This often comes up in discussions of role playing games; it is certainly a problem no matter how it is approached. It has to do with the fact that in attempting to model characters who are different from ourselves as players, we rate them with in-game values representing their abilities, and some of those abilities have much to do with what we might think are the personalities of the characters themselves. For example, if a character is listed as having a certain charisma, but the player’s interpersonal skills are significantly different from that, how do you play the character, and how do you handle in-game character interactions? There are similar problems when a player of ordinary intelligence is suddenly playing a genius. Yet it goes both ways: particularly charismatic or intelligent players sometimes have greater difficulty figuring out how to play dull or dumb characters than their less-gifted player counterparts have pretending to be dashing and bright.
I suppose I should come back to this; I think I’ve treated on the problems related to intelligence and perhaps charisma before. This time, though, I’m looking at the matter of playing a wise character. None of us are so wise as we wish we were, and few of us are so wise as we pretend to be. When we are pretending to be someone wiser than ourselves, how do we make it work as a credible fictional character?
I’ve run a number of characters who were taken to be wise by the other players; it’s not really that easy, but perhaps there are some ways to approach it that are helpful.
In my bathroom drawer at the moment I have a book that is a collection of witty aphorisms and well-stated thoughts. It must not be a very good book. Whenever I leave a good book in that drawer, my wife will begin reading it and take it with her, and I’ll be without reading material. Only this aphorisms book, a printout of Aristotle’s Poetics, and a copy of Ron Edwards’ Sorcerer have survived her interests in recent days. Thus there are probably better collections of quotes out there, and I won’t bother you with the name of this one. However, reading it has reminded me that I once attempted to play a wise character by collecting such words of wisdom and using them in play. It didn’t work at all. I’d like to tell you that it was a good idea that encountered a few minor snags, but in truth the problems seemed insurmountable.
The first problem was simply finding good quotes that could be dropped in the file and used at need. A good quote had to say something wise, and it had to say it in a way that sounded at least clever; at the same time, it couldn’t be familiar. No one was going to think my character particularly wise if he spouted the familiar sayings of Poor Richard’s Almanac, or those aphorisms everyone knows, no matter how pithy or apropos. Merely spouting familiar aphorisms such as Look before you leap or Two heads are better than one would sound trite pretty quickly. Thus I was on a bit of a scavenger hunt to gather as many words of wisdom no one had ever heard that were worth repeating as I could. This was particularly challenging, because if they’re worth repeating, they’ve probably been repeated, and that would ultimately make them familiar. So getting the quotes was a major obstacle.
More difficult, however, was using the quotes. Somehow I had to find a way to organize these such that in any situation I could find and recite one of these wonderful words of wisdom that was appropriate to the situation and helped the characters make better choices. I never managed to do that. Like The Scarlet Pimpernel, I found I suffered from the equivalent of carriage wit: he said that whenever he was publicly insulted, he could always devise the perfectly devastating retort in the carriage on the way home from the party. Situations would arise and pass before I had a chance to think about what to say; the clever quotes I could remember never fit anything that happened to us.
To use aphorisms as a substitute for wisdom, you would have to be so versed in them that they came naturally to mind when situations arose. Frankly, there are better things to memorize, in my experience. In social situations, you’ll have more opportunities to quote Ogden Nash poems and Lewis Carroll witticisms and, dare I say it, Monty Python gags than wise proverbs. Unless you already have that sort of familiarity with such sayings, it’s a lot of effort for a small return on the investment–and if you already know all these words of wisdom, chances are that your gaming group has heard them all by now (that is, from you) and isn’t going to think much of your character repeating them.
So that would seem to be one way not to portray the wise man. I suppose you could try the I Ching or fortune cookie approach, collecting a large number of somewhat vague one-line esoteric statements and choosing one at random to spout at each opportunity. This may make you sound like some religious seer, but it’s unlikely to create the impression of wisdom, since nothing you say will be particularly relevant to anything happening in the game. I knew someone in high school who sometimes approached people and made a statement that was completely incomprehensible; I don’t know where he got it, but I more recently heard Alan Arkin use the exact same string of nonsense in a movie:
Arkin: In my country we have an old saying: Ishkidividi, Ishkidivirn.Other character: Oh. What does that mean?
Arkin: No one knows. It’s a very old saying.
That’s how a random aphorisms approach feels most of the time. If anyone has found a way to use words of wisdom as a technique for making a character seem wise in play, I’d love to hear about it.
Of course, as a referee, one thing that enabled me to play my characters as seemingly wise is the fact that I knew things the players did not. Thus once the players latched on to the fact that a particular character was intended to be wise, they also recognized that his words would point them in the right direction more often than not. I wouldn’t tell them what was going to happen, of course; rather, I would alert them to possibilities, and they would take that advice seriously.
Even though that particular approach relies on player knowledge of a special sort, there are a number of aspects to bringing it alive in play.
One bit that helps in creating the impression of wisdom is the ability to ask important questions. This takes a bit of practice, perhaps even a bit of personal wisdom, but if you as a player can look at the situation and the plans or proposals of your fellows and raise questions about them, this in itself is at least perceived as wise. Socrates was often presented as a teacher who made almost no statements, but always asked questions; today we refer to the Socratic Method as a mode of teaching in which the teacher asks questions and leaves the students to find the answers. It’s quite popular in law schools. On one occasion, my property professor asked a question and took an answer from one of the hands that immediately shot up. Many hands shot up after than answer, and another answer was taken, and another. The bell rang. The professor took three more answers. He then said, “One of those answers is correct,” and dismissed the class. I don’t know if he knew the answer; but it made him seem quite wise as he let us struggle with the questions.
Related to asking questions, wise people advise caution. Certainly there are wonderful sayings along the line of Strike while the iron is hot and He who hesitates is lost, calling us to action and even haste; but nine out of ten times the wise word is to stop, look, and listen before proceeding into whatever lies ahead. The character who advises caution and consideration before action will seem wise.
Somewhere I read a cute sign that said, Warning: please be sure brain is in motion before engaging tongue. One of the best ways to preserve the impression that a character is wise is to keep quiet when he doesn’t have something wise to say. My character Thuliar used this to great effect. He, a half-elf ranger/cleric, was almost always in the company of his companion Guljor, a gnome fighter/illusionist. Guljor talked incessantly, leaping from subject to subject like fleas on a griddle and spitting out a hundred eighty words per minute. Thuliar, on the other hand, spoke slowly, quietly, deliberately, and rarely. One night when I shifted to Thuliar’s voice, the player who played the party leader suddenly told everyone else to be quiet; he didn’t want to miss anything important Thuliar said, and he had come to recognize that Thuliar didn’t say anything unless it was important.
There are other traits that seem to connect with wisdom. Wise people tend to be observant at some level. Some notice the little things people do, some understand human motivations, and some see the big picture. That’s harder to emulate; you almost need to have that ability yourself to make it viable in play. However, if you’re not the referee, perhaps you can make a deal with the referee to treat your particular wisdom as including one of these aspects. Thus if you have the ability to understand people, tell the referee that your wisdom entitles you to know something about what this person is likely to do; if it’s the broad picture you see, ask him how your character would see the current events in their relationship with everything else that has happened. A character can sometimes lift a far greater weight than the player because of his strength score. Why shouldn’t a player have the advantage of seeing things more clearly because his character’s wisdom is high? It may require stepping out of character, but are you really in character at all if you’re not seeing what your character would see, or understanding it as he would?
Of course, sometimes being the wise one merely means not doing stupid things. One of the unattributed aphorisms in that book says Experience enables you to recognize a mistake when you make it again. Most of us know stupid things when we do them, and we do them anyway. Teach yourself at least to restrain your character when you want him to do stupid things, and suddenly he will seem a great deal wiser to everyone. If you want to do foolish things, get yourself a second character like a blustery fighter or a conniving thief, and use your wise character to scold him for his foolishness, and to express exasperation with his antics. Having such a foil in the party will reflect well on you, even if you play both sides.
Next week, something different.
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M. Joseph Young is co-author of Multiverser and Vice President for Development at Valdron Inc. His many contributions to online literature are indexed for convenience, and he looks forward to discussing these things by e-mail or on our Gaming Outpost forums.
