The Struggle: Strengths and Weaknesses

Every interesting character has their strengths and their weaknesses; the first enables them to compete in the storyline, and the second makes it difficult for them to succeed. Whether it’s their raw intelligence coupled with overweening pride, incredible strength paired against low wits, or tact and guile against callous character, each individual struggles and fights against things. These characteristics are, importantly, not external but rather internal, byproducts of the individual’s own character and not the events around them, though both will motivate the story. This balance between strength and weakness is of utmost importance to develop interesting, character-driven stories in all fiction, but it’s incredibly difficult to do well. Just the few examples I listed seem fairly trite, but executed properly they form the foundations for some of the most interesting characters you and I know. So how do they do it? Let’s look at it from a roleplaying perspective.

As I’ve stressed many times before, roleplaying is, almost by definition, social. It involves other people and their characters, and for each one you add the world gets a little bit more crowded. Because of this, we cannot simply settle for the metric provided by traditional authors—that is, a hero whose main enemy is circumstance, and he rises up against them with his strengths. Even these characters have weaknesses, flaws, and shortcomings, but they seem minor in light of their overwhelming prowess and capabilities. To maintain a compelling flow of the story, these heroes may brush against their weaknesses but never so hard as to fail at the end of the story—not traditionally, anyway. They may strike a lowest point near the end of the arc, but undoubtedly they rise again and save the day.

But take a moment and examine the characters around them. In a typical story, there is usually only one hero—though there may be as many as three to five depending on the scope and size—but surrounding the hero are many complementary characters. These characters are often much more like people you might expect to meet on the streets. They’re lacking in courage, struggle against their daily problems, and they’re doing their best to make a way in this troublesome world. These cast members are more similar to what we act when we roleplay.

If we have models to which we write our roleplaying characters, it’s within those individuals. I’ve talked about it in length in another post, so let me come back to the idea at hand: how do we show strengths and weaknesses?

To take the route writers do with their heroes is disastrously dull in roleplay. For the sake of a numeric visual, let’s suppose that heroes spend 20% of their time battling their personal weaknesses, and 80% of their time extolling their strengths upon the storyline. This is an arbitrary ratio as it may change depending on the writer, story, and character, but the idea remains the same. The problem, though, is people who do this in roleplay end up creating something much less than a compelling story. Once one character does it, they all need to do it, and it becomes a glorified pissing fest who can slay the most monsters in one room. Every characters matches another in skill, wealth, and grace, and anything significant cannot be taken at face value: it must be shouted the loudest.

You know how you make something impactful? You make it scarce first.

Gold is valuable because it’s difficult to get. If you want your character’s victories to mean something, you need to make them rare, and you do that by focusing on their weaknesses. You need to spend so much time talking about the things they’re doing wrong, so when they finally succeed it feels like a true victory, not just what you expected to happen. If you want a situation to actually have drama, you need to be willing to let your character fall on their face, even if you’re roleplaying a powerful person. This can be incredibly difficult.

No one likes to write about their character messing up (though this is why I write so staunchly against the idea of escapism). Even the best of roleplayers still feel a connection with their character, a pain when they fail and a satisfaction when they succeed. It can be incredibly tempting to just push that button relentlessly, then, always allowing them to win one trial after another. There’s a numb sort of satisfaction in letting things just go right for once, but it’s similar to satisfying a hunger when all you’re eating is candy bars.

Real victory brings real satisfaction. Real victories come from real dramas, and real dramas come from characters who have a serious chance at losing. How are you going to do that, if you’re always only writing about your character’s strengths and accomplishments? I said before that heroes are written on a sort of 4:1 ratio—for every weak moment they have, you have four strong ones. For roleplaying characters, I would switch this around.

Your character is smart? Good. Let them be stumped four times by an opponent before they manage to master it. Your character is a fighter? Let them be bested by a strong foe again and again before they finally succeed. This is the beginning of making them feel real, but those examples are Strength versus Threat, not Strength versus Weakness, and there’s a difference.

Threats are external, and the problem with those motivating the story is you have to make them more and more ridiculous to create drama. Okay, so the first Knight was difficult, but you finally bested them. By the end of the story, you’re hacking down legions of men to break into a sweat. This is okay and will be a part of the story, but the real savory stuff comes from the internal conflicts—that is, when a character’s Strengths butt up against their own shortcomings.

If a character is really good at solving problems, you need to show me why they’re not simply ruler of the planet. If every time you bump up against an issue you beat it in short order, then wouldn’t that care have long since recognized their ability to win everything and just gone straight to the top? Think about what hinders real people—yeah, external factors (i.e. life sucks) can be a big part of it, but you’re kidding yourself if you think that’s the whole of it. Battling with issues of laziness, apathy, identity, vanity, avarice, gluttony, independence, and so much more are just the beginnings of making a character look like a real human being.

Your character will face struggles, whether they’re internal or external, but in order to make victory worthwhile, the struggle has to be worthwhile first. Play up your character’s weakness, tell me what they’re not good at. Show them to me in an environment they’re uncomfortable with, and then really show me why they’re uncomfortable with it, after they fail. It’s hard, because it makes your characters a lot more vulnerable. There’s always the fear some character will scoff at yours for not being able to knock down every enemy in the room, and then you feel somehow personally at fault. You just have to fight through that. It’s worth it!