Inspired by our adventures in Diablo IV!
This is the first in a new series of posts on character creation for duet games. (We’ve written about creating your player character (PC) for your duet game before.)
I like to think of PC in duet gaming as “primary character” because the player’s character is the protagonist around whom the story will revolve, though depending on your personality and your character’s, your adventures might also involve quests important to the DMPC/GMPC [the Storyteller’s player character and your PC’s main companion(s)].
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Character Class + Design
The angle we’ll take here looks at character creation from the vantage point of character class and the role it plays in backstory and the motivations that drive characters forward. For our examples, I’ll actually be pulling from mine and Jonathan’s recent delight (and obsession) with Diablo IV which has a bonus, third open beta this coming weekend. (How soon can June 2nd get here for the early access to launch?! Or June 6th for official release?!)
During our second weekend of open beta play, we fell more naturally into in-game RP, in part because we already knew the story and so had more space to make our own. I think the other part was simply being more comfortable playing together again.
As a quick aside, we call Diablo III my gateway game because it helped pave the way for me to want to play D&D, and it also served as a huge inspiration behind my character, Briseras, who you’ll find in the Age of Azuria series and whose adventures inspired our Land of Vampires campaign.
We switched back and forth between two sets of characters during the open beta (with a brief foray into the third so Jonathan could play a necromancer). But for today’s post, I’m going to focus on the sorcerer and barbarian combo.
Sorceress + Barbarian
To avoid confusion, allow me a moment to differentiate between the Diablo IV classes and D&D classes.
The Diablo IV sorceress feels quite druidy to me. It’s a class based in elemental magic where you can have specialized builds such as fire or lightning. (As someone who often plays druids and who gravitates to spells that use fire, I naturally, pardon the pun, also gravitated to a sorcerer fire build. It. Was Awesome.) There’s of course a wizard-y element here too, but druids resonate with me more, and I also am more apt to picture a druid casting with a staff and calling hydras and giant snakes up from the earth to devour their enemies.
Likewise, the Diablo IV barbarian class feels like a fighter or even a paladin to me, though perhaps not with the “lay on hands” aspect of healing energy that paladins have. The barbarian build involves lots of weapon options and weapon variety with different specializations.
Backstory
Now with the background pieces covered, let’s look at backstory. At least in the early access beta, we didn’t see specific reasons why individual characters (as determined by their class) were making their way to this space sacred to the Horadrim (a sacred order in the world of Sanctuary [the world of Diablo] that protects the human realm from demon incursions). Diablo III does include this as a class-specific opening and as part of their transitions between acts and major scenes, so I’m assuming we’ll have this in later versions of the game.
But I find it even more fun to make up our own reasons!
This intimately relates to character creation in D&D because it needs to be clear why our characters are proceeding along on their dangerous adventures. (See a key previous post on the importance of internal conflict in one-on-one gaming.)
Of course we want to play with our duet partner, tell cool stories, go new places, and encounter fascinating creatures, but why are our characters risking their lives on their quests? Why are they daring to journey to these new unknown locations and cultures? These are the sorts of questions we want to be asking ourselves as we build our characters.
I want to add here, though, for those who aren’t quite as comfortable with the character backstory process first, that we have a list of backstory questions to help you, and second, that this will also be something you develop as you go. Your character’s motivations will change along the way. Stories are inherently about change. I’m also a big proponent of developing the backstory as you go along. We’ll see what this look like in process in the second post of this series.
We spend quite a bit of time in the setup for the Land of Vampires campaign in helping develop character motivation for the PC. This was one of the things I appreciated about the Waterdeep City Guide in Waterdeep: Dragon Heist.
It was also one of my frustrations with Descent into Avernus. For the most part, the early conflicts of that campaign ask characters to be motivated by money and, when that isn’t motivation enough, force them to do what the authority figures (and story narrative) demand under pain of death.
Character Class and Character Backstory
So how do we take character class into consideration when trying to figure out who our characters were before they set out on their life of adventure? Or, in slightly different situations, how does this special gifting of magic and/or ability set them onto their adventuring path?
One of my favorite examples of thoughtful and creative considerations here are the character backstories in season two of Critical Role. Taking Caleb for instance, we meet him at level one, but that is only after he’s had significant and transformative experiences as a wizard. He hasn’t just happened upon his magical ability and now he needs to know what to do with it. He had a scarring experience because of his magical ability, and now he wants to change his relationship to it.
Our Diablo IV Character Backstories
Returning to our characters in Diablo IV, how did Jonathan and I go about setting up backstories for Adriele, my sorceress, and Volker, his barbarian?
By way of clarification, we aren’t deliberately asking these questions one after the next before we get started. For us, it’s more intuitive, and that may be the case for you as well. But looking back on the process and what I know we were working to figure out along the way, this is how we went about it.
For Adriele, I wanted her backstory to be based in her experience with elemental magic, especially with fire. Setting aside the norms of Sanctuary itself, how common is fire magic in the micro-version of Sanctuary that is our couch co-op? Do lots of sorcerers have access to it, or is Adriele unique in this way?
The answers to these questions will help me move into how Adriele feels about and understands her magic. Is it something she embraces or something she fears? Does she see her magic as an inherent part of herself or in some ways separate from herself, outside of her control?
My second set of questions for Adriele revolve around how this gifting in fire magic set her upon her quest. In this instance, I’m leaning on this significant character trait of being a magical sorceress to use that as the catalyst for Adriele’s adventure. It marks a point of dramatic change: her life before and her life after.
Loosely, with these in mind, I also want to set up how Adriele’s backstory put her on a path to collide with Jonathan’s PC Volker. Depending on your own preferences, this is something I’d make room for with your duet parter, and then the two of you can try out some different backstory possibilities and find the one that works best for you. Or, if you prefer, have the two meet in-game like we do in the Crystalline Curse Trilogy or the Land of Vampires campaign.
So there you have it! Questions on character backstory based in character class! For our second post, I’ll share my initial backstory for Adriele, both the pieces I’ve figured out already and those that I’m still tinkering with.
Jonathan and I also thought it would be fun to share our couch co-oping with all of you! We made an initial stream of Diablo III and our creation of new characters there on our YouTube channel which you can watch here. I talk through some of these character creation ideas there as well. This is the first time we’ve ever tried video game streaming, and we were working with what we had so the sound may not be ideal. We’ll be working on that between now and June when we’re hoping to stream our co-op of our Diablo IV playthrough and the characters we choose for that!
How do you incorporate your character’s class into their backstory? Do you start with the backstory and choose the class from there? Let us know in the comments below!
Images note: The images in this post are screenshots from my Diablo IV characters from the open beta.
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