What drives your initial character development

[Nifft]

I roll on the trinket table and then try to explore the character who would have grown from possessing such an item.

This is awesome.

I'm adding this to my list of fallback inspiration tricks.

[Demonslayer666]

The start of a new campaign drives me to make a new character. As soon as I hear about the idea of a new game starting up, I try and make something interesting that I haven't played before, or at least something very different than I just played. I try to stay away from making an overly effective character but that's really hard for me to do. I like increasing my chances of survival. I also gain inspiration from selecting a random disorder, delusion, mania, or phobia to make them really unique. I set short term and long term goals, and define a motivation.

If I need truly random character inspiration, I use the website "who the f is my D&D character?".

[Ralanr]

I look at class first to get an idea of how they play. If I find them interesting, an idea for a personality. I don’t fully settle on the personality until I play them more and then let them develop through RP.

If I’m too focused on a particular character concept then I’m not gonna let them grow until I get it right and I never get him right.

[DarkKnightJin]

I roll on the trinket table and then try to explore the character who would have grown from possessing such an item.

Last time I tried rolling on the trinket table, I came up with the eggshell painted with the human misery thing. 3 times in a row.
When I told a friend about this, she commented on my character apparently getting a Behelit.

For those of you that know what that means.. I'm sorry..

[Typhon]

Last time I tried rolling on the trinket table, I came up with the eggshell painted with the human misery thing. 3 times in a row.
When I told a friend about this, she commented on my character apparently getting a Behelit.

For those of you that know what that means.. I'm sorry..

That is totally awesome to me and I would so own up to that aspect of my character.

[furby076]

I think we are on the same page.

The background system is one of the best things about 5e. They got it right. It's a vehicle for things that will happen in game but also not hijack the game to be one player's story.

I respect that. For me its different. My games tend to last years.

The background system is awesome, and i incorporate it into my character. My last character, i found the background after the story was made (street urchin ).by itself, its too limited for me. This is an rpg, and its important for me to know what happened to my character before the first game day. Figuring typical characters are at least 18 years old, if not older, what did they do? By knowing this i can shape their in game behavior, which is important to me. Better than floundering for a reaction. For example, my street urchin hates nobles. By knowing she was homeless, and beaten by nobles, when we encounter them in game she will behave appropriately.

I've had about 5 dms in my life. Highschool 2 years. College was 2 dms at 2 years and 3 years. Then a dm for 10 years (single campaign). Current dm is approaching 1 year (he was my DM in HS, so this campaign may last for a while. His world is like 20 years old).

A detailed story doesnt have to come anywhere close to hijacking a game, or even being more than a small footnote in the game. Thats why the DM has final say. No you cannot be the favorite son of a 20th level wizard who is the beloved king of the largest kingdom. You can, however, be the son of a lord who kicked you out of his region for being a dope of a son. If the party shows up for dinner, you may get a meal and accommodations in the stables. You are an embarassment to the family, after all :)

[Tanarii]

The background system is awesome, and i incorporate it into my character. My last character, i found the background after the story was made (street urchin ).by itself, its too limited for me. This is an rpg, and its important for me to know what happened to my character before the first game day. Figuring typical characters are at least 18 years old, if not older, what did they do? By knowing this i can shape their in game behavior, which is important to me. Better than floundering for a reaction. For example, my street urchin hates nobles. By knowing she was homeless, and beaten by nobles, when we encounter them in game she will behave appropriately.

youre taking about motivation. "my street urchin Hayes nobles, because she was beaten by one" is a motivation, not just history. In fact, I believe it's Bond number 3 for the Folk Hero background. Although some of the

The 5e personality system is awesome because it combines history and personality into one, in 4-5 clear motivations. Back stories usually fail to make the motivations clear at all, and focus more on history than looking forward at how your character will act during play.

That's why I'm not big on them. They often focus on the wrong thing. Especially when people focus too much on the "story" part of it, as many players do. Especially ones by players who view themselves as, or aspire to be, writers.

[furby076]

youre taking about motivation. "my street urchin Hayes nobles, because she was beaten by one" is a motivation, not just history. In fact, I believe it's Bond number 3 for the Folk Hero background. Although some of the

The 5e personality system is awesome because it combines history and personality into one, in 4-5 clear motivations. Back stories usually fail to make the motivations clear at all, and focus more on history than looking forward at how your character will act during play.

That's why I'm not big on them. They often focus on the wrong thing. Especially when people focus too much on the "story" part of it, as many players do. Especially ones by players who view themselves as, or aspire to be, writers.

To me, 4 to 5 clear motivations are not good enough to flesh a character out. Id probably have higher priority motivations than what the game suggests

Also, i believe anyone who is willing to "put pen to paper" IS, in fact, a writer. Maybe not a good writer, but still a writer :)

This is a personal thing. There is no right or wrong way to approach this. Even if my DM didn't want a story, I would still write it and make it available. It's useful to me, and allows me to form a connection to my character. Game sessions tend to last 6 to 8 hours, about once a month or so. I can invest a few hours to create a background :)

[Tanarii]

Game sessions tend to last 6 to 8 hours, about once a month or so. I can invest a few hours to create a background :)

If you're playing that infrequently, I can see the appeal in doing a little writing in between sessions, be it on pre-game development or even current character development between sessions.

I run multiple sessions per week, with many players participating in at least two sessions every week, often with different characters. They've got plenty of ability to develop them during play.

Definitely a case of different strokes.

[BW022]

1. The type of campaign, players, DM, and setting. Is it roleplaying heavy, survivability, core group or pickup, etc.
I may select completely different criteria for an Adventure League game (with quick advancement, random players, combat heavy, etc.) vs. a home campaign in a different setting, low-XP range, etc. Is it really deadly or mainly roleplaying?

2. Have I played this before? I generally like having something new or different. Can I focus on a specific race, or political situation, god, etc.

3. Is the character still useful? I try to avoid concepts which are either so specialized or don't fit in well with a potential group. Is it relying on specific rulings or DM-styles (say illusions) or going to p-off the rest of the players (scam artist or something)? Does it generally have a couple of roles it can fill?

4. Other players? Is it going to conflict with other players or characters? Alignments, religions, roles within the party. Is there a role which the players probably won't go after -- scout, face person, knowledge person, etc.

5. Given a character from the above... is there some twist I can give to it to make it unique. Going against type (a dwarven wizard, a noble halfling, a unique history, etc.) Books, trinkets, previous campaigns, backgrounds, modern takes on things, etc. can always help flesh out this.

[KorvinStarmast]

That's why I'm not big on them. They often focus on the wrong thing. Especially when people focus too much on the "story" part of it, as many players do. Especially ones by players who view themselves as, or aspire to be, writers.

I play with a man who is a published author. He writes one to two paragraph back stories, sometimes a bit more, and plays to play and let the character grow as play develops. I tend to write longer back stories, the whole point of which is "how did I get here?" and I always discuss with my DM potential threads of my back story that fit the DM's world. Been doing this since about 1978. I stopped the mechanical only approach to RPG's after our first dungeon crawl.

I do agree with you on the motivations, ideals, flaws thing. I never roll for them, but instead pick one, or write one similar to what's in the PHB. They are good seeds to grow ideas with.

Backgrounds: I disagree with you about the utility of backgrounds. Each adds a proficiency or two, or a tool, that can help in later play.

I also agree with this:

Thats why the DM has final say. No you cannot be the favorite son of a 20th level wizard who is the beloved king of the largest kingdom. You can, however, be the son of a lord who kicked you out of his region for being a dope of a son. If the party shows up for dinner, you may get a meal and accommodations in the stables. You are an embarassment to the family, after all :)

Bingo.

[Chaosmancer]

I tend to have a mix, sometimes it is the class that gives me the initial hook, sometimes a cool idea I want to try, sometimes the story of the character.

After I've got the hook I tend to refine and adjust, get a cool trinket that makes me think of adding X, if I grab a morningstar instead of a sword that might mean Y. Just tweaking things until it is time for the game to start.


As to writing backstories, I tend to write a page or two. I try and keep it short, but it is way more interesting and useful to me than trying to write some motivation sentences. Especially since a lot of the ideals, bonds and flaws in the PHB are kind of crappy and/or useless.

I think the biggest use out of writing the backstory is the connections. Sure I can write "Make my Family Proud" under ideals, but that doesn't tell me who my family is, and if I begin writing and figure that my family is a noble house with a long line of clerics devoted to this temple, then I can do two things. 1) I can talk about them like real people and 2) I can find other motivations, things I might have missed or overlooked if I thought about them in distinctive chunks instead of as a whole.

[Tanarii]

Backgrounds: I disagree with you about the utility of backgrounds. Each adds a proficiency or two, or a tool, that can help in later play.

I made no claims about the utility of backgrounds, so I have no idea what you are disagreeing with here.

[Dudewithknives]

Most of the time i come up with a concept and see how to make it work.

Ie. There is a whole thread from the other day where I was trying to figure out the best way to build a duelist type character.
This is for a long lasting campaign and I usually write a long backstory to go with it and go heavy on the RP


Sometimes, I read up on a new mechanic and want to give it a try.

Ie. I liked the new mechanic of a warlock smiting with a bow so I built a Hexblade Archer to give it a try.
This is for more the short type game that will only go to certain levels and I just keep it simple to try the mechanics.

[Wilb]

I talk to the DM about the setting and based on its characteristics, I develop my character to make me, as a player, feel "comfortable" while roleplaying it.

I try to craft the character to have the background and abilities of someone who actually survived in that place/society but did not stick out like a sore thumb, whether by being just one more in the crowd or just making others think that it is. Then I diverge from this baseline as the play dictates.

[HandofBlades]

It honestly depends upon the game I am playing on how I come up with the character. If we are running a module then I tend to just sort of wait to see what everyone else makes and then fill the holes in the party (hello all my skill monkey/healer characters). However when I get to play in a homebrewed campaign I tend to get a general idea for the world then think what would be cool here. For example, hmm there was a dragonborn empire with slave soldiers that collapsed. It would be cool to play a descendant of said soldiers. Ok so fighter maybe battle master let's add some tradegdy and he was a mercenary and his company got routed in a big fight he has nothing left and now is thrust with people whom he has to work with. Perfect.

Hmm you are playing a rogue. Hey you know what is the best part of dnd. Rogue and bard adventures. I am making a bard. Hey you want to be brothers. Cool. Oh you are playing a Kenku rogue. Neat guess I am a bird bard. Yay. (Goes to actually read bard) oh my I might have given myself too many options here. Oh well let's do this!

Or my latest character. Hmm. I wanna play a wizard, but let's make him interesting. Hmm he only has one arm. And he is lawful evil and...I know he does no damage pure control. Never got to play that. Let's do this!

My thought process for the last couple of games I was in.

[Breashios]

... If we are running a module then I tend to just sort of wait to see what everyone else makes and then fill the holes in the party (hello all my skill monkey/healer characters)...

Campaign or one off, this is usually what I end up doing, because I let everyone else run what they want. One time I didn't was when I was joining my wife in her first campaign experience. We both made Fighters (Champions) so I could help her with the mechanics (she was pretty good at the role-playing despite being extremely shy in real life). The rest of the party ended up being two Battle Masters and a Ranger. Needless to say, I eventually had to play an NPC Wizard, while one of the Battle Master players had to play an NPC Cleric (the ranger never learned any healing spells) so we could get through some of what the DM had planned. Another new player joined later. He chose to play a Rogue.

[GlenSmash!]

To me, 4 to 5 clear motivations are not good enough to flesh a character out. Id probably have higher priority motivations than what the game suggests

If you find the games Personality Traits, Bonds, Flaws, and Ideals often lacking, do your write your own custom ones?

If so I think that's great!

[CantigThimble]

Typically I look at what the party needs and work backward from there. Sometimes that means: 'We need a cleric', other times it means: 'We need a straight man' or 'We need a leader'.

If we don't have a party yet, then I'll often look at the DM's setup. What kind of character is going to make his job easier? Someone headstrong to move things forward when they're slow? Someone cautious who will get the party to follow up on details? Someone who has a bunch of knowledge skills or comes from a specific place in the setting so he can justify giving us important lore? etc.

After that I start worrying about how to give them interesting twists and motivations to suit me personally.

I think I may be a bit unusual in this respect. I don't tend to come up with my own ideas out of the blue much but once I have something to work off of then I hit the ground running.

[nickl_2000]

If you find the games Personality Traits, Bonds, Flaws, and Ideals often lacking, do your write your own custom ones?

If so I think that's great!

I'll be honest, I completely ignore the traits, bonds, flaws , and ideals tables. I find they are way to restrictive, my character gets most of this in the backstory and the rest comes out as I play him.

[erok0809]

Lately, I've basically just been saying, "what class haven't I played yet/recently?" and then making one of those, choosing whatever race I think might be interesting/thematic with it. Even if I weren't doing that, I tend to start from class, just based on what I feel like playing. Once I have a class/subclass that I like, then I'll see if I can think of what sort of background I'd like (with both mechanical and story considerations) along with actual personality stuff.

Once all of that is done and I have a character sheet written up, then I'll write the backstory in first-person, as that character would retell it to someone else if they had perfect recall and weren't lying about anything. I find that helps me understand the character more, and if they aren't perfectly honest also helps me figure out what they might lie about, what they like and don't like about themselves, how confident they are, etc. I'll work with the DM (and the party, if appropriate) to figure out how the backstory I write links up with the campaign.

I do tend to start from the game mechanics when building, but I don't like having characters with no personality or history.

[Waterdeep Merch]

I typically look at my party first and decide on a class and build that works with them. From there, I figure out why my character has each function.

Then I write a long backstory and likely a short story of a pivotal event that I know for a fact my DM's don't read, followed by a paragraph tl;dr that I know they do. This last time I even told my DM I wasn't going to bother sending it to him, which weirdly made him ask for it and he read the whole thing. I do this so that I know who my character is and I can get in their headspace, and I'm not bothered that no one else cares as much about it.

Then I try on accents and voices, varying my pitch and depth, testing out some deliveries. I come up with responses to standard adventure events, like if I get angry or afraid when I get critically hit, how I ask for help (if I ask for help), some favorite sayings I might employ, etc. It's around this point that I'd say I have a fleshed out character, ready to go.

Then the first session happens, and here's my dark secret- I rewrite a lot of my backstory and redo some of my character voice choices after the first day to better suit whatever naturally occurred between me and the other players. This last time I was going to play something of a cool but cocky and jocular knight, which quickly changed into an arrogant prick that's running from all his troubles, all because a different player ended up comic relief and the synergy felt off feeding into the same vibe. So now I'm his straight man instead.

[Afrodactyl]

I come up with a loose idea or theme for a character, then come up with a background and fill in the class and other bits afterwards.

For example;
Premise - a very unintelligent orc that was the "apprentice" (bodyguard) for a wizard. He is convinced that he can cast spells and does so on a regular basis by narrating what he does and waving his hands about like his "master" did.

Background - as above, add in stuff like him questing to become a fully fledged wizard (despite being dumber than a sack of wet leaves), him having a bag of rocks labelled 'magic missiles', casting 'magic circle' by drawing a circle in the dirt and punching anyone who walks inside it and stuff like that. Lots of poorly interpreted spells.

Build - low intelligence (and the -2 from orc racial), probably frenzy barbarian or something revolving around physical violence.

[CircleOfTheRock]

I think to myself "What hole is there in the party that I can filll, combat-wise and then effective skill-usage as priorities?" My choices in literally everything else are made by that mentality, although it generally means I end up playing a bard or a monk.

[PopeLinus1]

Often, I find out about the games setting before I put my background in stone. My favorite character, I made much of her background during the actual adventure, without ever using this to gain an advantage(like being freinds with someone we negotiated with beforehand).

The end product was a charecter that’s backstory was actually applicable to the story line and had a great motivation.

[Corsair14]

I look through the classes and based on my mood I think this would be a cool class to play. Then I start thinking of character concepts. Just as an example I have always found the Summoner class from PF to be one of the coolest classes in the RPG universe. So I think what would be a cool character to build off this class. I really like oddball races so I think Forest gnome. That would be a cool off beat race for it. Then maybe think about why. Say the eidolon isn't his direct creation but he perhaps hit is head in the woods or has a spilt personality that took the form of the eidolon and he has always heard stories about green dragons and a small green dragon has seemingly appeared in his life and wont go away and just follows him around. It doesn't act evil like the stories and he has no idea it is simply a manifestation of his subconscious mind. Now to go roll the stats, figure out equipment, come up with a background and play.

Most of my characters come up like this or I see a picture or read about a character type in a book and build one based off of that.

[KorvinStarmast]

I made no claims about the utility of backgrounds, so I have no idea what you are disagreeing with here.

Ok, I'll try again.

Back stories usually fail to make the motivations clear at all, and focus more on history than looking forward at how your character will act during play.

I disagree.
Back stories can add a lot to the game. Our bard's back story ended up becoming significant when wanted posters started cropping up with his face on them; he was wanted for murder back in his home town, and we are pretty sure that he was framed. This led to a nasty encounter with some moon elves.

This back story was sent to our DM in 2014. Each of us sent one in and shared it via email so we could all get the "introduction" bit done before the first adventure.

Korvin's Story
Mother died from the violet plague.
On my third trading voyage, Father was killed by the pirate Rustbeard while defending the good ship Windbreaker from attack.
Rustbeard took our ship, since his had burned during the battle.
Salted Bart and Steelfinger mutinied, feeding Rustbeard to the sharks. It was justice, of a sort.
They put ashore those of us who wished to leave piracy to them. I watched my seven shipmates slowly die from poisoned wine, which was Steelfinger's parting gift to us -- I'd never cared for wine, ale tasted better to me, and rum.
I made for Mother's temple, the one in Scornubel where Father had met her.
The high priest said I had potential. He enrolled me to study as a Cleric of Lathander. It was four long years of prayer and learning.
I felt a sailor's restlessness. I left the cloister to spread the Light.
Maybe I can heal a small part of this sick world. Maybe I can find justice.
How I'll do any of that in this mad city of Waterdeep I'm not sure -- If a few other people are as restless as I am, there's no telling what we can change ...

Back story.

The DM (some time later in the campaign, after Korvin died I created a new character) featured rumors and news of raids along the coast by the notorious pirate Steelfinger, but we never ended up in an encounter since the campaign ended (RL issues) at around the time we were choosing between heading for the underdark and a few other adventures.

[Tanarii]

If you find the games Personality Traits, Bonds, Flaws, and Ideals often lacking, do your write your own custom ones?

If so I think that's great!

I'll be honest, I completely ignore the traits, bonds, flaws , and ideals tables. I find they are way to restrictive, my character gets most of this in the backstory and the rest comes out as I play him.

That's great if you make it work for you. But even experienced players that write backstories can benefit from several clearly articulated 1 sentence motivations pulled form the backstory, across several categories of motivations. Not necessarily the PHB categories, they're just particularly useful as a nice broad spectrum of categories of motivations.

I've seen many experienced players with detailed back stories that still play their character as themselves + one hook + history 99% of the time, because they focused their backstory so much on the one hook and history.

Regardless, the PHB tables are clearly meant for newcomers to the game, to inspire them. And to drive home the point: motivations within different categories is what really matters, not just back-history-story.

I personally found it was incredibly fun to actually use them to generate a random personality, then try to play that.

But I also like leaving my history nebulous enough that the DM and I can invent it more in play. Playing (effectively) a mysterious stranger / herohobo with no solid background, but very clear personality and motivations, works well for me. All of this is in the Personality traits, history can come out as I play her.

[KorvinStarmast]

But I also like leaving my history nebulous enough that the DM and I can invent it more in play. Playing (effectively) a mysterious stranger / herohobo with no solid background, but very clear personality and motivations, works well for me. All of this is in the Personality traits, history can come out as I play her.

That works too, and is a good vehicle for making sure the back story fits into the campaign world.

[Asmotherion]

0) I already know beforehand what abilities I want my character to have; Why I play D&D, a variation of a fantasy setting and what's the basic concept behind it. I basically want a character who shoots magical energy from his hands, and might or might not be able to do other magical stuff.

1) I come up with a Character Concept. Anything goes. Depending on the starting level, I will give a deeper backstory or a less developed one. I will make sure to have some trinkets, a good description of how my character looks like and finally Aspiration, and what drove me to adventuring.

2) I play through the Character; Other than my in game Aspirations and Goals, I have my out of Game Goals, as in "what I want this character to be remeberted as". I then wait for the DM to give me some "Flags" of when is the right moment to perform some aspects of the character, give a specific quote or line I have prepared between sessions, in order to make the Character what I want him to be in the end!

Ultimatelly, we are Actors. The DM is the Director, and takes control of the scenes, but as PCs, we are the Protagonists, and we can Direct our own character in any way we want. And this can make a great story.