How to plan your Characters Future

[Music] hello and welcome to today's episode well I've rebuilt the studio from the ground up and quite literally I got building permits and construction personnel and we spent five years building this brand-new studio for for the channel or I just had have moved around some of the stuff in the hopes of making the channel a little bit better looking I've been struggling with this green-screen idea and now that everyone's happy with the idea of bullet points behind me I wanted to try and up our game a little bit so I hope I hope that this new layout works better for everybody so leave your comments below your feedback was fantastic for the titles everybody liked them I didn't think element almost nobody said that they didn't like them so here we are anyway so today we are looking at planning your characters future now this is not necessarily something that you need to do for every single character for a one-shot you certainly don't need to do it but if you're planning on playing a campaign there is a certain joy that you can get out of having a long-term plan for your character and seeing how that changes and evolves the geom is not the only person who needs to have a plan you do too and you'll see that there's a huge amount of benefit so we're going to look at why plan for a future we're gonna look at what should your plan look like we're gonna look at how do you actually plan it out then we're gonna look at how do you actually make it happen that's one thing having a plan but bringing it to action in a role-playing game can be a bit daunting it's gonna look at that we're gonna look at how do you work with you others your fellow players how do you make that happen and then of course we're gonna talk about role-playing itself being so chaotic so wonderfully complex because we've got all these different people playing the same game with us and they're gonna change things around aren't they that's just the nature of how life works so let's look at why plan of future so character growth is something that we look for in films we look for in TV shows and we look for in books we like to get a sense that the character has progressed and there's a lot of reasons for that but principally it's because we as people like to change and progress and become better it's tough and grow and learn from our mistakes well hopefully anyway so our characters should be doing the same thing our characters should be evolving and should be changing and should be adapting and growing as they go now what that does is that gives you also a huge amount of satisfaction there's nothing better than planning out a character arc especially if it's a complicated one or if it's a difficult one let's say your character arc is literally going to be that your character starts off working together then becomes negative gets involved in the dark side and then returns to the light side that's a very interesting journey and it's one that's gonna take a lot of role-playing from your behalf but as well as a lot of cooperation from all of your fellow players and from your game master she's going to have to make sure that your game is adjusted accordingly to accommodate your journey but don't worry it's not like you're prescribing the game and it's also no need to make this very very important this is not you hogging the spotlight this is not you taking over the games that you can run your personal story every player at the table should have something planned for their character and I've advised GM's on this particular topic that they should look at one or two key adventures centered around you and your characters growth and then of course everybody else gets there one of two adventures as well so don't feel like this is you taking over the game and being a bossy player it's absolutely not it's you raising your game to the next level so the enjoyment factor is planning out this journey and then watching it unfold and then watching how the other players have to interact with your character and how they change and what comes out of that discovering how this whole thing plays out is absolutely a pure pure joy especially if you've got a plan on where you're going now it is an absolute challenge there's no doubt about it you are going to have to make some tough decisions and you're going to have to get into some emotionally difficult situations that paladin o doesn't agree with the rest of the party are they going abandon that party no they're going to try everything they can to perhaps bring that party back to the light to redeem that party but what about a paladin who starts going down the dark path and realizes it what about their journey that they need to go on to then find themselves and then come back again and it's the ultimate kind of story it's the ultimate kind of role playing in my opinion and it's something that you can do and I'm going to show you how to do it so what should a future plan look like well as with any narrative narrative and if you've watched any of the GM videos on this channel you'll know you need a beginning you need a middle and you need a conclusion now conventional storytelling tells us that your beginning point your beginning status where we find the character where we meet the character should be as opposite to your concluding point as possible so they need to be literally poles apart now that might be a bit extreme but it gives you a starting point so if you want to play this let's take a science-fiction analogy let's say you want to play a Jedi who goes on this journey of starting out lightside unquestioning does that mean you have to end in the dark side unquestioning no it means you need to end in the light side where you have questioned you have journey you've gone to the dark side you've made mistakes but you're now on the light side and you are now happy in that space that you are in you are now content you are now at peace you are now a true Jedi you have found your center you have found the meaning behind the force you're no longer questioning you know no doubtful you're no longer angry you're no longer depressed you're no longer vengeful you are now at peace so the journey doesn't necessarily mean that if you want to end as a good character you have to start as a bad character it might mean that you start as a self-centered character and you end off as a character who now does good for the community rather than just for the self and that you derive satisfaction from that action rather than from the personal action so in other words this is a journey that you are crafting specifically and it's a journey that you take with any of your characters in any setting whatsoever so you need a beginning a middle and an end now yes your begining needs to be as far away from your end as possible but we don't talk about oh my characters poor so I want my character to be rich by the end of it that's a very external goal generally character growth is internal my character starts the game questioning everything all starts the game angry and just violent and I just attack everything and I just kill everything and I just pound everything to death that's what my character does but by the end of it I want my character to be perhaps a pacifist or to have realized that violence might be a means to an end but that cold cool logic is a better way to go so now how I going to do that how am I going to go from that stage to that stage well what's the middle ground what's in the middle or what is the furthest point away from both of those goals so the Jedi analogy works quite nicely because we've got such polar opposites good Jedi bad Jedi assist versus and the actual Jedi so the exact opposite of both of those is a neutral Jedi or is someone who no longer believes in the force so that's someone who's gone right the way we've moved as far away as possible from our starting point but we're also as far away as possible from our ultimate end goal so for you as the creator of this narrative you need to look at that journey and you need to work out if I start here and this is where my midpoint is going to be and this is where my endpoint is going to be how do I do it how do I shift them now you're not working out the adventures that need to happen for your character to go on that you're not doing you're not working out the relationships that your character has with the fellow party members not yet and there's a reason for that you need to start to seed stuff and that is going to grow things into the other characters into the gm's story now what's a seed if you haven't watched the GM videos a seed is really just it's an it's an analogy for planting an idea now in script writing and novel writing we talked about foreshadowing so if you see a dagger at the beginning of the book in the middle of the book you're going to see that same dagger again but now in a different way and then at the end of the book you're going to see how that dagger is used so we seed something at the beginning we then let it mature and grow during the middle and then at the end we then see the final product the grown tree if you like so I use the idea of seeding and the way that you seed is incredibly subtle you don't have to lay down giant markers let's take our Jedi analogy for example because that's working quite well so we starting off with this very confused frustrated Jedi who perhaps has gone through the Academy and has graduated with questions why shouldn't we love why shouldn't we be passionate surely that passion that love is what gets us to do things it's our motivator rather than this neutrality which almost seems like stagnation it doesn't seem like we're moving forward how do I start to seed that that Jedi is ultimately perhaps six months down the line and adventuring going to announce their ways completely well seeding could be that my Jedi begins to want to differentiate themselves from the Jedi Order I'm not wearing brown robes and that cream-colored y-shaped thing my Jedi is wearing something else my Jedi is going to abandon that and is going to do something else my Jedi is going to step away from that and is going to start dressing entirely in red because it's passionate and it shows conviction and dedication and loyalty and all the things that red brings with it now all you're doing from a role-playing perspective is that you're saying to the GM and your fellow players my character goes to the markets I'm looking for a dress maker or I'm looking for someone who sells armor I want it but I wanted coat it in red absolute red that's all you do and then you wear your red armor and occasionally if you busy role playing you can say right I put on my red armor with my red cape and I night my blue lightsaber this lightsaber doesn't feel right it doesn't belong now we're not making our Jedi go to the dark side that's a different type of character journey that we don't want to do we want to have our Jedi lose their faith in the Jedi Order and in the Jedi way so a couple adventures later things are going on you're going through your GM's meticulously crafted plot you're helping your fellow players characters evolve and grow remember it's important to support your fellow players your character then says I want to go and find a different crystal color I want to change the color of my lightsaber people still think of me as a Jedi can I make it so that the lightsaber isn't a smooth beam of energy but the sort of crackling fiery type of thing yes I can okay good what do I need to do that all right so that's an adventure that we need to go on to find this artifice oh who can help us do that or this old Jedi who knows a trick on how to make it all flamey and stuff and I want mine to be orange or yellow but like a fiery yellow not the sort of lemon yellow I wanted to have passion because that's my character's passion passion passion passion right so you've seeded you've seeded and you seeded so seeding is about dropping these little ideas that your character is changing and then once your character gets to the point where they renounce the Jedi Order and that can be verbal I renounce the Jedi I'm done they're wrong the Sith are not rise either they're also wrong I'm going to find my own way then perhaps the Jedi costs aside the lightsaber chooses not to use it but chooses to use something else or perhaps now renounces their Jedi ways altogether and stops using their powers now is the time where you then have to move in and move forward with that whole idea so this is how we seed things you now need to talk and share with your GM you should have been doing this along beforehand anyway but now it's critical now when you were announce your powers I'm no longer a Jedi I'm not using the force anymore the force is a delusion it's a trap that in snares us and tries to take away any sense of individuality that we might have I renounce it that's absolutely fine absolutely fine and you're welcome to do that you are absolutely welcome to do that now you start talking to the GM and your fellow players I want my Jedi to realize that that the power of the force is needed to save lives and can be used for good and possibly can be used for evil or perhaps I want some kind of temptation GM can you work that out for me but and here is the critical thing you don't go to the GM with a premade adventure you don't say right I've written out an adventure here for my character which is perfect it's going to show exactly how the Jedi get her back into the fold you don't do that you sit and you chat with your fellow GM and you chat with your players I want my character to feel isolated to feel alone to feel as if there's no one there absolutely fine talk to a pillar players and see what they say now sometimes you get players to go it's all very emotional and it's I'm not comfortable with that no I'm not not comfortable with your Jedi abandoning us now instead of digging in your heels instead of becoming stubborn say but I've planned this from the beginning I've this is my story it's my character that's what my character will do no no no now you start to work around that because remember you are playing a game with other people it's as fun for them as it is for you but you can cause them to stop having fun and that I think is the mark of a bad players when you cause other players to no longer have fun so if they're not comfortable with your character say becoming a drug addict and being difficult to work with and admittedly that would be a challenge you would have to make sure that you state categorically that whilst your character might become a drug addict or might renounce the force that you are still going to be useful and practical they must be some valued still keeping your character around bear this in mind maybe I should have said that up front your character has to always remain useful even if they become surly or if they become angry or aggressive or questioning or they must still go along with the plan bearing in mind and this is a great example of a character story because if you go way back I'm talking back decades sadly literally it is almost now two decades but if you go all the way back to the original x-men look at Wolverines character he started off as a loner the entire first movie was about him being condescending towards the x-men do you wear spandex all the time not wanting to work together not wanting to work together until eventually he started to see the benefits and then he transformed and he changed he started to fall in love with these characters and then the characters died and they went on this journey and then we watched Logan literally what almost 18 years after the first film was made and we see that he's now become this really dedicated supporter or Professor X look at that character journey that's an 18-year campaign folks that is a character who started off vehemently against the people questioned fought against fought with and then ended up being the ultimate champion of that group so that's what I'm talking about when you plan together is you sit down you say well this is what I'd like to have happen I'd like my character to realize the error of their ways I want to be able to have this kind of fight or this sequence or I want I would like something like that leave it up to the GM to then incorporate it into their game now if they don't do that if they don't do that that's the Jemez call and you have to respect that because it's their game however you can ask them after the session hey are we going to do that character thing or you're just not happy with it if they're not happy with it maybe it's something that's beyond their capability it's beyond their scope absolutely fine send them over to the channel in it then watch a couple videos on how to work with character stories and the like because you can make such a better game now this last slide I think it's the last slide it could be the last slide maybe it's the last slide let's see this slide here is all about role-playing you have to adapt change and you have to modify I could sit right now and say right my character character of guy is going to lose 50 pounds by next year that's a character journey that my my character wants to go on is to get thin it's not going to happen I can tell you that right now there are too many things in the way and not enough incentive really to do it anyway that's not the point the point is is that your characters goals might not be achieved because of the dynamic of the party if there are other players whose characters stories are unfolding and they're in conflict with yours or they start to drive a wedge between the player group you need to sit back and realize it's just a story it's just role playing so as much as I am passionate about it frequently I step back and I go you know what that was a great plan it was gonna be a great story it was gonna be wonderful but I need to adapt and change because the people around me my friends are not going in that direction so either I need to adapt my story to figure out how to get it there later on I need to change my story to figure out how it can fit with the group or ain't a modified in such a way that the outcome is different from what it was but it still got some bass chords in there which I originally found that's just the nature of team working working with one another and that's something that we just have to live with there's nothing that we can do about that so learning to do it gracefully and learning to enjoy it that's what I had to do when I was becoming a GM was I had to learn how to enjoy others changing my plans and it's something that does take a bit of getting used to I won't lie but if you do it properly it can be fantastic it really can be magic and so with that thankfully I think because that was the right title it brings us to the idea that creating a character future creating a character plan using seeds planted out there my character goes to temple to worship my character starts to pick up a manual on how to be a better scuba diver whatever seed it change it adapt it talk about it and then experience it and you will be amazed you'll absolutely be amazed at how elevates your game so that in a nutshell is how you create a plan for your character to evolve and to change in a meaningful way so hit the like button if you liked the video hit the subscribe button if you want to see more of these let me know is this new studio setup working out for you can you tell the difference maybe you can't who knows who knows that's well you do so leave your comments below and I will be absolutely thrilled to see your feedback on the subject anyway until next time I wish you and yours the very happiest of playing [Music]

Channel: How to be a Great GM

Views: 54,697

Keywords: dnd 5e, World building, Dnd gm tips, Game master toolkit, dnd, d&d, dnd gm tips, game master tips, Great game master, Tabletop Roleplaying, GM, How to GM, How to be a great game master, Game Master, Great Game Mastering, How to, How to be a great dungeon master, DM Tips, Dungeon Master, RPG, Game Master Tips, Dungeon Master Tips, GMing Tips, DMing Tips, dnd character creation tips, dnd character flaws, dnd character builds, rpg character design, character growth

Id: edpAG567m9s

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 29 2018