A limited palette means never having to say you’re sorry. Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay, background splash by Mike

Writing and uploading this in advance in hopes of forestalling any disruption.

It’s been a while since I did something on characterization; the last such was Four Roads To Characterization, back in late 2022.

Hopefully this is a worthy extension of the subject.

While packing recently, I discovered first-hand something that I already knew, deep down inside: I had more neckties than I was ever going to need again.

On The Wearing Of Neckties

My ‘career’ has had four main strands (and a couple of loose threads) before CM came along.

• Accounts Clerk / Bookkeeper / Forensic Bookkeeper – first for a bank, then for a number of businesses. When you deal with people’s money, even by proxy, you have to wear a tie.
• Programmer / Systems Analyst – Where I was working, you were expected to wear a tie (and preferably, a suit) if there was ever the slightest prospect of your even being seen by a client. A different tie on every working day in a fortnight was expected (and the occasional weekend or social event) – and noticed.
• Data Entry – I did this for two censuses in a row, before they moved the whole show to Melbourne. Casual but tidy was completely acceptable, but even junior management (supervisors) were expected to wear a tie. Except after hours and on the regular social events.
• Graphic Artist / Digital Artist / Photo Editing / Website Design – Ties were not essential but could often help when attempting to sell your services to someone, or if you had to work at their place of business. It’s that customer rule again, this time by proxy.

White-collar work, from start to finish (there was some blue-collar stuff in those ‘Loose Threads’).

In two of those four neckties were an essential part of ‘the uniform’; in the other two, there were times when they were expected, times when they were useful, but for the most part, they could be left in the closet.

Status – Now

Now? Not So much. I write at a computer in my home. I can dress as casually as I like, as shabbily as I like. Who knows or cares?

I’ll wear a tie at a wedding or other official occasion. I will probably wear one at a funeral, depending on whose it is and the nature of my relationship with them. I’ll wear a tie if I have to go to court.

The first two are singular occasions, not sustained activities. The last one is now the controlling, defining factor in how many ties I might need: 5 or 6, plus a couple of spares. Because people do notice, even if only subconsciously, when you wear a different one every day.

The fashion lesson doesn’t end there

I mentioned the dress code at the place of my greatest occupational responsibility, but didn’t give you the whole picture. Not only did you have to wear a different tie every day, but it had darned well better color-coordinate with the shirt and jacket and, well, the rest of the wardrobe.

The basic lesson: start with a limited palette – black, white, blue, gray – and learn through trial and error where you can branch out from that, what works and what doesn’t – and always check yourself in the mirror.

(There was a time when red denim jeans were my favorites. You can see the size of the gulf that had to navigated!)

Nowadays – again working from that ‘limited palette” concept – I barely even think about it, I naturally color-coordinate.

Basic advice for those who might find it useful:

• Black and White go with everything – almost.
• Wearing two tones of the same basic color is fine.
• If your pants are blue, your only safe shirt choices are blue or white.
• Red ties and blue suits fight each other. Your shirt had better keep the peace – by force.
• Autumn colors (including tans) make natural combinations with anything but blue, black, or white.
• Green can be an especially difficult color to coordinate. Approach with caution, except on St Patrick’s day. and finally:
• A matched outfit can get away with one splash of bright color. With blue or navy pants, they claim that slot – your tie has to coordinate with that one piece of color. Conservative choices always work better than bold ones in this respect.

Independent Verification

My stepfather used to be a chartered accountant, then became the manager of a nursing home, then of three nursing homes, and oversaw their amalgamation into one BIG nursing home. We were talking about this the other day and he made the same observation that I have done – Weddings, maybe funerals, otherwise hardly ever.

Adding the jury duty / court appearances circumstance is all me, though!

But he then extended the thought – now that he’s semi-retired (and becoming more entrenched in retirement as his health starts showing signs of age), outside of those rare circumstances, he doesn’t think he will ever wear a tie again. He needs two to give him color-coordination options and a third for backup, and that’s it.

And that got me to thinking about what we wear, and how that reflects our life status, and how a change in what we wear can announce that life status – or at least hint at it.

Max, the ubiquitous NPC

Actually, amongst my players, the ubiquitous generic placeholder is usually named “Bob”, but I think “Max” has more scope for flavor.

Bob is generally aged somewhere in his mid-twenties to early 40s. He is of completely unexceptional appearance. He may have a fancy title, but no-one ever uses it. And he’s prone to getting renamed later in his life – if he ever turns up again in-play.

Whenever the PCs encounter an NPC that has not been written up in advance by the GM, he gets given the name “Bob”, however temporarily (one of my resolutions for 2024 is to try to replace Bob with Max).

Sometimes, in genuine passerby-in-the-street moments, I can’t even tell you what Bob Max does for a living. He could be a plumber or a crypto-zoologist, a rocket scientist or salesman, a tramp or a billionaire.

But I can usually give some idea of what he’s wearing, and that yields clues as to his profession. (It doesn’t always work, and sometimes I’ll deliberately mix things up – like the Dentist who always wears Khaki because he likes to, you know, support the troops in his own small way).

The right piece of clothing can amplify character traits, create roleplaying pathways where none existed:

“You are approached by a man in a suit. He’s wearing a save-the-spotted-lion button in his lapel.” That’s it – two facts, one of them generic, and right away you feel the pieces clicking into place about who he is, what he wants, and what he’s doing there. Anything else you add, like a particular speech pattern, is just coloring around the edges.

The Return of Max

When a character shows up regularly, what they were gets genericized and labeled, guided by their personality and any other personal facts that come to light.

It’s natural for people to try and label him (or her). Sometimes this can cause confusion (i.e. story opportunities) when two people get assigned the same label and one then gets mistaken for the other…

Anyway, as soon as this happens, their generalized choice of clothing, their fashion sense if you will, becomes their uniform. If ever someone doesn’t wear their uniform, something has happened to drive that change.

It could be mundane (but very human) – “my kids thought it would be fun to swap the tie I had packed for this one” – to personally devastating (“our house burned down over the weekend, this is the only tie that survived”) to a life-altering change of circumstance (“They’re pensioning me off tomorrow, kid. I’m just getting an early start on my new life, is all. Whatta they gonna do, fire me?”)

Pattern leads to exception and exceptions are gateways. What people can see if they look through that gateway is up to the owner of the character.

The PC

That’s right, all this works for PCs, as well.

You can ask each player, “How does what your character wears reflect who and what they are?” – but unless you get it in writing, you had better be good (and fast) at taking notes.

“What symbols do you project to the casual observer, how are they usually interpreted or misinterpreted, what do you do when that happens, and what do those symbols really mean or represent?

“When do you wear something different, what is distinctively different about that clothing, and why?”

There are lots of great questions like these, and all of them illuminate some aspect of the character.

But then the answers have to be collated, tabulated, analyzed, understood, and translated into the answer to the unasked question, “What will NPCs think when they meet you?” – and it’s all unnecessary prep.

A Better Solution

How about if, instead, right before any NPCs are to meet a PC in-game for the first time this session, you ask a simple question – “what are you wearing today?”.

This seemingly-empty question has some very interesting potential consequences.

1. You get the player to focus on his or her character and not the plot of the moment, better positioning them to roleplay;
2. You get to decide what the NPC will make of the answer, putting you into the mindset of this individual, better positioning you to be able to roleplay;
3. It creates an opportunity for a character moment, a soft interaction (i.e. no hard prep required) that smooths the entrance of this NPC into the plot;
4. You get the other players thinking about how their characters would react in the NPCs place, better positioning them to be able to roleplay;
5. Those other players will also start thinking about the answer to the same question, should it be posed of them, further deepening the bond between player and PC for at least the duration of the session;
6. and finally, if this is something the player has never put any thought into previously, you introduce a new character-defining tool into the campaign, for one and all to use.

Wow, but that’s a lot of mileage to get from one simple question!

But it doesn’t even end there…

Choices as a signal

If, in the course of introducing an NPC for the first time in an adventure, you describe what they usually wear (assuming that the PC has met the NPC often enough to have noticed a pattern) and then mention any aberration from this composite, you create a signal of changing circumstances.

By asking yourself the question, in advance, you give yourself permission to evolve the NPC in some way and demand that you take advantage of it.

Suddenly, they aren’t a static creation – they are an evolving organism in a changing set of personal circumstances, and much closer to being a three-dimensional ‘person’.

The alternative

But, what if the NPC hasn’t been appearing regularly? What if this is, in fact, their first appearance in the game?

That means that instead of measuring what the NPC is wearing against the standard of a pattern that has become familiar, the PC will be measuring the NPC against whatever expectations they have of the position and the sort of person who would fill it. Your choice is then to conform to those expectations, or to create a maverick, or – the best answer of the lot – a realistic person who has one or two points of distinctiveness about them.

In other words, to begin to define them from the word ‘go’, as a 3-D person with a set of personal circumstances, that will lead them to evolve and grow over time.

But the benefits don’t even end there!

Perhaps the most potent effect to come out of all this is simply to remind the GM that the NPCs should have lives outside of their in-game appearances and that occasionally those lives will spill over into the game. It reminds you to transcend the mundane from time to time, not because it furthers the game, or the plot, but because it makes the NPC “furniture” feel more solid.

GENERIC: PC encounters an older woman in a hibiscus-pattern silk dress with a hearing aid and thick tortoise-shell glasses, working as a librarian.

POINT OF DISTINCTION: PC notices that she is moving slowly and tenderly, and has a great deal of trouble lifting her arms to return books to the shelves.

INTERACTION leads inevitably to the question “Are you feeling all right” or something along those lines.

PAYOFF: “In my spare time I teach a skydiving course out at the airport. One of the trainee’s chutes wasn’t packed properly or something and didn’t open when they jumped. And neither did his backup chute. I had to cut my lines, free-fall down to him, grab hold of him with my ship, use it to bind us together, and deploy my backup chute in the nick of time. I think I cracked a rib or two in the process.

Compare the NPC you now perceive to the one that you were imagining back at GENERIC PC or even POINT OF DISTINCTION. This ain’t no ordinary granny no more – she’s Indiana Jones in a Skirt and NOT someone to be taken lightly… And she is NOT going to be forgotten in a hurry; her place in the campaign has been well-and-truly cemented!

Remember – Patterns lead to exceptions, and exceptions are gateways. And if the tie doesn’t match the shirt, someone will always notice it. The more interesting question is always, “why?”

A fairly short article this week, designed to give me more time to work on moving, and on transcribing the Orrorsh material…