Toward a Perfect Character

I recently had a disagreement with the organizer of the Spycraft LARP. We worked under considerable schedule pressure to produce the game. Characters were being changed up until minutes before they were printed out. Even though most of them were proofread a week before, some ugly looking mistakes were introduced during the final two days of development. The typos and the misspellings are an area I identified for improvement. The LARP organizer responded that it is impossible to eliminate mistakes. I disagree.

Character Development FlowchartVolumes of books have been written about defect management. There are times when it is impractical to eliminate all possible defects from a system. It could take more than a year to test every possible combination of characters that could be entered into a tax preparation program. This is no good when the program has to change every eight months due to new tax laws. So in order to eliminate defects you must be practical.

I believe it is possible to implement a process to reduce, and maybe eliminate, errors in character sheets. I know the word process summons images of straitjackets to some. But those folks are only fooling themselves. Processes improve quality.

Here is my process. I introduce the concept of a status to a character sheet. When a character sheet is first written is in the working status. Once the author feels it is ready, then he submits it to the scrutiny of a peer review. Let us call this a review status. Other authors have the opportunity to examine the character and provide constructive criticism. If too many defects are found, the character is rejected and returns to the working status. Otherwise the defects are fixed and the character gains the accepted status. Once a character is accepted, the project leader must review it. If there are more than minor changes, then it returns to working status. If not, then the character is ready for the player and reaches the finished status. If an accepted or finished character is modified, it returns to the working status and must be reviewed again.

Now this process is not so rigid that it cannot be bent. There is little benefit in sending a character back through for review for relatively minor fixes. The important points are 1) all characters are subjected to the scrutiny of your peers and 2) the project leader has the final approval on characters.

You may point out that this requires more time in order to produce a character. But I believe the turnaround time for peer reviews can be improved by setting a reasonable deadline for comments and gathering them electronically, i.e. through the character's wiki talk page.

Does this seem unreasonable for a volunteer project? I do not think so esp. if your goal is to produce characters without embarrassing flaws.

Posted at 6:21 PM