to their eventual death and they have to be mature enough to accept that so is there any chance of moving players from here to here well it's something that you really can't force as a game master and can only happen slowly over time this is what could happen your characters we're falling 5.e you go up every level every 3 or 4 sessions so after a year if they go from first to 20th level and then they repeat that process and then it happens again and again and sooner or later they start getting bored and they start looking to play other role-playing games ones that are more on this side like maybe Call of Cthulhu and then one of two things are gonna happen they're going to get bored with gaming in general and move on to some other sort of hobby return to it in about 20 years when they ask what did I ever leave or they graduate gradually toward this side and you can persuade that in that yeah you could have a character arc and we might create characters that don't go up in level as fast but have more interesting stories and then they become your collaborator but it's not going to happen with any of everybody I still have players I played with for years like they are firmly on the side they're never gonna get it they're never going to go to this side and if you've got players that are all decide the advantage is it's really easy to design adventures for them I mean you just have to have five encounters three of them have to be combat and they're gonna be happy one word of caution though I should have mentioned this before when you have someone on this side and they open up to you they give their character a vulnerability this is important don't exploit that vulnerability like the bastard eval is in love with countess Claudia but she's not going to stab him to death in his sleep and murder him without a saving throw or something we're not going to use the weakness to screw over the player instead we're going to use the weakness to create more interesting engaging stories not just for that player but for everyone if you enjoyed this content please give it a thumbs up and share it on social media questions or your own suggestions put them in the comment section below also below you'll find links to our Facebook group and patreon page and thanks patrons for making dungeon crafts possible once again for dungeon craft I am Professor Dungeon Master thanks for joining me I'll see you soon and until then may all your roles be 20 s yet bring her here click on these videos for more dungeon craft I still don't see what Daenerys did wrong

Channel: Dungeon Craft

Views: 28,403

Rating: 4.9719343 out of 5

Keywords: D&D character arcs, DM advice, dungeons & dragons, character arcs RPGs, pathfinder character arcs, dungeoncraft character arcs, D&D, pathfinder, dungeoncraft

Id: Qe-GvxooYDs

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 15 2020