Story vs RPG part Appendix: Emma - RPG to Story Conversion using Psychology and Sociology Theory

Story vs RPG Series

Story: Elements

Story vs RPG Part 2: Main Characters - Protagonist, Antagonist, PC, NPC

Story vs RPG Part 3: Character Information

Story v RPG Part 4: Potential Pitfalls of using a RPG session for a Story.

Story v RPG Part 5: Personality Types

Story v RPG Part 6: Alignment, Morality, and Ethics

Story vs RPG Part 7: Character Needs
Story vs RPG Part 8: Character emotions
Story vs RPG Part 9: Lies - Our characters darkest secrets
Story vs RPG Part 10: Setting - cultures
Story vs RPG Part 11: Pair Dynamics
Story and Game Structure: Storylines
Story vs RPG Part 12: Larger groups - conformity & deviance

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Example of an RPG to Story Conversion using Personality Theory

For more practical purposes, lets try making a story character that is based on a fantasy character. Most of this process will help to develop backstory.

Picking a name

I'll pick a popular names in the US 2015 for character names - Emma.

Gaming information

Emma a Lawful Good alchemist

Emma is e a Lawful Good character in a game that is a alchemist - someone who works to transmute material into magical items. To move that character to a story I begin with what I know about the character. In this game maybe the alignment is the only indicator of character personality. I'll use that information to try creating a hopefully more interesting character by adding small backstory and character details.

Conversion

As mentioned yesterday, I think that Lawful Good is similar to Jung's Hero. Let's compare them.

Lawful Good - Crusader
Core Concepts: Duty, fairness, honor, property, responsibility, right, truth, virtue, worthiness

Jung - Hero
The Hero (Heroine, Champion) - Defender, guardian, rescuer, sacrifice, win, arrogance, confront

And then compare this information to the first enneagram.
1. Reformer (Perfectionist) principled, purposeful, self-control, thinks they are always right

If I agree to this comparison, I begin to see character weaknesses of arrogance, confrontational, and maybe sacrifices themselves beyond what most people do.

Converting Class to Profession

And maybe I want take this character to move over to more modern terms, changing the world and setting slightly.

To me a alchemist might be some sort of scientist, maybe like a CSI type crime scene investigator. She's someone who uses technology to work with the material in crime scenes to reveal what happened by various methods. In a different fantasy world, that might by using magic powers to analyze stuff. In this modern world, rather than magic it will be technology and procedures.

Character Behavior

Emma wants to know and tell the truth about these crimes. She does her job well and tries to tell the truth, even if less desirable people accused of crimes or a bad person in general has evidence that supports their innocence. Because of this I give her Kantian Ethics.

• Kantian Ethics - right is determined by intent, reason, and type of action, not the consequence. "Tell the truth even if it causes harm."

From the Jung - Hero archetype, they also sacrifice themselves - in this case I will translate that into relationships. Emma doesn't spend time to develop romantic relationships. Instead she fills her time with activities that reaffirm her sense of truth. It might be a religion, working for a cause, or maybe trying to find new advances in crime scene investigation.

Character Needs

Because of her needs are strong in some areas and weak in others.  She has strong sense of law and order for safety, yet might be threatened somewhat by helping to put away dangerous people. Here biggest relationship weakness is an issue of social love, belonging, and sexual intimacy. Along that line which might affect the balance of affiliation, autonomy, and dominance needs should be used occasionally in any story created, while the weakness is still open. If that weakness ever is filled, another weakness should also emerge.

Character Emotions

Having looked at character personality, ethics, and needs emotions will now be more predictable.

Emma will be courageous when facing the results of brutality within a laboratory. However with relationships, then may be fearful a begin to feel threatened when in casual situations dealing with relationships. The biggest surprises may come when she thinks she knows the truth but finds out later through investigation that it was all an illusion or wrong. From these basic emotions they can easily be turned into backstory of actual events - one for every major emotion.

All of these examples show that once you know your character's personality, ethics, and needs the other details flow much more smoothly out from backstory. You can just create events that would created the emotion. A list of several emotion creating events would help to round out the character, and make them more whole and less one dimensional - even if you don't actually write that information into the story.

Character Lies

Any number of lies depending on Emma's earlier experience, may be creating or maintaining her relationship weakness. Something probably happened in her childhood or adolescence.

Maybe she saw something between her parents and created a vow not to ever get herself into that situation. In her teenage years, maybe her early relationship went really bad and she was hurt in the process. Or maybe her interests kept her from forming any teenage relationship with someone else.

Whatever it may be, using lies can help create a dark secret with is great for storytelling.

Character in Society

Her job as a CSI scene investigator is going to come with many role expectations. Some conflict can occur when her relationship weakness my interfere with her social role expectations. Conflict that other characters might attribute wrongly to her own reason and cause.

Character Pair Dynamics

Interesting dynamics can occur between her and investigators that interact with her. Especially if they have very conflicting personalities, needs, and ethics. She might despise a rule breaker at first. But then when their rule breaking leads to the truth faster than her objective evaluation the dynamics of the relationship may change as she begins to respect and trust the rule breaker.

Character Group Dynamics

Emma probably begins with conformity to the CSI rules, procedures, and regulations. As she tries new methods of investigation, she may begin to have innovative goals. With her relationships and dating, she may be in rebellion or retreat at first.

Summary of Emma from the Lawfully Good Alchemist

I believe this is much more usable and better for story writing than just knowing alignment and class.

All of these details I tried to create just based on RPG alignment of lawfully good and the class of alchemist. I'm just showing one way that details can be found just by expanding background using tools and interpretation to expand those two descriptive data pieces.

Emma is a CSI type crime scene investigator. Here personality believes in duty, fairness, honor, property, responsibility, right, truth, virtue, worthiness, defender, guardian, rescuer, sacrifice, win, arrogance, confront, (perfectionist) principled, purposeful, self-control, thinks she is always right. She's someone who uses technology to work with the material in crime scenes to reveal what happened by various methods. In this modern world, rather than magic it will be technology and procedures.

Emma wants to know and tell the truth about these crimes. She does her job well and tries to tell the truth, even if less desirable people accused of crimes or a bad person in general has evidence that supports their innocence. Because of this I give her Kantian Ethics. Kantian Ethics - right is determined by intent, reason, and type of action, not the consequence. "Tell the truth even if it causes harm."

From the Jung - Hero archetype, they also sacrifice themselves - in this case I will translate that into relationships. Emma doesn't spend time to develop romantic relationships. Instead she fills her time with activities that reaffirm her sense of truth. It might be a religion, working for a cause, or maybe trying to find new advances in crime scene investigation.

Because of her needs are strong in some areas and weak in others.  She has strong sense of law and order for safety, yet might be threatened somewhat by helping to put away dangerous people. Here biggest relationship weakness is an issue of social love, belonging, and sexual intimacy. Along that line which might affect the balance of affiliation, autonomy, and dominance needs should be used occasionally in any story created, while the weakness is still open.

Emma will be courageous when facing the results of brutality within a laboratory. However with relationships, then may be fearful a begin to feel threatened when in casual situations dealing with relationships. The biggest surprises may come when she thinks she knows the truth but finds out later through investigation that it was all an illusion or wrong.

Any number of lies depending on Emma's earlier experience, may be creating or maintaining her relationship weakness. Something probably happened in her childhood or adolescence.

Maybe she saw something between her parents and created a vow not to ever get herself into that situation. In her teenage years, maybe her early relationship went really bad and she was hurt in the process. Or maybe her interests kept her from forming any teenage relationship with someone else.

Her job as a CSI scene investigator is going to come with many role expectations. Some conflict can occur when her relationship weakness my interfere with her social role expectations. Conflict that other characters might attribute wrongly to her own reason and cause.

Emma probably begins with conformity to the CSI rules, procedures, and regulations. As she tries new methods of investigation, she may begin to have innovative goals. With her relationships and dating, she may be in rebellion or retreat at first.

Search for a current fantasy main system Part 4: Organizing Losers Battles

Prior posts in the series
Search for a current fantasy main system Part 1: suggested games and evaluating their samples
Search for a current fantasy main system Part 2: First look at downloaded samples
Search for a current fantasy main system Part 3: Organizing "Battles"
Search for a current fantasy main system Part 4: Organizing Losers Battles
Search for a current fantasy main system Part 4: Evaluating the game systems

Here are my combined posts concerning the structure of the losers bracket battle rounds.

I'm working out a system to test the non-playable games.

I think after I finish doing the battle phase and reduce the playable games nearly in half, I will do a losers bracket.

Phase 1: losers bracket battle round

*Phase one Criteria might be three:

1. Official Rules - How good are the rules that I can find on the official site? And I don't want to create an account to access it or given something not available officially to all. Unless it's available on RPG Now, which I already have an account.

2. Gameplay - Can I figure out the rules by looking at or watching a few gameplay media?

3. Reviews - Can I figure out the rules by reading or listening to rules review?

*Criteria are subject to change, if between now and then I think of something different or better.

I'll use the same grading scale - A through E as the winners phase 2 battle round.

If any of the systems are missing any of those three data points, it will be an automatic E = 0 for that criteria.

If I can't remember or forget or am distracted hearing or reading a detail - tough, too bad, so sad. My attention and memory can only go so far when media isn't in front of me.

I'll then divide the score by three to get the score.

Phase 2: losers bracket

The winners of the first losers bracket phase I'll try to do a full evaluation using what I've learned about the game like the other games taking the winners and tied games of the first round against each other. Anything that I can't figure out or remember from a few gameplay, reviews, and rules notes in the full-20 criteria will be an automatic E = 0. And all the total of the scores on my criteria spreadsheet is divided by 20.

Only one game from the losers bracket will emerge.

If there is a tie ... maybe a dice roll if I can't decide.

I think it's tough but fair.

Losers Bracket Phase 1 Battles

Strange Object Battle - Burning Wheel Gold v Cypher System

Two 'The's Battle - Shadow of the Demon Lord v The One Ring

Hero Battle - Hero System v Heroquest Glorantha

Kickstarter Battle - Blades in the Dark v 7th Sea

Anyway, it will be a while, at least a week, before I get through the top games. Heck, they might even read this and make sure they have material ready

Story vs RPG Part 8: Character emotions

Story vs RPG Series

Story: Elements

Story vs RPG Part 2: Main Characters - Protagonist, Antagonist, PC, NPC

Story vs RPG Part 3: Character Information

Story v RPG Part 4: Potential Pitfalls of using a RPG session for a Story.

Story v RPG Part 5: Personality Types

Story v RPG Part 6: Alignment, Morality, and Ethics

Story vs RPG Part 7: Character Needs
Story vs RPG Part 8: Character emotions
Story vs RPG Part 9: Lies - Our characters darkest secrets
Story vs RPG Part 10: Setting - cultures
Story vs RPG Part 11: Pair Dynamics
Story and Game Structure: Storylines
Story vs RPG Part 12: Larger groups - conformity & deviance

If you like this series support it by buying it today for kindle all in one file and without advertisement. Available in most countries that Amazon supports. 

Readers identify with characters through expressed character emotions. In gaming, many times the player's emotions substitute for the character's emotions.

When I was learning about the need for writers show emotions of the characters in stories, this of course assumed that I knew what emotions mean and how to show them. In my daily interactions with neighbors, friends, and even strangers I noticed that different people show different emotions even for the same event, movie, or tragedy.

This is something I did earlier this year.

When the local sports team were one minute from winning a world championship, I walked outside into the dark night and listened. At first a I heard a few shouts. When the minute passed by, suddenly the entire town was bursting with a chorus of chants, curse words, and outbursts. Fans were expressing their emotions, because their team had won - the best in the world.

What are emotions? Why do people experience different emotions? And how can I see a big picture on covering what people experience?

Emotions - a natural state of consciousness caused by an arousal (stimulus) like situations, moods, and others where one experiences a change in physiology, expression, poster, gestures, and strong subjective feelings.

Feelings - are subjective experience of emotion.

Mood - a temporary, low-intensity, and long lasting emotional state.

Affect - experiencing a mood, emotion, or feeling.

What are the ingredients to an emotion?
Stimulus - event or object
Response - includes instinctual reaction including physiological, gestures, and facial expressions; emotional including internal dialogue, dialogue, and reaction, thoughtful reaction, action

Something happens. The team wins the championship. Joy begins to spread through their body. Unable to contain their excitement, they must do something. They get up get up out of their chairs, walk outside, and let out a cheer and scream. "Yeah team! Go team!" They are beyond happy - ecstatic even.

Note: I removed all reference to the team name in order to help let the example go beyond this sport and feelings for this team by opposing team fans. Also it could apply to any championship team in any important sport or competitive activity across the world.

Different experiences, different emotions, same event

Emotions can have a positive or negative influence on characters. Characters have different personalities, ethics, and needs that interpret events differently. Each event has individual meaning to various characters all experiencing that same event.

Lets take a car of a few people driving past a house. One person might remember happy feelings playing with her friends there many summers in the past. Another might remember being afraid of a dog that chased him one evening. And another might be suspicious of someone living there ... because she blames on him the loss an item of hers, the ring that she thinks he stole a year ago, which was given to her by her best childhood friend.

Showing Emotions

Several tools have been created to help out showing emotions, rather than telling. A tool such as Ackerman and Puglisi's The Emotion Thesaurus - A Writer's Guide to Character Expression is a great tool to help show emotions. I have that book, but I wanted to know the underlying reason why people feel different ways - even considering different experiences. Knowing how to show emotion wasn't enough. For this I began looking at the basic emotions. And with these basic emotions,  I looked at the reasons behind them.

Basic Emotions

Several categories of basic emotions have been created.

Robert Plutchik (shown here) and W Gerrod Parrot (shown here) each categorize emotions further. All emotions are categorized and considered degrees of the basic six or eight emotions.

Reasons for Emotions

Most interesting to me and maybe to some others is Plutchik explanation of the reason for emotions.

He explains functions according to purposes which I will change a bit for simplicity sake.
stimulus > evaluation > feeling > behavior > goal
stimulus - event or situation that triggers emotion
evaluation - thinking about what the stimulus can be thought of symbolically
feeling - subjective thinking good or bad and the meaning to the individual; the emotion
behavior - the involuntary behavior that results from the feeling
goal - the function and reason the has caused a reaction

I like how he explains that there are reasons for most emotions. A cause and effect relationship helps explain the basic emotions. If you mix this process with the one I showed earlier the stimulus & response - especially considering the emoted gestures, facial expressions, and physical sensations happening before the evaluation and subjective feeling - emotions come alive with purpose. Especially they come alive when used with tools like lists of emotional responses.

Plutchik's basic eight emotions stimulus and goal.

Joy - gain of valued object; gain resource
Trust - member of one's group; mutual support
Fear - threat; safety
Surprise - unexpected event; gain time to orient
Sadness - loss of valued object; reattach to lost object
Disgust - unpalatable object;  eject object
Anger - obstacle; destroy obstacle
Anticipation - new territory; knowledge of new territory

So how can I use this list.

If in the story something important has been lost - like a person, position, living space, or important item - I need to find some way of showing sadness in the story. Everyone can't be stoic statues. And the greater the importance, the greater that emotion needs to be. It may even be very hard for me to relate to the character that suffered the loss. The character could be a personality type that I don't care for. But still, to that character had something important which is now lost. I need to let that character share and express that emotion in a fitting manner.

What about more complex emotions?

For other more complex emotions, Plutchik shows how they are combined out of the basic emotions which he divides into dyads: primary, secondary, tertiary, and opposites. Here are just a few of those emotions to which I put in parentheses the stimuli.

Love = joy + trust (gained an object + member of one's group)
Submission = trust + fear (member of one's group + threat)
Aggression= anger + anticipation (obstacle + new territory)
Optimism = anticipation + joy (new territory + gain of valued object)

So, if I am writing a situation where submission is the main emotion I want running through a point of view character, by ingraining into the story a threat (or multiple threats) into some member-of-group type situation plays off of the instinctual affectional drives that everyone has to some degree. The threat should be appropriate for the situation. It may be dramatic. Will the character give in to the demands of the group? It could even be a friend, lover, boss, or family member making the demand.

You can see more complex emotions beyond the four that I wrote in Plutchik's theory such as: disappointment, remorse, contempt, guilt, curiosity, despair, envy, cynicism, pride, fatalism, delight, sentimentalism, shame, outrage, pessimism, morbidness, dominance, anxiety, and conflicting emotions.

So in light of what events mean to a character they can react in different appropriate ways. And maybe they react in an unexpected manner because the facts haven't been revealed yet showing why they react in that way.

Summary

Readers need emotions in stories. Characters need to differ in the expression of emotions to show that they have individual lives. Knowing who the character is, how they act, and why they act the way they do can help bring out their unique and personal emotions - emotions that readers can identify with.

Next post may be about internal conflict - defense mechanisms. That would serve as a great transitioning out of character and into possibly the topic of plots - or maybe setting first.