In the Official Series Bible Core Book as it exists now, there is some discussion of the roles supporting characters and villains play. All of them are pretty practical, in terms of supplying characters with equipment, information, missions, and people to fight. I’m wondering what other roles, obligatory or optional, might need to be filled? Does a character need emotional support? A muse? A mentor? Should those roles be filled by supporting characters, or might the player characters fill these roles for each other? Is this a level of consideration that we should all be giving to the game going into it, to better create roleplaying opportunities, a sense of versimilitude, and the development of smoething more story-driven?
Roleplaying games are already filled with archetypes, because that’s essentially what character classes and templates are. Should we explore personality templates as well, Jungian shortcuts to give us a better handle on how to play the character, and allowing players to get a sense of how their player characters will interact and make it easier to get into actual roleplaying? If your character is a “businessman” archetype, there to get the job done with no emotional ties, and my character is a “child” archetype, with a need to be protected and nurtured and validated, we both know how to play the characters, we can see how they’ll get along and where the interesting conflict will come into play. Is that stuff not as important as knowing what you need to roll to hit and how your powers work, if it’s really a roleplaying game?
In the revised and expanded OSB, I want to touch on these things, but not go too in depth. I think these concepts could be a book until itself. What do you think? What roles within the story do you think are essential and should be included? What personality archetypes do you think are universal enough to be included for use with any genre or setting?
