Controlling Your Own Character

I once played a barbarian character that was adventuring in a big city. He was a nomad that chose to leave his tribe after a painful experience. His tribe was mostly composed of hunters and gatherers. While he was noble at heart, he had very little experience with the outside world.

At a local tavern, however, he got in a argument with some really large, really strong fighters. That incident made me take a closer look at my own GMing.

The GM's description was pretty obvious, he could not take these two guys on and survive. The entire party fled the scene based on that warning. The players were pressuring me to do the same.

The GM, at that time, was having problems understanding my motivation for standing up to them. He reemphasized it by saying that those two could kill me in one hit. Yet, I wanted to roleplay this character according to his personality traits as opposed to my knowledge of the game system.

When the fight began, I became unconscious in one hit and was thrown outside the bar. Nobody in the party came to help that character, and the only reason he wasn't killed, was because the GM didn't want me just sitting around with nothing to do.

As a GM, I wanted to make sure that wasn't the case on my campaigns. I wanted the players to fully develop their characters and be free to interpret them in whichever manner they found more appropriate.

How could I possibly achieve that?

The answer to that question has three parts. Some of of those parts are harder to implement than others, but I try my best to follow them on my games.

First, allow the players to do whatever they want. The gaming board coupled with their experience, should allow them to make informed decisions. In case they have a question, they should feel free to ask, but if they don't, I will assume they know what they are doing.

Keep other players from interfering is the second part. Other players will have plenty of reasons to apply peer pressure, but it should all be in character.

This last part is really difficult. Allow the characters to pay the price for their decision. Yes, that may mean dying, and sometimes it's really hard to kill the character off, but removing an intricate part of the game, can also lessen the whole experience.

That GM did teach me a lot about what I wanted out of my campaigns. Allowing the players full control of their characters involves giving them freedom of choice, policing the other players, and most importantly, letting them pay for those decisions. These steps are often times hard to take, but in my opinion, essential to allow them full control of their characters.