Characters with Agendas

I've written a number of times that characters need goals and desires. In this post, I'd like to look closer at how to develop those goals. 

In game design, action oriented decisions help propel players down various strategy paths. In world building for board games, character design should also be action oriented. You can write in the fluff that your character likes ice cream, but if ice cream isn't relevant to gameplay, your character's desire for it doesn't do much to create a sense of character. Irrelevant surface details are fine to include, but those should come last and as much as possible should be used to add texture to your game world by being congruous with the setting. 

How do we make a character's goals action oriented and thematic? I like to think of it as giving my characters agendas. They don't just have goals or desires; they have agendas. Those agendas drive them to take action. Those actions make up the game. A list of personality traits doesn't make a character. But give a character an agenda and the player will be able to imagine the personality of the character on their own.

Agendas imply desires, goals, and personality traits. Competing agendas can create conflict. Agendas don't have to be rational as long as they are apparent in the game mechanics. Agendas aren't just what a character wants but why they want it. The agenda in Agricola is to be prosperous and keep your family from starving. The characters don't have much in the way of personality, but the real need to eat makes those workers feel more like characters than many other farming euros. 

Giving your characters agendas is just the bare minimum, however. The goal should be to give them interesting agendas.  I've mentioned in the past that I am a fan of trope-flipping. But if you flip a trope enough, the reverse of the trope will also become a trope. So, instead, I am becoming a fan of what I call "thinking sideways." To explain this method, I first have to explain how I build characters in Dungeons and Dragons. 

If you play D&D long enough, you will eventually have to make a character solely to fill a gap in your party's composition. So you build a character that works mechanically and fits in the world, but has no personality yet. (Actually, that kind of sounds like most characters in board games.) Fortunately, the Player's Handbook has tables you can roll on to give you direction for roleplaying your character. Unfortunately, the tables are filled with tired tropes that don't really help make a character with the nuance I'm looking for. This is where thinking sideways comes into play. I usually choose a background (pg. 127 in the PHB) for my character based on what abilities it grants me rather than as backstory fodder. However, early in my roleplaying career I was rolling on the traits, ideals, and bonds tables and noticed how interesting my results were. I then realized that I was looking at the wrong tables for my background and was instead rolling on the tables of the previous background that were on the facing page. The results were interesting because they were no longer generic fantasy tropes when coupled with the 'wrong' background. The traits now suggested a unique and interesting character. (And, if I'm being honest, I think that it should be one big trait table for all the backgrounds to give a more interesting selection.) 

By looking sideways at adjacent character tropes and using them outside of their expected context, I can create better characters. Sometimes that means changing the agenda and sometimes that means changing the character. I can take a stock evil supervillain and give him a family and a need to protect them. Thanos is interesting because he isn't just the embodiment of evil; he has an agenda that's tied to emotions that are comprehensible to viewers. 

On the other hand, I can recast a character to better fit the agenda present in my game. I recast my inheritance game that featured multiple generations of aristocratic men and replaced them with murderous women who marry for wealth. Deadly Dowagers is still about accruing wealth and moving up the nobility ladder. The core mechanics didn't change a whole lot (at least not right away). But the game became more interesting because the cast was more interesting. Not simply because they are now women; that would be an art choice by itself. No, it's because the characters have a more interesting agenda. "Become rich and powerful over the course of generations" is a boring agenda. "Take matters into your own hands in spite of societal and moral objections" is a much more interesting agenda. 

If you're designing a dungeon crawler, write out a break down of a typical party. Then shuffle the traits around. Now, you won't be able to call someone an archer if they don't use a bow. But maybe dwarves with longbows and elves with axes can spark ways to develop your world in a unique direction. This same process can work in a lot of genres of games and is especially good for art direction. But don't discount the thematic and mechanic interplay of giving characters agendas and personalities. 

A note on character personalities: I describe the characters in Deadly Dowagers as murderous because that adjective describes their actions during gameplay. A character who regularly donates to religious charities might be described as pious. I would avoid personality descriptors that relate to mood—cranky, bubbly, gloomy, sunny— or those that relate to appearance. Show; don't tell. Your character's appearance belongs in their illustration. Your character's mood might appear in dialog, if there is any. If there isn't any dialog, I'd merely suggest mood through the art as well. 

Interrogate your designs. Why do my characters want to win? What is at stake for them? What are they willing to give up to succeed? How do their agendas conflict with other characters and with the world around them? At the very least, this method should make your characters more memorable, which hopefully transfers to a more memorable game. Best case scenario, your game experience is elevated by tight thematic/mechanic integration that also has greater emotional breadth and a unique world. 

Here's my agenda: I want to see more interesting characters in (non-narrative) board games. 

ShippBoard Games is a board game design blog that updates most Mondays.