These tips were pulled from a post I put together over on EN World called “RP Prompting and Immersion”. Here, I expand upon them further.
Unique Character Aspects
I want my players to be attached to their characters. I want them to care if they live or die. Whenever I can help create this connection, I do it.
One of the ways I accomplish this is to work with players to give their characters some unique aspect(s) that are for this character only. If the Elf Ranger dies, and rerolls another one, he will no longer have the unique aspect of the previous one. Furthermore, these unique aspects evolve and grow with a character, which often times creates within the player a desire to see where this aspect leads – just how far will it evolve.
Here is one example of how I did this in my current campaign (4th Edition for those who are curious)…
The Psion
The player of the Psion (at the time) explained that he saw his character as someone exploring his powers for the first time. He wanted to be someone who could manifest his abilities in ways outside of combat that did not stem from the power cards necessarily. He described a wandering gambler trying to hone his mental powers attempting to pick up the thoughts of others, and to try and “push” his thoughts into other’s minds.
Of course, he has a power that allows him to basically do this, but he talked of it going a step further – allowing him to persuade people in a way, to get them to think something of his choosing. He understood that this kind of thing would be spotty and that for a while it could be as much of a problem for him as it could be a benefit (it might return false info, or he may end up sharing thoughts he didn’t want to share).
He liked the idea, and I was already full of ideas for the role.
Examples in play…
– In the first game, while watching someone in the forest, I let him know he was getting a sense for the thoughts of the person. He asked what he was picking up and learned that the person seemed anxious and was wondering when everyone would arrive.
– In the second game, someone in a tavern was giving him and the PC’s some grief and he said out loud something I don’t recall specifically, but it was something along the lines of “yea, big help”, and in a very sarcastic way. So I asked him, “did you say that out loud?” and he said, “no”… so I replied, “well that was odd… you didn’t say it out loud, but he seemed to hear ‘something’ that irritated him, and he looked around right as you thought that”. So, the player understood his emotional reaction, while internal, had ‘leaked’ into the NPC’s mind – he even said, “oops, I need to watch that”.
Anyway, I hope you dug this tip! Follow me on Twitter, or let me know if you liked it if you already are!
More of these to come…