Ideals.
Maybe honor.
Bonds.
They are loyal to their nation.
And then flaws,
maybe they have an anger problem?
Damn it, I just made Zuko again.
(upbeat music)
Hello friends, Ginny Di here,
and if you're new here,
welcome to my channel.
My stuff is mostly targeted at roleplayers
in tabletop games like D&D,
but if you do text-based roleplay or you're a writer,
I hope this can be helpful to you too.
Today, I wanna talk about character flaws.
What it means for a character to be flawed,
how to come up with flaws that suit them,
and how to incorporate them into your roleplay.
I wanna start by saying, as I often do,
D&D is a game that we play for fun.
The only audience you're writing your character for
is your fellow players,
so by no means are you obligated
to make a character realistic
the same way that you might be
if you were writing for an audience, for consumption.
That said, flaws can make a character more interesting
and more fun to roleplay, and to roleplay with.
Plus, it can give your DM another element to play off of.
Which is probably why your character sheet
has a specific section for you
to write down your character's flaws.
Finally, choose a flaw for your character.
Your character's flaw represents some vice, compulsion,
fear or weakness.
In particular, anything that someone else could exploit
to bring you to ruin,
or cause you to act against your best interests,
more significant than negative personality traits,
a flaw might answer any of these questions,
what enrages you?
What's the one person, concept or event
that you are terrified of?
What are your vices?
Of course, each background
includes a rolling table of flaws,
and I think that can be a great place to start.
But not everyone wants
to randomize their character's personality,
so in this video,
I'll talk about how to use those rolling tables effectively,
but also how to come up with your own flaws
if that suits your style better.
But first of all,
I wanna say, for the purposes of this video,
I wanna try and separate the discussion of flaws
as writing tools from judgment attached
to personality traits.
I know the word flaw is negative,
but if I talk about something in this video as a flaw,
that doesn't directly translate to how we should feel about
that thing in real life.
Like, in a lot of ways,
trauma is a flaw,
in a narrative sense.
That doesn't mean you're a bad person for having trauma.
Just to be clear.
When we talk about character flaws,
what we mean is, what is gonna get in this person's way?
What's gonna cause trouble for them?
What's gonna prevent them from easily achieving their goals?
Conflict is important to storytelling.
You can't really tell a story without it.
Some conflict is external,
obstacles in your character's path, those aren't flaws.
Flaws are all about internal conflict.
I think it's also important
to differentiate between superficial flaws
and true character flaws.
Don't get me wrong,
superficial flaws are fun too.
Especially in a game like D&D when you can use them
to really build an image of what your character is like.
Superficial sounds negative,
so let's call 'em flavor flaws.
These are things like biting their nails,
or getting common idioms wrong, or having a lisp.
They can contribute
to making your character feel whole and unique,
but they're not actually going
to meaningfully influence their actions.
So basically, they're fun,
and totally use 'em,
but that's not what we're talking about
when we talk about flaws.
Instead, a true flaw is something more like a fear
of heights, an addiction, greed.
Usually these stem from a fear,
or a false belief,
or some kind of moral failing, think seven deadly sins.
So, that's what a flaw is.
Now, how do you come up
with the right flaw for your character?
Here's four different options.
Think about your character's goals,
what would get in their way?
What would they have to overcome in order
to achieve what they want?
Picking a flaw that compromises their ability
to achieve their goals is a great way
to make sure that it comes into play during the game,
and it gives your character a clear arc
for how they'll need to grow
before they can achieve what they want.
For example, let's say that your character's goal
is to escape their past.
Maybe their flaw is resentment.
They can't seem to move past their old grudges,
their judgments, the ways their past has shaped them.
This stops them from moving forward.
As much as they want to make a new start,
be a different person than they were before,
this resentment is just stuck inside them,
and they can't let go of it.
Or maybe their goal is to end a war
between two nations.
But their flaw is always seeing things
in black and white,
struggling to accept nuance and see both sides of a problem.
They'll never be able to end
this war unless they can truly understand why each side
is so committed to continuing it.
As long as they think about things in absolutes,
they'll always favor one side of the conflict,
which will essentially draft them into it.
The connection between their goal
and their flaw doesn't have to be super literal,
but it could be.
They can even be in direct opposition.
Their goal is to escape the cycle of violence
that created them,
but their flaw is that they're vengeful.
These kind of internal conflicts can be really interesting
to explore in a character,
and because of the nature of how tabletop games are played,
they could take you in all kinds of different directions,
maybe they learn to forgive and make peace,
or maybe they discover that vengeance can be cathartic
or even healing,
and violence against the right people can do good.
It all depends on what happens at the table.
(upbeat music)
I don't know about you but personally,
one of my character flaws is over scheduling myself
so that whenever I try to run D&D,
I haven't given myself enough time to prepare.
No, just me.
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(upbeat music)
What is your character really good at?
A flaw doesn't need to negate that strength,
but it could temper it in some way.
This introduces complexity every time your character
does the thing that they're best at.
Say that your character is extremely intelligent,
but they lack confidence.
So even when they have a smart solution
to a problem or they know something important,
they might not be confident enough
to volunteer it,
or they might voice it
in a self-doubting way that stops others
from taking it seriously.
Or, on the other end of the spectrum,
maybe they're an arrogant know-it-all,
which rubs people the wrong way.
On the rare occasions when their intelligence fails
or misleads them,
they refuse to accept that they might be wrong.
Here's another example.
Your character is super charismatic and charming,
but they're also very vain,
so they can be taken advantage of by someone
who appeals to their vanity.
Or maybe they place so much weight on being liked
that when their charisma fails,
they're crushed by it.
Connecting your character's greatest flaw
to their greatest strength
gives you opportunities during the game
to roleplay both sides of that equation.
While some flaws might be easy for your character to hide,
this method ensures that every once in a while,
your character will end up throwing a wrench
into their own gears,
which can lead to some really cool,
organic character moments.
In real life,
most of our internal struggles are related
to our past experiences.
Which is why, you know, therapy.
In the same way,
you can root your character's flaws in their backstory.
This could be related to some trauma
that scarred them.
For example, if they were betrayed
by someone they were close to,
they might be hesitant to trust people now.
Maybe they're suspicious of anyone who offers to help them.
They might even conceal some information
from their own party members out of fear
that they'll be betrayed again.
Or perhaps they lost a family member or a friend
and they blame themselves for what happened,
so now they're impulsive
and they're quick to put themselves into danger
to protect the people around them.
But you can also create flaws rooted in backstory
that aren't trauma-related.
Maybe they had some false belief instilled in them,
based on the way they were raised or trained.
Such as, they were taught to respect and obey figures
of authority without question,
so now they might sometimes trust people
that they really shouldn't,
just because they're in a position of power.
A corrupt authority figure may be really difficult
for that character to respond to.
Or, maybe they grew up with a very adversarial relationship
with a sibling,
or had a cutthroat educational environment,
so now they're extremely competitive,
and they have trouble seeing other people succeed
without feeling like it means
that they themselves have failed.
I think a lot of us can point to things
that we ourselves believed when we were younger
that we now know are not true,
or at least not as cut-and-dried as we initially thought.
That kind of experience can be great
inspiration for character flaws.
And of course, you can use the rolling tables.
Backgrounds start on page 125 of the Player's Handbook,
and each has their own set of rolling tables
for personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws.
Using these tables to randomize traits
can be a really good starting point for a character,
especially if you don't already have a clear idea in mind.
You might roll up a Guild Artisan
and end up with a perfectionist painter
who aspires to be the best,
and plans on one day returning to their guild
to prove their greatness.
They have the flaw of never being satisfied
with what they have.
That sounds like a perfectly good character personality.
A perfectionist who's never satisfied with what they have
would probably also never be satisfied with their own work.
If their goal is to be the greatest,
then they don't truly believe they can ever reach it,
that's a huge internal conflict.
However, sometimes the rolls will be a little harder
to fit together.
For example, you could also roll a Guild Artisan
who is a stingy shoemaker
who doesn't part with money easily,
and whose ideal is generosity,
and who owes their guild a great debt,
and their flaw is that they stole from the guild coffers.
I'm not saying you couldn't make it work,
people make contradictory choices all the time.
But personally,
I would find that kind of character difficult
and confusing to play.
All this is just to say,
if you do use the rolling tables,
I would encourage you to just try it a few times
and see what combination of options are inspiring.
You don't have to be married
to whatever the dice throw at you.
Once you know what your character's flaws are,
how do you go about actually incorporating that
into your gameplay?
The first thing to keep in mind
is that your character's flaws
shouldn't make the game less fun for you
or for others at your table.
If your flaw requires being obnoxious
or constantly obstructing other characters,
it might not be a good one
for a group roleplaying experience.
It's really important that you talk
with your table about this.
Some groups would be fine
with your character's flaws giving your group a disadvantage
in combat sometimes,
or making it difficult for your party
to negotiate with NPCs, or something else.
But other groups would find that really frustrating.
Every table is different,
and I don't know your specific context,
so make sure to communicate with your fellow players
and your DM.
In general, the more you understand your character's flaws
as a part of their personality
and a result of experiences,
the easier it'll be to identify
when it should come out in roleplay.
If you just say my character is naive,
that could mean a lot of different things
and it could get annoying really fast
if you just play your character
as not understanding anything
about the world around them.
But if you say, my character grew up very sheltered,
in a religious community
with strong moral values,
and is too naive to understand
that others may be intentionally deceptive or cruel,
then you know that they're not too naive
to understand a sexual joke,
but they are too naive to recognize
when they're being scammed by a shopkeeper.
Your character should also grow and change over time
as their experiences during sessions make an impact on them.
If your character is reckless,
but they run headlong into a trap
and one of their party members is badly hurt as a result,
they're probably going to at least think about that
next time they have an opportunity to be reckless.
It doesn't have to be, and probably shouldn't be
a quick change, it can take time to overcome
and unlearn flawed behaviors
but as your character levels up and grows
in other ways throughout the game,
they should also be growing in terms of their flaws.
I would love to hear all about your character's flaws
in the comments.
And if you liked this video,
I have a bunch more videos you'd probably enjoy,
like how to write interesting character backstories
without leaning on tragedy,
or how to develop a voice for your roleplay character
even if you can't or don't wanna do accents.
Check 'em out in my D&D advice playlist linked right here
on this very screen that we currently are.