Stardancer's Off the Beaten Path Blog

What’s In a Personality?

What’s Character Personality Got To Do With It?

(This is the text portion of “Off the Beaten Path” as heard on Hearthstone Tavern Roleplay Podcast #17)

Personality is a way of summarizing an individual’s essence, so that a character can enter the world and be more than a cardboard cutout. It’s easy to look at the character that is a druid and already know that they like plants or can shape-shift into cats, and may even have cat-like traits. However, when faced with a trying friends or a personal trauma, what exactly will be your character’s response …and why?

In the world of advertising and marketing, knowing the personality of and the how a person derives at decisions is worth paying millions for. When they figure out the how and why, then they know exactly in what way to target their products to people. It’s not as simple as group a and b like product x or anything like that. The real treasure is trying to understand what movtivates people to make decisions, and in what ways do they allow influences to affect them. An exercise that marketing uses to understand people and their choices is actually a tool developed by authors and writers called the character diamond. This is a technique which allows for a quick snapshot of the essence of person’s personality by building a scaffold or framework. By defining a person (or in our case a character) into four simple quadrants, you can begin to fill out and understand the character, then the rest of the RP can become organic and natural.

The four quadrants in the character diamond should at least represent the dominant traits of your character and are as follows:

your character’s main Primary Strength(s)
your character’s Shadow Trait
your character’s Supporting Trait(s)
your character’s Fatal Flaw.

To use these four areas as character development exercise, the idea is to pick a character and come up with a word or two that best describes each of these categories for your character. Let’s get an idea with a character who we want to create, let’s say a roguish thief.

The Primary Strength is generally something that is admirable and forms the backbone of who the character is. For example, our roguish thief character’s strengths are that he is tenacious and patient. He can get himself out of a jam no matter what, even through sheer will if he needs to. He also has the required stamina to be meticulous.

The Shadow Trait is a secret yearning or something about the character that is hidden. In your character, it is either actively suppressed or sometimes can be something they are unaware of or simply lack the ability to see it in themselves or can admit. Going back to our roguish thief, let’s assume that this trait is Avarice – The acquisition of items for him borders on the drive to obtain them at an almost obsession level. This includes doing just about anything if there is a potential gain to him.

The Supporting Trait is generally an attitude or value which blends and supports the primary strength. Back to our roguish thief, we will make him knowledgeable and skillful. Our guy is an artisan and can make his own amazing tools and weapons. He knows how they function and how they are made which can be very handy when he needs to appraise goods. This supports and complements his primary strengths of tenacious and patience.

The Fatal Flaw is a virtue which borders on the extreme, and usually ends up can being a failing grace. Leadership winds up being a flaw if it becomes controlling. Another example is when nurturing becomes smothering. The fatal flaw is the one thing that almost every character needs and is the item that makes a character more believable and more real (more human as it were.) So for our roguish thief character, his flaw might be that although he is a meticulous artisan, if taken to the extreme he is a scrupulous blathering fussy perfectionist with himself and other people.

Using this marketing and writing technique can help define a basic personality framework for your character. This gives your character a foundation from which they make choices or interact with others and why.

Hope this little exercise helps you with your characters. Have fun everyone.

Suzanna aka Stardancer/Stardancerelf (stardancerelf.com) started doing audio articles in the Epic Dolls Podcast in 2006. She has continued on to host Hearthstone Tavern RP Podcast with a fantastically talented and creative cast. She is an avid part-time gamer, musician, artist, and someone known to philosophize. Twitter her @stardancerelf

Hearthstone Tavern Roleplay Podcast, Role Play Editorial, Role Play Tips | Suzanna (aka Stardancer) | July 27, 2010 4:05 am | Comments (0)

Natural Roleplay

Roleplaying Organically

In the Hearthstone Tavern Roleplay podcast, Brent was probably the first to mention it, but several cast members have referred to or use the term “organic” when describing some types of roleplay.

The word organic is used in the food industry when referring to products grown without hormones or other chemicals. In business, the term refers to company and/or consumer growth that happens on its own without a lot of hustling or capital expense. In the past, I have used the term “organic” in music business articles I have written to describe how to compose music digitally with more natural sounds and orchestrations. The term “organic” has come to refer to something that is natural, authentic, or has core value. However, I like the way that the Urban Dictionary defines the term “organic” with regard to writing,

“As an analogy in the creative process, used to describe a work such as a novel or movie script made in such a way that the various parts developed as they were written/painted/whatever, one from another, rather than sticking rigidly to a preconceived plan.”

I think this definition probably applies the most to what it means to roleplay organically or naturally.

Many players look at organic roleplaying more like improvisation. Auburn wrote in How Do You RP: RPing Methods 101,

“Improvisation leans on taking what’s there and running with it. An improvisationist is most happy when random events conspire to become meaningful. ”

While some players may prefer more strict settings in details and goals established through Storytelling ( Dungeon Mastering or DMing), it is important to learn to “roll with the punches” when dealing with additional, artistic, or novice players. Eliot wrote this observation in Storyboard at Massively,

“Far better to compromise and keep things active. Organisms that adapt, survive. It’s a principle to live by.”

In the Hearthstone Tavern Roleplay podcast, we have talked about storytelling, leading, and even DMing organized events within the game world. However detailed those events and storylines can be, everyone pretty much agrees that some of the best nights of roleplay happen when there is no script or storyline, when roleplay “just happens.” It is those random high-caliber roleplays that arise out of nowhere without a script that would be my definition of a truly organic roleplay. When another player plays their character as their character no matter what is thrown at them, those are the kind that deserve standing ovation behind the screen because their “acting” was so good! It is those roleplays where the characters, stories, and interactions become living art to me.

I guess the point I am trying to get to here is that whether scripted or not, what people put into their roleplays, the little random parts of themselves, the spontaneous previously unwritten extras, artistic or otherwise, are truly that the seeds that help their character and stories organically come alive. I might have to get a guest writer on here to write about tips and tricks to play roleplay more organically.

Suzanna aka Stardancer/Stardancerelf (stardancerelf.com) started doing audio articles in the Epic Dolls Podcast in 2006. She has continued on to host Hearthstone Tavern RP Podcast with a fantastically talented and creative cast. She is an avid part-time gamer, musician, artist, and someone known to philosophize. Twitter her @stardancerelf

Role Play Editorial, Role Play Tips | Suzanna (aka Stardancer) | June 2, 2010 6:41 pm | Comments (1)