The Roleplay Forum: What's wrong with you?

By Persephone Bolero

In the last Roleplay Forum article, I explained how it’s important that your character want something. His or her desires, immediate and long-term, are the seeds from which all roleplay grows.

If you stick a seed in the ground, especially in the roleplay climate of the Amazon, something will likely grow from it. However, if you really want to grow a nice garden, the seeds you plant are going to need some water, fertilizer, and care. That is where conflict comes in to play.

Consider two variations on a character I’ll call Pam Gies. She’s a graduate student from Columbia University studying indigenous cultures in the Amazon. Pam has already published in a number of respected journals, has collaborated with top anthropologists across the globe, and her research is always funded by the most prestigious grants -- and she hasn’t even completed her doctorate degree yet. With a sizeable grant, she goes to the Amazon to study how native tribes maintain their cultural integrity in an increasingly globalized and modernized world.

When the foundation that provides her grants goes belly-up due to some embezzlement scandals, she loses her funding. To go home now would waste years of work. So, she goes to live with the tribes, who help her get food, shelter, and clothing.

Indeed, this is a character who wants something, and it’s easy to see lots of fun roleplay coming from her interactions. But let’s tweak this character a bit to give her some more human dimensions, which are not always so pretty.

Let’s say, in addition to all those previously mentioned qualities, Pam is also stubborn, rigid, and at times dogmatic. She has a fierce commitment to cultural sensitivity and believes that all anthropological research into indigenous people should be done as objectively as possible to avoid impacting the subjects of the research with western bias. She holds these scientific standards dear and constantly fears compromising them.

She limits her interactions with the tribe she’s studying to only those that are necessary for observation and collecting data. She won’t participate or adopt any part of their customs. When a native girl gives Pam some handmade earrings, she doesn’t wear them for fear she’ll appropriate their culture. Ironically, in her dogmatic commitment to cultural sensitivity, she ends up alienating and offending the natives she’s trying to be considerate toward, a fact she’s oblivious to. 

When the foundation that provides her grants goes belly-up due to some embezzlement scandals, she losses her funding. To go home now would waste years of work. She has limited equipment, food, and other resources. In order to survive and complete her research, she has to ask the tribe she’s studying for help, which means wearing their clothes, practicing their customs, and living with them. To save her research, she has to compromise her principles.

The situation gets even worse when friendships begin brewing between her and the natives she’s studying and living with. Her sense of guilt reaches a crisis when she falls for the tribe’s chief and one night, after having a bit too much to drink, sleeps with him.

I think most people would agree the tweaked character far more interesting and her story more compelling. All I did for the second version of Pam was give this brilliant researcher some flaws and shortcomings. She wants something, just like the first version of Pam, which is a good start. But in the second version, something is stopping her from having it. And that thing is primarily herself. She has an internal conflict.

Conflicts will enrich your roleplay. Often when people think of conflict, they think of fighting and combat. A lot of fun roleplay comes out of fights with others. In pure combat scenarios, however, the conflict is entirely external. Someone wants something, and someone else is opposing it. They get into a fight, one person wins, and the other person loses. The fights can happen again another day, but the story can only repeat itself. The characters don’t grow or change anymore than the story does.

If you want your roleplay to be richer and evolve over time, your character will need some internal conflicts with which she struggles, and those will come from your character’s flaws.

In the Amazon, I play a city girl who longs for the luxury and security of civilization. She wants to bring to the jungle law, order, sanitation, and wealth -- all the great things about civilization. She’s intelligent, charming, and has a grasp for politics, which could make her a great leader. Yet, despite her qualities, she’s lazy, irresponsible, has a weakness for intoxicants, and often lacks any confidence in herself. The thing that stops her from realizing her dreams is herself.

This produces some interesting interactions with Eve Fintan, Dylan Fintan, and Kiki. Unlike Persephone, Eve and Dylan are responsible and good at business. They have built a successful, luxurious resort, and they’re quite generous with their wealth. Eve, however, is sometimes snobbish and often judgemental. She’s always scrutinizing Persephone’s irresponsible behavior, which includes casual cocaine use, especially when it comes to Persephone’s obligations toward her adopted daughter, Kiki.

Kiki is kind, loving, and loyal. She’s also mentally handicapped, which presents all kinds of challenges with understanding the world around her. Dylan is a quack doctor who’s far better at breast enhancements than curing diseases. And then there’s Tantrica who’s, well...Tantrica.

All of these characters are a mixture of wants and needs, which are satisfied or impeded by the characters’ qualities and flaws. And when these characters come together, the roleplay is multifaceted, dynamic, varied, and compelling -- and often humorously absurd.

Your character’s strengths and qualities really won’t make him very interesting. It’s actually your character’s weaknesses that will drive rich roleplay. What characteristics are stopping your character from having what he or she wants? It’s those failures where your character’s story will most brilliantly shine.