Character arcs - Part 2: Individualized stories for your players

A little note, for the few who follow: This article should have been finished and published about 4 months ago but I lost steam and found it hard to want to focus on my blog. I went from my notes, but it's far from perfect. Thank you for bearing with me! ❤️

Let's start with a little recap of Part 1 about character backgrounds. I thought I would make more connections between the two, but still, well-crafted backgrounds set the foundations of what uniquely motivates a character to move forward. They oftentimes create relationships with NPCs or even other characters, outline motivations, and are ripe with quests seeds for the mindful GM.

In that article, I presented a few types of backgrounds, which may come up later:

• blank background
• individual background
• interwoven background
• team background

All set? Sorry if you were already up-to-date but, y'know, don't want to leave anyone behind!

Time to move on to character arcs!

Why make character arcs?

We really ought to start from the basics, whether you're a player or a game master. Not every GM feels comfortable with character arcs or feel like they're not a good fit for their table. I'm not one of those, but I can see a few arguments against character arcs:

• Give a lot of focus to a single character (and more importantly one player) for an extended period of time
• Take focus and time away from the main scenario of the campaign
• Require a lot of preparation & work
• Easy to disappoint a player with a story that's too different from their expectations

If you think they're not a good fit for your table, I strongly encourage you to think about why they're not! It's not like I can force you to try them out, but I can share some thoughts about these concerns:

• While it's true that no one wants to sit through 4 hours of unilateral character development, a carefully crafted arc will give other players plenty of time to shine and participate.
• If you're worried about the time it takes from your story, maybe you need to re-evaluate the roles characters play in your story. Players are not spectators, they're players, they play, they act. It's not really your story, it's all of your table's.
• It can be disheartening to start setting up a character arc and for whatever reason the character is no longer in play (could be that the character died, the player switched to another character, the player left the game, etc.) There are few cures for a TPK, but a character death can feed into the narrative of an arc, perhaps a defeat gives the character time to go complete their side quest after all -- and we all know players are suckers for side quests!
  
  
  
  
• If character development is not the point of your game, then there really is not much to do: character arcs are unlikely to be on the horizon for you but consider this: they're a good way to give loot that's not totally random or that makes sense with how a character is played. An arc doesn't even have to be super deep to be fully entertaining and rewarding!

If you don't want to use character arcs, and I haven't convinced you to even consider them, I guess now's as good a time as any to stop reading and go watch a compilation of birds with arms on YouTube. If you're still with me ... cool!

Character arcs playstyle

There probably are as many ideas of how to play character arcs as there are GMs out there. So this is just one tipsy geek's view on their playstyles: 

• Summary
• Out-of-game/over text
• Interstice
• Full arc

Summary

This is both the simplest and the boldest way to run an arc -- like do you even want to run an arc? This involves updating the player on their story without asking them what they would do or giving them the opportunity to shape their story. Sometimes, it can be very short:

"While you were away saving the knight's son, your family discovered that a neighbor was poisoning their field, unfortunately, when they found out and brought this to the mayor, they realized he was in on it. You now have nowhere to return to."

As you can see, this summarizes events in a way that gives no room for the player to participate: perhaps they would have liked to investigate further or confront the mayor. Still, when done properly, it can be an incentive to further the intrigue without having to go through all of the steps.

When using summaries like this, be respectful and don't control your player's characters and don't make decisions about their actions or feelings. This is a very fine line to walk, but if done well, or, even better, collaboratively, it can focus the action on what matters the most.

Out-of-game

Arcs can be worked out between the game master and a player either through a in-person or phone conversation or through text. This works particularly well for games that are not played as often (such as a monthly game) or online, or the ones that have dedicated chat rooms (such a a Discord server).

I, for one, love doing some asynchronous role-play, which works great with text-based campaigns.

This is a great way to explore private (and sometimes private 🤭) scenes and stories with one player. There are a few possible pitfalls that a clever GM must be aware of:

• Making sure that the events fit within/don't contradict the main game's timeline
• Giving the same kind of attention to all players who want to run arcs or scenes this way, which  may mean a lot of extra work
• Because this is out-of-game, giving rewards for such arcs become tricky at best and may be seen as favoritism

Interstice

Players miss game. It happens. Sure, you can cancel the game if you're missing one or more players, but if you're feeling bold, you can use this time to work on specific character arcs.

There are a few moving parts when using game time this way: you can't know ahead of time who will and won't make it (well, eventually you do know your players), you have to share the secondary story spotlight, you need to make sure that it fits within the timeline...

If you're smart about it and have story seeds for every one of your players, I'm fairly sure that most will prefer playing a side arc than actually canceling a game because people are missing.

Another way to run interstice game is to actually have "special episodes" dedicated to a special event, maybe just a chunk of an arc, or a side story that is meaningful to one or more characters before returning to the main story a few hours or a few games later (at most!)

Full arc

When I say "full arc," I mean a side story embedded in your main story, played with your whole table for one or more character, from beginning to end. You'll have to focus on one character's story rather than your whole party's, which can be tricky: the last thing you need is have the players' attention slipping because they're not super interested.

Before running full arcs, make sure to:

• clear it with all your table: some players don't feel comfortable having a huge focus on them, even for a little while, some players might be bored if they feel they don't 'belong' in a story.
• give every player a chance to shine even if it's not their story
• try to intertwine various stories whenever possible!

Downtime is a great way to give players opportunity to explore their own stories without having to narrate them. When you go around the table asking what players want to do during their downtime, mention anything that would lead them down toward their arc. Little hints guiding players down the arcs path but on their own terms, stuff like:

• "Don't forget that you still need to decipher that cryptic note left on your sister's grave"
• "There's a rumor going around about a lycanthrope hiding near the stone circle"

After, if as a group they decide to further investigate any of those hints, then it's on them to take the quest, and the arc, further as a group.

In some games, personal arcs and quests are an inherent part of the system. I'm thinking of something like 7th Sea where there are various types of quest, one of which the players write for themselves, laying out what their character wants to accomplish and how they intend to get there. In games like these, you're more likely to work on personal arcs and also to split your time between the personal arcs of every one of your players.

Having a small table with a limited number of players, might be to your advantage: less moving pieces and less players allow better focus.

Building arcs

Not only do you need to consider how you'll run arc, you also have to consider what your building blocks even are! Great arcs stem from a character's background and personal goals, in my opinion. That's why, to me, it's crucial to have a background that opens more door than it closes.

On one hand, a background like "All my family is dead and now I'm on an adventure to discover the world" or "I'm a traveling mercenary and I just want to get paid to kill shit" is so vast that, as a GM, it can be difficult to find anything that the player will find interesting. Don't hesitate to ask your player for more information after a few games, giving them the opportunity to explore their character.

On the other hand, a background that goes on and on and on and tells you every single thing that every single person ever did can also make it constraining for the GM and difficult to come up with hooks that don't contradict the existing story.

This is where your interwoven and team backgrounds come in super handy! Sure, all characters have different goals, ambitions, and means, but if they have similar backgrounds, they're more likely to respond to a type of hook or to open a door to a character arc. Not only that, your single character arcs now may be multiple character arcs, which means more player buy-in without you having through a bunch of hoops.

Arcs that include more than one characters at once are far more likely to keep your table interested but also are less likely to feel like a filler arc. They're more likely to feel like they fully matter to the story. Even if you have only individual backgrounds and goals to work from, consider interweaving more than one background to create a still-cohesive, but far more compelling story.

You know what? Making arcs is all about practice: trial and errors, and about not getting disheartened when something doesn't pan out.

Don't forget that characters can die, players can miss hooks, character goals may change ... a lot of things can mean trashing a lovingly and carefully crafted arc, but sometimes, it's just about accepting it and moving on.

When arcs are pulled well, they're a great way to make the party feel closer as they'll have helped one of their own through a hard time. Give it a try, what have you got to lose?