Chapter 3: A Question of Character

I rode in silence as Mark drove us north through that autumn evening. He refused to turn on thestereo, and I refused to discuss my condition any further. I knew my decision would not set well with his Catholic upbringing, but with all that we had seen, his concern for the hereafter seemed a bit out of place.

Carol dozed off intermittently in the back seat as the first few stars began to twinkle through the charcoal clouds, but she was awake enough to see it first. All she said was “huh,” in a half question, but it was enough to make my spine run cold. I shifted in the front seat, and craned my neck to see her bruised face. She was staring out into the dark fields that ran alongside the highway, tracing her finger along the window. Following her gaze, I saw a lone figure dancing in the amber glow of a lit billboard.

It appeared to be a clown.

The players’ characters stand at the center of any Dread game. Just like the main characters in a novel or movie, the plot revolves around them, and it is what happens to them that is most important. Therefore, the players’ characters are often far better defined than any of the other characters involved in the story. It is necessary to create these characters before any game so that the players and host can reach an agreement on what they can do and how they should be played. The host may also find it very useful to know what sorts of roles will be played so that they can tailor the story around these characters.

The Duties of a Questionnaire

A good questionnaire will provide the following:

Information about what the character is capable of

Information about what the character is not capable of

A hook that invests the player in the character

A way to tie the character into the plot of the story

A way to tie the character to the other players’ characters

And a reason for the character to hope.

These characters exist in three forms: as roles the players interpret through play, as characters understood by the host, and as simple lists of questions and answers designed to reconcile the first two forms. This chapter deals mainly with the questionnaire itself. From here, the players should be able to develop their interpretations, and the host an understanding of the characters. It all starts with the questionnaire.

The host should create the questionnaires beforehand in order to tailor the characters to the story they have planned. Each character should have a unique questionnaire. Basically, a questionnaire is a page or so of questions, with plenty of room for answers, that attempt to define the character well enough for play. Do not ask too many questions, or you will spend most of your game sifting through the answers. With practice, both creating a questionnaire and character can become easy and rewarding parts of the game, though it may seem daunting at first.

Creating a Questionaire

Creating questionnaires is more art than science. You will have to take into account the needs of the story, your players, and the characters themselves. Each requires something different from the questions. The story needs leading questions that tie the characters into the plot and each other and questions that can help the characters through some foreseeable hardships or expose them to greater danger. The players need questions that they can sink their teeth into, which lead to interesting answers and inspire them to breathe life into their characters. These create characters the players can invest themselves in—characters worth caring about. Without this investment, the players simply won’t care if they lose their characters. And the characters need questions that can flesh them out, defining their strengths and limits. The characters need to have their capabilities well defined in the questionnaire to avoid slowing down play with discussions on just what the character can and cannot do. Above all, the characters need a reason for hope, or they won’t care if they are lost to a tumbling tower.

Ask questions that deal with a character’s habits and daily life. Ask questions about occupations, hobbies, achievements, and goals. Ask questions about disabilities, weaknesses, addictions, and failures. Find out what shames a character, what excites a character, and always what a character fears.

Perhaps the one thing that every character questionnaire must address is why the character participates in the story. What is it about this character that keeps him or her from quitting? There will be moments in most Dread games when a character has the chance to turn tail on their friends and escape whatever horror they face. It may occur while trying to out run a fearsome and spectral predator or when the characters uncover a cache of medical supplies with a surplus of morphine. Why not let the ghostly beast consume your allies? Why not inject yourself with enough narcotics to forget it all? What is it that keeps the character in the game?

After all, if the character doesn’t want to be in the game, the player might as well topple the tower and be done with it.

If you are building a game with certain types of characters in mind, ask leading questions that tie characters to the motives, careers, or social standings that you require. What did you steal from your employer just before you were fired? What is it about your love life that you fear your mother may discover? With all this cash, how do you fend off boredom? Each of these questions immediately says something about the character, but doesn’t exactly tell the whole story. Leave room for surprises.

That bears repeating: leave room for surprises. Try to leave as many important details as possible about the character up to the player. If you need someone who starts the game in a hospital, let the player decide whether they are a janitor, nurse, security guard, paramedic, pharmacist, doctor, patient, a loved one visiting a patient, or what have you. The key is to let go of control. Perhaps the player in the above example wants to play a mafia button-man who is looking to put the squeeze on an ill witness in protective custody. This opens up all new possibilities for the game. What if, during an outbreak of a horribly contagious and fatal disease, a police officer recognizes him and tries to apprehend him? The answers players come up with often add whole new layers of pressure on the character.

Don’t be afraid of leaving questions open-ended. Ultimately, it is up to the host whether or not to approve any answer a player puts on a questionnaire. This way, the questionnaire can ask “You have mystical control over what?” and the player won’t be able to answer “The world,” unless the host wants to allow that answer.

Through the questionnaire, you can leave some details of the story up to the players. “What feral animal almost killed you when you were a child, and how does this encounter still stay with you?” In a game where the antagonist is a lycanthrope, the answer to the question could prove very useful. The more details you draw out of the characters’ questionnaires, the easier it is to draw them into the story.

There is really no hard and fast rule on how many of which types of questions you should use in a questionnaire, but as a general guideline, a baker’s dozen or so should be enough. To make things easy on you, try to spend equal time on the character’s capabilities, shortcomings, personality and appearance, psychology, and social interactions with the other characters. It is also recommended that you include a question or two about what belongings they might have with them at the beginning of the story and of course, don’t forget to ask about the name.

Remember, though, the more questions you ask, the more you will have to read through to find that important detail in the middle of the game.

If you are having trouble thinking of questions, you will find over a hundred and fifty examples along the bottoms of these pages. Simply flip through the book to a random page and see if any of the questions inspire you. If not, look at the next or previous one, and see if the combination sparks an idea.

Sample Questionnaire from a Risen Dead Game

Here is an example questionnaire to examine—later we will look at how these questions can be answered. These are from a game that takes place a month or two after the dead have risen and torn the civilized world apart. Since this apocalypse, the characters have been forced into a grim and harsh survival.

This particular questionnaire was written with the intent to exemplify the differences between life before the apocalypse and after.

Filling Out a Questionnaire

When filling out a character questionnaire, you should always assume the presence of a silent “and why?” at the end of each question. It will create a better understanding of the character. The answer will cover more ground, and there will be less room for misunderstanding during the game itself. The more times you ask yourself “and why?” about any of the questions, the further and further you fall into the depths of the character. To take a seemingly innocuous question and apply an exaggerated example:

“What’ll you have to drink?” Whiskey, on the rocks. “Why?” Because I’m a weary man with little use for frivolous and fruity drinks. “Why?” Because I have seen things that have made me question my own sanity. “Why?” It is the nature of my occupation to scour the world for things we were not meant to know. And so forth.

You do not have to answer all of the silent whys in print, but considering them will help you answer other questions.

The goal to filling out a questionnaire is not to create a character that will survive and thrive in any environment the host throws at you, but to create an interesting character that makes the story worth participating in. To this end, consider what sorts of flaws your character will have to heroically overcome, and try to bring them out in your answers. Try to provide reasons for why your character would want to survive the story and make connections with the other characters. The game is a struggle and without such reasons and connections, there is no point in playing. Keep in mind that whatever answers you supply will have to be approved by the host.

How to Answer the Questions

To create an appropriate character, try to follow these tips when filling out a questionnaire:

• Assume the question ends with a few more “and why?” or “How?” questions.
• Don’t try to make an invincible character.
• Tie your character in with the other characters.
  • You can wait until all the characters are introduced before you answer the questions about the other characters.
• Create a character with flaws that need to be overcome.
• Give your character a reason to survive.
• Most of all, create a character you want to play.

If you are stuck on the answer to a certain question, move on and return to it later, or ask the host for clarification. You may also find that you will have to wait for details about the other characters as well. For that matter, other players may ask you about your character. If all the players are present, you can go ahead and ask them. Alternatively, everyone may decide to wait until the rest of the questionnaires are filled out, introduce their characters, and then answer the interpersonal questions. There is no need to share information you do not feel the other characters would or should know. Try to be as helpful as possible without revealing any important character secrets.

Sample Answers from a Risen Dead Game

Here is one example of how a player might fill out the sample questionnaire from above. The comments are interspersed, and explain why these answers are useful and how they may help in the game.

Playing your Character

Once you have completed the questionnaire it is time to introduce your character to the other players. At this point, you should reveal any information their characters may know about yours. Just how much usually depends on the characters’ relationship with each other. The host should let everyone know if and how they know each other. Answers to questions about character relationships will also have an impact. In the end, you should play by ear and makes sure you don’t reveal anything that is meant to be a secret. Those can come out during the game.

Generally, the host will start the game by telling you and the other players about where their characters are, what they have been doing just before the game started, and what the world about them looks, sounds, feels, and smells like. While the host narrates the story, you and your fellow players should explain what your characters are doing. There is no order to this unless the host says that there needs to be. Try to give everyone an opportunity to participate, but don’t sit back and let the story happen without you. Jump in.

During the game, you will be responsible for controlling your character’s intentions. You can decide exactly what the character wants to do and how the character plans on doing it. However, things will not always go according to plan. From time to time the host may step in and require that you pull some blocks in order for your character to do what you want your character to do. Or, if the host thinks whatever your character is attempting is too unreasonable, it may be prohibited altogether. When the host makes these sorts of judgments, you are allowed to argue your character’s case, to a point. If you feel that the host has overlooked an ability that is clearly detailed on the questionnaire, or if you don’t think the host fully understands how the character will accomplish the task at hand, you are welcome to bring these things up. Ultimately, the host is the final arbiter. If you state your case and the host still disagrees, you must live with their ruling.

There are two reasons why the host’s rulings on character actions are final. The first is simply to save time and eliminate stress. Lengthy arguments about what imaginary people can and can’t do are no fun to anyone. The second is because the host knows more-intimate details about the story. You may think that because your character is a professional mechanic, she should be able to fix the getaway car in no time flat; but you won’t realize until much later in the story that an alien virus is clouding her brain. The host shouldn’t have to reveal such details until the appropriate time, so as a player you will have to trust the host’s judgment.

When playing your character, keep the questionnaire on hand so you can reference it. Try to speak as your character would (though if your character has a voice too far removed from your own, no one will blame you if you speak normally instead of in a comical pitch or accent). Playing a Dread game is in some ways similar to improvisational theater. Everyone is more likely to enjoy the game if they are in character. Keep in mind what is written on your questionnaire. There will be opportunities to showcase behaviors and quirks that were developed from the answers you came up with.

Remember to stay as true to your character as possible. Don’t consider what you would do in any given situation; consider what your character would do.

Player vs. Character

When you know somethingthat your character should not, you need to pretend you don’t know it. Or rather, you must not play the character as if they know it. This is much harder than it sounds. The game isn’t ruined if you forget to maintain this separation of knowledge, but you should try to be aware of it. For the most part, it can be assumed that characters know many of the everyday things that their players know. That is, assuming the game is set in roughly the same time and culture as the players. If you were playing serfs in feudal Europe who are being hunted by a demented lord and his entourage, then obviously your characters would not know how to change the tires on a car. Fortunately, this situation is not likely to rise in such a game.

In fact, many times the opposite occurs. The characters in the feudal game could very easily know how to slaughter and dress a wild animal they caught while on the run, even if the players do not. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, and the players shouldn’t be required to describe what their characters are doing in such detail that they run the risk of doing it wrong. They could just say their characters are preparing the animal for eating. The host should be satisfied with this.

Occasionally, a player may realize that their character would understand or notice something that the player wouldn’t even know to look for. An example of this would be a character who works as a forensic crime scene investigator. The player may not know that the blood splatter patterns on the wall are not consistent with eyewitness accounts of the murder. The player may, however, suspect something is amiss. In this case, the player may electively pull a block to have the host bring the clue to their attention. This doesn’t guarantee that the host will have something for you, but at times it is better safe than sorry.

Perhaps the most disruptive schism between player and character knowledge is not when the player has had the benefit of some experience or education that the characters hasn’t, but when the player suspects something the character shouldn’t. During a Dread game you will have those moments when a character should open a door and you, as the player, know that something horrible waits just beyond. Resist the urge to play the character as if they know this. The game is much more enjoyable when boneheaded characters do boneheaded things—even if it gets them into devastatingly bad situations.

That said, you could ask the host to allow your character to have an idea that they normally wouldn’t. If the player really wants the character to know something the player knows—something it is unlikely but not impossible for the character to know—an elective pull may convince the host to allow it.

Beyond the Night

Dread characters do not have to end when the story does. Many of them can offer more than a single night’s distraction. If you were to play in a series of stories set in the same place over several nights, you might want to reuse the characters you had previously. In this way, the game can be like a comic book, novel, or television series. However, no one survives a Dread game without changing. To represent the sorts of changes a character may experience there are several things you will want to do. First, take careful notes during the game. If something happens to or has an affect on your character, write it on the questionnaire. The guidelines for these notes can be found in the previous chapter in Dealing with the Consequences, Recording the Consequences, and Expanding Characters.

Second, the host should provide each player with a few extra questions at the end or beginning of each complete story the character is involved in. Unlike questions for new characters, these don’t have to be so well thought out. In fact, the host may ask the same questions of each character:

The host is not tied to these questions and may try to direct the growth of the characters with more leading ones—especially in the case of the last question. In fact, if a lot of time has passed between stories, the host may expand the last question into several questions that are more like the sort of questions asked of beginning characters.

Whatever questions are used, the goal is the same: find out how the characters have been changed by their story and how they have changed since it was resolved.

Eventually, your character may take up more than a single sheet of paper. That is, if you have a steady hand.

If you find your questionnaire has grown and it is no longer conveniently packaged on a single sheet of paper, feel free to reduce it all to a single sheet of notes. But hold on to the original, just in case.