Beating the Blank Sheet (A Guide to Character Creation)

[Mr. Analog]

Everyone gets stumped. It happens, whether the DM is making an interesting NPC or a player is creating a character you can get stuck for ideas. So what then, create something vanilla and fill in the blanks? Well chances are that unless you do a lot of work while you play building on an empty foundation you'll probably find that it will be really hard to develop a character's personality or even define a direction for them to go in terms of actual play mechanics (sometimes additional classes, item selections, etc are based solely on "character flavour").

SO, how do you beat the dreaded blank sheet? Here are some of my strategies:

Naming

"What's in a Name?" asked Shakespeare, well a heck of a lot actually. A name can often define a character and give you that critical starting point you may need to get started on the road to character creation.

Lazy Man's Way Out
Pick an existing character's name and tweak it. Be prepared to be made fun of though if you go this route and DO NOT make your character a carbon-copy of their namesake or you will be shunned for the copycat you are. Oddly enough, I think if you mangle some of your favourite names together you might end up a winner. "HELLO! My name is Jean-James Kircard, human, Rogue and all around fantastic captain of the recently appropriated Expedition!". This segues nicely into...

Bungle in the Jumble
Look around you, see a word? Ok, jumble the letters around until it sounds like a cool name! Next to me I see a "Grundig" shortwave radio, lessee.... Gundrig, Rindugg, Gigrund, Nirgrug (I could keep going...). From the name you can maybe picture different characters.

• Gundrig - Human warrior, favoured weapon the throwing axe (heh-heh, "gun").
• Rindugg - Dwarven sorcerer, stoic, flowing beard, eyes like cinders and spells screamed to the heavens and executed with wild furious movements.
• Gigrund - Halfling cleric, a goodly soul, a bit cowardly, enjoys inventing sports.
• Nirgrug - Half-orc barbarian, his wife and child were captured by the darkforces of the Litch Coal Acco (coca cola!).

Make @%&# Up
Seriously. It's fantasy roleplaying, come up with anything. Mumble something, make up a word, type something random and try to say it and then make it yours.
Arble Plentarg the jaunty elven protector of the Thatchwood Dorrows has wandered to the greater world to try and understand the outfolk. His great curiosity is only dwarfed by his mighty quarterstaff and knowledge of plants and animals.

What kind of name is Arble? I don't know! What's a Dorrow? Pfft! Ya got me, some kind of pie shop maybe. But it sounds cool and I pulled it out of my ass mostly by thinking random thoughts.

Personality (Plus)

Once you've got the name down, a desired class, or even just a rough idea OR even just what kind of equipment you want to work with you can start building a personality. Let's ignore names or even rough concepts and just go after equipment. Maybe the one weapon you always wanted to slug with in D&D is a warhammer. Conjur up in your minds eye a warhammer. A great big bloodied lump of steel at the end of a sturdy wooden handle. What kinda guy uses that thing? An elven dandy? A pious monk? A halfling coward? Probably not. It might not even belong to the stereotypical warrior either maybe it's the weapon preferred by the zealous Paladin for laying smackdown on unbelievers and evil creatures of the night. It could be the rogue's "little friend" when he's on horsback. The point is if you focus on equipment and how it's gonna be used a character starts to form around those rough ideas.

Class Act
The same kind of thing works if you pick a desired class. You can go typical (warriors are tough, clerics are dedicated, barbarians are crazy murder-machines) OR you can go atypical (a weakling warrior, a rough-around-the-edges cleric, a meticulous barbarian). While typical characters are easy to play they can get boring if you don't make interesting background for them. Atypical characters can be really challenging to play but often yield endless play potential (lookit that grumpy old badass dwarf, he'll heal you if he thinks you're worth it).

Already got an idea? Run with it (we are free?)
If you have a rough idea that's great! Turn your mind into a scatter gun of ideas, pick the ones you like and discard the stuff that might be hard to play or not fun for you.

Background Check
Backgrounds are important. How did your character get to be where they are today? Do they have family? Friends? Foes? Pets? Houses? Land? Inheritance? Incontinence? Thinking about background can help you pick a name, a favoured weapon, a class, just about everything you need to make a character short of the stat block. It works the other way too, how'd they get that first shortsword? When did they decide that Wizardry was for them? How did their name earn them a reputation?

Thinking about this stuff can be hard, think about epic characters in history, some of them were borne to greatness some had to earn it. Most of the time a D&D character has to earn greatness. Look at great folks who started with very little or no chance of success. What historians say about how some man of state became great might be the hook you need to get started. They key again is to think of something and grow on it. Even if you can't think of anything, your character had at least a mommy and a daddy, how'd they get together? Are you just some farm kid swinging a sword instead of pushing a plough? Are you Destined by the Gawds of Old to become a mighty Kingbreaker? That's up to you.

Number Munchers
For many players character creation is all about stat manipulation. We all do it, it's nothing to be embarrassed about. What you do need to do sometimes is try different builds to see where your stats end up. You don't want to play a wimpy warrior or a doofus wizard (do you?) so play with the numbers and look at your strengths and weaknesses and ask yourself. Are my character's strengths something that will come into play fairly frequently? Are my character's weaknesses something that will get the character hurt or (even worse) make them useless?

Stats are not set in stone until that very first RP'ing session. With things like eTools, websites and spreadsheets you can play around with numbers to see what they might look like in your final build.

I'm still stumped!
Well, sure, ok, no worries mate. You have other people you can bounce ideas off of. The DM, other players, random street people. If you are really stuck don't be afraid to ask for help, you never know what a five minute talk might yield!

Last but not least!
Have some EFF YUU ENN.

Character creation doesn't usually occur that often, especially if you are in an ongoing campaign and you have a strong, healthy character so HAVE FUN with it! This is your chance to write a character into the screenplay that will become the movie that is the game!

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I hope this has been useful for everyone, but mostly for ANYONE who has sat in front of that piece of paper or with those unassigned point buy points and drawn a complete, utter, deathly, panic-inducing, mental blank.