By Dave Windust
When starting a TTRPG, character creation is one of the first things you will do. But how do you build a character that you will be happy to spend time with – sometimes over an extended period if you are playing in a long campaign? Here are four tips – most of which come from experience of not doing these things, and wishing we had. These tips probably work best for a longer game or campaign. For a one-shot, throw sound thinking out of the window and embrace the chaos.
Have a mnemonic key
In our game, Alex (who plays Seeksorrow) has spoken about having a “mnemonic key” – a single core feature that guides the character. It’s his name: Oberon Seeksorrow. The first name, given to him by his mother, represents joy and hope – and it sits in contrast to the dour, unfortunate history of the Seeksorrow family line. Oberon is his reminder to look for adventure and fun and get away from being a Seeksorrow. And Alex uses this as a lens for when Seeksorrow has a decision to make – what option leads towards adventure and fun? That’s the option Seeksorrow should choose.
When starting out with character creation, deciding how your character would react to the range of situations that get thrown at them can be tricky. A mnemonic key like this – which could be anything from a name to a physical characteristic or even an item of clothing – can help make it easier, until you are used to inhabiting the character you are playing and it starts to feel more natural.
Talk to you fellow players
It can be tempting to create your character in secret, so your friends can gasp in awe when your mighty barbarian heaves the tavern door off its hinges and makes their magnificent entrance. But what happens when you discover the rest of your party are also mighty barbarians, you haven’t got a shred of intelligence amongst you, and the bartender is reaching for a gun because she has already replaced that door three times tonight and she’s just about had enough? A quick chat with the other players to ensure you have a range of skills, and haven’t created a party that simply could not tolerate one another for any amount of time, can resolve a lot of problems. In Dice Company: Small Embers, we did not do this and early chapters feature a lot of inter-character bickering as we ironed out how our band of misfits could muddle along together.
Give your character some flaws
Over time, when playing TTRPGs, I’ve learned that for me at least, it’s not the mighty successes or brilliant rolls that are most fun. Instead, it’s the times something goes horribly wrong and you have to get creative to fix it. Why not increase the likelihood of this occurring by giving your hero an enormous flaw? Or multiple flaws? An unlikely phobia perhaps, or a tendency to make rash promises after a couple of ales. The joy is in the tangents, so give yourself an opportunity to have something unexpected happen. Besides, perfect heroes are dull. Our flaws make us interesting.
Create threads, not an autobiography
It’s great to create a bit of backstory for your character. But don’t get bogged down in the details. Instead, create threads that you and the GM can pull at together. For example, perhaps your character grew up with a friend so close that everyone thought you were siblings – but you don’t talk anymore. What a lot of opportunities that creates for the GM, but these opportunities narrow if you start going into detail of exactly what happened. But with just the bare bones information, all sorts could happen – the friend could now write requesting help, or show up in town. The reason you don’t talk could get tangled into the plot of your adventure and you will have the opportunity to react and see what your character does. TTRPGs are all about collaborative storytelling, so why not view character creation as an opportunity to bring that into backstory too?
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