Find Roleplaying Inspiration On Your RPG Character Sheet

It all started when our Tuesday night RPG group started a new campaign with me at the helm. For my turn in the Game Master seat I chose to run Quest, an all around favorite of mine. It’s a wonderfully streamlined and narratively focused roleplaying game. One particular standout from the rulebook describes the nature of each character’s abilities, which direct players to “Think of your abilities as ways to take control of a scene.” Acknowledging this concept in a deeply meaningful way changed how I look at RPGs for the better so let’s get into it.

Interpreting RPG mechanics through storytelling

Whether you’re playing fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons, Quest or another of the hundreds (thousands?) or tabletop RPGs out there your character almost certainly boasts a variety of skills, features and other abilities. Players note them on a character sheet and all these attributes comprise a player’s way to engage with the game. This is nothing new.

What clicked for me while we played through our campaign is the relationship between a character’s mechanics and a player’s interpretations during a game session. Nerdarchist Ted illustrated this to me most clearly. In our Inquest Quest 2 campaign his character took the Fighter role, which unsurprisingly offers a wide array of abilities focused on combat. Since my GM style generally doesn’t incorporate frequent or hugely challenging combat scenarios he shared a concern about how to interact with the game mechanically. Early on he asked if he could reimagine, reflavor or otherwise reconceptualize the things his character could do.

Of course! And because Quest presents game mechanics from a narrative perspective this worked out with extraordinary results.

Through this experience and guided by Quest’s credo that character powers equate to narrative control I began to look at other RPG experiences in the same light. An exceptional example of this on a much larger scale can be found through Critical Role, now onto their third campaign. Liam O’Brien in particular demonstrates this approach extraordinarily well. I began noticing this during the Mighty Nein campaign when he played the human wizard Caleb Widogast and now playing the halfling fighter Orym. Liam knows the ins and outs of what his characters can do mechanically and uses this knowledge to inform his roleplaying.

Discover the narrative in RPG mechanics

Although not nearly as straightforward or plainly stated as Quest in a game like 5E D&D players can certainly find similar perspective. We may see the latter game moving towards more of a storytelling focus with all the mechanical hoops it’ll jump through to get there already underway. Recent books from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything onward show strong evidence of this. There’s even precedent found in the core 5E D&D rule books suggesting this approach to gameplay.

Discovering an emergent narrative as a group sits at the center of this approach. One of the most frequent questions Nerdarchy receives comes from GMs seeking greater player engagement — and we’re not alone! Tons of online discussions, blogs, videos and more offer advice on this but I cannot avoid circling back to the players on the other side of the GM screen almost every time. Through their individual characters every player comes equipped with many tools for engagement. Through creativity and immersive imagination these things manifest in the game’s setting and create all the wonderful opportunities for storytelling for which a group can hope.

Whenever players invoke their characters’ features they’re essentially steering the narrative in a new direction by asserting their agency and this is a terrific thing. The choice may not even be a conscious one from a storytelling standpoint but the implications are plain to see. Even a very simple and very common example like casting fireball when confronted by a force of goblins makes a statement with impact. In this case the statement is something like, “I’m evoking an explosion of magical fire to end this confrontation quickly.”

As recently as last night during our current Ashes of Ardor campaign I felt this dynamic play out through my own actions. My character Dasytrichos is a Shaggy Soul sorcerer and I’ve been enjoying myself immensely wielding all the Beardomantic magic I can muster. (And it’s a lot!) Our session leaned heavily into the social interaction aspect of 5E D&D while we engaged with a merrow community. Over the course of the session I noted how all of us found opportunities to use our various features in very narrative ways including even things like combat abilities.

Because our DM Steven Partridge is so good he took all of these scenarios and ran with them. The entire session was phenomenal and I really felt like we were participating in, discovering and contributing to the world all at the same time. Using produce flame to impress a tavern keeper by enhancing an already potent beverage with fiery panache, assisting in a complex magical ritual through an intriguing interpretation of Cruel Intent, speaking Druidic to smooth over a rocky relationship between the community spiritual leader and our own party’s connection with a contentious Druid Circle and finding solace in the merrow’s spiritual sanctuary to conduct a beardgury ritual each brought about incredibly engaging results. (No spoilers — you can watch the campaign and discover how!)

The point in all this circles back to something we focus a tremendous amount of energy on around Nerdarchy — our game experiences are a 100% group effort. It can be a fine line of distinction when players look to their character sheets to overcome a challenge but there is a powerful overlap between mechanics and narrative in any RPG. The trick lies in using the former to inform the latter. On the other side of the screen it serves a GM exceptionally well to recognize these moments as opportunities to uncover new stories together.

Now it’s your turn

The next time you play an RPG think about how the features on your character sheet translate into roleplaying opportunities. Keep in mind this takes place whether you’re in combat or otherwise. Do you expend one superiority die to attempt to disarm the target with your Disarming Attack maneuver? Or do you recall the many training sessions when your instructor demonstrated a clever technique for achieving leverage to knock your training blade from your hands? Do you cast cure wounds on an injured NPC? Or do you close your eyes and find inner calm through meditation on the teachings of your faith and use this serenity to act as a conduit for positive energy?

Share your own memorable moments when RPG mechanics became the foundation for narrative excitement in the comments below and as always, stay nerdy!

*Featured image — Travelers discover a Forgotten Oasis hiding an ancient secret. But they aren’t the first ones to explore the temple beneath the welcome waters. Spirits and a construct from a bygone age haunt the halls. Careful investigation and dealing with these echoes of the past brings adventurers face to face with the handmaiden of the Forgotten Goddess herself. Characters discover ample opportunities for their features to impact an open-ended adventure along with a new Otherworldly Patron, the calculating NPC construct Digit, three new magic items and three new creatures within Forgotten Oasis. Check it out here.

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