#11 Character Templates and The Witcher 2

Today I want to talk about characters, both in theory and in practice. I present a short approach to character design and am then going to use it in my Witcher quest. Let's get into it!

Characters

It is probably hard to find a book about narrativity (be it in video games or any other medium) that doesn't contain a chapter on characters. Funnily I enough, in none of the six books on storytelling/game writing/quests/narratives I possess it is made clear why we need characters in stories. Moreover, even though this is less surprising, none one of them seriously explored a more experimental use of the term "character" (a.g. the city as a character).

The first finding is probably related to the fact that characters are just such an important part of storytelling in our societies that there is not felt any need of explaining the reasons. I do not think the reason to be very complex: It is probably because seeing ourselves or someone like us in stories is part of what makes them meaningful, relevant to us. However, and here we come to the second note, we seem to not necessarily need humans in order to have a narrative character.There are a lot of examples of aliens, animals, computers or toys being used as characters in a story. But I'd like to take this even further: What about cities, mountains, fate, wind, "the land", "the streets" or Uncle Sam? In school, such things were called personifications or anthromorphizations, whenever human-like properties of a non-human thing were emphasized and/or added. Going in this directions is the chapter "The Tales Cities Tell" by Dr. Konstantinos Dimopoulos in Chris Batemans Game Writing. Instead of diving into this topic further, I will content myself here with stating, that a character can be anything: It only needs proper highlighting of its (possibly made up) human-like attributes in the story.

Character Design

So, we now let us think about human-like attributes. This is the main focus in all the literature on characters (at least that is, how it seems to me), so I won't be able to catch all of them in one post. Consequently, for pragmatic reasons, I'll just present the approach chosen in  the book "The Game Narrative Toolbox" by Tobias Heussner et al., more precisely, chapter 5 "Characters".

After talking about player-characters (or avatars) and department coordination on characters (which both need an extra post to meet them), they start with introducing 

• internal conflicts, 
• merits and flaws,
• psychological types and
  
• temperament theory
  

as four major inspirations for creating a character. They furthermore advocate for creating diverse characters and use the spaces they exist in to tell more about them. At last, a holistic approach is prefered where traits, conflicts, diversifications etc. intertwine and are woven together. To have an overview over all the informations making up a character, character templates are encouraged as a starting point. Here I have distilled from their templates and lists some groups of attributes for such a template:

Outside: Materialistic Description:

Name, Title, Age, Ethnicity/Race, Sex, Complexion, Height, Weight, Eyes, Hair, Biography, Family, World they live in, Profession

Outside: Demeanor/Attitude:

Environment (home, work, ..), Motto, Way of talking, How they dress, Means to reach goals, Relations, Culture, Behaviour towards Strangers

Inside: Knowledge/Image of World and Self

Goals / Desires, Interests, Abilities, Gender, Spiritual beliefs, Philosophical, Political Learnings (...), Experiences/Memories (Childhood, Teenager, at Work etc.)

Inside: Possibly Unknown to Character

Motivation, Emotional States, Personality, Fears, Conflicting Traits, Merits and Flaws, Temperament, Relationships with other NPCs and own Fmily

In the Story

• Function: Protagonist, Major Sidekick, Friend, Villain, Minor Sidekick
• Drive, Conflict, Motivation, Happenings, Growth, Regression, Arc
• To the Player: Meaningful, Engage, Involve, Capture, Attachement, Seeming Alive
  

Seeing that the above cited "major inspirations" named in the book are all more or less to be found in the more hidden areas of a character (inside and unknown to him), I am reminded again of other sources I read on storytelling so far. It always seems to be about an unveiling of informations, and the deeper the origin of these informations, the better. This, I am sure, is something to be explored - unveiled - in further posts. But here, today, my look is now directed towards my current quest design.

Further Reading / Inspiration

• T. Heussner, T.K. Finley, J.B. Hepler, A. Lemay: The Game Narrative Toolbox
• L. Sheldon: Character Development and Storytelling for Games
  

A "Witcher" Quest - Part 2: Character Descriptions

A short recap: Pursuing a contract in a small village, Geralt finds that the people's problem is deeply rooted in their attitude to their environment and a local family of woodworkers.

To be more concrete, my quest design was about an insecure girl called Alene and the rustic village she lives in. The village is torn between holding on to the old way, woodworking, and a recently found focus on the nearby river. This conflict is instantiated in the relation of Alene's uncle Alvin Wudmager (living alone in the woods) to her father, stern burgomaster Aisker Wudmager, who is not comfortable with the forest nearby. Alene feels drawn to the forest and her uncle Alvin and plans to leave the valley with him. Geralt travels into the valley, because he heard of a possible monster plagueing the people: Indeed it turns out that a fisherman's son has gone missing. He soon meets Alene, Alvin, Aisker and the other villagers and has to decide to what degree he wants to get involved in their personal matters.

Here are the main characters of this story:

• Geralt of Rivia, professional monster slayer
• Aisker Wudmager, burgomaster of the village, focused on the river, is not comfortable with the forest
  
• Alvin Wudmager, his brother, forester, living alone in the woods
• Alene Wudmager, Aiskers daughter, insecure, drawn to the forest
• Nohman Kapuner, part of the only traditional fisher family in the village, lost his son by the monster
  
• The Village, a collection of simple people having a long tradition of woodworking, now mostly following the hype surrounding the river
• The Local Lord, a selfish man who doesn't care much for the inhabitants as long as there is peace
• The Forest, young and calm, stretches far and wide through the valley, wondering why the villagers don't care about him no more
• The River, flowing swiftly, curious for the sudden attention

Being a main character doesn't mean to me that the character needs to talk much or be seen a lot. Much rather, main characters have a big presence: Besides being physically present and speaking, they might also be mentioned often, be felt often or do major movements while the story progresses. Side characters, who do not have such a big influence over time, are:

• Aisker's wife (being Alene's mother)
• A friend of Alene
• Nohman Kapuner's son, who got lost
• An old bear in the forest
• The mountains surrounding the valley

I haven't given much thought to these as of yet, so there is definitely some more room for improvement here, tying into the details of the storyline. But I'll proceed to the matter at hand: A characterization of Alene, done with a slightly modified version of the template written down above.

For unlimited resolution, see this beautiful PDF vector graphic.

So, this is it. I noticed that the last six items were rather difficult to answer and I wrote down some redundant answers. There is room for improvement there. But I will leave it at that for now and come to a conclusion.

Ideas for Feedback

• What items could be added/changed/repositioned in my character template?
• Which parts of my characterization of "Alene Wudmager" don't seem refined enough?

Conclusion

Another post finished, another conclusion incoming. When I first encountered character sheets, I immediately thought "How superficial! How shallow!", but then I soon realized how important they are to give an opportunity to  start with, diversify and refine your character. It helps making them more concrete and embedding them into their surroundings. And, last but not least, it is a good format to exchange between departments and to include in a quest documentation.

This is how my post ends today and I'm happy with it - may you be happy too! Have a good time!