Character Creation

Day 2 of #RPGaDay is Prompt. I felt like this was too broad and I was going down too many rabbit holes with it so I rolled a “Question” d6 and got 1 – Who. Immediately I thought about prompts for who the player is in the game, that is, Character Creation prompts.

Character Creation prompts are something I feel strongly about as someone who can spend days obsessively creating a character for a game. Anyone who has seen me start a new play through of Skyrim or Baldur’s Gate 3 knows I will spend an uncomfortable amount of time agonizing over everything from eye color to name. This is doubly hard in a TTRPG when the whole world is at my fingertips. Having options and prompts not only keeps me from spending days on this topic but helps me create a character that matches the storyline and tone of the game.

Unfortunately, many games, especially solo TTRPGs, will have very few prompts for character creation. I’ve seen game creators saying they don’t want to bog down the game and allow players to jump right in and start playing. I can only imagine that they don’t have the same character creation choice paralysis that I do. This sort of anything goes, do whatever you can create tends to give me too many choices and also give me anxiety around not creating the ‘right” character. In the end, I spend too long on it (yes even longer than when I have prompts and choices) and either don’t play or play just a little bit, feel like I made the wrong character for the story and then go back and redo…again…and again…and…you get the idea.

Games that Have Great Character Creation

Public Access is one of my all time favorite TTRPGs and I talk about it a lot, I know. However, its my favorite for a reason. PA does an amazing job with building a world with the players and that happens as soon as everyone joins the table and starts session zero. However, to help people fit the very specific mood of the game (retro modern – 80s to 00s – nostalgic analog horror) there are prompts for everything from favorite media as a kid to character aesthetic. Players are welcome to choose things not listed in the prompt box but with these prompts they can at least get an idea of what the game is looking for. It isn’t necessarily the game for a Victorian vampire or mech-wielding space cadet (unless that’s the sort of game the GM and other players are interested in pursuing with you). Its the game for characters who loved Darkwing Duck growing up and now cause mischief on Heelys.

Midnight Kiss is another game with fun character creation prompts. While the sections for creating your vampire lover have longer rolling prompt lists, the area for creating your own character has insightful questions to ponder. I also love how creating your PC comes after choosing the vampire lover so that you already have a feel for what sort of story you are telling and can build your original character to fit the same world you’re putting your vampire creation in. If your vampire is an original punk walking around downtown Portland, you can decide what sort of person your PC is – are they a new punk that the vampire scoffs at or are they a historian studying the punk movement or are they someone uptight who dreams of cutting loose and being who they really are inside but need someone like the vampire to draw them out. All three of these options are based on the creation of the vampire. Then we get the questions around the characters interests and relationship goals (which match the game’s theme of romance) and then vague goals like “I fear…” and “I regret…” This creates some really fun work with internal struggles and back story. Love it.

Character Creation in My Games

When deciding how I want to do character creation for my games, I treat it a lot like how I decide my game mechanics. Prompts need to match the tone and focus of the game. There’s no point in agonizing over eye color unless eye color is going to come up for the game (or if you’re creating OC art for it…which is a different conversation).

That isn’t to say appearance doesn’t matter for a game. In Mother Hydra Father Dagon, you play a cultist and one of the background options is a Deep One Hybrid (that is a child of a human and a Deep One fish person). Your character’s appearance will not only show their ancestry but will effect their stats – if you look like a fish, you’re going to have a hard time stealthing around and being charismatic to humans (unless they’re a particular kind of Shape of Water fan). This also matters for clothing. I bring up clothing in both Mother Dagon Father Hydra and in Father Dagon Mother Hydra where you play a civilian trying to stop the cultist. I include this because if you’re character is in a mini skirt and ten inch heels, you are gonna take a hit to dexterity even if your charisma is boosted. Running over crumbling asphalt to escape Shoggoths in heels is not ideal.

Then there are times I create whole games dedicated to character creation. Make a Necromancer is one of these instances. I love necromancers. I’ve written about them, played them, homebrewed powers for them, and more. Creating a tri-fold prompt game just for contemplating the types of necromancers we can create…yea it was a good time.

This isn’t to say that I always require time spent analyzing appearance and background for my games. Some of my games are more minimalistic due to space. Radio Broadcast at the End of the World for example only has 2 character creation questions – name and show name. This is because your character isn’t seen. You are only a voice in the chaos of the apocalypse. All that matters is who you announce yourself as, the interaction with callers, and the music.
Sure you could go more in-depth, especially if you want to create character art or deep dive into a background of why you are DJ, your connection to music, why you choose the type of music you do, but that’s up to the player. Let the music tell the story here. This game is meant to be quick and dirty, creating a playlist and thinking about existential dread…