30. character creation: introductions

Today we are looking at the section “Introductions” in the Character Creation chapter (76-77).

Once everybody’s finished creating their characters, it’s time to introduce them.

The introducing of the characters reminds me of the first point in the “Why to Play” section of the Basics chapter (14). Let’s take a moment to talk about how each character is fucking hot.

Before they start, make it clear: they all know each other. If they’re traveling, they’re traveling together. If they live in a holding, they associate with one another. They’re friends, or at least good colleagues. If one’s a maestro d’, the others can be her regulars, for instance. If one’s a hardholder, the others can be her lieutenants. The Hx rules will help make this happen too, but get it up-front and make sure everybody’s on board.

This paragraph tells us that even though only one player will be highlighting her character at a time, the other players need to listen attentively, thinking about ways that their characters might be connected with the character being introduced. And once again, that “make sure everybody’s on board” is a call to establish the social agreement at this stage of the game (which I have talked about plenty in the last couple of posts).

Go around the circle. Have every player introduce her character by name, look and outlook. Ask each a couple of questions about her character. You’re after a relatively coherent picture of who these people are and how they fit together.

I really love “outlook” as a category or description. The “look” of the character tells us how she appears to the world; the “outlook” of the character tells us how the world appears to her. Outlook is more than personality or attitude, right? It’s a way of seeing and approaching things. To me, outlook is one of the many linguistic gems in the text; it’s informative, evocative, and poetic.

So, an important thing happens as soon as the first player introduces her character: the Shared Imagined Space begins to be created. This is the moment that the fiction takes flight off the playbooks. The way the game brings that fiction into the SIS is by having the player contribute directly while the MC prompts the player to reveal more information until we have “a relatively coherent picture of who these people are and how they fit together.” Once again, questions are the heroes of the hour, as the answers they pull from us bring the character’s details into focus. And while character creation is part of play simply because we are all together talking about the game, this is the moment that capital-P-play starts up as the fictional world takes shape.

Examples: How old are you? What do you do for scratch? How long have you been doing that? How long have you two been working together? Where do you live? Who lives with you? So people, like, come to you all the time? So shit, you remember the apocalypse a little? So you two are sisters?

The sample questions are very different from the questions we will be seeing in the “Hx” section. These questions are direct questions with the answers left up entirely to the player being questioned. In fact, a few of these questions would be at home on the playbook themselves. “How old are you?” is a question usually grouped on a character sheet with appearance and height and all that jazz. By leaving age off of the playbooks, the game gives us a few simple questions to warm up the question-and-answer period. These questions are the basic set of tools that any of us use when we are having a conversation with someone we just met. What kind of work do you do? Where do you live? Are you married? Oh, is that your sister I met earlier? If we are genuinely interested in the person with whom we are conversing (as opposed to simply making small talk), then this kind of introductory conversation is always enjoyable, and we all know how run-of-the-mill questions can yield a surprising answer that takes us on a new line of inquiry. If you can have a conversation with someone you just met, then you can play this game. That’s your whole model for this part of character creation, and it’s an excellent way to warm up the players for what comes next: Hx.

If you have a straggler who hasn’t finished making her character yet, don’t make everybody wait. Have her introduce her character now anyway, she can finish up choosing her moves and crap as you go.

This is reasonable, and it drives home that for all the questions asked and things learned at this stage of the game, a great deal of the characters will be discovered through play, so don’t sweat it. Anyone straggling to finish her character has either joined the session late or is overthinking her decisions. Get her playing and talking and the character will unfold before her.