Tabletop Stuff: How To Create A Good Player Character
So you’re a player starting a new campaign, and you need a new character! Or you’re part of an existing campaign, but your last character just ate shit fatally, or otherwise left the party. You want your new character to be fun to play, loved by the DM and the other players, and to contribute positively and dynamically to the action. But character creation makes you sick to your stomach. You’re worried about creating a character who is unlikeable, boring, or who somehow, despite your best intentions, never really gets involved in the plot.
“Yes, thank you, I feel nauseous with dread.”
It’s mad easy to make a quality PC. But first you have to realize that the characters you like to read about or write about are not necessarily the same characters you will succeed at playing. The table is a totally unique creative environment where you, the player, do not control any variables in your environment, you don’t have a lot of time to think about what your character is going to say, and you don’t have any control over how other characters respond to you.
“So what does that mean?”
1 - Don’t make a point of “challenging yourself.”
This is not a novel!! Or your fanfic drafts!! Or any other space where you can hem and haw and agonize over every line, in the name of creatively stretching your wings! You are at the gaming table, other people are waiting for you to take your turn. Your character should be someone you can quickly and comfortably slip in and out of.Â
Do you feel stupid or bad when you try to act cocky? Then don’t make your character cocky. Do you hate chatting people up? Then don’t play a face character. You may have many favorite characters, in media and in your own writing, who act totally against your own social impulses. That’s great! That’s a wonderful escapist fantasy! But you have 2 seconds to think of something to say at the table, and then you’re committed to it and you roll your dice.Â
There are thousands of great and distinct characters who don’t specifically do things that you, the human being who has to say all the stuff THEY say, hate doing and are bad at.
2. For God’s sake, make them care about stuff.
Jesus. Jesus. Emmanuel. Lord God. “My character has a hard time trusting people.” “My character has a hard time lowering their walls.” “My character is an aloof loner.” “My character doesn’t like other people.” “My character is fixated on one goal and doesn’t care about anything else.” “My character doesn’t get emotional.” Stop it. Stop it. I’m dying. You’re killing me. Look at me, I’m turning blue. Stop.
The only thing - the only actual thing - your character has to do is care. No, not about themselves, or some shit from their backstory that doesn’t involve anyone else. About everything! They should have an opinion about everyone they meet, and every situation they end up in! Don’t make it a battle for your character to get emotionally invested in the other characters in the campaign, don’t make a character who will consider a lot of the events and institutions in the world irrelevant to them.Â
If you find yourself saying “my character just has a hard time connecting because [FILL IN ANY REASON AT ALL],” you fucked up. Make them care. Your DM created a whole world for you to care about it. You and your friends give up hours every week to go on an adventure that’s meaningless if you don’t emotionally buy in. There are plenty of ways to play a character who’s damaged, or has trust issues, or has an overriding singular drive, that doesn’t preclude them from making quick emotional connections.Â
3. Give them the drive to act.
Make them active. Make them brave ( “I’m terrified but I’m determined to overcome my fear” is also brave).
Caution is your enemy. Adventures are not cautious endeavors. Heroes are not cautious people. Put your finger on the scale of action vs caution to make sure that they are always talking the other party members into action, not out of it.
4. LIFEHACK: HOW TO MAKE LOVEABLE FLAWS.
I recently figured out how to trick my players into giving their characters serious, but loveable and relatable, flaws. I said, “Hey, haha, what’s something that’s funny about your character? Like, something that’s just kind of ridiculous about them as a person.”
Comedy is rooted in tragedy. But comedy is tragedy you can get your arms around. Ask yourself, during character creation, what you could make fun of this character for. What’s something genuinely absurd and garbage and self-destructive about them, but in a way you can laugh at? You’ll come up with an achilles heel for them to overcome that will make the other people at the table fall in love with them, instead of just feeling frustrated with their constant bullshit.Â
AND THAT’S IT ACTUALLY?Â
- Don’t deliberately make them hard for yourself to play
- make them the kind of person who gets emotionally invested about stuff
- make them people of action
- give them a flaw you can laugh at
If you want to bounce a character concept off of me go for it, but if you just treat this like a checklist, I think you should be fine.
jbbartram-illu
origamiaround
