Now please, don’t take this guide as the end all be all for a good character, because it’s certainly not. What I intended to do was put down some thoughts and ideas I have been mulling over for the past few years about playing a good aligned character in the world of NWN, and most recently EFU and to perhaps spur some new life/thought into what many consider a rather “boring” alignment. Know also that it will not be a discussion on the alignments, you play them as you choose within the constraints the DMs have set.

I feel that the boringness in it all is the inevitability of it all. In all the books and in all the comics, in the end the good guy (the hero, the protagonist) wins. Certainly this is the norm, but there are exceptions where the anti-hero is followed and wins. Yes, great. But the reality is that 9 times out of 10 good will win, and why you ask? Because the solidity of the game environment depends on it—that is in a static environment. Here at EFU it’s a bit different, with the active DM interaction and the changing of the city environment reactive to player actions. The city can be seiged and done in, the town hall could be blown up with all the councilors in a meeting when it happened, and the water poisoned, the machines driving the water/air sabotaged and stopped. The possibilities for doom and despair are rather endless—and here’s the kicker, the DM team would allow it –if-, and I’ll reiterate –if- it was well planned and executed, well rp’d and well done. I have no doubts there. We indeed have the possibility of a fluid environment, where PC actions have a very real impact. That said—it is the job of the good aligned character living in the city, from Damaran to reformed Thayan, to thwart those actions and keep Sanctuary safe. To that end, I’ll give my thoughts on each of the good alignments (and in doing so open a whole big barrel of crackers), and follow up with a short discussion on good play types.

Knowing your place in the grand scheme of things:

The Good: Now understand that plenty of people play good people as generally nice folks, and generally I think that would apply to most people you meet. But here’s the kicker—good doesn’t mean nice, selfless, helpful, clean, neat, orderly, righteous, trustworthy, honest, true, chaste, benevolent, friendly, thrifty, brave, clean, or reverent. Good simply put, is exactly that. Not bad. Not evil. Doing what is generally right a greater percentage of the time because at your core, you believe that there is value in doing so. A good character has at his/her core the desire to adhere to a morality/code of ethics that is in line with either a good aligned diety, the beneficial aspects of a neutral aligned diety, or to some other internal moral driving force that pushes that character to act in the benefit of society or some idealistic view of the world. But know that you don’t need to be the embodiment of good to be a good aligned character. Have flaws, vacillate over the moral conundrums that pop up due to your characters beliefs, and be fallible. It’s sometimes the foibles that endear a character and spawns great rp.

The Bad: The evil folks that give you so much trouble by making giant spider spawn, by wanting to turn the townspeople into piles of ooze, or by simply wanting to get along with demons and devils and open the unnamed pit to the 19th Lord of the Flamming Pit of Eternal Doom. These guys are your nemesis should you choose them. Just sitting out there in their secret lairs waiting for some good adventurer to come along and listen to them monologue about their plans. The bad folk come and go, and that, and that, is what can make playing a good aligned character fun. You have conflict, something to fight against, and something to be worried about. Evil characters that get big are usually well played as well. You can learn a lot about how to play a good character from watching a well played evil character.

The reactive vs the pro-active: Let’s face it, everyone is reactive except for the bad guys. Bad guys go out with nothing and make something evil that will endanger others, actively recruit for their plots, and actively try to put it to those after them before they get caught. They do not just sit around and wait for the good guy to ring the bell on the stoop of the lair. Good guys on the other hand tend to be very re-active. Something happens, and then you say “hey, I’m good. I need to correct that problem.” And in some instances that’s fine, especially with DM run quests that are set up before hand. But what about being pro-active good? Forming an organization is great, but if you all still sit around and wait for evil to rear it’s ugly head you are still re-active. But what if you set out a spy ring to collect info on anything bad that’s happening and then trying to nip it in the bud –before- it happens. What if your group wants to seek out the seven treasures of hell not because someone else is trying to get to them already, but because if you have them before evil thinks of it, evil never will have a chance at them. This is an environment (EFU) where evil is very easy to play, and with the prevalence of evil, pro-active good becomes easier to do as well. So set that sting operation, stake out places you think evil is going to, and above all, think about what evil would want and then pre-empt them by correcting the situation.

Know your goals:

Evil has it easy I think when it comes to goals. Take world domination for instance. I mean, how many evil guys have had this uber-goal in mind? But think about it—What’s wrong with a good aligned character wanting that goal to come to pass? Nothing! Why not dominate the world and ensure a lasting empire with strict laws to benefit society and all people?(LG). Want to be a badass mercenary known throughout the lands as the one to get the job done, though one with a conscience that takes jobs that allow him to sleep at night of course (NG, CG, even LG should you have a warriors code you adhere to). How about a wizard hellbent on immortality and immense power, but whose main goal in life is to try to rid the world of the taint of the shadow weave? There are a lot of possibilities for long term, character defining goals for every class and race combination out there. The lack of long term goals is a sure fire way to kill a character off early by lack of focus. Make goals, make goals that are attainable, and then see to it. It gives you something to do with a character after the questing is all said and done. Goals help make rp, questing rarely does.

Goals come in two basic flavors, long term and short term. Short term goals are those that pop up usually through RP, through DM quests and such. But once you get past those, you’ve got to have something that really drives your character to continue. Long term goals may never be truly obtained, but add that core driving principle on which your character focuses. Look in real life at some of the long term goals of those that history remembers. Rasputin: to control the rulers, and thereby rule. The Ceasers: to extend the empire beyond what it was. Ghengis Khan: to conquer. Winston Churchill: defend a nation. Mother Teresa: end suffering. Audie Murphy (an American war hero of WWII): defend his nation and his friends. Any current Ms USA: ensure world peace…and look real pretty doing it.

Play your level:

Right, so you start out life as a level one or two ranger. Fresh out of the slave stocks but itching to get back to your real job as defender of the all the woods in the Dalelands and Courtier to the High Sun Elf Lord of Magic in the Crystal Palace. Hey, you are a second level character…and in the realm of well, anywhere, that makes you green. How green you ask? Emerald green. Greener than a new spring leaf. And what’s wrong with it? Playing your level can add a lot of dimension to your character, after all, it is a representation of his/her experience in the world in which we play. So go ahead and lack the knowledge with that 2 lore to know that the second small red eyestalk to the left can cast negative energy ray at max level and go and get hit by it. Then you’ll know it for sure.

Play your character:

Your character is a conglomerate of your goals, experiences in game, and abilities. Or can it be more than that? A biography is an important aspect of the character in my opinion, just like the prologue and first few chapters of a book sets the stage for the remainder of the story it’s a hook and a foundation from which to start your character. How about personality? Important too, for rp purposes. I usually write a good bio for each character I play, as well as list off three to four personality traits that I try to adhere to through my RP. I find that a short list helps me not only remember them, but to remember to play them. For example, In a PnP campaign that I play a CN bard in my personality was (self interested, hedonist, live for the moment, sarcastic). If a problem comes up in game, the first thing I mentally list down is what personality tool would that character reach for to accomplish that goal. Q: Don’t know how to get into the evil castle? A: find a chambermaid and go hedonistic. Q: Party needs horses to travel and I have no gold because I spent it all the night before on wine and wine for the women? A: Stick the bill in a very self interested manner to the Pally in the party when he decides to act noble and says he wants to contribute to the group. Playing your character from what you have on the bio (as a starting point) and from your personality (more long running) adds to character flavor over the course of the life of the character much more than a lisp, a smoking habit, or any single gimmick can. Gimmicks get old fast, and when they wear thin on you it’s usually the end of that character. Don’t get me wrong here, they can add flavor, but should never be the sole thing differentiating your character from another. A character should have more depth than that.

Know when to take a break: And when it feels like “work” to do all the nifty extra things that you need to do due to a faction, player run plot involvement, etc., just take a break from the character. Take a breather and come back to it a little bit later. Play something else you have been thinking on for a while to get a different viewpoint on gaming or characterization. Ultimately you can’t play a good character without having fun, and having fun is what gaming is all about. It’s not about playing the best played character ever, it’s about fun.

Look, these are just ideas at the end of the day. Play your character the way you want to, but I hope that you get something out of this. I’ll tell you, it helped me focus on a few things I need to get better at.

Very nicely written. There is a substantial amount of insight here. After playing a lawful good character for almost my entire EfU career, I can relate to most everything you mention. A good guide for any person new to roleplaying.

Nicely written, and terribly insightful. There should be a subforum for all these guides!- and yours should be sticky'd there.

I vote for a sticky! :)

Write a parallel piece about Evil.

oh thats easy just stick the post infront of a mirrior and read off the mirror lol

but seriously good post somethings i hadnt thought of others i thought everyone knew but my bigest problem is i dont write bio's i used to but i found it more fun to start as a charactor with those sort of gimmics but as i played create the story of their history ask my charactor Vilia or another players charactor, matham my charactors dont start with depth they gain it and usually my charactors either become one of interest or they dont. ie Tasha she is slightly addleminded because of spending 30 years alone in the underdark with only her familiar as company. she was never captured by any of the races down there and she is way over the top optimistic however because of the fact that she has slightly lost her marbles other charactors that enquire about her history quickly loose interest, not because she dosnt have a good history but because she gets sidetracked very quickly and tends to ramble. its not bad RP its just her charactor which has slightly killed her for me same as playing a charactor that cannot rember her past. i was hoping to have her killed off verry soon but that plan went slightly awire due to the fact that i was going to make her father enter the story (a fullblooded Averiel who was either a weoponmaster [was pending dm decision and if that dident go to plan just a fighter] he was going to be Lawfull Good and be greiving for the loss of his daughter, he was also going to be your very clasical goodly charactor that may act less good towards any that had lead to her demise. Sadly he was knocked back by the dm's so he wont be surfacing at the moment perhaps at a later date. the bigest problem i faced i think was that when i sent the application i had one concept for him. at that stage i wasnt sure if Tasha was 100% going to die so i couldent say he was going to be a greiving charactor because if i did decide to keep Tasha what could he be greiving about that dident come accross as cheap. i still dont have a history grouped together for him so the bio had to be tiny and seemingly undeveloped and as such i couldent give an account as to how much fun he would be for others to play along side. i knew i would have fun with him but obviously if one person has fun with a charactor others may find it hard to enjoy playing along side him. (wow most of the above seems like a rant lol well it aint just throwing my ideas of a goodly charactor in) perhaps he may surface in the future but at this moment im still trying to figure hout how to continue Tasha especially with her nievity putting her in lower sanctuary telling every elf she meets "i have a blade with Zau's name on it" because she wants to join under Michael de la Ray's tutalage on how to become wiser and less haphazard and she sees this task at hand as a chance to proove herself despite the fact that she is ment to be looking for Zau himself and as such her own death but she is too optimistic to see it like that.

Excellently written.

I'd especially like to echo the sentiment about Good characters not needing to be kind and chivalrous.

Cail probably isn't the best example. He's Lawful Neutral. This doesn't mean he's completely apathetic. He's an asshole, and very easily irritated, often sarcastic, and in most situations, ready with a scathing remark, or a (admittedly small) repertoire of swears. Yet repeatedly he's done good things, even though he may pass them off for entirely selfish reasons, deep down he does them because they're good. He routinely saves people's lives as they bleed out on the ground, if only because he respects them.

Even raising victims of brutal murder from the dead out of his own pocket. Not the things you'd expect from the mean mysoginist that you see.

The same sort of stuff can apply for Good. Go ahead and -make- your priestess of Ilmater, but dont make her the sweet, kind-hearted martyr. Make a bawdy, weathered, matron who's seen everything. She no longer cringes at the wounds of warriors but instead jokes along with them as she bandages their wounds. Who tells the kind of stories that would make a sailor blush. Actually, don't, I think I may use that sometime...

The point is, break away from the stereotypes!!!

There's nothing that bores me more than seeing the same exact characters over and over.

No use in being the knight in shining armor. It's good for fairy tales, but you'll probably never be remembered, and it's just as unlikely you'll make any sort of impact on the setting. Not unless you break away from the norm.

What if your paladin of justice and kindness and honor and good, didn't come from noble birth and loving parenting? What if he struggled his entire life against the odds to serve his deity, despite tempations at every turn to stray from the past? What if you played such a character in a way that he didn't become a paladin until some time -after- generation? I think that would make a fantastic story, personally. (As a matter of fact, don't steal that one either, I think I might use it, too. *shifty eyes*)

But you get the picture. Break the stereotypes. Think outside the box, do something new and interesting and strange.

The Beggar made a point about not using gimmicks to make your character interesting. That's especially important. I'll confess, I've done it before. My last character on CoA was burnt and permanently scarred in his early childhood. For about 90% of the rest of his career he refused to remove his helmet in public.

A gimmick, right? It ended up dominating his personality. And when it gets to a point where the gimmick or quirk actually adds to the character, when it becomes more than just an interesting thing to interject randomly into your emotes, and actually influences personality and decisions, that's when it becomes more than just a gimmick.

I'd rather see a bog standard stereotypical Cyricist Cleric played well than an Anime Kura Turran Halfling pale masters of Velsharoon. That equates to tacky. Nor do I find gimmicks impressive. Occasionally a character will come along whose only personality trait is an amusing-for-five-seconds speech impediment. That is a shallow character.

Of course, this is only my opinion. I'm not criticising anyone in particular, merely pointing out what I think is best for maintaining the integrity of the server. People that play stereotypes well and interestingly will earn the greatest RP rewards from me.

A very well done post, Beggar. I found it interesting and inspiring.

I didn't read any responses except Lado's (which, though he and I have disagreed on the topic of archetypes a plethora of times, I find to be true. We'll take well played over an earth-shattering concept any day.), but the original post was very well written.

-Cross

And note that I completely agree. Stereotypes are there for a reason, most generally because the majority of a population (or the visual majority of that population) behaves close to the stereotyped behavior. A well played character, whether stereotype or not, is what really matters.

Stereotypes are bland and unfulfilling. I hate seeing them.

However, a kara-turan palemaster/monk/bard halfling is a stereotype already. Its nothing unique at all.

There are two kinds of stereotypes and this fact is easily missed.

You can stereotype a woodsy elf ranger, or a stout dwarven fighter who likes ale, or a evil villain who likes to pull the wings off flies and wear black. We all know those stereotypes. Generally, I hate them because I can predict what they'll do in most situations and find them horribly boring to roleplay with.

The other stereotype is the 'unique' concept. Its always 'different' supposedly but mostly amounts to an outlandish background with outlandish race/class combinations.

Its just as fake and one dimensional as any other stereotype and still just as boring to me.

I've found the best way to make any character is to start with the personality and goals first. Then pick class/race/alignment-perhaps even at random or as you develop your own history.

So decide you want to play a rock star character who loves glory and attention. He'll obviously be outgoing and personable, willing to play up his exploits. Deep down he's brave, but it'd take something important to him being risked to really bring that out. This important thing is really his reputation because that's what he thinks he cares about most.

Ultimately, he is a romantic though and although he flits from woman to woman without regard--deep down he wants true love. This is why he tries to gain glory in the naive belief that is how you win real love. If he ever found a true love, likely a strong woman capable of keeping his urge for glory in check, he'd develop into a brave, courageous individual.

Once you get some details like that down. Start picking classes and races. You can pick what you think makes sense now, or what doesn't make sense at all. Perhaps pick randomly even.

He clearly sounds like a good guy, and probably neutral or chaotic at that alignment wise. Although he could be lawful evil with a chance to redemption, anything still fits.

Fighter/paladin/bard/rogue all sound likely as class choices. Then again so does cleric, sorcerer. The only class that doesn't leap out as likely is druid, but even then if you could come up with some interesting internal conflicts. A druid tends to be lonily due to his profession, as does a ranger. So he's likely fairly naive about people entirely--and now some aspects of his personality that didn't make sense before suddenly does.

This is how you avoid wretched characters that bore many people to tears. You can still tack on the stereotypes *after* you build a personality.

So you decide to make this guy a druid afterall. Druids tend to be woodsy, wise, nature orientated. He likes to find ways to bring people closer to nature, showing them all the beasts he's tamed, groves he's rescued. He's a big fan of taking women out berry picking, trying to appeal to them by showing them his sensitive nature loving side--he probably is highly drawn to elven women even though he's a gnome. He's a gnome! So he also likes practical jokes; possibly things he does to get a little attention in his lonily hermitage life.

From there becoming a proactive character of good is easy. He's got a strong set of motivations desiring to find friends, romance, and glory (not in that order). He obviously dislikes arrogance in others, although he's got a little hubris to himself and will mock, play pranks on arrogant people.

He's not likely antagonistical to a city, but would certainly try to help bring it more in order with the laws of nature. Helping domesticated animals return to the wild, encouraging hunting and fishing rather than farming (but encouraging farming as an alternative to over hunting through good farming techniques) while explaining carefully how many animals may safely be taken (even hiding animal herds if he thinks too many are being taken). *In a city like Sanctuary, he may seek to destroy the reliance on animatrons and remind the citizens ancient Dunwarren was protected by earth elementals [is he a Grumbarian druid?]

You can easily move from there outwords now building more goals, more ideals, more personality. Your character can flit from being a little unique (a glory hounded love stricken druidic gnome with a fondness for elven women and the glory days of Dunwarren) to keeping to the stereotypes (far more comfortable in nature, a bit of a hermit uncomfortable with large groups for long, a prankster gnome with a streak of silliness in him).

Yet you don't have to add in bizarre outlandish characterizations, histories of war with drow bands or a vast established history to try to explain weird class/race choices as it stands. Nor do you have yet another 'druid/gnome' who follows the always predictable path of "woodsy, likes furry animals, is kind hearted, enjoys occasional pranks". Your guy is chivalrous, loves to tell stories about his great deeds to the point he may even lie about what he's done to impress people, he's got a strong goal that he'll work towards with a crusader like fetish (perhaps even to the point of ultimately having to choose between love and restoring Dunwarren to its ancient elemental glory).

All without going "Hmm...I should play a gnome druid." This will push you as a roleplayer, and I personally love to avoid starting with a stereotype because it makes it too easy to forget your character's personality or even lose interest after just a few weeks.

Nice post Oro, I'd have to say that I agreed with everything in it. I don't create characters in quite the same way, but its not that much different either. I think a post like that could help some newcomers to RPing and character development. Good work.

If possible, I'd like to keep this post related to TheBeggar's. I apologize for helping Lado to derail it. =)

-Cross

Coming from someone who had a lot of trouble coming up with a new character concept for this server, Oro's post is also great. There's tons of roleplay advice in this thread.

Part of my post was aimed at the Beggar though, a large part.

He seems to think the good guys can't be proactive and evil guys have it so much easier. Unless I misread him, I had some trouble following his thread.

Ultimately, good guys are just as easy to play proactively. Its just that little thought goes into good guys.

Most villains stop and ask "why is my character a villain? What motivates him to villainy?" Few good guys stop to ask "why is my character good? What motivates him to do good?"

Goals come out of motivations. Many characters lack motivation because they're based on easy to portray stereotypes or 'gimmicks' as Beggar pointed out. Once you have motivation though, being proactive becomes very easy.

I have to agree with Oro there.

I play anumber of good characters and always try to look at what events has produced the traits that the character exhibits - what are the defining events and what are the character's motivation and goals.

Two Good characters that I play are Chell Kantalith adn Danielle Addams - both grew up in the same Martial Monastary but they are vastly different characters because of the difference in the way they were treated as growing up.

I always recommend spending a little time and though on your characters and develop them as you play a character more deepen the backgroun - it makes it a lof of fun and opens up load of roleplaying potential.

Cheers Nestek

My two cent

The Beggar

But here’s the kicker—good doesn’t mean nice, selfless, helpful, clean, neat, orderly, righteous, trustworthy, honest, true, chaste, benevolent, friendly, thrifty, brave, clean, or reverent. Good simply put, is exactly that. Not bad. Not evil.

The same applies for evil. Recently I made a character (teredrift) who is nice, helpful, semi-honest, kind, pleasant, friendly, sympathetic, affectionate, would never hurt or betray a friend or a fly, or kill a baby or stab you in the back... BUT *spoiler* makes her evil. Without that *spoiler* she would be a good aligned character.

So there evil doesn't mean sadistic, friendless, sociopathic, mentally deranged, incredibly powerthirsty or whatever.

On another note :

Oroborous

Stereotypes are bland and unfulfilling. I hate seeing them.

Stereotypical characters can get tiresome, but I have to disagree with the last part : you shouldn't hate them.

Since everything is relative, in order to have extraordinary characters that everyone can love, you need the stereotype without depth somewhere else, so you can compare.

What makes someone brilliant is the fact that so many others aren't.

Another comment : In your life, how many people do you know who don't correspond more or less to any stereotype? Of course everyone is different, but everyone resembles to some varying extent stereotypical figures. So ALMOST stereotypical (not entirely stereotypical though) people are what any society must expect.

Coming back to NWN and EfU, since no one except the character's player knows a character perfectly, it is easy to label a char as stereotypical only after observing someone for a short time, but can you be really sure about your judgement? Do you really know everything about a char? Prejudice will play a large part in what you define as stereotypical or not.

So there, in the end I think that stereotypical chars are necessary to RPing and since most of the time character development is very limited in the quantity of stuff you can do, because of RL constraints, people shouldn't be harsh on stereotypical chars.

I feel like I ought to observe that there is an important difference between stereotypes and archetypes.

The Dread Oroborous has, in his time, even been known to play an archetype or three.

I kind of hate the whole pro-active good argument, so I ain't touching on it, other than to say, if it's equally difficult to play good and evil pro-actively...why are there so many more pro-active evil folks?

-Cross

Allow me if you will to clear up a few of the things that may have been left poorly elucidated and thus misconstrued. I in no way think the good guys can’t be proactive, though I do think that due to certain conditions it is much easier for a character to be proactively evil. As Oro pointed out motivations are key in playing a proactive character of any alignment, and I do not disagree that it is a large lack of both character planning and goal setting that causes a lack of proactive goodly aligned characters. I am however of the opinion that evil characters are much easier to play proactively due to two major factors: the environment in which evil finds itself, and the planning that the more experienced role players have put into the evil characters to get them to where they need to be.

I think that in any environment where evil is generally scrutinized by a group which outnumbers them (usually a mixture of both good aligned and safety interested characters) it creates an pressure that either pushes the player of the evil character to survive by actively pursuing the goals or motivations planned (swim) or to die due to a lack of allies, material necessities, or of eventual player motivation (sink). I think that the player of an evil character comes into the game with the mindset as well that he will be persecuted at some time or another, and so plans for dealing with it. These are things that are not thought of perhaps as much as when designing a “good aligned” character, and so getting left out of the process perhaps (exactly as Oro had stated) the motivations and goals are lacking.

Ultimately the goal of the post was to generate some opinions to spark some thought into good characterizations, and I see that it has. Please, if any have any comments on playing or developing characters let’s continue it. I myself am still learning how to role play more effectively, and posts from everyone’s differing points of view on the subject are of great help.