B. asks:

I just finished the first session of a new campaign. One of my players pitched a character who was “very strange, but in a charming way.” In the first scene she told the chief of police that his eyes reminded her of her dead mother, then she ran in circles around another NPC, sat down cross-legged on the floor in front of him, and asked what his favorite color was.

Both NPCs reacted poorly. Not hostile. But definitely “I don’t want to talk to this nutjob.” My player then reminded me that, while her character is strange, other people are supposed to find the strangeness charming.

I’m not sure what to do. This PC is a stranger in town and she basically just accosted these people. I had the NPCs react the way that I thought they would naturally react to someone behaving like this.

What should I do? Should I just have NPCs find her antics charming, even if I don’t?

I suspect your player is aiming for what I think of as the “feral weirdo” or “hyper-kooky” archetype, often seen in anime. Examples off the top of my head include:

• Edward from Cowboy Bebop
• Mako from Kill la Kill
• Naruto from Naruto (particularly in the first couple arcs, then he socializes a bit)
• Anya from Spy x Family

Non-anime examples include Anya from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter.

There’s a wide range to these characters and the types of stories they can exist in, but the less comical the tone, the more delicate the balance is.

Assuming that this is what your player is aiming for:

If you don’t think this is an archetype you can support at the table, then you need to have a frank discussion with the player. Try to avoid being judgmental. I don’t think this player did anything wrong by aiming for this archetype, but the tonal mismatch between what you’re running and the character they want to play is going to make for a frustrating experience.

If, understanding the archetype, you want to support the player, I think you’ll still need to have a frank discussion with them: Yes, there are people who will find the feral hyper-weirdo charming. But there will also be people (often lots of people) who don’t. Often even people who end up being the hyper-weirdo’s best friends will initially be, “WTF?”

This is a two-way contract: The player needs to make sure that their antics do, in fact, have a charming, whimsical quality to them. The player also needs to accept that not everyone will like them — Luna Lovegood has to interact with Draco Malfoy; Mako with Nanon and Nui; etc. On the other hand, you’ll be promising that there will be characters who DO accept them and find them charming. If you can’t do that, then circle back to, “I can’t support this archetype in this game.”

The more general tip here is, if you don’t understand a character concept or the actions that a player is taking in your game, it can be very useful to cut straight to the point and ask them what their goal is. Using analogies to characters from other mediums isn’t the only way to figure things out, but it can be a very effective way of quickly understanding what the player is aiming for and the types of responses and outcomes they expect their actions to have.

Go to Ask the Alexandrian #1