How does your character see the world—and what do they expect from it?

Our reactions are influenced by our expectations. What are your character’s expectations?

I think this can be a helpful way for us as players to improve on our roleplay and improvisation. If we know what our characters expectations are, where they’re in their element, what they’re accustomed to, that information can inform our roleplay when things don’t go according to their expectations, when they’re out of their element, when they’re in an unusual situation.

The Personality Traits, Ideals, Flaws, and Bonds of 5th edition D&D work well because they’re short, direct statements about your character. It’s easy to review them during a session (or right before, as in “it’s been weeks since we last played, who even is this fricker anyways”), and they’re fairly simple to select and jot down.

To make things easy, let’s keep that model—one or two sentences per section, some sort of format that makes it easy to reference in the middle of play.

These character expectations should be easy to jot down on your character sheet. Your character’s actual perspective/experience might be complicated and contradictory (as people often are), but I would try to boil it down to the most dominant “idea” in your character.

This is a rough draft, but let’s go with it and plan to revisit it later.

There are three sections: how your character views the world, what they know how to do in the world/where they are in their element, and how your character views themself.

To illustrate, I’m going to grab two of my characters—two elf bards.

Finnith Fëanor is from the SBotLL campaign. He’s a high elf college of lore bard with the entertainer background.

Finnith views the world as a story with arcs and characters. He wants things to make sense like a story makes sense—foreshadowing, dramatic irony, plot twists and all.

He knows how to put on a show and entertain people with his music.

He views himself as an aspiring bard, who spreads tales of heroes and tells stories of his own adventures.

Madrigal Marvella is from a one-shot. She’s an eladrin college of glamour bard (with a few levels in rogue mastermind) with the courtier background.

Madrigal views the world as a series of games going on around her—some of which she can win.

She knows how to employ her skills at diplomacy (to negotiate with and persuade others).

She views herself as an agent for her own interest. She’ll get herself into and out of trouble as she pleases.

I think the most difficult to boil down is the last section, how the character views themself. I’m not sure that there’s a way to make it easier, since people (and the characters we create) can be very complex.

I’m interested to hear what people think of this, though! Does this seem useful? Can you use this with your own characters? Any advice/feedback to make this better? Let me know in the comments!