Amelia Tran
Fortune Favours the Kobold: The Salience of TTRPG Character-Creation Choices in Player-Character Sentimentality
Biography
Amelia Tran is a student of Professional Communication who unceasingly strives to push the limits of where we look when we think of “communications”. Double-minoring in English and Communication Design, her fascination of the Story is never quite quelled. Whether it is the dense readings of 1800s semiotics (from which she was inspired to pursue communications), or the visual design of an upcoming video game, her eye for detail and enthusiasm to dive head-first into whatever niche she can find means you are bound to at least learn something new.
With confidence across just about every medium, Amelia proficiently adapts to any challenge thrown their way. Tailoring messaging to a different channel, speaking to an unfamiliar audience, or even churning out a last-minute change, she reliably finds unlikely resources and uses creative problem-solving to get the goal accomplished.
Details of Project
It all started when a lovable, but entirely joke of a character, Human-Rogue named Doot Doot, died in a session of Worlds Without Number (WWN). WWN is a Tabletop Role-Playing Game (TTRPG), where you make a fantastical character who sets out on adventures with a team of other characters made by your friends. Subject to the rules of the Game Master, dice, and improvisation, every decision you make can lead to the death of your character. Long story short, when my character Doot Doot died, I felt such a grief that I began to wonder if I could academically justify it; lest I confront a more personal thesis.
Fortune Favours the Kobold: The Salience of TTRPG Character-Creation Choices in Player-Character Sentimentality is a research project that sidesteps the player-character bonding that occurs over time in-game, to explore the initial, unrendered state of a character, and how it may portent emotional reactions from their player.
Though it is near impossible to divisively attribute sentiment to either character-creation or post-creation, secondary resources from a literature review combined with primary research of peers and online discourse formed a sure link between traits of character-creation and player investment. Precisely put, unless explicitly stated, the comparative impacts on player-character sentimentality of character-creation, versus post-creation, are not exclusive relationships, but inclusive ones. However, this does not prevent us from mapping effects of certain character-creation choices.
To explore different types of character-creation choices, three character archetypes were created: Self-Inspired, Comedic, and Premade/Preset. For a character to be categorized as any one of these types, it had to fulfill certain criteria. For example, a character that took advantage of many customization options could only be Self-Inspired or Comedic, as players get no customization options for Premade. On the other hand, if the character was cohesive with the tone of the setting, it could not be a Comedic one. Each of these criterion linked to elements of sentimentality, like: motive fulfillment, opportunity for learning, or likenessing.
By coding each choice to a type of character, and then seeing how many elements of sentimentality connected to each type, degrees of sentimentality could be identified for said character types. Unsurprisingly, Self-Inspired characters have the highest potential for player-character sentimentality. But, in looking at the most significant character-creation choices–and the specific sentimentality factors they link to–that push Self-Inspired on top, one also sees the overlap with the Comedic archetype.
Ultimately this research project endeavoured to understand what character traits were best at getting under a player’s skin. And while TTRPGs are uniquely suited for seeing this connection, these findings can arguably apply to other forms of narrative media.