“Why does everyone keep going, ‘KITTY!’ when I’m a dangerous and deadly predator!?”

One of my regular groups has been playing a modern paranormal game using Savage Worlds. It’s a mash up of the Dresden Files along with a little bit of the World of Darkness, but with our own spin on the setting. Our eclectic group of supernatural folk include a nervous changeling fae, a rich kid selkie, a witch blood that talks to dead people, a water wizard that is a descendant of lost Atlantis, and my exiled werewolf. Since I was playing a werewolf, I pictured her human form as muscular and tall, but when the group started talking about what our characters looked like, I learned that everyone else in the group was either the same height as my character, or taller. Hrmph!

Okay, so my annoyance at this is kind of petty and a bit silly. In the grand scheme of the game, so what if most of the group is 5’10” or over 6’? Does it really matter if the character I pictured as tall enough to stand out in a crowd is suddenly eye to eye or overshadowed by everyone else? Not really, but it can still be a little frustrating when the vision you had of your character doesn’t quite work in the light of what the other players have chosen for their characters.

In this particular case, the disputed feature is height, but I’ve seen this kind of disconnect come up with other kinds of physical features before. Someone made a red head, only to find out that almost every character in the party is a ginger. Or, the player who made a character they wanted to come off as tough, only to discover the rest of the party looks like a biker gang on a bad day.

So, what do you do with a frustration like this?

• Session Zero is for more than just balancing stats and mechanics. While not everyone may have a vision of their character in their head yet, it’s worth bringing up some basics if you’re aiming to try and be noteworthy in a particular area. Let folks know if you’re picturing your character as being particularly tall, short, stout, or whatever. Doing this doesn’t necessarily claim ownership of that characteristic, but folks might consider other aspects if they know you’re going that route with your character.
• Be vague and stay away from actual numbers. While this doesn’t work with some physical features, your group could agree to stay way from specific numbers for height and weight and just use descriptors. This may come as a surprise, but the designation of tall and short is completely dependent upon point of view. To someone who is only 5’2”, someone who is 5’8” is tall. To someone who is 6’2”, someone who is 5’8” is pretty short. One of my gaming friends is somewhat ‘height blind’. He fully believes me (5’8”) and my roommate (5’3”) are the same height. When we point out the difference in our height, he is legitimately surprised. In his world, people are either short (shorter than him), normal (about 6’ or so) or tall (taller than him). Switching to descriptors can help let the rest of the group adjust their perception without having to put real numbers to those features.
• Adjust your description of your character. If you’re just getting started with the game, there’s usually no foul in changing up various things about the character within reason. This includes the description. If you really wanted to have your character be unique with their emerald green eyes, but then learn that everyone else also gave their character green eyes, go ahead and switch it up to another color.
• Embrace the commonalities. Maybe you wanted your character to stand out with bright blue hair, but when play starts you realize everyone else also gave their character unnatural hair color, it could be fun to lean into that. Maybe the bright colors are something they could have all bonded over. Maybe it’s a choice they made when they started working together. Either way, it could become something to celebrate rather than get annoyed at.

Whatever route you choose to get around your annoyance, the biggest suggestion I can make is to not be a jerk about it. Yeah, it might be annoying that the description you gave your character doesn’t quite line up with what you hoped after you hear about the rest of the characters, but it’s usually not anything someone did on purpose. Figure out a way to get over your annoyance and get back to the important stuff: the game.