Post by Lil' Ragnaros on Jun 20, 2011 1:38:43 GMT -5
//It's obvious the quality of the character is directly proportional to the amount of work put into the character. Building a very fleshed out, in-depth character will take probably afternoons of finger-work shifting through pages and pages of feats and classes to find out which one truly speaks out about your character. This guide doesn't reduce that work, rather than give ideas on what to focus on creating. Also, please ignore the spelling mistakes, this was done on Notepad.//
Tired of building boring or uninteresting characters or characters that seem to get old and die out personality wise within a few sessions? Also,do you have problems with players or Gm's that build such crazy characters they negatively impact the game? This is my guide on how to build fun and funky characters that you and your players will remember for sessions to come.
What is a character?
A character is a unique person or thing that does something to advance the plot in a literary work.
When you think of a character in a movie or book, the next thing to come around are deeds that character has done or the quirks about that character. So step 1 is To identify a character. To help you do that, come up with the following things in order spending the most time on number 1 and the least on 5:
1. An aspiration
2. A unique fact or quirk
3. Character options
4. hobby
5. personality
1. Aspiration
This is what your character's life long goal. It should be something specific enough so the Gm can design the adventures around it but vague enough so that the Gm can manipulate it to suite his needs and have no definitive end. This makes the Gm's job much easier.
Bad aspiration: I want to be come rich/powerful.
I want to kill the man who murdered my family.
Good Aspiration: I want to create an undead empire and take revenge on those that wronged me.
Notice how the bad ones are too vague or don't make your character unique. Also note how they hit dead ends. After you kill the man who murdered your family, then what? That just creates more work cause now you have to come up with something else to do. The good aspiration has no end. Your goal has many steps along it's path and each step is a compilation of many more steps that each would be worthy of 1-3 sessions worth of time.
example of how this works out:
So the character hears about undead in the crypt.
Good starting point on how to be a necromancer.
The character knows that the undead are dangerous and will kill any living that enter. Uh-oh, need a party to assist you.
Coincidentally, the rest of the party has reasons to venture into the crypt.
After adventuring through the crypts, it turns out it was a necromancer that flees when the party approaches him.
Great, now you'll have to track him down and either ask him for advice or kill him and take his spell book and learn how to cast necromancer yourself.
So you've obtained his spell book but the spells are written in a alien script and now you must find either another book or someone who can translate that script. The scholar in the library knows but that library is in a different town which coincidentally the rest of the party has needs of going there but there are bandits along the way, best travel in groups just in case.
The scholar agrees to help but only if you complete certain tasks.
You've finally got it translated and find out it is a school text book on beginning necromancy. It blatantly tell you the steps on how everything you need to become the generic necromancer/undead army/lair thing.
You can see where this is going. That would normally be about 7-10 sessions worth of time depending on the time spent each session/speed of which the party moves/time spent digressing on other party member's motives.
2. A unique fact or quirk
This is probably the easiest. What is unique about your character? Is it his back story or maybe he acts in a special way? Maybe he has a phobia or something. The spectrum is infinitely broad. The trick here is to come up with the most unique, funny, crazy, combinations.
Which is more amusing, a bard that runs around playing the lute or a bard that prefers a triangle? A barbarian that gets angry as just about anything or one that gets angry only when someone makes fun of his balding head?
3.Character options
These are feats, skills, etc. that you as a player get to decide about your character. They should reflect on your character. If your character is a copper smith, he should have ranks in an applicable skill to suit. While this stage is not completely necessary since its improbable it will impact the game, it still helps a ton when roleplaying out your character.
If presented with a situation where the options are: run away, kill it with fire, play dead, or diplomacy. A character's options/feats will play the biggest role in this decision. If you are a pyromaniac wizard with all fire spells and features that increase the power of fires you create, obviously you'd kill it with fire. It might not be the best option at a time, but that's what roleplay is all about, making decisions based on your character abilities and personality, not yours.
4. A hobby
This is probably the least important but still useful. It is what your character does in his spare time adventuring and could be used later to help define his personality. Mostly for plot reasons, it could be used to explain a characters absence, could be used as a quest engine, or could be a spare way characters pay for their petty charges like inn fees, food whilst in town, things the Gm or anybody doesn't want to keep track of. The goal is to never have the GM have to ask the question "So what is your character doing while this is happening."
This is different than quirks but can be closely related and can be used to explain each other. Quirks are more like static things that you cannot change that are there for aesthetic reasons. Hobbies are things your character chooses to do just because he likes to do them. Every morning, my characters jogs a mile. It's not unique enough to be considered a quirk and it's something my character chooses to do because he enjoys it even though he doesn't gain any benefits from it.
5. Personality. This is probably the hardest thing to come up with but if you spent enough time on the first 4 things, this will come almost natural to you. Personality is how you act both in real life and as a character based on your characters statistics, quirks, past experiences, or what-not.
Very many characters end up dead or on the /ignore list because many people think that acting out the character is the most important part of an RPG. They are sadly mistaken. Unless you have the real life charisma to do so, the kind professional actors and public speakers possess, Odds are you'll end up boring or hated by everyone in the group. I've had groups where a person believed that talking in an Irish accent while playing a drunkard character was suitable and that the story would reach a point where something fun would pop up for his character to do. It went about 3 sessions before he ran out of alcohol puns and the pinnacle of his life was when he bribed the guard with booze. He quit after about the 6th or 7th session because the game was boring. The game wasn't boring, his character just lacked the development necessary to find interest in the quests that were given. Also, if his character had increased his Constitution to aid his resistance to alcohol poisoning, he might not have spent 2-3 hours of in-character time passed out nor would he have spent nights in jail while the rest of the party adventured for misconduct while drunk. It's bad mojo for a DM to grant special powers or privileges to people for less than adequate reasons.
The character had number 2,4,and 5 down pat. A drunk character gives ample room for interesting situations and serves as a hobby. If the character is not in the spotlight, he's finding a bar and getting drunk.That gave plenty of room for the gm to advance the storyline and what not. "Whilst in the bar, you overhear..." "While in a drunken stupor wondering from the bar to your house you stumble across... but you know you don't remember all the details."
The problem was that the character's life goals consisted of: going to work, get paid, buy booze, write a fun adventure book, die. His stats consisted of a bard with no skill in his profession, craft of bookbinding, or drunken brawler to help his 1 bar fight he got into. (The bar took weapons at the door for such a reason.) The consequences of such is that the other drunkard who had such things made more than ample money ,being more skilled at his job,to pay for the damages to the bar and run away when the police showed up.
A few general tips:
1. Avoid cliche. Yes it is simple to have a barbarian that gets angry about every little thing and smash whatever made him angry but how many times will this repeat and go over before it gets boring?
2. Speaking of repeating, any quirks your character has should not just be a repetition of the same action with slight different variants.
3. The quality of a character is based on the critics opinion. The critics are the people you are playing with.
4. Research character options thoroughly and as a last resort, ask your DM about custom character options that would fit your character. The only reason you should build something simple and basic is that you are learning a new system.(or is the DM foolishly wants to limit the creativeness and diversity of his players by disallowing large quantities of suitable material. This is acceptable in some rare occasions such as if the campaign story-line has certain requirements of players.)
Tired of building boring or uninteresting characters or characters that seem to get old and die out personality wise within a few sessions? Also,do you have problems with players or Gm's that build such crazy characters they negatively impact the game? This is my guide on how to build fun and funky characters that you and your players will remember for sessions to come.
What is a character?
A character is a unique person or thing that does something to advance the plot in a literary work.
When you think of a character in a movie or book, the next thing to come around are deeds that character has done or the quirks about that character. So step 1 is To identify a character. To help you do that, come up with the following things in order spending the most time on number 1 and the least on 5:
1. An aspiration
2. A unique fact or quirk
3. Character options
4. hobby
5. personality
1. Aspiration
This is what your character's life long goal. It should be something specific enough so the Gm can design the adventures around it but vague enough so that the Gm can manipulate it to suite his needs and have no definitive end. This makes the Gm's job much easier.
Bad aspiration: I want to be come rich/powerful.
I want to kill the man who murdered my family.
Good Aspiration: I want to create an undead empire and take revenge on those that wronged me.
Notice how the bad ones are too vague or don't make your character unique. Also note how they hit dead ends. After you kill the man who murdered your family, then what? That just creates more work cause now you have to come up with something else to do. The good aspiration has no end. Your goal has many steps along it's path and each step is a compilation of many more steps that each would be worthy of 1-3 sessions worth of time.
example of how this works out:
So the character hears about undead in the crypt.
Good starting point on how to be a necromancer.
The character knows that the undead are dangerous and will kill any living that enter. Uh-oh, need a party to assist you.
Coincidentally, the rest of the party has reasons to venture into the crypt.
After adventuring through the crypts, it turns out it was a necromancer that flees when the party approaches him.
Great, now you'll have to track him down and either ask him for advice or kill him and take his spell book and learn how to cast necromancer yourself.
So you've obtained his spell book but the spells are written in a alien script and now you must find either another book or someone who can translate that script. The scholar in the library knows but that library is in a different town which coincidentally the rest of the party has needs of going there but there are bandits along the way, best travel in groups just in case.
The scholar agrees to help but only if you complete certain tasks.
You've finally got it translated and find out it is a school text book on beginning necromancy. It blatantly tell you the steps on how everything you need to become the generic necromancer/undead army/lair thing.
You can see where this is going. That would normally be about 7-10 sessions worth of time depending on the time spent each session/speed of which the party moves/time spent digressing on other party member's motives.
2. A unique fact or quirk
This is probably the easiest. What is unique about your character? Is it his back story or maybe he acts in a special way? Maybe he has a phobia or something. The spectrum is infinitely broad. The trick here is to come up with the most unique, funny, crazy, combinations.
Which is more amusing, a bard that runs around playing the lute or a bard that prefers a triangle? A barbarian that gets angry as just about anything or one that gets angry only when someone makes fun of his balding head?
3.Character options
These are feats, skills, etc. that you as a player get to decide about your character. They should reflect on your character. If your character is a copper smith, he should have ranks in an applicable skill to suit. While this stage is not completely necessary since its improbable it will impact the game, it still helps a ton when roleplaying out your character.
If presented with a situation where the options are: run away, kill it with fire, play dead, or diplomacy. A character's options/feats will play the biggest role in this decision. If you are a pyromaniac wizard with all fire spells and features that increase the power of fires you create, obviously you'd kill it with fire. It might not be the best option at a time, but that's what roleplay is all about, making decisions based on your character abilities and personality, not yours.
4. A hobby
This is probably the least important but still useful. It is what your character does in his spare time adventuring and could be used later to help define his personality. Mostly for plot reasons, it could be used to explain a characters absence, could be used as a quest engine, or could be a spare way characters pay for their petty charges like inn fees, food whilst in town, things the Gm or anybody doesn't want to keep track of. The goal is to never have the GM have to ask the question "So what is your character doing while this is happening."
This is different than quirks but can be closely related and can be used to explain each other. Quirks are more like static things that you cannot change that are there for aesthetic reasons. Hobbies are things your character chooses to do just because he likes to do them. Every morning, my characters jogs a mile. It's not unique enough to be considered a quirk and it's something my character chooses to do because he enjoys it even though he doesn't gain any benefits from it.
5. Personality. This is probably the hardest thing to come up with but if you spent enough time on the first 4 things, this will come almost natural to you. Personality is how you act both in real life and as a character based on your characters statistics, quirks, past experiences, or what-not.
Very many characters end up dead or on the /ignore list because many people think that acting out the character is the most important part of an RPG. They are sadly mistaken. Unless you have the real life charisma to do so, the kind professional actors and public speakers possess, Odds are you'll end up boring or hated by everyone in the group. I've had groups where a person believed that talking in an Irish accent while playing a drunkard character was suitable and that the story would reach a point where something fun would pop up for his character to do. It went about 3 sessions before he ran out of alcohol puns and the pinnacle of his life was when he bribed the guard with booze. He quit after about the 6th or 7th session because the game was boring. The game wasn't boring, his character just lacked the development necessary to find interest in the quests that were given. Also, if his character had increased his Constitution to aid his resistance to alcohol poisoning, he might not have spent 2-3 hours of in-character time passed out nor would he have spent nights in jail while the rest of the party adventured for misconduct while drunk. It's bad mojo for a DM to grant special powers or privileges to people for less than adequate reasons.
The character had number 2,4,and 5 down pat. A drunk character gives ample room for interesting situations and serves as a hobby. If the character is not in the spotlight, he's finding a bar and getting drunk.That gave plenty of room for the gm to advance the storyline and what not. "Whilst in the bar, you overhear..." "While in a drunken stupor wondering from the bar to your house you stumble across... but you know you don't remember all the details."
The problem was that the character's life goals consisted of: going to work, get paid, buy booze, write a fun adventure book, die. His stats consisted of a bard with no skill in his profession, craft of bookbinding, or drunken brawler to help his 1 bar fight he got into. (The bar took weapons at the door for such a reason.) The consequences of such is that the other drunkard who had such things made more than ample money ,being more skilled at his job,to pay for the damages to the bar and run away when the police showed up.
A few general tips:
1. Avoid cliche. Yes it is simple to have a barbarian that gets angry about every little thing and smash whatever made him angry but how many times will this repeat and go over before it gets boring?
2. Speaking of repeating, any quirks your character has should not just be a repetition of the same action with slight different variants.
3. The quality of a character is based on the critics opinion. The critics are the people you are playing with.
4. Research character options thoroughly and as a last resort, ask your DM about custom character options that would fit your character. The only reason you should build something simple and basic is that you are learning a new system.(or is the DM foolishly wants to limit the creativeness and diversity of his players by disallowing large quantities of suitable material. This is acceptable in some rare occasions such as if the campaign story-line has certain requirements of players.)