# What to expect. --- Character creation is maybe the most important part of playing and TTRPG, and that importance only increases the longer you plan on playing that character. As such, I want there to provide as many tools an explanations to help you create the character that you will have the most fun playing. ## Rules of character creation. Below you will find the rules of creating a good character. If at the end of this process these rules are not followed. We go back to the drawing board. 1. You are excited to play you're character. 2. I'm excited to have you play your character. 3. We're confident, everyone at the table will be excited to watch you play your character. That is it. As long as everyone at the table is happy. Well... we're happy. This gives us a guiding light in our character creation. **Your character should be fun for everyone at the table.** Everything else is merely a suggestion. ## The Process I believe that character creation is best done when both the DM and the Player are collaborating on the character in question. Meaning plan to work together with me to get your character all put together. This will be done as a combination of asynchronous text posts, discord. chats, and hang outs (whatever our schedules allow). I suggest keeping your character choices between just you and me for now as part of the fun of the early stages of a campaign is being surprised by the myriad characters your friends create. I will do my best to liaison between everyone so that no two characters are too similar and that there is a good party setup (whatever form that takes). If I haven't already, I will add you to a private text channel for just you and me in our discord. That is a great place to get this process started and start sharing any ideas you have! But don't worry, this isn't meant to feel like homework. If you don't have time or just are a little hesitant, know that I plan to walk everyone through the rest of character creation one on one. **That means, anything below this point is optional and only there for you to look at if you want to.** (Note: I'll re-walk you through it anyway so be warned) # Some things to note. --- Before we get started I wanted to say a few words about my philosophy when building Bloodrite. More specifically that which will affect your character creation. I take a sort of hard stance method to world building. Meaning I have strong ideas about how some things work, a few examples are: magic, undead, gods, etc... What this means for you is that I may be randomly cryptic or perhaps limiting in what I allow. Know that this is meant to create a memorable and well defined feeling to playing specifically in this campaign setting. It's not just there to ban you from playing what you want. It may just require a little more collaboration than is sometimes necessary for character building. # Why do we do this? --- Keep in mind a simple fact when creating your character. We do this not to have the coolest character, not to have the strongest character, not to have most surprising character, but to have the most narratively interesting character. The one we want to watch go on a journey. # Where to start. --- ## Things to keep in mind. While these are not hard rules, these are my rules of thumb when creating a character for a D&D campaign. Think of each one of these as a sort warning signal. If you want to color outside the line you can do so but make sure your doing so on purpose. #### 1. Your character should be competent in some way. This is D&D, at it's core it's a game about fighting monsters and getting stronger. While a level one character is weak they are stronger and more capable than 90% of people in the world. Most importantly, it's more fun to watch flawed yet competent characters than it is to watch incompetent characters. #### 2. A Character in Motion Your characters life is not starting right when we start the campaign. Try to avoid having your character have no attachments to the world around them. What plans do they have? Are they reading a book? We're catching these character in chapter one of their lives. Not the prologue. #### 3. Communication is the name of the game. TTRPGs are social games. Meaning they are mostly about talking. If your character is inhibited in terms of communication in any way (verbally, visually, emotionally, etc...) that will greatly impact your ability to engage with the game as a whole. #### 4. Play to the top of your Intelligence In improv, there is a rule: play to the top of your intelligence. This might seem confusing as, in improv (as in D&D), we play characters dumber than ourselves all the time. That is not quite what the rule is meant to state. Playing to the top of one's intelligence is more to not sacrifice your character's integrity for incompetence. A dumb person is not unable to recognize the world around them and reason about it. They just may struggle to parse logic or learn new things. They are trying their best to fit in and be cared for, just like everyone else. Practically what this means is to watch out for giving you character behaviors and traits that make them act in a way that would seem completely out of place and distracting. Why does this matter? Simply, it's a courtesy to your other players and DM to not take too much focus away by "just being your character" #### 5. Make a character you can relate to and understand. This is probably the most important "rule" for me personally. This is pretty much exclusively for long campaign characters. If you're character is too "high concept" or not grounded enough, it will immediately become difficult to stay in character or really believe what you are saying. I often fall into this trap by creating a character based on a fun mechanic or cool picture I found. When creating your character, the most important thing is, first, that you are excited to play them. But, second, that they are a character that you will find fun and easy to play and keep playing. ## Coming up with a concept Some people are able to summon a character from the dark recesses of their brain. But if you're not one of them (or the dark recesses are scarier than usual), below are a couple of methods I find useful to create characters. ### Class and Lineage It might seem simple but it's effective. Sometimes looking at cool names and descriptions just works and that's okay. Feel free to look at these pages for inspiration but there is no need to pick just yet. #### [[Classes]] #### [[Lineages]] ### Archetypes One option to start from when creating a character is to think of archetypes and tropes that you've seen in similar media before. If one excites you, explore it a bit! Ask yourself questions like: * What would it mean to be like that? * What do I like most about that archetype? * What characters can I think of that are like that? If you lose interest, move on. If not, maybe you have something there. Here is a list of [[Archetypes]] that might inspire you. This is in no way meant to be an exhaustive list so feel free to think of your own! ### Character Inspiration Another option is to pick a character you like, or group of similar characters, and ask yourself why. * Why am I drawn to this character? * What about them do I find most interesting? * What about them would I change to make them even more interesting? Starting from a character is a great way to get in touch with the specifics of what you actually like in a character. I warn you though, not every character you like to watch or read would be a character you would like to play. ### Self Reflection Finally, self reflection. This method can be pretty amorphous and maybe ill conceived but I decided to throw it up here anyway. Simply, it can sometimes be enough to just look at a part of yourself and build a character around that. Maybe you struggle with expressing anger or motivation. Then you could ask, what kind of character also has that trait. Maybe a cleric who has been told to be pious their whole life... or a wizard who dropped out and now needs to find a new way to live. If this seems daunting or uncomfortable, feel no pressure to use it. I like to use this as a supplement to the other methods or just as an additional layer to flesh out a character. Having that personal touch to a character really helps me get into their story. ## It's still a game though. Now it's probably a good idea to take a look at the different [[Classes]] and [[Lineages]] that are available to play. Maybe you have a strong idea for both already. Maybe you'll find inspiration while looking them over. Maybe you need to develop more of your character to figure out what works the best. In any case, if you haven't already, it's probably good to get familiar with what changes and limitations I have made before getting in too deep. No need to get to creating your character sheet but, if you want to, just note that we will be rolling our ability scores together during session 0. ## Making it yours ### Questions to be answered I've written up a number of questions to answer that can get you started with detailing out your characters life. You can find that [[Character Questionnaire|here]]. ### Character Arcs Start thinking about what is the central conflict in your character and what they will need to move past it. This will give you a through-line to build your story around, plus give you an easy way figure out how a character feels about different situations in game. A useful framework for doing this is called Flaws & Wants. If you're interested you can find more [[Flaw & Want Doc|here]]. ### Simplify Now, before you write a backstory it can be very useful to write down a logline. A one sentence description of your character. It should contain the who, the what, the why, and why that's difficult. Read more about that [[Loglines|here]]. If you have enough info to write a evocative logline, then you are certainly ready to move on. ## Backstory Everyone's process is different (and believe me I understand the difficulties of putting words on paper), but now is the time to start writing the specifics of how and where your character came to be. This may be solo practice that I then can answer questions or this can be a collaborative process of talking it through and taking notes. Either way, getting concrete answers to the main questions of: * Where am I from? * What did I do before my inciting incident? * Who do I know? (at least the big ones, family, friends, mentors, enemies) Will allows us to really place this character in the world. Afterwards, it's up to what happens in the game. So... # Finally --- ## Character Sheet If you haven't decided your class or lineage, please do so now. Make sure to have your character sheet together. Whether this be DND Beyond, Classic Paper Sheets, or a custom notebook. Having access to all the information that you'll need to play will be vital. I'm happy to help with this or not. Go crazy! ## Miniatures I do want to procure minis for our characters as soon as possible so please go out and find something appropriate for your character. Let me know when you found something you like. I suggest using either [Eldritch Foundry](https://eldritch-foundry.com) or [Hero Forge](https://www.heroforge.com/) to create your own (I much prefer the proportions of Eldritch Foundry but their options are a bit more limited) but if you can find an STL file for something else that fits I'm sure we can get that to work as well.