Paragons of an honorable code, antisocial loners forced to socialize, and gremlins looking to set the world on fire. When I started the Challenging the Tropes series, I thought it would be a fun examination of character types. I didn’t realize just how much it would teach me about improving the ways I run games and tell stories.

During extended lulls in between sessions, I do my best to check in with my players. See how they’re enjoying the campaign. If there’s something they want to explore in more detail or a change they’d like to make.

As a blogger, I do the same thing with long-running article series, and when I did that for this series, I was sort of surprised. Enough that I thought it was worth sharing with the whole class. So here’s “What I Did on My Summer Vacation: or How Diving Into Tropes Taught Me About Game Mastering.”

The First Thing I Learned: What to ask in Session Zero

So, I loooove session zeroes. Some people build extra characters in their free time. I read articles and listen to podcasts about session zeroes. There’s something about a group of people coming together to brainstorm a world into existence that gets my blood pumping. So trust me when I say there’s a lot of great information out there about running them.

What these trope deep dives have taught me is that after safety talks and after you’ve aligned the table on setting expectations, the most important question you can ask your players is what they want to get out of their characters.

To put it another way: What is their character fantasy?

And then the important trick, I figured out, was to actually listen. Because, confession time, since I read and listen to a lot of GMing advice, I have a tendency to assume too much. When someone says, “I want to play a character based on Obi-Wan Kenobi,” my mind jumps to conclusions and I say, “Groovy. Let’s f’in go!”

What I should be saying is, “What version of Obi-Wan?” The brash padawan? The Jedi Council investigator? Seasoned war veteran? Exiled hermit struggling with PTSD? The cheeky ghost?

My point is that even when we’re using the same touchstones, our mental pictures can be widely different, and I need to get better at making sure what’s in my head matches what’s in my player’s noggin.

The Second Thing I Learned: How to Break Down a Trope

Once, probably eight years ago, I watched a Gordon Ramsey video tutorial on carving a chicken. Now, at every Thanksgiving, I’m in charge of carving the turkey. I feel the same thing happened when I started breaking down tropes for these articles. I learned how to do it more efficiently and take the best cuts for my session planning.

When I was analyzing the three tropes — chaos gremlin, paladin, and loner — I found the most inspiration (the best meat) when I was coming up with lists of pop culture characters who fit into those tropes. This taught me (and hopefully it will now teach you) how to look at the characters more abstractly, like poring over a mechanical schematic made out of motivation and inspiration.

Once you’ve talked with your players about their characters, brainstorm parallel characters in other forms of media that you’re familiar with and mine those pop culture references for inspiration for your players’ arcs. I’m not saying copy those arcs, but use them to figure out the bits that align with your player’s character fantasy. Then take the juiciest bits and turn them into obstacles.

The Last Thing I Learned: How to Build a More Personal Obstacle

The world is always ending in my games. Which is big, and it’s epic, but what it’s not is personal. If the world’s always ending, then the threat loses its teeth. It’s the epitome of the wonderfully fourth-wall-breaking quote from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer musical episode, “Dawn’s in trouble? Must be Tuesday.”

This series was a well-needed reminder that we need to make the obstacles they face more personal, so we can give them a reason to connect with the world before it ends. Organizing the characters’ journeys by way of their tropes has helped me tailor-make obstacles specifically meant to challenge not just their mechanical skills, but their narrative arcs, allowing for a deeper connection to the setting and the story.

And it’s also shown me ways I can plan for stories that aren’t world-shattering.

Or, at least, not literally. Sometimes, shattering their personal worlds is just as effective, if not more effective, than threatening their actual world.

Some Further Reading

If you’re looking for some more ways of tapping into character arcs, I highly recommend checking out Monte Cook’s Your Best Game Ever (or Invisible Sun). Both have ways of systematizing character arc progression.

Slugblaster is another more recent game that focuses heavily on the character’s arc and making sure it’s a key component of the campaign.

If you’ve got suggestions for other tropes we can explore, leave them in the comments!