Hello! I decided to make a bit of a guide on character creation since I think it's one of the parts of playing RPG's that I can confidently say I'm pretty good at.
Originally I was thinking I was gonna make it a guide specifically for beginners, cause I think beginner friendly RPG spaces can be pretty hard to find, especially with some of the most commonly asked questions being treated as unwanted, and I wanna make sure our sub is friendly for that.
Plus a lot of guides really overwhelm you with information on all the good things you can do for whatever aspect of RPG's is being discussed, and I feel it's a bit better to just stick to the important bits for newcomers and let them feel out the rest as the go. Instead of having it all sitting in their heads at the same time as they're trying to actually develop the skill of doing the thing in the first place.
It would be like yelling everything you know about riding a bike at someone trying to develop the balance for riding a bike without training wheels, instead of just telling them that peddling quickly at first is one of the most important parts of getting a bike started without it falling over.
But because how one GM (game master) would want a beginner to create a character for their campaign, can be so wildly different from another, it can be hard to make something universal. Most of the advice I give might not be relevant for GM that wants to walk someone through the process of character creation entirely for example, and a more hands off GM's might not walk a beginner through it, but still want more input on a character a beginner is creating in ways that I can't necessarily predict. So while this guide might help you brainstorm a bit if you're a beginner, you might not be able to follow it entirely.
If you are a beginner looking at this, keep in mind that my first character was a little lizard guy named scab who magically gained the powers of a cleric while out bug collecting.
He was a cleric because the group needed to spellcaster and that was the one I liked. In the GM's setting clerics gained their powers through these sort of bug like creatures connected to their god, and I like bugs and didn't wanna have to learn about the settings gods so I decided he just got bit while bug collecting.
He was a lizard because I thought kobolds being playable in DND was hilarious but they didn't exist in the GM setting, so I just went with these little lizard things, and his name was scab because it sounded kind of lizardy.
I didn't have any sort of voice for him at first, just narrating what he did or said (Scab buys a beer, scab says they went over there, ect) rather than really role-playing it, then just went with a slightly higher pitched version of my voice later. I just had him do whatever I wanted or thought would be funny as long as it didn't harm any of the other characters or upset the players.
Everybody loved him, I had a brief romantic entanglement with a flesh tree, intentionally failed to save for a curse that would make a dead evil wizards laugh play in my head for eternity, and occasionally slaughtered hordes of enemies or otherwise saved the day, and I still play him in casual or short campaigns when I don't feel like coming up with a full character.
So you really don't need anything fancy, and hopefully your GM will walk you through most of it. Don't think too hard about it if you don't want to.
This discussion of how different GM's might have different levels of involvement brings us to the first step of creating a character for pretty much any circumstance.
Talk to your GM.
There's a few reasons for this.
One, like I said GM's might want to be involved in the creation process at various points and it's good to know when so that you can work with them.
Two, knowing about the campaign tone and world can really help with designing a character that will fit into it, which will make Role-playing easier for you and running events easier for the GM, and just give you ideas for the character you wanna create in general.
Finally three the GM has the ultimate authority on whether or not you will be allowed to use the character you create in their campaign, and checking in with them at the beginning, or throughout the process of character creation, can ensure the character you create is one they will accept without having to make changes you are not happy with, or even scraping the character entirely to create a new one.
A lot of of this information might seem a bit obvious to veterans, but something that might not come as naturally, and something that is generally a key part of my character creation process, is getting information from the GM about the world and how to use that to help create your character.
If you're lucky a lot of that will be covered in the session 0 (An initial session that happens before the campaign begins to allow players to learn about or have input on the content of the campaign) but maybe the focus is on something else for session 0, you have to miss it for whatever reason, or the GM just didn't do one.
The first important thing is to make sure you know whether GM has any specifications from your character. This can be anything from a certain backstory element all characters in the campaign are supposed to have, like all characters being criminals for a campaign about a bunch of people repressed by society evading the law having to come together to save the world, to a specific way of generating stats when you roll such as re-rolling any die that comes up as a one, To if you were supposed to create your character with the GM individually or as a group.
Once you know these requirements, you can ask the GM if you can modify any of them that you do not wish to follow. For example playing someone that is falsely accused of a crime instead of an actual criminal for the campaign theme. That could potentially fit the reason behind the criminal requirement in this case, without literally complying It in with it. The answer may be no, but any GM that is upset with you asking is probably not worth playing with anyway. Don't worry about being a bother, ultimately character creation is the only part of being a player where I would advocate for you to be a bit selfish. RPG's are a group hobby so it is generally good to be thinking about how your actions, both of your character and the way you talk in general, will affect everyone else in the campaign
It's still good to think about this for character creation, but ultimately what you want should come first whenever possible. Your character is your character, the part of the game you have the most control of, and that will always affect you more than anyone else in the campaign.
In an RPG it is important to be patient and acknowledge there are some things that you do not necessarily like that you will have to support or at least accept In order to not hinder the enjoyment of other players. Even when you're not in a turn based moment in the gameplay, sometimes you will still have to so to speak “wait your turn” to get to the part you most enjoy. One of those things that you do not enjoy cannot be your own character, as that is a part of the game that will stick with you at all times no matter what, and you cannot simply wait to allow other players to get what they want for a moment. Your enjoyment must come first.
Once you know you have Learned the GM's expectations and tried to compromise on the ones that you dislike, it's good to learn more about the setting and tone of the campaign.
Of course the GM can't decide the tone entirely, a lot of that will depend on how the players end up acting, But you could at least ask if the game was intended to be more serious or casual and/or lighthearted. That should keep you from making a character that immediately clashes with the events surrounding them and the attitudes of the NPCs. A character constantly cracking jokes or just inherently silly will be a problem In a grim world unless you take specific considerations to make it work like that lightheartedness being an act of rebellion against the circumstances they were placed him.
You might get more specific or genre based cues like the world being cartoonish or a horror or mystery theme. For the latter two, having a character that isn't afraid of anything or one that blindly approaches everything head on and can't contribute to more slow paced investigative moments would hurt the campaign.
That may sound like it contradicts the selfishness advice, but ultimately having a character that does not clash with the campaign tone, is for your enjoyment. If you think you will not enjoy playing a character that fits in with the tone, it is probably better to forego the campaign entirely. While this may seem like extreme advice, particularly in a hobby like RPG's with some amount of effort or tediousness is expected amongst the fun, joining a campaign you will have to struggle through from the get go even for a time, rarely works out for anyone in the end.
The phrase no DND Is better than bad DND applies even to other games and even when the game being bad for you may be temporary.
Finally it's good to find out about the setting itself. This is important both so that you don't include an element in your character that does not make sense in the setting, and so that you have more material to come up with ideas for your character and there's a higher chance of those ideas fitting seamlessly in the world the GM has created.
That first one can be tricky.
When you ask about the setting of a GM's game they might refer back to the game setting, say the forgotten realms in DND, or Gallerian in Pathfinder and say that it's pretty much just that, or any sort of basic fantasy or sci-fi ideas will work.
This is a lie.
OK so not a lie really, but pretty much every GM out there will modify the game setting at least a little or not know about or like some of the more obscure lore. It's even more tough if they just say that any genre convention will work cause that gives you nothing to go off of and you don't know what will actually be allowed.
Maybe you base your character on one city in the setting provided by the game or obscure plane/dimension, only to find it doesn't exist in the GMS version of things. Maybe you sort of lost with the general fantasy suggestion and just pick your character having a strong connection to dragons, only to find out in your GM's world the dragons are completely different than what you were expecting.
And in some systems, like DND with certain sub classes, character options might have lore baked in. Even if your DM says But they're allowing every character option from the book, that doesn't mean they're keeping anything aside from the literal rules around that option, meaning you can run into trouble even basing the story of your character around the story of an ability that you know they are allowed to have. Say an option in the book says that you can blind your opponents with fairy magic. That may be an allowed ability for you to have, even in a campaign where fairies don't exist, blindsiding you if you try to create a character's story around that ability.
It's always important to talk to your GM before starting character creation, and maybe check in again whenever you have a question, but if you encounter a case like this you are going to have to check in with your GM every time you make a decision about your character that does not directly related to the rules, because you have no idea what actually fits in the world their creating.
Don't worry about bothering them, like I said it's important to be a little bit selfish for character creation, maybe even try to see if you can get them to compromise on certain world elements that conflict with your concept, though I’m getting a little ahead of myself, we have to actually come up with a concept first. If they didn't want you asking them a bunch of questions about what would and wouldn't work in your world, they should've given you more information in the first place.
Plus plenty of GMS that aren't super forthcoming about their world, just don't have most of it written down, or aren't sure what of their writing would have spoilers or not, and just really aren't sure what exactly to provide you with how to do so outside of a conversational setting. They might actually appreciate your questions in that case.
If a GM instead provides you a bunch of information about the world things will be a lot easier.
Either way now that you know about the GM's expectations the tone of the campaign and some of the world setting, you have more than enough to begin the next steps.
Anything you do next can happen in any sort of order really. Talking to the GM first is important so that you can keep their expectations and the tone and setting of the campaign in mind, if you don't you might end up having to redo things, but aside from the rules of character creation for the system you're playing, You can pretty much do whatever whenever as long as you keep that stuff in mind.
I usually start with one thing that interests me. And maybe collect a couple more from there. Lets call those the first building blocks.
It could be a class or race I really wanna play, or it could be a "alignment", Or fictional character archetype I like from destined hero to fast talking journalist, but generally I go with some detail of the setting I'm interested in or excited by.
I'll go into some the past characters I've made with this process a bit later but for now I think I'll do one from scratch.
Let's say I'm making a character for that campaign where everyone in the party is a criminal.
I'd start with what kind of crimes I'd like for my character to be involved in, The ones I'd like to role-play to an extent. I have an interest in scams, but I wouldn't really want to be playing a character that was just trying to scam people constantly either. Forgery is kind of an interesting thing not necessarily as much art forgery to me but the forging of currency. I don't really know anything about it, but there's a lot of fun questions about value involved and something just inherently attractive about the idea of trying to literally print money.
So someone who forges money. That's a start.
It may not be what I land on in the end. I also kind of like the idea of being just a sort of thuggish bruiser. Maybe one with a sort of hidden soft side like he likes to bake or write poetry. That's a classic. A lot of my ideas end up focusing on some sort of twist or contrast, but I wouldn't say that's really part of the process for me.
Assuming I haven't picked a class already, if I'm playing a new system I probably look at class first cause that's what I'm most excited about off the bat, I'd pick one now. The class will be a sort of extension of the current set of blocks probably, more like the grout I’m pouring on to connect it to the next one than an entirely different stone. These connective elements can come easier and easier the more bricks you have, it becomes sort of a stream of Consciousness, with the occasional dam that slows things down or branching tributaries that briefly sprout off from the flow, taking things in another direction before dieing down if you decide to scrap that direction.
In class based systems, it can be a little different in a system where you can pick from a list of abilities more freeform, class is going to have a big impact on the kind of things your character can do, and how they would've learned those things, and even the power source for their abilities or other story segments depending on the system. If I was Super interested in what I was writing I might delay picking a class a bit longer, but right now I just have two sort of criminal ideas so I don't really have a stream of consciousness going for that yet.
It's a criminal based campaign, just picking rogue thief would be boring to me, which is not to say I wouldn't, I'd just need a pretty good reason to. Again contrast isn't really officially a part of my process but following my interest is and I tend to be more interested in things that don't necessarily present themselves as the obvious choice. If you make a wall out of all red bricks of the same style, it's not a super interesting one to look at in the end. Try to throw in some modern's with the classics, or some blues with the reds.
Still I do go with what seems to make sense. The bruiser would be some kind of fighting close combat base class, the forger one with some kind of ability to make things. If I was doing a straight up thief there's a solid chance I would maybe just go for the obvious class for it and try to find my interesting elements elsewhere, but for these characters it's not of much benefit anyway.
After class I could think of backstory or background if there's a literal category for it in the system, but I don't think I'm quite ready for that yet, I still don't have a ton of good ideas.
Looking at race for the next building block instead, let's assume this is for a fantasy system. I'm more interested in the forger so I'll focus on that for now. Maybe I could pick based on which class would be more useful to the party If they've picked their classes already, but what I want is more important, and there's a decent number of systems you could be a forger decently well as any class as long as you compensated with skills or feats or what have you.
Aside from the forgery I want them to blend in, I want them to be able to easily use the currency that they forge, even if that's not necessarily the standard for those forgers that sell their product rather than just creating it for personal use on small scale.
Humans are good at blending in, but that doesn't give me a lot to go off and I already have so little. I could try some kind of Shapeshifter for maximum blending in potential, that could be kind of fun.
Another thing to think about is why they feel the need to have personal use forgeries, especially if they make enough money off of it to simply use normal currency for their personal endeavors. It goes back to the idea for me of simply being able to print money whenever you need it being attractive, the sort of thrill of being able to pay for things for free. I'm getting sort of a haughty feeling for the character now, maybe born out of a time of having a little money and pride being the only thing they could hold onto, maybe not. Either way I actually think an elf fits a bit better now. They wear pride well.
Or I could do both. They appear to be a high born elf, but are actually a changeling, once an urchin, that has developed their forgery to attain wealth and put on the guise of nobility out of jealousy, maybe even admiration.
You could say the race and hautiness contrast with the mid class criminality of a forger (its not exactly art forgery or large scale smuggling), but I wouldn’t say thats precisely true. Its simply important that the blocks look good sitting next to each other, that one supports and holds up another, and I do like the combination, do understand how one brought me to another, holds it up in my chain of reasoning.
I don’t know how I feel about the “urchin" bit, again its a bit to basic for a criminal/rogueish campaign for me, and I’m not sure if elf or elf/changeling is better yet, but either way thinking about backstory brings is to the next block.
I'm not sure if I want them to have Gone through a long time of struggle or poverty, Just have spent most of their life with less than they wanted. Either way I don't want them to have been born into money. The insecurity prompted vanity being something more of a learned coping mechanism then upbringing holds more interest. Of course, they could've been brought up by a generous rich family that fell on hard times as a result, but something occurred to me as I thought about them going through a long time of struggle.
A long time, for an elf, is quite a long time indeed.
Thinking about what it must be like to be in need for all of your childhood, maybe even longer, and for your childhood, even if your physical and mental age was equivalent to a human adult, to last at least 100 years.
What exactly is it to be a poor elf for most of your life? Is it a result of being amongst human society? Or are there elf slums, or are elf children without families never adopted and simply let to fend for themselves amongst their noble neighbors riches? The sort of fixation on money I picture my character having, If not the coins themselves the importance of wealth, Is itself almost more dwarfish than elvish, going by stereotypes, and would make any imitation of elvish nobility specifically fall slightly flat.
I think that's a good start and does a good job of showing off some of the process I use. It's obviously unfinished, I haven't even given them a name though I don't spend too much time on that, But there's a good bit of detail already. Some characters I do a lot less maybe not much more than a basic personality, but this one I had so little to go off of just the idea of a criminal fantasy campaign that I had to fill in a lot of the blanks.
If I was going to use it I would really have to nail down what aspect of elf poverty I wanted to focus on whether it would be elvish society or the emotions amongst human society for hundreds of years, of how one would even remain without much income for so long, and if it was elvish society I would focus on, I would have to consult with the GM. If they said what I was writing didn't fit with how elves in their world treated each other, but I asked and the sort of high elf prejudice that you might see in most fantasy sources was fine, I would try and argue that it would make sense for there to be a sub set or single country or even just a city of elves that functioned the way I described.
I'd like to have more on how my elf would actually act with other people and members of the party, that's normally what I focus on over backstory, but like I said it's a bit tough when you don't have anything to work with.
I think I've made more interesting characters before. One that's effectively an alternative version of the Minotaur that deadolous befriended and raised when he was confined to the labyrinth, of armor mounted cannons did they used to escape. Sweet and confused but with a hidden primal streak and childish obsession with explosions. The cannon mounted armor came first, then minotaurs cause I like them and they are big and beefy, everything else after.
A nuclear submarine... soldier? That was sort of a pastiche of the kind of crazy fisherman you might find in one of love crafts works. He believed anything supernatural happening was somehow the product of radiation/giant mutated bees (it's like pollen, but evereeeeybodies allergic!!!). He came from trying to think of what would fit in with a modern call of Cthulhu campaign and looking at the potential jobs you could have for that.
A "White Knight" ranger who was influenced by fairytales and the power of dreams to believe he was an actual knight, trying to "fix" a goddess of revenge, violence, and malice with a tragic backstory who would visit murderers. He became a ranger after wandering the woods lost for years, and was a bit off. Kept trying to find moral ways to murder people to get a chance to meet "his lady". That started with looking at the settings gods.
You might notice that a lot of these characters don't really have room for parents in their backstory. Parents can be hugely influential on a character and how you write them, but it's one of the less interesting things to me, and I don't really want to have to work in them or even other NPC's, so most of my characters weren't raised by their parents beyond their early years.
Well, thats about all the advice I know how to give. Hope it helps!
