Common Character Pitfalls

Trial by Fire is a collaborative roleplaying experience where you will spend more time worldbuilding and interacting with other players than you will being led by direct storyteller intervention.

Great characters come in a wide variety of forms, and we're constantly impressed and surprised at the creativity many players are able to flex in bringing new ones to life. Our story lives or dies on the strength of our cast. There's no easy road map to what makes a character great, but like real people, strong characters often have hobbies, relationships, histories, ruminations, and obsessions. These characteristics help to define how a character reacts to and feels about the things that happen to them. They're also entertaining to read about for others.

Trial by Fire is not about "winning" against scenarios, it's about telling stories. Your character is going to be the primary tool you use to influence and tell stories for the other players in the server. Therefore, it's essential to that you understand these nuanced aspects of your characters so that you are equipped to understand how they may react under the pressures of events they encounter.

As such, we put a lot of focus on the narrative aspects of the characters running around Hamilton, both Supernatural and their Mortal tethers. Many character concepts that might be great for other types of stories have trouble fitting in here. The below list is by no means comprehensive, but does cover the majority of character pitches that we discourage for our setting.

The Chosen One
The media is littered with "chosen ones", children of prophecy, inheriting incredibly powerful titles or artifacts and taking on insurmountable foes. This concept is problematic for two reasons: One, as a collaborative sandbox, we don't have a main character. Think of your insert as part of the broader cast, where everyone has a relatively equal stake in the overarching plot. Two, all of the interesting things about the chosen one are things outside of who the character is, and what they can control. Stuff just tends to happen to Chosen One characters - we prefer this dynamic to be the other way around. There's plenty of room to grow into important characters that single-handedly influence the world around them.

The Power Fantasy
When this character concept formed, did you start by finding a neat high rank power in the rulebook, maybe even finding a great merit to pair with it for some extra oomph? Tempted to find ways to maximize those dice pools to really make the most use out of it World? World of Darkness is full of interesting powers, and there's nothing wrong with being enthusiastic about finding a way to wield them in game. The trouble with this archetype comes from the fact that the character begins as a stat block, and then narrative elements get tacked on afterwards. They tend to be shallower entries with a personality as an afterthought. Your stats and abilities are never your character concept, they're just what your character is able to do.

The Lonely Orphan
Loner characters come in many forms. Maybe they have no family or social connections because they were all tragically killed, maybe their family is overly antagonistic towards them to the point where it drove them away. Regardless of how interesting the backstories of these characters may be, if the end result creates a character with no social network whatsoever, then please go back to the drawing board. Allies, Mentors, Contacts, and other interpersonal relationships in your backstory are important for making your character feel like a real living part of our setting rather than a PC that spawns in suddenly downtown and gets storyteller intervention into the plot.

The Dreaded Mary Sue
This concept is the flawless idealized paragon of a character (often self-insert). Their lack of internal flaws or personal growth potential undermines any room for interesting drama, and often comes across as very unrealistic for the setting. Mary Sue's can take many forms - maybe they're the perfect and impossibly attractive one who's extraordinary skills in some complex pursuit have them getting wide acclaim at a young age. Maybe they're an extraordinarily intelligent person who has already reached the top of their field with wide reaching political influence. The commonality is that these concepts rarely leave room for characters to grow, and often make it unrealistic for them to even be engaging with the plot or setting at all.

The Avatar
Also known as the self-insert, the avatar is not a character. The avatar is a shell that a player drives like a puppet to indirectly explore a fictional world. Avatars exist only as a vehicle, often with no clear motivations of their own except to acquire loot, gain xp, and entertain the driver. If you're unsure whether you've created an avatar vs a character, ask yourself if you're making decisions for them because it's what your character would do, or because they're the "right" decisions as a player in the game.

The Cliche
These come in many forms, but the commonality is that we've seen all of them before. One dimensional tropes can be a good place to start, but if they never develop past that, then they aren't a good fit for our setting. This goes for both stereotypical hero character tropes from other media, or making an overly stereotypical character from World of Darkness lore. Racial, Gender, Disability, Sexuality, and other stereotypes that are disrespectful to others are explicitly banned.

The Borderline Antagonist
World of Darkness as a setting often zigs away from the "good versus evil" paradigm of other roleplaying games and encourages exploring the moral grey area in between. Compelling morally-grey characters are great, but sometimes players blur the line between morally grey and thinly veiled villains as a concept. Your character should above all include two core drivers in their personality: a desire to impact the world for the better (otherwise why would the engage with the plot?), and a desire to collaborate and build meaningful relationships with other player characters

I feel like I don't need to say this, but you Really shouldn't be trying to pitch a Nephandi.

The Comic Relief
Comedy can be a valuable writing tool to help offset grim drama and emotional tension. Having a character who is funny as a trait, can be great. Having a character who is a walking meme and only serves to undermine any drama is not. This one can be tricky, but please read the room, and make sure that both you and your character are bought into the serious tone of the setting

The Lore-extension
World of Darkness has a wealth of Lore including historical events and predefined characters that spans all sorts of media. These resources can be great for getting a better understanding of the setting and inspiring character creation, but none of the history or characters you read about should be presumed to exist or play any role in your backstory. Hamilton is a custom fictional setting with a multi-splat woven plot that will revolve around the city and various characters within it. None of the established metaplot of World of Darkness is guaranteed to be used.

The Amnesiac
Amnesia is a storytelling trope that allows a writer to unravel the plot from the perspective of the main character slowly recovering what they lost. In collaborative writing, if you as the player have amnesia, this essentially forces the storyteller to write your background, and withhold it from you. This ultimately reduces the amount of creative hooks a character will have to interact with others, and takes administrative time away from development of interesting NPCs to populate Hamilton.

The Anomaly
There are some incredibly rare types of characters that can be created in the world of darkness setting. Just because a character has a particularly exotic breed or background, does not mean that this trait can be used in lieu of a character concept and personality. Rare concepts may be approved, but the ultimate goal in character creation should be to insert someone who believably blends in with the setting, not stands apart from it.