I was briefly involved in a discussion at one time about character arcs. I mentioned that, as an old school guy, I had no truck with preplanned character stories and did nothing to support them. Any player with preconceived notions of their character’s arc are just SOL in an old school game. Such a statement was regarded as heresy by the youngsters and there wasn’t much quality discussion in that forum, so I dropped it then.

I’ve been thinking about the topic, though, and can see how one of the foundations of classic play works against much that’s pre-planned. Pre-planned character stories? Nope. Pre-planned character development? Nope. Involved backstories intended to affect play and what the GM prepares? Nope.

I see one of the hallmarks of classic play as playing to find out. That is, we prepare situations that provide confict and adventure and choices to be made of the kinds found in literature, then place characters in the midst of it all and play to see what happens. If a good story results, we’re happy. If a disjointed story results, we’re happy. If a tale of catastrophe and woe results, we’re happy. We’re not attempting to make any specific story result.

Because of that desire to find out what happens in play, we can preclude anything done to predetermine results. For example, the practice of players developing involved backstories that are intended to set up their characters for some specific storylines doesn’t really fit. As those background events weren’t played out, they don’t fit the style. The player didn’t find out any of it via play. (There are also other issues with such background stories, though not pertinent here.)

The same with character arcs. The player may want to develop the character’s history in some specific fashion. That doesn’t mesh well with the approach of developing the character only according to what happens in play. The player may want the PC to become a powerful general involved in overthrowing a despotic emperor, yet the results of play may very well work against that. For the player to try to work to that end when the rest of the group would make choices that don’t support it can make for strained play at the table; no player should be trying to force the fiction in a specific direction.

This also applies to builds. I’ll suggest that good systems don’t allow for any specific builds to be overall better than any others, just on the face of it. A player trying to plan a build for a PC’s entire career at the outset of play just doesn’t work, as it involved trying to force the fiction in a specific direction. The best practice in eliminating this is to have a system that really doesn’t support detailed builds in the first place, removing the temptation for such, and allowing players to concentrate more on interesting play.