Capsule 💊 Games – Part 2: Player Characters

Artist credit: Will Kirkby

Most people would be utterly aghast at the notion of an RPG where you don't get to make your own character. To many folks, they are one and the same synonymous. But why?

Video games don't have any hang-ups about this. Skyrim is cool, partly because you make your own character. But The Witcher is also cool, not even in spite of you playing as Geralt of Rivia, but largely because of it. Nobody has ever been like, "aw man you mean I have to play as Geralt?" No, people are like, "oh hell yes I get to play as Geralt!"

And yet I've seen so many RPG players get bent out of shape merely for having characters randomly rolled instead of personally constructed. I've seen players refuse starting packages like in Electric Bastionland or playbooks like in PbtA games. Which is a real shame! Those games aren't even forcing you to play pre-made characters. They're just trying to suggest details about the world and its inhabitants through character options. That's a really interesting and thoughtful application of design.

A Hero is You

The thing which inspired this entire conversation to begin with was the Kickstarter for RRD's upcoming game Eat the Reich. This game has a very specific premise:

EAT THE REICH is a tabletop roleplaying game in which you, a vampire commando, are coffin-dropped into occupied Paris and must cut a bloody swathe through nazi forces en route to your ultimate goal: drinking all of Adolf Hitler's blood.

Sounds fucking crazy, right? To that end, they made a bold decision:

EAT THE REICH doesn't contain rules for making your own characters - we wanted to focus on making the pregenerated ones as impressive and evocative as possible instead. 

I encourage you to read through the Kickstarter campaign and see their six characters in all their glory. They're something to be proud of. Obviously I could totally come up with my own awesome vampire commando if I wanted to. But... I wouldn't turn down the chance to play as one of these six.

Of course, this isn't actually anything new. TSR's Marvel Super Heroes was the granddaddy superhero RPG, which many consider to still be unsurpassed. While there were indeed rules for randomly creating your own character, the default assumption is that players take control of their favorite heroes from Marvel comics. Most of the adventure scenarios published for this game were also built on that assumption. A whole generation of gamers was more than happy to play as Spider-Man, Wolverine, and the Hulk. Wouldn't you be?

Something Radical

Sometimes we learn best from the things which shock us. That put us outside of our comfort zones. An example I keep coming back to is Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast. It's a really good one. I could not sell my players on it. Not only do you not get to make up your own character, but you share the characters as well. From one episode to the next, different players might trade the same residents back and forth. There may even be occasion for someone to play multiple characters in an episode, taking control of a bunch of guests staying at the B&B.

I think this confuses so many players because they take it for granted that their primary creative input in an RPG is to craft a character all their own. "I get to make this part and add it to our story. The game belongs to the game master, but this part is mine." I think that's a failure of imagination. As a collaborative exercise in creativity, there's a lot more that anyone at the table could contribute than just a race + class combo they rolled up. There are so many unique possibilities to explore if you start from the assumption that everyone at the table can own every part of the game equally.

I'm far from the first person to compare YBB to a traditional stage play. There are important differences to be sure, but I think it's illuminating. If you're an actor taking on Shakespeare, you're assuming a role that's been played by thousands of other actors for centuries. But for the brief length of your performance, you get to own that role. Your Hamlet is different from everyone else's Hamlet. But also, maybe in the next production someone else in your troupe will be Hamlet. Your take on the character does not diminish theirs. It enriches it.

And that's actual theatre! YBB is still an RPG, remember? You make the dialogue, you make the decisions, you make the plot. When you introduce this to a bunch of gamers, they balk at the restrictions. But if you showed this to a theatre troupe, they'd probably be a bit intimidated by the freedom.

More Comparisons

Josh's approach to defining capsule games was through comparison to other related artistic mediums. We can do that, too. Jay has said that YBB began its life as a Lady Blackbird hack, but also that another important influence is LARP. And y'know, LARP is in this weird position where nearly everyone who plays RPGs has heard of it, but very, very few of them know anything about it. A lot of you probably just picture a bunch of people dressed in renfaire costumes beating each other up with foam weapons. Which, sure, that's some of LARP. But that doesn't even begin to scratch the surface.

LARPs are played at conventions and festivals as big organized events over hours or days. They're also played in smaller, private settings you set up with your friends. Sometimes they're played solo, on the bus on the way to work. A genre I find illustrative is the "parlor larp." If you can picture a murder mystery dinner party event, that's one familiar example. But if you're curious what more there could be, here's a list of some publicly available LARPs to take a look at. 

So in the absence of what we traditionally think of as "crunch," what do you find when you crack open a LARP you download off the internet? Oftentimes, it's a pre-contained scenario. It may have setup conditions, narration, guidelines on play, creative prompts, and very often, pre-made characters.

We can come at this from another tradition. I myself have talked a lot before about Model United Nations and other convention-based FKR simulations. I find it very funny how often I'll talk to an RPG person and they're totally fascinated by the weirdness of the famous Braunstein experiment, and how they'd like to imagine trying such a bizarre and rare thing. And I'm like, dude. Literally tens of thousands of people play Braunsteins every year. Most major universities in the United States have a competitive "Braunstein club." A huge chunk of those host a yearly weekend-long Braunstein convention with a variety of simulations set up!

Having hosted many MUN simulation myself, I'm well-versed in the art of "writing" a Braunstein game. While there are many approaches to this, the standard in MUN is that all players are assigned a character. And this is sincerely like the most exciting thing about the game. You sign up to play in a Cold War sim and then everyone eagerly awaits to find out who gets to play as Kennedy or Khruschev or de Gaulle. Or like, you're in a Game of Thrones committee and you get to be a lord from one of the Great Houses of Westeros, or maybe one of the members of the Small Council. One time my team attended a conference that had a simulation of the committee of Batman villains. We sent two of our members, who were assigned the Riddler and Hugo Strange. Can you even imagine how fucking stoked you'd be to get the Riddler?

A MUN scenario contains some background information on the topic and important questions to prompt research, but the bulk of your player guide is just the character dossiers. Some simulations will give you a whole personality and set of goals, but I was more interested in trying to offer a list of assets, liabilities, and personal background information.

Back to RPGs

D&D has always been orbiting this idea. Roleplaying games are all about accepting a prompt and then doing your best to fulfill its potential. That's all character classes are, when you think about it. It's actually very rare to play an RPG where you truly make your character from scratch. The cunning rogue and the mighty paladin are both archetypes with a ton of tropes built into them, a ton of assumptions about who you are, what kind of person you're playing as. When you choose to play as a rogue, you're also accepting a lot of character details handed to you by the designers.

But of course, people have pushed against this for ages. Pushed against alignment restrictions, pushed against flavor features, pushed for more and more customization. More archetypes, more backgrounds, more something. Which isn't wrong, necessarily. It's expanded the game a lot. But maybe it's also a symptom of trying to make D&D the "one size fits all" game, where anything is possible.

There's something compelling about a game that has exactly 6 character archetypes that it's interested in offering. In many stories, the principal characters are themselves a microcosm of their world. There's a very real sense that Deckard Cain is the world of Bladerunner, that Conan is the Hyborian Age, that Barbie is Barbieland. I think a lot of RPGs would benefit from being a bit more particular in their vision.

I'll confess: out of all the cappy traits identified in part 1 of this series, this is probably the one I'm the least interested in, personally. I've been cooking up a capsule for a few years now and it hits almost every cappy quality except for this one. Maybe that's just because of what I can sell my players on, though. I just know that I do still really love the experience of making your own character, coming up with your little guy, maybe drawing a picture too.

But I still wanted to begin my series with this post for a few reasons. One is that this topic is what inspired us to give a name to "capsule games" to begin with. But another is for that thing I said earlier: you need to be shocked out of your comfort zone. The RPG industry needs to break from its sacred formulas. If there's any trait of capsule game design which shows their unexplored potential the best, it would be this one.

Go to Part 3

-Dwiz