character creation – Nerds on Earth https://nerdsonearth.com The best place on earth for nerds. Sun, 24 May 2020 14:10:29 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/cropped-nerds_head_thumb2-100x100.png character creation – Nerds on Earth https://nerdsonearth.com 32 32 All the podcasts from NerdsonEarth.com, under one umbrella. We create short run podcasts for nerds, covering D&D, Marvel, Starfinder, and more! You vote for your favorite shows and they just might get a second season. character creation – Nerds on Earth false episodic character creation – Nerds on Earth jason.sansbury@nerdsonearth.com podcast All the podcasts from NerdsonEarth.com, the best place on Earth for nerds. character creation – Nerds on Earth https://nerdsonearth.com/wp-content/uploads/powerpress/noe-podcast-logo.png https://nerdsonearth.com/blog/ Remember the Name: Tips for NPC Creation https://nerdsonearth.com/2020/05/remember-the-name-tips-for-npc-creation/ Mon, 25 May 2020 12:00:00 +0000 https://nerdsonearth.com/?p=30436

How do you make memorable NPCs in your tabletop games? Start with these simple tips!

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Back in high school, one of my history teachers guided us through an exercise designed to stress the importance of determining a person’s Frame of Reference (FOR) to see how that shaped their Point of View (POV).

My history teacher’s point was, that people are, to some extent, the results of their histories. This translates directly to tabletop gaming as well; regional folk tales, growing up in a barracks, associating with ‘low-lifes’ – these things get incorporated into a character and helps us catch a glimpse into their motivations and desires. It gives us a lens through which we can understand a character. 

A black and white image of a smoggy skyline in the Industrial Revolution
Can you imagine if skylines still looked like this?

D&D NPCs: Stand Away from the Pack

Our players tend to glob onto NPCs when we least expect it. What determines whether an NPC will exhibit that ‘star-status’ and become beloved by the party?

Sometimes it’s as simple as the voice, or maybe the NPC stands out from the crowd in some way. There’s always SOMETHING, and as a GM you can give your NPCs one unique characteristic that invites the players to welcome them with open arms. 

Here are a couple methods that you can use to flesh out your NPCs:

  • Cast Away
  • My Entire Life Story
  • Unique Voice
  • Trinkets and Quirks
  • Gimme the ‘Block, stat! 

Abram, you’re not making any sense! These aren’t real methods! Don’t worry, I’ve outlined the premise of each of these, below.

Creating Memorable NPCs: Cast Away

One of the best ways to get your players to mentally connect with your NPCs is to cast them as an actress/actor. Bonus points if your players recognize the name! Oftentimes, I’ll say who the actor is and then whatever show or movie that they’re from.

The caveat with this is that your players will often have some predisposed attitudes or feelings towards this character if they’ve already seen the flick. Lucky you! Feed those biases and create some red herrings!

Here is more on casting an NPC.

Tom Hank's character in Cast Away, with long hair and beard.
Grizzled and pure.

Creating NPCs: My Entire Life Story 

You don’t have to go overboard with an extensive lineage through five generations, and you certainly don’t have to write a novel detailing childhood to the present. Even if you’re a player creating a new character, we recommend a simple, story-based process we outline here.

These are NPCs that your players might embrace into the story or maybe the only interaction will be a brief conversation in passing. Putting too much effort into this stage runs the risk of being wasted; that’s not much fun for the GM. Even if you wanted to reuse the backstory elsewhere, you’ll always remember who it originally belonged to. Cue nostalgia. 

When developing a backstory for an NPC, the most important thing to establish is how their individual history influenced their current FOR and POV. Sample questions:

  • What circumstances led them to hold specific beliefs or feel a certain way about the government, a nearby town, or a close neighbor?
  • How did they come to be in their profession?
  • Do they have a family?
  • Have they always lived here?
  • Are they active in the community?
  • Where do they spend most of their time? 

Typically, I would recommend this kind of depth for an NPC that is guaranteed to play a role in the campaign, because this sort of information will usually only come up as a result of dedicated conversation.

If the PCs visit the baker to buy a sweetroll to bribe a guard, the baker isn’t going to hand them the pastry while mentioning the time they were bullied as a child, which is why they decided to put on a bunch of muscle. There must be context for this backstory to come out.

A delicious Sweetroll from Skyrim, drizzled with icing.
Have you seen my sweetroll?

Create a NPC: Unique Voice

Something as simple as giving your NPCs a unique voice is enough to draw the players into the narrative. Now, if you’re not a professional voice actor (at least 99.9% of us), don’t get stressed out with trying to reinvent the wheel.

In fact, every person in your campaign likely won’t have their own voice: most people native to a specific region are going to share some of the same affectations, inflections, and dialects.

Use this as a baseline for your characters in a specific location. For example, everyone in a village might speak with a Welsh accent, but the blacksmith might be a bit gruffer thanks to years of breathing in thick forge smoke. 

Keep in mind that different regions will have unique names for the same thing. I’ll use ‘Shamble-Men” from the Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss as an example. In the novels, the ‘Shamble-Men’ are monsters who are formed out of the discarded remnants of the harvest and slowly march towards the villages at night. They are a folk tale, however, and only a ‘backwater’ village would believe such tales.

Having your NPCs hold superstitious beliefs, like wearing a phial of salt around their neck or keeping a copy of every holy symbol nearby, can help define a region and give some flavor to their persona. It defines what’s important to them.

I’m looking at you, Beni.

Beni holding up a religious icon in hopes it will ward off a mummy.
Oh Beni, you’ll never be forgotten.

Trinkets & Quirks

A quick and easy method of setting your NPC apart is to give them physical attributes or possessions that are exclusive to them. Whether it be a purple mohawk, a pet ferret, or an ugly brooch, NPCs are bound to have something that nobody else has.

Give them a purpose within society. It might be an actual occupation, hobby, “calling,” or odd-job. Then, think of what that might mean for their belongings and how they might handle themselves.

Take this a step further, and give them the OPPOSITE disposition of what the norm might be. For example, a butcher might be stereotypically described as being a well-fed man with an abrasive personality. However, what if the butcher were a shy woman with quick temper who prefers a foreign blade over the Empire’s steel meat-cleaver? Flip the story on its head.

Jewelry, family heirlooms, pets, weapons, hairstyles, clothing, artifacts, relics, family, occupation, tattoos, piercings, allergies, taste preferences, affinity for ale, specific pronunciations, language barriers – there are numerous possibilities that you can have fun with here. 

Make them quirky, not crunchy!

Holly’s necklace in Breakfast at Tiffany’s is iconic.

NPC Creation: Gimme the ‘Block, stat!

OK, sometimes you do need the crunch that a stat block provides. You can never guess the reception that your NPCs will get from your players. Conversations run amok far too often, and civilities give way to violence and rolling for initiative. It doesn’t hurt to keep several basic statblocks on-hand to reference in case it starts to go down.

Dungeon map made using Donjon Resources.

For your average NPC, these statblocks are going to be nondescript and more barebones than a chilly skeleton on All Hallow’s Eve. Keep some mundane weapon stats nearby so you have the damage ready.

Additionally, swap out a feat or two depending on who your character might be. I’m going to plug it again, but Hero Lab by Lone Wolf Development is a fantastic tool in this regard. You can save your portfolios and calculate numbers automatically while you quickly make adjustments mid-session. 

Donjon is an excellent resource for generating NPCs on the fly. In the provided link below, a list of NPCs will be created with race, brief physical description, possible weapons/armor, and a sentence of flavor. Sifting through a bunch of these lists can give you some great ideas to start with! This is only the tip of the Donjon iceberg – there are map-making tools, name generators, weather, shop inventory, loot drops…it really is an incredible wealth of information. I highly recommend that you give it a look and poke around to see what jumps out at you. 

Link to Donjon Resources.

Remember the Name: Parting Thoughts

This is not a complete list, by any means, and it’s certainly not the final word on NPC creation. You will develop your own style over time and find something that works well with your campaign preparation. Just like there are no two NPCs alike, there isn’t an incorrect method to prepping for your games.

If you are creating an NPC that is going to be a prominent, vital link to the story as a whole, then you’ll probably want to combine a couple of these methods. You can use them for easy descriptions to help your players connect with your setting.

Plus, as you start fleshing out these characters, you will undoubtedly have a better handle on HOW you are going to portray them and get a feel for who they truly are. They will come alive on the table. Well, not literally, but you catch my drift.

Embrace the challenge of the GM, who gets the exciting privilege of walking in the shoes of every character!

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An Interview with Two Veteran Players with Some Great Character Creation Advice https://nerdsonearth.com/2018/10/character-creation-advice/ Mon, 01 Oct 2018 12:00:54 +0000 https://nerdsonearth.com/?p=19785

Players are looking for advice on creating a great roleplaying character. We interview Rachel and Heather from the Find the Path podcast to help with that need.

The post An Interview with Two Veteran Players with Some Great Character Creation Advice appeared first on Nerds on Earth.

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Keeping pace with the renewed popularity of pencil and paper roleplaying games like D&D and Pathfinder is an equal rise in the amount of RPG blogging. Yet, approximately 110% of those blogs are advice related to Dungeon Masters, leaving players to grind it out at level 1.

This is particularly true for brand new players. LOTS of new players are coming to tabletop roleplaying games, so let’s share some simple advice for one of the simplest of things: CHARACTER CREATION.

Specifically, what are some tips and thoughts on creating a great character? This advice comes from Heather Allen and Rachel Sandidge, two wonderful people who happen to also be long-time Pathfinder RPG players and current cast members of the Find the Path podcast, a playthrough of the Mummy’s Mask adventure path for the Pathfinder roleplaying game.

Character Creation Advice

Clave: First, thanks for sharing. What is your primary goal in creating a character? What are the common high-level objectives you’re trying to tackle? And do you have the character fully mapped out in your mind?

Heather (currently plays Onuris, a 3rd level cleric of Horus): I try to make characters that are different than ones I’ve played before, but with a build that I think I’ll enjoy playing. If it’s a character I know I’ll play for a while, I tend to chose my feats and class abilities that I can customize ahead of time. That way, if I want to do a feat tree, I know I’ll be able to get it and still have it be viable during the game. (Editor’s Note: This is keyed toward the Pathfinder RPG but the principles remain the same for D&D 5e, for example.)

Rachel (currently plays Sitra, a 3rd level rouge): Hands down, my primary goal is a character that I’m going to have fun to play! Once I find out the theme or location of the adventure, I start building a concept from there.

Unlike Heather, I’m not usually the player that plans everything out from 1st level to 20th level because I like my characters to evolve more organically. I’ll have a general idea in place, but I like when the story drives my character development. Every time I’ve planned them out, my characters end up going a different direction anyway, so it makes it easier to just let things fall where they may.

Clave: OK, you have your high-level concept. Now, what are some sources of inspiration you use to then flesh out your character?

Rachel: I’m a visual person so over the years I have become familiar with deviant art. I also follow several artists on tumblr. A lot of the time I’ll see a picture and then when an adventure comes up, I develop my character around that.

Or if I know the general culture my character is based on compared to real world places, then I will dive in the collection of books I’ve gathered over the years. I have encyclopedias on ancient cultures, religions, or day in the life sort of things. I use them mostly for my own writing, but they definitely come in handy.

Our GM (Rick, my husband) also has pretty much every Pathfinder book we could possibly need to reference the world of Golarion. He helps me hash out the final details that solidify my character’s connection to the story and the world. I have the habit of coming up with a concept, and then I have to go to our GM and ask him, “How do I make this work in Golarion?” Not once has he failed to deliver, but I know that makes me pretty spoiled as a player.

Heather: I draw inspiration from a lot of places. I often look at the campaign traits that Paizo supplies in the Player’s Guides for a Pathfinder adventure path and take the one I chose into account when developing a backstory so my character will feel like they belong in the setting. I’ll read about the location we’re playing in to help determine what kind of life my character would have lead before the adventure begins.

Don’t be afraid to talk to your DM and ask questions or just have a conversation about the game and the setting. They might have ideas that could help you flesh out things you’re having trouble with.

If you’re stumped, don’t be afraid to take inspiration from a favorite character from another media! It’s a good starting point for personality and big backstory points, and as you play you’ll develop the character. Even though it was based off of something, they will become your own.

Clave: Let’s dig into that a little more. Maybe–as you said, Heather–it’s inspiration from other media, but what are some other surprising places or technique you use in create characters?

Heather: I have been inspired by songs before. There’s been a handful of songs that have made me think “what kind of person would feel this way, or sing about this” and then gone off to make an entire character following that train of thought.

I tend to start with an idea for a backstory, and build the character from there. There’s been a few characters that I’ve had their backstory written before I’ve even touched a character sheet.

Rachel: My best friend, Jessica, and I have already been writing together for ages. Character creation for us actually is a back and forth process. I will start with a character trait. Could be as simple as my character is quick to anger. Then we’ll bounce ideas about why that character is angry. Is it family? Friends? Something historical? Cultural? Etc.

We will just sit and continue talking about who this person is stemming from that one thing. Then I’ll go back and see how that fits into the mold of Golarion and whatever specific Pathfinder adventure we’re aiming for. Anytime we have writer’s block, or need a new character, or whatever, just sitting around and talking gets the creative mojo going, and before we know it, we might have the initial character done, and three more on the backburner for future stories.

Heather: I’ve had characters be related to characters someone else is playing. For our Pathfinder Carrion Crown campaign, my character and my friend Jessica’s character are siblings. We talked about what we wanted to do, and while we both wrote our own backstory, we worked together on some of the details and came up with something we both really liked.

It gives you a strong connection to another character, and gives you some good role-playing opportunities right from the beginning. We did this at Find the Path for our Mummy’s Mask characters to a lesser extent. Onuris knows Sitra and Sudi, but we didn’t write our backstories together for that campaign.

Rachel: My other strategy came from my previous profession. I still do some teaching on the side, but when I was a full-time public-school teacher, I pretty much had my pick of characters. My students were so diverse, interesting, and just wonderful that often times I’d base my character on them. It was a rare occasion if I based a character solely on one student. Usually it was a combination of several. I never told any of my students that they were my inspiration, but I hope they’d be flattered.

Clave: Thanks so much. I think the lesson learned is there is no one right way. It might be a piece of art, a song lyric, a student, a back-and-forth discussion, a skilled build keyed to a particular campaign, or more! So thanks for sharing your process with us, as there is surely something in there that will connect with new players who may be looking for a little guidance to get going.


If you are looking for a simple, step-by-step guide to preparing a streamlined backstory, click here. Or click here for more on the Find the Path podcast. And click here for more on the Pathfinder roleplaying game.

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