The Clothes Make the Man

Beware the orc wearing panties on his face

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the relationship between clothing and roleplaying games. Not in the sense that I have two t-shirts that say, "My other shirt is chainmail"* (true story) but in the sense that the characters in my game seem to spend an awful lot of time running around in full-armor, and armed to the teeth, no less. This is certainly not an uncommon occurrence in tabletop gaming. My characters have been the sort to eat, sleep, shop and woo the ladies in their robes and wizard hats... in-game, of course. However, I feel that, while there are several possible reasons for what I suspect is a common and imaginatively odoriferous trend in character behavior, the choice to “change 'yo dang pants!” can potentially add some richness and/or challenge to a game.

First, the reasons that I suspect lead to 1-outfit characters:

1. “Math is hard, let’s go shopping.” There is something to be said for having one set of stats when playing a tabletop RPG. Changing a character’s clothes, especially in a game like D&D, can alter a number of stats. Most prominently, it changes a character’s armor class, but might also affect how well they run, jump, climb, swim or sneak. Players have a lot of stats to track with just one outfit. Adding additional load-outs is just asking for a headache.

2. Video games. Having not achieved sentience before the existence of rudimentary videogames, I may be talking out of my ass on this one, but I suspect that the merging and interplay between the digital and pen-and-paper RPG worlds has contributed to a sense that it is okay to have tea with the queen while wearing full plate. After all, characters in games like Skyrim, WoW, etc. go everywhere in their battlefield best, waving glowy implements of death and dismemberment, no less.

3. CONSTANT VIGILANCE! Players think/know their GM is out to get them, and as such, feel it is perfectly appropriate to lug 200 lbs of adventuring gear on every jaunt to the corner store to buy more troll jerky. They sleep in their armor and likely would even wear it in the bath if they could. In essence, they are playing the stats, not the character. Never mind how uncomfortable and stinky perpetual existence in armor would be, taking it off would lower my AC by 4!

Now, some would argue that worrying about what a character is wearing/carrying is a level of nit-pickiness that detracts from the ultimate purpose of a roleplaying game, which is to have fun. Well, what about the expanded purpose? to have fun while roleplaying? Something as simple as a change of clothes opens up a lot of potential for new and unique encounters and roles played. A barbarian from the steppes just saved the kingdom and is to be honored at a high-court banquet... huh? big earthy guy in cummerbund and fur briefs? The situation practically writes itself!

I believe that a story and a heroic protagonist is much more interesting if they are not always fully prepared when a sticky situation arises. Getting caught unprepared gives them an opportunity to show their versatility and emphasizes that this person is a badass even without their gear. The Indiana Jones movies have several great examples of this sort of situation. During the opening scene from Temple of Doom, Indie gets poisoned in a swanky nightclub. He doesn’t have his hat, whip or even a gun. This doesn’t necessarily mean he’s unprepared, just that he has to approach the situation in a different way than if he was fully kitted out. The scene in the Venice library from Last Crusade is similar in a lot of ways. The situation and resources at hand become part of the challenge and add to the excitement.

So, how do you implement this in a tabletop RPG without bogging down the game and becoming the enemy of fun?

1. Take the number-crunching burden off of your players. I recommend having your players come up with just three alternate outfits. Each requires only a brief list of stats, mostly modified AC and movement stats. They should also make a list of weapons/gear they keep with them, but a single listing of bandolier, baldric, backpack or utility belt should imply that they have everything they usually carry therein without need to list it separately. The alternate outfits I suggest are as follows:

Around Town: This is the shopping, drinking and general personal-time outfit. It may involve armor or weapons, but probably would not include full 50 lb backpacks and the like.

Schmancy Occasions: Meeting the king? Gathering info in the noble district? Your PCs will probably need to look respectable to avoid sideways looks and questions from the guards. Most armor and things like blood-crusted greataxes are likely out, but rings of protection, other magical aids or a dagger in the boot would be perfectly acceptable.

Sleepy Time: This is probably fairly straightforward. Though PCs on the road might stay at least partially armored, if they’re crashed out at an inn in the middle of a friendly city, chances are they’ll want to be comfy, though propping the trusty broadsword by the bed isn’t beyond reason.

Once you establish these baselines, it should be quick and easy to reference or modify the list without having to grill your characters everytime they walk out the door. Are you really bringing your 10-foot pole to visit Madame Ruby’s brothel?

2. Make your characters’ appearance matter. If they go out in full kit, have NPCs react to what they see! Poor villagers might run up to them 7 Samurai-style and beg for assistance with the bandits raiding their village. Bouncers and thugs might think twice before messing with them, but guards might ask a few extra questions and wealthy shop-owners might balk at letting armed strangers into their fine boutiques.

I haven’t yet attempted to implement such a systematic approach to these matters in my campaign, and really my players have been pretty good about policing themselves, but I think I might run the idea past them and see how it works.

Any thoughts or stories from my fellow players or GMs about 1-kit wonders?

*After writing this I realized the bizarre feedback loop established by such a situation. "My other shirt says "My other shirt is chainmail"... add "other shirts" until space-time tears itself asunder.

V is for Verisimilitude

 
Verisimilitude -or "truthiness" to the unwashed layperson- refers to a sense of realism or believability.

So why would someone working in a high-fantasy motif be concerned with believability? I personally think that achieving verisimilitude is as important (if not moreso) in fantasy as it is in otherwise more "realistic" settings. Making sure the fantastic elements or even the mundane aspects of a fantasy world interact in a believable way helps add a sense of reality to an otherwise unreal environment.

I really started thinking about the verisimilitude of my game world while reading some of my favorite blogs, which deal with the ways that access to fantastic things like magic would affect a universe. If you haven't seen them already, I highly recommend Martin Ralya's post on world-changing spells over at Gnome Stew. I also feel obliged to plug one of my absolute favorite blog series, the Architect DM over at Critical Hits. Both blogs have excellent ideas for game-masters and fantasy writers alike.

Today, I would like to focus on one particular aspect of verisimilitude -building believable conflict and believable villains. To be more specific, I would like to focus on conflict that involves people vs. people as opposed to a person vs. nature or the guy who wants to build and eat the world's biggest ham sandwich.


I find that coming up with believable interpersonal conflict is incredibly challenging even though I think I logically know what makes for exciting and believable conflict. For me, believable conflict occurs when both sides genuinely believe they are doing the right thing. This is why Eric Lensherr a.k.a. Magneto from the X-Men is a far more compelling villain to me than someone like the Joker from Batman. As a child, Lensherr survived the Holocaust only to later find that he had mutant powers. When he saw non-mutant society beginning to single out other mutants as dangerous and undesirable, he took actions, seen by others as evil, to prevent another Holocaust, this time inflicted on mutants. This is a far more compelling backstory than that of the Joker... who went crazy after falling in toxic waste.

Actors who have portrayed villains often mention the necessity for finding something to love about their character. Believable villains do not perpetrate evil acts because they want to do evil, they perpetrate evil acts because they believe those things are actually good!

Unfortunately, many high fantasy worlds suffer from moustache twirler's syndrome. Their villains know they are evil and embrace that fact. In Harry Potter, Voldemort's followers happily fall in line behind someone they call "The Dark Lord"... no matter how much you agree that wizards are superior to muggles, I find it hard to believe that anyone would label the being they revere as "the Dark Lord" especially when it is clear that the term holds the same connotation of evil as it does in real-world "Western" society. Even Tolkien suffers from this evil for evil's sake mentality with Sauron and the orcs. Why are they waging war against the people of Middle Earth? Their evil...that's what they do. Granted, in both of the above examples, access to power is said to be the driving force behind characters' decisions to side with evil. The trouble is, they recognize that what they are doing is evil rather than seeing their pursuit of power as fighting the good fight.

As a side note, if you are interested in this sort of thing, I highly recommend you check out Kiril Eskov's The Last Ringbearer. This retelling of the Lord of the Rings shows events from Mordor's perspective and recasts Sauron's actions as a struggle for technological progress against the technophobic elves and men who want things to remain the same.

Of course, there is a flip-side to the always wanting to do the right thing, which is that the right thing is not always clear, or even existent. To start, people in conflict are emotional beings who often do not want to acknowledge that their truth might not be the whole truth. They find a viewpoint that subjectively makes sense to them and run with it. They refuse or can't acknowledge other points of view believing their own to be correct. Humans, and particularly Americans seem to recoil from moral ambiguity. It scares us. We feel compelled to split things into right and wrong without acknowledging that both sides might be partially right and partially wrong, or that there might not be any right answer. Though our minds can technically grasp such a situation, our hearts and guts revolt against it.

When I am writing, I often have a hard time factoring in these complimentary aspects (desire to do right and resistance to moral ambiguity) that sit at the heart of interpersonal conflict. As the creator of the situation, I can see all sides, by definition. This makes it very difficult to work my way down to the emotionally driven, subjective viewpoint of the characters on either side. And try as I might, someone often comes out of it twirling a mustache.


Anyway, all this brings me to my main point -coming up with a reference that will guide me into the emotional mindset of characters in conflict in an effort to make both sides believable. I find that drawing elements from the news, or from real-world history can help fuel conflict scenarios that feel much truer, and to me, more engrossing. To that end, I have set up a page on this blog, which I have titled "The Plot Garden" which I hope to populate with "The seeds of conflict" (I know, it's cheesy!)... In plain terms, if I get an idea for something that might make for a rich or believable cause for conflict, I will add it to the little list growing on the page. Hopefully, this will prove useful for me and anyone else who stops by looking for inspiration for their next diabolical villain.