Everything is Weird in Fantasy RPGs (But That's Not How You Make a Character Stand Out)

Many years ago I got invited to play an RPG with a group I'd never met before. It was pretty large, and the general gist of things was that it was a high-fantasy world with a lot of magic and some rapidly advancing technology. The party, as I was introduced to them, included the following;

- A powerful psychic warrior who'd escaped from a brutal, repressive nation
- A halfling paladin who literally shown with a halo of light.
- A half-elf alchemist smart enough to understand the very fabric of the cosmos.
- A cyborg mercenary with a gambling problem wielding a sword that had slain a powerful lich.

There was one guy who was standing off in the shadows and playing it coy, though. Rather than just introduce his PC, the way the others did, he made a big deal about how there was this tall figure in a black robe that obscured his features. And he was carrying this huge scythe. Then he pulled back the cloth, revealing... well, basically exactly what you're expecting with that lead up.

Hey man, you got any twos?

The player had gotten super special permission from the DM to play a pseudo-undead race, and he had chosen to make this living skeleton a cleric of the god of death. It was, of course, then completely necessary to walk around in a ragged robe that really did very little to conceal what he was for long, and while carrying a big, obvious weapon. The loud kind of mysterious that is not, in fact, mysterious at all.

This player continually expected to get a big reaction out of this character, and he never did. And that's something I'd like to talk about today, because there are a lot of players (and DMs as well) who seem to forget that when everything is weird, the flip side of that is that nothing is weird.

The Fantastical Mundane

I talked about this over on The Literary Mercenary in Making Use of The Fantastical Mundane in Sci-Fi and Fantasy, but if you didn't catch that when it first came out, the concept is pretty simple. In short, the world you are in decides when something is or isn't unique, strange, or special. If you're in a setting where, for example, magic is rare and wondrous, then just the act of being a magical creature, much less a wizard or a sorcerer, would immediately make you a target of fear and awe. In a setting where magic is everywhere, though, it ceases to be a spectacle. In that sort of setting, sorcerers might be casting spells on street corners for pocket change, and levitating trains might run between cities on the power of ancient runes.

In New York, this is terrifying. In hell, this is Tuesday.

This is something a lot of players sort of forget about when making their characters. Base races, even the notably inhuman ones, aren't some impossible creature that only exists in stories. People have heard of them before, and in more cosmopolitan areas there may be entire neighborhoods of them. Whether you're a six-and-a-half-foot-tall cat person with a massive crossbow over your back, or you're a fuschia-haired, jade-eyed gnome riding around on a floating pink cloud instead of a mount, you might be unusual, but you're still mundane by the standards of the world.

Which is to say that you might get a, "Huh, haven't seen that before," or perhaps some curious questions or funny looks out in the hinterlands, but you're probably not going to cause riots simply by existing the way you would in a low-magic world.

Interesting Characters Are More Than Skin Deep

And we need to explore them over time.

A common mistake that lots of players make is to assume that making a character look weird, frightening, or unusual is the same as making that character interesting. It isn't. A standard human fighter can be the most interesting character in the party, and the drow wizard/assassin might be the most boring... it all depends on what's going on beneath the skin, and how you lead the rest of the party down that path to figure it out.

Let's go back to the overly-grim reaper for a moment.

To add some context to that introduction scene, it was the new PC being introduced to the squad he was going to work with through the adventurer's guild. They were in the middle of a major city, so even though the new guy had never seen a sentient undead before, there were dozens of possible explanations for what this thing was, and why it was here. It was unique, but it was far from unheard of just in the context of what one might see walking down the street in the high magic district.

But the character displayed no unique personality after that initial reveal.

As a cleric who seemed to be the party healer, the player missed a golden opportunity for the others to call him Bones (the age-old nickname for the sawbones). The character, post-reveal, could have offered a bony hand and apologized for the state of himself, but he was in the middle of conducting a service when he got the call to come in and thus was still in his "official" robes/costume rather than something a little more casual. Even something as simple as asking for alignment, deity of choice, and funerary rite preference should the new guy meet a terrible end while on a mission, as disposing of his earthly remains would likely fall to the cleric would have added some personality.

Any of those simple quirks would have instantly made the leper in the room into one of the most interesting characters at the table. Alternatively, if there had been some effort put into genuinely disguising what he was (say, being under a constant illusion spell that he never risked someone seeing through by avoiding physical touch whenever possible, or wearing actual concealing robes, veil, etc. that would have genuinely shrouded him), then it would have been a big surprise when the party realized they'd been traveling with a living skeleton this whole time. Combined with an interesting personality, that sort of long-term reveal could have been really interesting as well. But, alas, it's not what happened.

Solid concept for this game, by the by, so go check it out!

Get Weird (And Go Deep)

To address the other side of this coin, though, there are also a lot of players who claim that by picking a big, loud, colorful, or bizarre class or race that you are inherently less interesting as a character. This comes back to the Stormwind Fallacy (the idea that a mechanically optimized character cannot be roleplayed well, and vice versa), except that this time it's players arguing that the weirder, more unusual, or more inhuman a character is, the less roleplaying there will be as a result of that choice.

I would, instead, argue that the more inhuman, weird, or bizarre a concept or character is, the more opportunities you have to really embrace the things that make them strange and unique as characters.

Don't mind fluffy, he gets me where I'm going, and he's a friendly sort.

From the bizarre habits and comforts that inhuman characters have (such as a tiefling putting hot coals in his mouth to think, or an orc or goblin eating things that would never be acceptable to a human palate), to the bigger implications of their cultures, background, upbringing, and even their age, I fully endorse players getting as weird as a setting will allow and really stretching out into those roles.

As long as you're aware that what makes you interesting isn't the race on your sheet, or the levels you have in a given class. It's what you do with your character's personality, and how you make them stand out in meaningful ways that also bring the characters around them deeper into their orbit, and their story.

For more recommended reading and inspiration, check out some of the following:

- Reveal Details About Your Character Through Flavor-Based Skill Checks A unique strategy for bringing across your character's details, and getting other PCs involved in the process.

- 100 Random Mercenary Companies: If you are, of have been, a mercenary, then you likely carry some specific gear, linguistic quirks, etc. from that life that could make other folks curious about who you served with. Other entries that might provide similar background information include 100 Knightly Orders as well as 100 Gangs For Your Urban Campaigns.

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That's all for this week's Fluff post! If you've used this in your games, share a story down in the comments!

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