Playable Character Roles

This post spun out of ideas I had while working on my recent post about game structures. In this post I want to look at different roles players take on when playing a game. 

When developing themes alongside mechanics, an important question to ask is "Who is the player playing as?" Most, but not all, games benefit from an explicit answer to that question. 

The Hero is probably the first role most people think of. Hero characters may be solo acts (especially in competitive or solo games), team members (such as in cooperative games), or faction leaders (skirmish and civ games). This role requires that you know who you are playing and that that role is in some way unique from the other players. Characters may have different stats or powers, but different portraits can be enough of a distinction. Unique jobs can also be enough. If the job is carpenter and every player is playing the same nameless, faceless carpenter, that job will not make players feel like they are the hero of their story. However, being the only stone mason in the village is enough detail to become invested in the inner life of a character. And in fact, most games where players play only one character will provide some detail about the characters. Furthermore, a character is not always a person, sometimes your 'character' is a corporation. As long as a corporation has a unique logo and/or player power, it still qualifies as a hero role. (Although you should design with the implications of making a corporation the hero in mind.)

The Baddie could be a villain character or a traitor character. Villains are bad from the outset while traitor characters often switch sides at some point during the game. Villains, as a role distinct from heroes, are opposed to the majority of players, such as in one-vs-all games. To be a villain, the character must be competing against the other characters in a way those characters are not competing against each other. Villain roles usually give their players more information or exclusive information that is hidden from the other characters, such as in hidden movement games. Narratively, this gives the role a 'plotting' air. Often villain roles require a player to curate the experience for the other players, rather than playing as competitively as possible. Villains need the same level of detail that heroes do in order for players to invest in them as characters. A villainous character could still fill the role of hero, if they are not uniquely opposed to the other characters. I wrote an entire post about villainous characters in games, so I won't spend much time on them here. 

The Squad could be a team or a population. In this situation, the player is playing as multiple characters. In many cases, these games have an implied boss character (a Boss) or an explicit leader (a Hero). However, in games like Flame Rouge or Quest for Eldorado you can definitely make the case that while the player has god-level control and knowledge in the game, the characters in the story are presumed to have free will. This is easier to do if the characters have separate goals or trajectories that can narratively imply independent decision making. 

The Boss could be a business manager, a general, or even a deity, depending on what makes sense in the fiction. This role is what happens when you don't specify a hero character, but the minion characters clearly don't have free will.  This is common in worker placement games and asymmetrical games, among others. If a manager, general, or deity has a named role and card art, that technically makes them a hero (or villain) character and not a boss. The boss is a meta explanation for why the player has total control over a number of characters. 

Blind Forces falls somewhere between the hero and the boss. Players may be told who they are, but who they are is a force of nature, law of physics, or a philosophical idea. Players may be mechanically distinct from one another, but won't have much in the way of character background. (Personified forces with character portraits would be heroes.) Storytelling can get tricky around blind forces, as players won't have discernible in-world motivation to defeat other players. An example is Petrichor, where players play clouds who have a preference in what plants their water grows. 

Unspecified Roles are sometimes the best options. Sometimes, the implications of the role take your world building in a direction you don't want it to go. For example, if you try to figure out who you are playing as in A Fistful of Meeples, you may come to the conclusion that you are an Old West mobster extorting a town. Instead, the game wisely doesn't try to explain why you benefit from both arrests and robberies. Other times, the most logical explanation is either boring or doesn't add much to the game. I think of these as 'filing clerk' roles. An example is Space Base, where your role is specified in the rules fluff and never again—because you are a garage attendant for a space station. Obviously, the boss is a type of unspecified role, but one that most players could intuitively explain after playing your game. Lastly, one type of unspecified role is when players are playing above the narrative. Players will sometimes take on the role of 'player doing a mechanical action' that is not tied into the theme. Because the action is not tied into the theme, the role is not either. 

Roles are a huge aspect of world building. Mechanically, roles provide logic for player actions. Thematically, roles allow players to invest in their characters. Roles should be consistent with the logic of your world building. 

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