Dungeons and Dragons Player Tools – Character Creation

One of the first things that you do when you start out as a player is come up with an idea for your character. I want to give you some help when coming up for a character because I think players often struggle with coming up with a character in two major ways. Plus then there are just practical things to think about as well. But let’s talk about the two big things to think about as you come up with your character idea.

The Struggle of a Character Idea

So, there is a struggle in two areas that I think players consistently run across. Both are around when you come up with the concept for the character. A player generally ends up on either of two extremes. They come up with a good starting character idea but don’t know where to build their character towards. Or they come up with a level twenty backstory and the character is level one.

So how do you combat that as a player? I think there are two things to think about. Because both starting at the right point and having an idea where you want to build to, that level twenty powerful character, are important. And it’s more than just what class do you want to take.

Coming Up With A Character Idea

So let’s come up with that character idea. And yes, you are starting the campaign at level one. But that means the world is your oyster. You get to come up with the answer to the question, why did I get into adventuring?

Let’s start there. This is a simple question that is meant to prompt the thought process of character creation. It is meant to also limit the scope of your character. It’s not a question of, what amazing things have I done? Or what great skills do I have? It’s a simple question of, why did I become an adventurer. And the reason for keeping it that simple is that the skills come from your class and background. And you will do amazing things in the campaign. But right now you are starting out. So what is the characters motivation.

Then I also want you to think about, where is the character going? And by this I mean, why do you keep being an adventurer in some ways. What is the end goal that would make you character feel satisfied as an adventurer? Because this is going to be the big thing that you roleplay towards. Again it’s not the skills or levels of a certain class, but what motivates your character to be an adventurer and go as far as they want.

Example – Character Idea

Let’s say I sit down and I want to create my character. I have some ideas for it especially around class and background. I know that I want to be a Monk who was an Urchin and then was brought into a monastery to learn martial arts and have a place to live. So I got that bit of a backstory, now I need to answer my two questions.

Why am I an adventurer? I head off adventuring because the monastery needs more money. There used to be a bunch of people who donated money but after the charismatic head monk passed away, people have slowly drifted away. But this is the place that saved me, so I want to venture out to find fortune or make money in any way that I can to keep the monastery going so it can help more kids like I was.

What is my end goal? It’s two part really. The first step is that I want to get the monastery back to the point where it is financially stable. And then eventually, once it is there and I feel like it won’t fall into a bad spot again, I want to return to the monastery and take over running it and bringing in more kids.

What About Race, Class, and Background?

So how do you plan those in as well? Well, you easily see that I tossed them into my backstory idea. I think that most people generally can come up with some idea of what they want to play in those areas. But I do want to toss out especially with background, think about how it ties into your character idea, and the same can be said for class. It wouldn’t make sense for me to have my backstory with the monastery and be a well trained Wizard.

While they are important to making a mechanically solid character, I don’t think that it’s the end of the world to focus more on what makes thematic sense. That is going to provide a more interesting gaming experience. And this is also where it’s great to collaborate in a session 0 with your Dungeon Master and the other players to create a balanced party, if you want, but to iron out any wrinkles between characters and players and their character builds.

Stats

Finally, let’s talk about stats. And I went over in the Character Creation article for Dungeon Masters some different options for rolling up stats. And there are more options as well that can be done. But the first step when getting stats is ask the Dungeon Master how they want you to get stats. Every Dungeon Master is going to have a preferred way. And even if they don’t, they are going to want it consistent across everyone. You get characters with unbalanced stats if someone does points buy and another player rolls.

But there is more to stats then just how you get stats, there is how you allocate them. And there are two things I want to talk about here. What is your best stat and what is your worst stat?

Best Stat

So the reason why you think about this is that your best stat is going to affect your best skills. And that is probably going to be what you are leaning into. If I character my monk, I might go with high dexterity as my top stat. The reason that I do that is two-fold. Firstly it helps with the character build and making it functional. But also, it stems from my background and idea for my character. I want to be light on my feet from being an urchin who stole some and didn’t want to get caught and then being trained in martial arts.

In fact, that’ll also influence how I solve problems too, I might just try and fadeaway in the shadows. So that’d again make sense for dexterity to be my best stat because it means that my stealth will be solid.

Dump Stat

So the worst stat is also called the dump stat. And every character should have a dump stat of some sort. That means a stat that is below 10 so you get a negative to your rolls on it. Because as much as your good stat helps determine how you roleplay, your dump stat is going to be as well.

Let’s look at my monk urchin. They came the monastery when they were a little bit older, probably a teenager, so they don’t have the formal schooling that you’d expect. The monks did what they could, but while the character is street smart from living on the streets, they aren’t book smart. So intelligence would make a great dump stat.

Especially because thinking about the backstory, how poor intelligence could work in. The character is focused on doing well themselves. They learned as a kid how to rely only on themselves. And while they love their monastery, they think it’s only on them to save it. So even though they maybe know they aren’t the brightest, they aren’t going to consult others for it. They are going to try and do those things themself.

Don’t Be Batman

Final thing about stats is don’t be Batman. What do I mean about that? Batman is generally good at everything in DC. He can take on almost any villain and with enough time and his tons of resources, he’ll beat them. But when you play you don’t want to be Batman. Batman isn’t fun for everyone at the table.

So let’s talk about it a bit more. First off, give yourself a dump stat. Even if everything rolled high, give yourself an 7 or 8 in some area and roleplay into it. Also don’t pick all the good skills. If you are a rogue who is proficient or have expertise with stealth, persuasion, deception, intimidation, perception, and insight, you are just going to do everything. Don’t be good at everything, and this part of character creation to make sure that every player at the table has some area where they will shine.

Final Thoughts

We’re going to have a few more articles in this series for players in Dungeons and Dragons, or really any RPG system. So as a player what topics do you want covered? I am going to toss out a few, but let me know if there are more you want to learn about?

• Flaws, Bonds, Ideals, and Personality Traits
• Roleplaying your character
• Character Arcs

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Dungeon Master Tools – Session 0

What Is A Session 0?

A session 0 is your first session of your RPG campaign, kind of. Everyone gets together, like you would normally to play the game. But instead of just playing the game, you instead are getting ready to play the game. Players don’t come with rolled up characters or anything like that. This session is for chatting, talking through your character ideas and rolling up those characters.

Why Do A Session 0?

We know what a session 0 is now. The better question might be, why do a session 0? Is there a very good reason for doing it, or is this just extra work for everyone and you should just jump right in? I’ll give you a spoiler, it’s a good thing to do.

Players Handbook

One of the reasons it’s a good thing to do is because not everyone has a players handbook. And that is a bit of an investment for a players handbook that in all fairness the fighter might not really need 99% of the time. So it makes sense to share the players handbook around the table so everyone can create their own character. If even one player doesn’t come to that first playing session without a built character, you’re going to spend most of the time making the character, so might as well have everyone do it at once.

Player Conversation

Beyond that practical reason, it’s great to have players talk and bounce character ideas off one each other. You can do that via an e-mail, but if someone is waffling between what stats to make strongest, a couple of different character backstories, things like that, the Session 0 is amazing for players to work together and create their party that can work cohesively. The example would be the rogue and the paladin. How do they work together, well, if they are created together to be in the same party, the players can talk through that.

Dungeon Master Benefits

And for the Dungeon Master it is great as well. You see what the players want to play. And as part of the conversation, you know what elements are the most important to the players. Is the background an urchin, but the backstory is really focused on the fact that they were a noble who got lost and lived as a urchin? Well, now I know all of that if I am part of the character creation process.

What Else Can Be Done in Session 0?

So, I talk a lot about character creation. And I think that is going to be the bulk of the time that is spent in a session 0. But it is also a chance for players who maybe don’t know each other to get to know each other. Because I find that I often pull in from different groups of friends to play in a campaign. So they might not know each other at the start of the campaign. A session 0 is a great way for people to get to know each other.

And as the Dungeon Master it is a great time to workshop other ideas. If you want a list of NPC names, have the players right down five each. If you want locations, let the players create some of the locations. This is a chance to flesh out some of that stuff that I think Dungeon Masters often try and do themselves for the campaign. Take off some of the load and share the fun and frustration of some of that creation on the fly with the players.

Finally, it is a chance as the Dungeon Master to pitch more of the tone of the game. This might be in giving the elevator pitch again. Or it might be adding to that pitch as you’ve planned a bit more, or integrating things from what the players are talking about. But this somewhat goes back to character creation. If someone is creating a character that doesn’t fit the tone, you know ahead of time.

Final Thoughts

This is a really useful tool. I think, and I don’t want to over emphasize it, but also don’t want to under emphasize it, it’s a great chance to socialize. Even if it’s a friend group, it is going to let you set the tone for the time and keep that focus on the fun of the game. Though every session is going to have tangents and things like that.

But for a new Dungeon Master or even someone who knows the game really well and has run many campaigns, this is very nice to use. Especially because you get to know the characters and see that work done collaboratively. It immediately cuts down on potential party friction if someone believes that there character should work in one hyper specific way that goes against what the rest of the party wants. And yes, this is something that happens.

So what is coming up next?

• Session 1
• Story Arcs
• World Building
• Combat
• Exploration
• NPCs/Social Interactions
• Meta Game and Players at the Table

And let me know if there are other things to cover as well that you want to know more about, or help with. I think that there are a ton of different things that new Dungeon Masters are curious about or that feel intimidating. So I hope that I can help make them clearer and simpler for you. And this one is really that first step that you can take before you even start to think about the other elements.

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How To Play Call to Adventure: Stormlight Archive

This isn’t the full details, like I said, it’s a first impression. And along with that, I need to try competitive mode still. But the basics of the game generally remains the same. In this game you are building out your heroes grand adventure in three different acts. You cast runes to test your skills and complete challenges to get story elements.

To do this you cast three basic runes that can give you 1 or no points for a check. And you cast runes based off of skills on the card. Those are your standard Dungeons and Dragons stats. So you can cast up to three runes of each type which can give you more points and better points since it is a skill you are good at.

In the cooperative game you are trying to get your characters levelled up to cast runes against Odium at the end of the game. Odium has hit points and you remove them throughout the game in various ways. Mainly if you get cards with radiant symbols. But if you fail checks it can also add more onto him. So you all work together to make sure you pass checks and can take out Odium in the end by casting your best runes.

What Doesn’t Work

Right now I think the weakest thing is that the story, while there, could be there more. When I play, I want to really tell a story of what I am doing. And I think that is something the game can encourage. It is almost a backstory generation for an RPG campaign. Especially if you are starting higher than level 1. I also know know that for some people that won’t work, telling more story. But I’d probably implement some story time in my game as the cards really lead you.

The game is also very light. This might be more for whom it is for, but the combination of light game play and the casting of runes, epic fantasy artwork, it feels off slightly. You almost expect the game to be more strategic looking at it, but it is very casual in what it does. And in the competitive version, it will have some take that, which might turn some players off as it doesn’t match the theme that well.

What Works

I enjoyed the cooperative game play quite a lot. I thought that Odium was an interesting villain and while what he does is fairly simple. And you can change him up with one of several cards that you assign to him at the beginning. We played on one that I think is a harder one and managed to win. But that is because we leveraged our cooperation a lot we were able to win.

I also think the game played well as cooperative because had less downtime. This is a lighter game, as I said, so downtime isn’t a major issue. You have a limited number of choices so you pick one and go with it. But in cooperative you help other players. I play a card and it improves your chances of completing your challenge. Competitive it’d be more take that and playing cards on yourself.

The light game play is also nice. Again, it helps with downtime. But it also made it pretty easy to pick up. I think the rules are solid. And I think you could get down to it and get playing fast. More teaching would occur during the game but it is easy enough that you could do that. And because of the great artwork, I think it’s a nice game to draw people in.

Let’s finish with the artwork. It is amazing. It helps that I know the characters. But even if you don’t, the artwork is gorgeous. And it is likely going to make you want to reach the books to find out what everything means. But the qualify of the game is very solid overall. The player board is a bit thin, but cards are nice, runes are nice, and cardboard tokens are nice.

Who Is It For?

This is more of a gateway game than I was expecting. I think that people who are familiar with a few games or a few concepts would be able to pick up this game. I might not pull it out over something like Catan or Ticket to Ride, but it is close to that. And, in all fairness, I might pull it out over them because of how much I’ve played those two.

If you are looking for a highly strategic game, there are elements of strategy. But it is not going to wow you with the strategy in the game. This is more about the artwork and that lighter game play than heavy decision making.

Call to Adventure: Stormlight Archive – First Impressions

I had a good time with the game. I want to try it as a competitive game. But I suspect I will prefer it cooperative. A game like Call to Adventure could rely too much on take that, I think, in competitive mode. And to be trying to set yourself up for that one perfect card or toss and have someone mess with it is not that fun.

I also wonder about staying power for the game. The game is likely to stay in my collection because it’s Stormlight Archive versus it being a highly replayable game. There are elements that change it up, but is it enough. Granted, Brandon Sanderson is writing more books in the series, so it could be one that comes back and works out just fine with another expansion in two years. Overall, it is a fun game that I think is a bit lighter than I’d life if I didn’t love the theme.

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People do those five things in different orders, but I tend to like them in the order listed above. Some people pick class before race, but for me, the race plays a more important part in who your character is. Everything I want to lay out should enhance both your roll playing and your role playing.

Race

So why is race the first thing? Why not class? I think that race will give you a better idea of your character for both roll and role play. And elf might not be as likely to be a barbarian but if they are, you now have a story surrounding that. But for first time players, race can be easier to pick than a class. Picking that you want to be an elf then leads you in certain directions for your class choices. Granted, picking human leaves everything open.

So from the roll play side, like I said, picking your race helps you nail down your class. And I think that the class for a lot of players is a little bit more flexible and most races can play most classes well. Going back to the elf example, you can pick to be an elf and be a fighter, a ranger, a rogue, a druid, or a wizard very easily. And I think that a number of the other classes work as well. Picking your race will give you a narrower target for classes, but a wider target than picking a class and then going back to race.

From the role play side, you now get to create a character with more of the flavor that you might want. When you look at the classes, you have a variety open to you still, both fighters and casters. The race give you a better picture for role playing than class does. How do you want them to interact, do you want a haughty or nature focused character, an elf, a gruff drinking and brawling character, why not a dwarf. The race helps set more of that personality than anything else would.

Class

Class helps focus the character. This really covers both roll and role play again as you can use the class to focus more of the story. But you also get a lot of mechanics out of this. You are going to get your first skills, if you pick a spell casting class your first spells, and you really get to see where you are going to be rolling the dice. Take this time to when looking at the class to find those skills that are going to be your characters standard. What attack is your signature, so when it comes time to combat you are ready to go.

But there is also role play elements to think about. When you pick your class you start to add in other questions. If you are a wizard, what wizarding school did you go to. What connections do you still maintain there? If you are a fighter, where did you learn to fight? Who is your mentor or trainer, and are they still a friend or a foe? Were you in the military or town guard or why did you pick up the skills?

Stats

Now we move into an area that seems more like it is roll playing and role playing. But in reality, it is both. The roll playing part is obvious. You roll your dice and you use the stats to modify them. So with your race and class, you now know what stats you need to be good at. If you are a wizard, intelligence, a fighter, strength, that sort of thing.

But putting down your stats also gives you a ton of opportunity to create more role playing as well. It is tempting to try and be at least okay at everything. Using a standard array for numbers, it is going to give you one thing you are below average at. And that is where you get your role playing. What does it look like to be worse than average at intelligence or to be missing subtly because of lacking common sense from wisdom? What is it like to be a character who isn’t strong? There is a lot of story that starts to develop from your weaknesses, as well as your strengths.

Background

This is the last part of what you need to be thinking about from the book. The background helps flesh out your characters backstory and who you were at some point in time in your life before you decided to go adventuring. This one is much more focused on the role playing side of things, versus the roll playing. In fact, you are unlikely to get any dice improvements out of this beside getting some more skills and maybe some tools to help improve your modifiers.

This is about picking a background and getting four areas in this. You get personality traits, bonds, ideals, and flaws. Check out them more in details in my Building a D&D Character 201 article. But these add in story elements naturally to a character by giving them connections and little ticks and more. These are not hard and fast things your character will always adhere to, but they help create touch points when you aren’t sure how you character would react. It also gives them some skills to fall back on.

Backstory

We are finally to backstory. This one is the easiest to talk about. This one is only role playing focused. This is what helps your dungeon master know how to bring your character into the story. It is also the only part not in the book. However, I put it last because if you don’t know what backstory you want, the other things will help. In fact, they can do most of the writing for you.

If you are an elf, you will see things more one way. If you are an elf fighter, it focused more. An elf fighter who is great with a bow because you have high dexterity but bad charisma, more focused. An elf fighter with low charisma and a military background, you now have a lot of your backstory written for you. You just need to flesh out the details.

Now You Have Your Character!

If you go through those steps, you’ll have a character that is ready to be played. Work with your Dungeon Master through this whole process, because you want your character to fit the story being told. As a dungeon master, I recommend a session 0, a chance to sit around, talk about your story idea and setting and then build characters together. That will create a group more cohesive characters for the players and the world being played in.

What type of character do you want to play next?

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The Premise

The Characters

The Bosses

The Guilds

The Levels

The Boards

Cards vs Dice

Character Leveling

Skills, Weapons and More

Quests

In Town Activities

Level Events and Monsters

Boss Battles

Building a Character

So, this really should have more of a graphical component to it than it will. I would love to show some art, but I don’t have that, to give a sense of the design, or a layout of how I think the board is going to work, but we are in the super early phases of this design. What’s really going to happen is that I’m going to move this over to a spreadsheet and create a number of different characters based off of that so that everything is formatted the same.

The Real World Character

Male – Age 26 – Office Drone

A recent graduate with high hopes and now nothing more than an office drone. Changing the world was the dream, and now it’s changing numbers in the spread sheet. Friends moved away and not enough energy after working overtime to make that many more. At least the people he works with are nice enough, and the coffee isn’t bad.

“I’ve been waiting for this game for months, I know some old friends have too, it’ll be just like old times.”

Keywords: Gamer, Business

In Game Character

Stats:

Strength: 5

Agility: 5

Vitality: 5

Allure: 5

Guile: 5

Currency: 100 Gold

Oddly enough, that’s about it for a character when you pull them out of the box. The real nuances to a character are going to come with how you allocate your 10 extra points for the stats.

The Other Stuff

I think it’s important to talk about what else you’ll have right away, even though it might not be pure character creation stuff. Such as what sort of weapons will you be able to find, and what sort of skills can you pick up. You will be dropped into the world without any gear, just normal commoners clothes, and no skills, just basic attacks that you can do, so that’s why you get 100 gold to start. You can save it up, because there is better stuff you can get on level 2, but you might not live that long.

For armor, and this could have really been it’s own section, you’re looking at two types of armor.

Leather – No movement penalty, +2 defense

Chainmail – Minus 1 movement, +4 defense

Something along those lines. the advantage with chainmail is that you are going to be taking considerably less damage. When an attack might only get through on leather armor at 2 to 4 damage, that means chain might mean that you take no damage. But it does mean that the enemy is going to be more apt to focus on you, because you are going to be the closest with that slower speed, so it’s a trade off. Numbers are not final at this point obviously, but for an example.

Weapons then, you’re going to have much more of a choice. You will have two handed swords, short swords, daggers, bow and arrow, axe, crossbow, and maul at least all available at the start of the game to buy.

As for skills, we’re looking at pretty simple ones that would be available. Something like sweeping attack, bash, counter attack, rush, disengage.

Plus there will be items as well, health potions probably being the biggest of those items that the players might want to buy.

Now, with getting items, I could be really nice, I could be really mean, or I could do something between that. What do I mean? If I was really nice, you’d have a catalog of items that you could pick from and purchase without it costing a turn. If I was really mean, I could make those places four separate shops and make players almost have to decide to shop at least 3 times in a row before doing anything else. I’m going to be less mean than that, I don’t want to hand out gear, and players can do other things on their first turn, but on the first level, there is just going to be a bazaar that’s the shopping area, so you can go and shop once and be done with it, unless you decide that you need more and then you can come back again. The first level is going to play a bit differently than others, I think, and I will delve into what I’m thinking when I start building a level, though I probably won’t build the first level.

Character creation, pretty simple, basically all a player would need to do is allocate those points and fill in the player name and the character name. The character boards, for the stats, might be more like a character sheet, and then a side board. Or I might go with dials that keep track of stats, that’s too be determined, with a save sheet so if the dials get bumped it isn’t the end of the world. Or with a save sheet, maybe I’d do a dry erase player board, that’d be pretty cool and useful.

What do you think of character creation, it should be extremely simple. Obviously, the keywords I handed out this time were pretty generic, but I want to create more unique real world people than just what I wrote for this one, someone might run a greenhouse so they’d know about plants, or maybe a chef, give people a ton of different backgrounds.

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Tieflings, for those not familiar, are tainted in their bloodline somehow by demons. Mainly, the lord of the nine hells. In the players handbook you get the rules for creating a character who has some influence of Asmodeus in their bloodline. In Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes, you get it for the rest of the Lords and Ladies of the nine hells. All Tieflings are generally charismatic as they all get an improvement to that stat, that generally makes them good at being Warlocks which makes a ton of sense. However, Bard and Sorcerer are also Charisma casting races. Most interestingly, the Paladin is also Charisma based, so that could make a really interesting role playing experience. As you’d expect, the main feature for a Tiefling is that they are resistant to fire.

Now, how that infernal influence gets into your bloodline is going to be up to you as a player. You could have had a relative that screwed one of the Lord of Hell, but that isn’t the only way. If your family worshiped one of the Lords of Ladies of Hell for a long time, it’s possible that they just became tainted through that and spawned the PC. I think that either of them provide some interesting role playing opportunities, but the biggest thing that the Tiefling provides for role playing is the fact you look different and that tells people that somehow your family consorted with someone evil.

Tieflings, themselves, don’t have to be evil, but might lean towards that alignment. And even if you don’t, again, people aren’t going to trust you, because you are very different. In the PHB (players handbook), you feel like most likely a Tiefling came from a human line, but there is no reason that your Tiefling couldn’t be based size wise off of some other race. But, back to my main point, the distrust of your character is going to be something that you are going to have to role play out with your DM. Maybe even your party doesn’t fully trust you because you are a Tiefling, and I find this interesting, because as a charismatic humanoid, you are not just naturally magnetic. It’s more of a situation that you can just sit down and win people over if they give you the time and aren’t running screaming when they see your horns and tail.

So what are some backstory ideas for playing a Tiefling?

When you were born, there was a lot of shock in your community, and you were tossed aside and left to die. However, the old Priestess in your town wouldn’t allow that to happen and went and took you from the woods where you had been left. She, in secret for several years, raised you and taught you the ways of the church. When you reached the age of ten, a new priest came to town as the priestess was getting old and frail. He didn’t treat you as well, but he promised the priestess he wouldn’t kick you out or abandon you. When you were old enough, he told you it was time to go on a mission and spread the word of your god to others and help where you could. So you went out and found a group that seemed to be doing good.
Class: Paladin
Alignment: Neutral Good
Background: Acolyte
Note: I would play some into the tension between the infernal and the divine.

Your parents told you that the village you had been born in burned when you were young, and that’s why you lived all alone with only a few close family friends who had been able to survive. You found out later that might have been the case. As you grew to know more, you found out that your parents and their friends were worshiping a devil. And it turned out, as you overheard, that the village had burned because the village hadn’t wanted your family there when you were born, and your family and their friends had burned it to the ground while everyone was trapped in the temple. That didn’t sit well with you, so when you were a teen, you escaped and started wandering the woods, hunting and gathering as you needed. Then, one day, there was a tug on your heart and you went into a village, in disguise to see the humans as thralls and your family and their friends controlling them. You knew they had to be stopped.
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Background: Outlander
Class: Ranger

Being a Tiefling is generally looked down upon, but you were bred to be that way. Your kingdom is very pragmatic living in the shadows of a Red Dragon. Tieflings really make good firefighters being able to handle the heat and flames better than any humans. So each generation, a few women are selected to be part of the ritual and give birth to Tiefling children. However, your mother had told you that when she was carrying you a seer had told her that you were going to be important at a time when the world was in flames and that you could bring on the end of the world. You didn’t want to do that, but as compared to other Tieflings, it quickly became obvious that you had more power and that whichever Lord of the Nine Hells had sired you was helping keep you alive. Now you’re running, hoping that will protect you from what the seer foretold.
Alignment: Lawful Neutral
Background: Haunted(?)/Soldier(?)
Class: Warlock
Note: What I like about this idea is that your character has a different feeling Warlock patron because they were given it as a way to defend themselves and stay alive, not because they made a deal, could offer some interesting role playing options.

So, what about you? Have you played a Tiefling before? How easy are they to play in your opinion? How hard are they to fit into the group?

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They don’t love an extremely long time like Elves, they don’t live underground like Dwarves, Humans are just like humans in the real world. Very diverse, very able to adapt, and able to be any class pretty easily. Humans are the odd race in that they don’t get a +2 to any of the main six stats, but they get a plus one to all of them. Getting an even stat bump across the board means that you can be equally as good as being a wizard as a barbarian at the start. But that’s the big thing with humans, or the variant human, which gets +1 to two stats and then a feat (an extra ability), which can also help you create any type of character you want to be more effective from the start.

But enough about the mechanical reasons, let’s talk some about role playing a human. Again, they are pretty straight forward, but diverse. You have to decide on things like if you are from the city or a village or the country when playing a human to see how you might interact with the world, or are you wealthy or poor, or something along those lines. You don’t have those racial traits like Dwarves and Elves that are going to give you a basis for your role play, you have to figure that out as a player.

For that reason, it’s pretty easy to have fairly boring human characters. You don’t have that specific thing to latch onto and if you don’t put the effort into your backstory, you’re going to run into issues knowing how to role play your character besides being generic human adventurer #201348. So lean into some aspect that makes your backstory and traits unique for growing up. What sets you apart from the humans you might run into in a town miles away? What world view do you have from where you grew up? Does the outdoors and wild seem too open? Do the city streets seem too confining? None of this is unique to a human even, Elves or Dwarves can have the same experience, but it’s the experiences that you’re going to have to lean into for really playing a human.

So what are some backstories for a human?

Growing up on the farm, I really wanted to find more in the world. I was the second child and I knew I wasn’t going to inherit the farm. When my parents passed away it would go to my older sibling. My parents main hope was to marry me to someone who would be getting a farm of their own. I eventually convinced my parents to let me apprentice in town and get a skill that I needed. I heard stories of the world there, and I wanted to know more about it and see more of it. There were so many amazing tales, wonderful places of power and awe that I could only hear about and had never seen, and I wanted to see them. So I left with a group that came through town and made it to the city where there were supposed to be white spires reaching into the heavens. The real world is disappointing, people lie, but I know that some of those stories must have had truth in them, and I want to find it.
Class: Any Martial/Half Caster Class
Alignment: Neutral Good, Chaotic Good
Background: Guild Artisan

The city is a mean place to grow up when you’re poor. You basically make a living by stealing, begging, or charity of some temple. But I found another way, I met a man at a cross roads who offered to become my patron and a good hot meal. That seemed like a great deal at the time, turns out that he had more plans for me. He started having me do some shady jobs for him once in a while, but it wasn’t too bad. Eventually life changed for me, and I was able to set-up a little shop on the corner where I told people’s fortunes. Sure, it might have been a hustle, but compared to most others who had their little shops, I was more accurate. I had almost forgotten about the deal I made when the man came back to visit my shop and asked me if I liked my success. I said that I did, and he said that in turn for more success I was going to need to do him a favor.
Class: Warlock/Cleric
Alignment: Chaotic Neutral/Chaotic Good
Background: Urchin/Charlatan/Criminal
Note: This is a backstory that really screams Warlock, but I think it could be interesting to have the “deal” be less binding, but something more of a deity sending an emissary to this person because they need them eventually and giving them cleric powers.

The Neverending War, that’s what they’ll call it. And it might not actually ever end, not with the demons seemingly uncountable coming through a tear in dimensions from the abyss. Life is fleeting, even with our short life spans, the war makes it even shorter. Fight for five years and gain your freedom to do whatever you want. Less than half of us last that long. The government gives us money to live, but most of us still need to work to really make a life for ourselves. Some can settle down and start a smithy, farm a field, build furniture, but that isn’t for me. I’m just out of the army now, one of the few of my friends who survived. I know there are demons who are getting passed us into the real world. I want to find a group who can help me stop them.
Class: Fighter/Ranger/Rogue
Alignment: Lawful Good/Lawful Neutral
Background: Soldier

You can see how these are pretty generic backstories that would probably work for almost any race. But I tried to add in a few more human elements to them.

What do you think about those backstories? Is there some trait that you think is really human that I missed?

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In the prerequisites, we’ve talked about how to make a character that fits the campaign and is fun for you and the group (101). We then went on and talked about how Dungeons and Dragons gives you tools, such as personality trait, ideals, bonds, and flaws to create some role playing experiences (201). Finally, in our last class we looked at how you can create an open backstory that the Dungeon Master will be able to tie into the game and that can tie into your role playing and character development (301).

This last bit is going to build off of creating that interesting backstory to give more options for the DM and for the player themselves with role playing. It could just be considered a continuation of the previous one, but I think that there are a few more intricacies with building a character with everything in here.

Leave Blanks in Your Backstory
This one is interesting because as a player you often want to know everything about your character. But it’s going to give you more opportunities to develop a character if you haven’t filled everything in. It also allows the DM a chance to create more character hooks for you. If your whole background is known, they only have the hooks that you were instructed to create in 301. However, if the DM has opportunity to work on your backstory and create hooks in those openings.

This is also tricky because it requires trust between players and the DM. There is at times a mindset that it’s DM vs the players. If you think it’s going to be like that, it’s hard to give a DM a chance to twist your characters backstory. But if you do allow for it, you can develop more interesting and deeper stories and stretch yourself with role playing.

Play to Your Weakness
Probably could have been mentioned earlier as I talked about flaws and looked at what D&D has baked into your character creation already. But there’s an idea of a dump stat, and no, this isn’t the stat you dump all your points into, it’s the stat that is lower than every other stat and is below the average, ten, that the commoners have. It’s easy to not want to have one of these or to not let it shine. However, the dump stat is going to provide you a lot of role playing opportunities. So give your character one, and then tie it into the backstory. Pick whatever stat that you want to dump, I wouldn’t recommend CON (constitution) though for any character, but really make it part of your story. There’s a desire to have it be the heroic things that you have done and your great moments to create your backstory, but instead consider your previous failures as to figure out why you are driven to be an adventurer. This also, again, creates more plot hooks for the DM to grab onto.

Don’t Be Afraid to Change
Finally, don’t be afraid to change your backstory. Don’t be afraid to change your character. You might think you have a concept that you love, but it might not end up being what you thought it was going to be. Figure that out early on, and if that is the case and it isn’t a character that you love, talk to your DM and change your character. Now, this can be done a couple of different ways. Maybe you don’t like the backstory that you created, so change that up. Even possibly changing out your background if need be to match your new backstory idea. Or it could be that you thought you’d love playing the Wizard, but you really want to hit things with a big pointy metal stick. Talk to your DM and change the character that you are playing. Depending on what the DM wants to do, your previous character could be magically transformed, or it could be that your previous character leaves the party and a new one comes in. My only caveat to this is that you should try and change early to find out what you want. In Dungeons and Flagons season one, Clint changed characters completely in the middle of the game, and it just happened to work that it made sense in the story, and I actually gave him the option as I knew he wanted to try new things. But that puts pressure on the DM, so if you are going to change, try and change early as the party and story are just starting.

I’m sure that there are many more things that I could talk about with character creation. However, I think for Dungeons and Dragons, that this is a very strong basis for getting character ready for a game and into a game. If you put everything together, you’re going to, most likely, have a fun time. There are certainly other things as well that can impact your game, but if you do this process, you can be fairly confident it won’t be your character.

Are there any tips that you’d like to add for character creation? If so, leave them in the comments below.

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We’ve talked previously about the simplest ways to make a character that doesn’t step on other players toes, that fits into the game, and one that is fun to play.

Next we’ve talked about how you can use the personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws to create some back story for your character. This allows you to really start creating a backstory for your character and your role playing. You can review 201 here.

Now we’re onto really delving into the backstory and what makes a good backstory. This will be covered in the final two posts about creating backstory and creating your player character.

When creating a backstory there are a few things that you should be writing into your backstory:

Role Playing Prompts –
This is probably the trickiest one to explain, but basically you are looking to expand upon the personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws that you’ve previously created or at this time create those along with your backstory to give you things to role play with. But now you get the chance to really expand upon that. If you have a flaw that you hate all goblins, well, now you can explain why you hate all goblins since they murdered your family and burned down your village. So as you develop your backstory, look to drop in those little tidbits of information to support the personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws. Also, look to add in more role playing elements for you. You can create little pieces of story that are going to give your character a more rich background and more depth to role play with.

A Reason to Adventure –
This one is pretty straight forward. You need a reason to be about adventuring. If you spent your whole life on a farm and you are going to inherit the farm, why are you out adventuring? Or if you are a hermit in the woods who hates people, why are you adventuring? Give yourself a reason to be adventuring, and a reason to keep adventuring. If a bunch of goblins killed off your family and burned down your village, that’s probably a reason to start adventuring to get revenge and also a reason to continue adventuring after you get revenge because you don’t have a place to go back to. It doesn’t have to be that tragic, and with elves or other longer living races, you might adventure just to leave your mark on the world. But use your backstory as your opportunity to create a reason why you are adventuring and why you will continue adventuring with the adventuring party.

Goals/Story Hooks for Your Character
Now, this is partially covered when you create your bonds as they can be things that is your characters goal, but work on adding in some goals and story hooks for your character that the DM is going to be able to use. It doesn’t mean that all of them will be used, but they are things that the DM can use if they want. In our example of wanting to get revenge on the goblins who killed your family, that’s a story hook that the DM can use. If you write that you’ve already taken care of the goblin in your backstory you’ve now closed off that part of your backstory and completed it already. The DM now can’t pull out your hate of goblins, give you the chance to track down the goblins and maybe have a change of heart about goblins as a whole. As a DM, I really appreciate those bits of mystery that people leave in their backstories. In the first season of Dungeons and Flagons, we had a great example of this as Ashley’s character was left somewhere as a young child and all she remembered from it was the stars in the sky. That gives me a ton to play with as a DM.

If you have, especially the first two added into your backstory, you are going to have a character that has a reason to go adventuring and a fun character to play. The last piece really allows you to be more a part of the story and have those story arcs that really focus in on you. If you are a player who wants to sit back and enjoy the story more, having less of those hooks is going to make it so you’re less involved.

Are there other backstory elements that make a good Dungeons and Dragons character? Have you done these while creating characters before?

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I would say that the ideas I’ve been giving in posts have been medium levels of backstory. It has been more than just suggesting playing a rogue who likes to stab stuff. But it also hasn’t been creating a lot of very depth heavy backstories. I leave stuff generally vague like what deity it is that the cleric is following, what town or area you grew up in that something horrible happened in. It is very possible to set-up a very in depth backstory where you list out your friends, you family members, everyone who has wronged you, what your life was like growing up, what all of your hopes and dreams had been.

There are multiple reasons for me doing that, the first being, if you want to use it, some of those things are things you’ll have to work through with your DM, because I don’t know your game, and some of them are stuff that you don’t need to know. Knowing too much about your character does a few things, it can limit what the DM can do around your character, because there will be a lack of mystery. It can force you into playing a character in a certain way and finding out that you don’t enjoy it. It can limit your character in how they can develop.

The one that I want to focus on for this topic is the fact that it can force you into playing your character a certain way.

The point of this topic was to cover two things, the first being, what’s my motivation for adventuring, the other other being, what’s my motivation for role playing. These two topics are fairly closely held together. Most likely the reason you have for adventuring is also the reason that you’re going to have for some of your characters motivations and interactions in role playing. If goblins murdered your family, you’re probably adventuring to get revenge on the goblins, it’s also probably going to mean that when you run across an injured goblin that poses no threat to you, you’re still going to want to kill it.

With motivation for adventuring, there can be a lot of different reasons. A bard might be in it to see the world, be able to travel and perform on different stages that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise. You could also have a Barbarian who is just in need of and bad with money, so they don’t care too much about the adventuring, but they always need money and the adventuring party always gives them a little money. Or you could be out looking for a lost holy artifact as a cleric, getting revenge on a ruler who slaughtered your village as a fighter, or out to protect your grove against a blight that is on the land as a druid. There are a lot of reasons otherwise that you could be looking into adventuring. But one of your jobs as a player when creating your character is to make sure you have this answered.

Along with having that answered, a lot of DM’s will put your party together, but if you and fellow players can come up with a reason for putting together, or better yet come up with a reason for keeping your party together, that is huge. Whether it’s because your party has similar goals or needs or because you actually like each other, it’s important to have some reason. This motivation with help inform some of your interactions and will help it make sense when the story of the game isn’t focused on your character to keep them as part of the group. Now, this isn’t all on you as a player, the DM has to keep all the characters involved in the story as well, but if you’re creating the loner Druid who cares only about her part of the forest, when the characters aren’t focused on that, that druid is probably going to leave the party to either go off on their own or to find another adventuring party to help them.

But also with motivation, we want to talk about the idea of role playing your character. I talked some earlier about having a medium depth background story. Some of the reason was that it doesn’t lock you into a single specific way of playing your character, but also because it doesn’t lock you into a single path going forward. It’s too easy to lock your self into a single purpose and single goal while role playing and then finding out that you really don’t enjoy it.

Now, I realize that sometimes it’s fun coming up with a ton of backstory and all of these different plot hooks, but often times it’s going to be too much to actually work into a game and there is a chance to feel disappointment because it wasn’t fully touched upon. As a DM, personally I don’t try and avoid using peoples backstories and generally I’ll try and tie them into the campaign as I go. However, if something doesn’t fit in with the overall story, or if I feel like the story is leaning too heavily on a single person, I am going to try and change it up which might keep it from using all of your backstory. If there are too many plot hooks as well for your character, I might not touch on all of them, instead just focusing on one of them to really add into the main story with a nod or two thrown to others of them.

Beyond having too many plot hooks, having too few is bad as well. If, as a DM, I don’t get much to work with, I’m not going to put as much effort into keeping your character engaged story wise. My assumption is that you’re going to like combat more so and I’ll make sure to sprinkle enough of those in as well. But it also doesn’t give you much framework to role play, if you want to role play a lot, a consistent character. They might end up being consistent because you’re just playing your own personality, but it might be that they are very chaotic in how they respond to everything presented to them. Being a little chaotic isn’t bad, and a lot of people play chaotic characters, in fact, the Total Party Thrill podcast has an episode (linked here) about how Chaotic Good is probably where most adventurers should be playing out of.

So there is chaos in a good way and in a bad way. A chaotic character can at times be used as an excuse to do whatever you want, but chaos means less that you just do whatever sounds the most fun in the moment, it more means that you’re willing to do what it takes in situations laws be damned, and you’re willing to be flexible for the greater good, again, I think that Total Party Thrill with their episode does a really good job of explaining it, so I’ll leave that as a listen for people.

There is one major exception for having much of a backstory, or any of one really, and that’s at a Convention or while playing a one-shot. When playing those shorter games, focus in on a single thing for your characters. When I was playing Dungeons and Dinosaurs game at AcadeCon the first year I was there, one person made their T-Rex very impulsive, I had an herbivore and I made him into a researcher who was watching and documenting everything. We didn’t have more backstory or direction for character than what we gave them, in fact about the only thing we knew about the dinosaurs came on a dinosaur fact sheet. In that case, having that one thing you role play to is important as it’s going to allow you to have a focused character for that short time without slowing down the game because you’re trying to pick out or build more depth into your character.

What are some things you’ve used as motivation for either being part of a party or role playing a character in Dungeons and Dragons or any role playing system?

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