{"id":392,"date":"2014-08-18T16:47:58","date_gmt":"2014-08-18T16:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/casting-your-game-wwphitm\/"},"modified":"2023-02-26T18:33:38","modified_gmt":"2023-02-26T18:33:38","slug":"casting-your-game-wwphitm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/casting-your-game-wwphitm\/","title":{"rendered":"Casting Your Game: WWPHITM?"},"content":{"rendered":"

As most of you reading this probably already know, QAGS<\/a> has a Word called \u201cWho Would Play Him\/Her In The Movie?\u201d While I really doubt we\u2019re the first game to use that kind of descriptor, it surprises me that it\u2019s not suggested in more RPGs. Personally, I define it for nearly every character I play regardless of what system I\u2019m using, and in a lot of cases once I know who I\u2019d cast as the character, everything else falls into place.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019m not really sure what kind of character I want to play, sometimes I\u2019ll come up with the WWPHITM? and then build the character around it. This is especially helpful when I want to avoid falling back on one of my \u201cdefault\u201d character types. Unless the game aims for almost campy adherence to genre conventions or I want to play an archetypal character, I usually try to avoid the most obvious choices. So, for example, if I\u2019m making up a character for M-Force, I\u2019ll skip right past Bruce Campbell and Sarah Michelle Gellar (we\u2019ve all seen plenty of Ash and Buffy clones already) and pick somebody like Owen Wilson, who I immediately picture as the loose cannon type. Following that thread, I come up with an easy-going beach bum type–maybe even a surfer dude–who\u2019s a little impulsive and reckless when it comes to monster hunting, possibly because he really doesn\u2019t have much to lose. If I\u2019m not afraid of a little cliche, I can even throw in a brutally monster-eaten family or love interest to add a layer of angst behind the carefree exterior. From there, the character pretty much writes itself.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Part of the usefulness of WWPHITM? lies in the fact that, unlike most game stats, it\u2019s not about the character\u2019s abilities, it\u2019s about personality. You\u2019re not going to get any points or bonuses out of it, so even the worst min\/maxer doesn\u2019t have any incentive beyond describing the character. Sometimes having this kind of personality template even encourages combat munchkins to jump in on parts of the game that don\u2019t involve hitting things with a pointy stick.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the things I like most about WWPHITM?, and what makes it a useful tool for GMs as well as players, is that it\u2019s a good way of avoiding one-note characters. Since–at least if you don\u2019t pick someone who\u2019s seriously typecast–you\u2019ve probably seen a particular actor playing a bunch of different types of characters, you\u2019ve got a larger frame of reference for how the character might act than if you\u2019ve just got some stats and a little background. This goes double for NPCs, who the GM often has to make interesting on the fly. Most gruff blacksmiths and mysterious wizards are interchangeable; unless one of them\u2019s got an interesting name, players might be hard pressed to remember which is which later on in the campaign. If the GM plays one gruff blacksmith as John Goodman and the other as Ian McShane (or for that matter, uses these two actors as templates for the mysterious wizards), the players are going to be much more likely to remember them as something other than Stock Character #37.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even if you\u2019re not playing QAGS, try thinking of WWPHITM? next time you make a character or NPC. If you\u2019re like me, you\u2019ll find it so useful you\u2019ll play casting director for your whole game.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As most of you reading this probably already know, QAGS has a Word called \u201cWho Would Play Him\/Her In The Movie?\u201d While I really doubt we\u2019re the first game to use that kind of descriptor, it surprises me that it\u2019s not suggested in more RPGs. Personally, I define it for nearly every character I play…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3885,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2005],"tags":[43,130,187,189,1595,1596,1597,1598,1599,1655,1850,2112],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-qags-corner","tag-qags","tag-character-creation","tag-ash","tag-buffy","tag-john-goodman","tag-ian-mcshane","tag-owen-wilson","tag-sarah-michelle-gellar","tag-bruce-campbell","tag-wwphitm","tag-ash-williams","tag-buffy-the-vampire-slayer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3069,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions\/3069"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deathcookie.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}