Character Creation

I'm torn over which pisses me off more in character creation: statistical mistakes in character creation, or characters built without personality. So, I'll rant about both.

You'd think creating characters would be quite easy, that there are a huge number of character concepts that can be built without problems with the rules cropping up, and that no experienced player would ever be at risk of creating a faulty character, but no. Apparently, it's too hard to remember that Humanity = Conscience + Self-Control and Willpower = Courage. It's too hard to understand that a character's class determines his class skills, and adding ranks to cross-class skills costs double.

Once again, I should clarify that my ire is not aimed at novice players. If a person makes a mistake out of lack of experience, that's one thing. But when someone has been playing a game for years, it should be fairly safe to assume that they can actually create their own characters.

Anyway, character creation can be monitored by the GM, who can go through the submitted characters and make the necessary corrections, so that's not too bad (I think in future, I'll announce that I'm just going to make what I think are the most likely changes in the case of an error, rather than trying to consult with individual players). However, then there are those characters who are created without any sort of a background or personality.

The annoying thing here is that creating engaging characters is really easy. You need three things: a past, a quirk and a goal.

The past is simply enough a reflection of that character's past. It represents where he's been, and where he's come from. All you need is one single detail to make this work, not the full life's story. So, "he served in 'Nam" works, as does "he used to work in the docks in Glasgow". Or "his parents were gunned down while he watched." Or "he spent many enjoyable summers working in the bars in Majorca". All that is required is one thing.

The quirk is a reflection of who the character is in the present. It reflects some hobby, mannerism, or fear that the character has. Ideally, you want something noticable but not over-powering. So, while "he constantly interrupts any other character" technically works, it's not likely to make you many friends in the group.

Again, all that is required is a single detail: "he constantly smokes", "he fears spiders", "he always wears some item of red clothing".

The goal reflects where the character wants to go in the future. This can either be an attainable goal, such as saving for a flight to Australia to see his dying sister, or unattainable, such as world peace. Either way, it should be something that drives the character, but probably not something that drives the character to the exclusion of all else. You want to be able to justify your character adventuring with the group, after all. Additionally, you don't want the goal to be too trivial, since then you'll need another one. Something that will take months should be the minimal level of challenge the character should set himself.

"He wants to own a Porsche." "She wants to see her name up in lights." "I want to become a Jedi, like my father."

Once you have the past, the quirk and the goal, you're basically set. You might want to expand on just why your chain-smoking ex-gangster wants to become a Jedi, but adding details to this skeleton is basically easy.

As a simple example, I present for examination my two most recent characters.

Balthazar was a dwarven ranger from Mithral Hall. He had a past involving the death of a friend, and a period of wandering. I did a 20 page write-up of this (simply to annoy Roger), but it boiled down to the above. His quirk was that he was loud and boorish (quintessentially dwarven). His goal was to get home, to return to the hearth he'd left behind, a goal complicated by his being trapped in Ravenloft.

By contrast, Cathak Dan was a samurai. He was a product of the empire's academy, one of the most promising students. His quirk was that he considered honour to be a personal thing to be earned, rather than a social birthright, a view not shared by the majority of the nobles of the time. His goal was to serve his family with honour, and thus to demonstrate what a samurai should be, rather than what he felt they were.

My current character has a past that I'm keeping mysterious for the moment (this should become clear later). His quirk is that he demonstrates a constant impatience with all manner of authority figures, believeing them all to be incompetent or hypocritical. I haven't decided on a goal for him yet.