Elements of incongruity
Created: 2025-02-03
One easy way to create this is to ensure that each creature, community, organisation, or whatever includes at least one element of incongruity
See in context at Elements of incongruity
Created: 2025-02-03
Incongruous character trait. Children’s fiction uses this sort of thing all the time. (‘It turned out that the dragon secretly loved dancing!‘) This sort of thing can serve to trip up players who make over-hasty assumptions about how such characters will behave, while also providing resources for those who bother to get to know them properly, allowing them to be more easily befriended or manipulated by the PCs.
See in context at Elements of incongruity
Created: 2025-02-03
An important sub-type is the incongruous moral position, whereby an otherwise-decent person turns out to harbour some horrible prejudice or moral blind spot, or a seemingly-wicked or amoral person turns out to have at least one moral line they genuinely will not cross.
See in context at Elements of incongruity
Created: 2025-02-03
But you can get much more mileage out of having a difference, instead: something that sets them apart in kind rather than just degree, a difference which can serve as a source of strength or as a wedge to drive them apart.
See in context at Elements of incongruity
Created: 2025-02-03
The character is not who they seem to be. The face they present to the world is a performance, but their true nature is very different to what they pretend, and at moments of crisis the real them shines through.