D&D 5E [POLL] What drives your inspiration behind char gen?

Jacob Marley · Dec 1, 2015

For the 5th Edition Basic Rules campaign I am playing in I built a random table to determine race, class and background. Then, through play, I discovered the character.

For the Pathfinder campaign I am playing in I built the character after being inspired by certain mechanics.

In the past, I have found inspiration from various sources: movies, paintings, historical and literary figures, and mechanics (optimization guides). Edit: And miniatures!

Salamandyr said:
A friend of mine told me an aphorism years ago that I've held dear ever since.

"A character's background should never be more exciting than the adventure they're about to go on."

This is good advice!

iserith · Dec 1, 2015

I usually come up with an off-the-wall name, then build a character to fit it.

Chuck Dagger is a rogue who, well, chucks daggers.

Tailor Swift is a wood elf monk guild artisan (seamstress).

Mucho Cerveza is a drunken luchador and therefore a dwarf fighter that grapples.

And so on.

empireofchaos · Dec 1, 2015

Does this poll refer solely to PCs, or are NPCs included as well?

I haven't done much PC creation for 5e because I mostly GM. The PCs I've made are kind of hybrids of folk tale, media, and real world archetypes, I guess. I have a disenchanted rock gnome toymaker who's fallen in with some unsavory types kind of against his will (very vaguely inspired by the Rumpelstiltskin character in Once Upon a Time), a human goon who works for a minor noble (Sopranos, pro-gov't thugs in various recent protests around the world), a wizard-physician opposed to tyrannical rule (ditto), a happy-go-lucky big lug bard from the marches (a cross between a character from Alexander Nevsky and some country singer), a knowledge cleric vizier (kind of patterned on a historical character and his counterpart in a Turkish soap opera about the court of Suleiman the Magnificent), and Alberich the Nibelung (from Wagner's Ring Cycle). So a pretty mixed bag.

NPCs, on the other hand, are really a domain for improvisation. A lot of times I make a village or a town, and randomly generate characters using the tables in the DMG, and then invent stories about them and relationships between them based on the rolls, ironing out the inconsistencies. Sometimes these are then infused by film or TV characters (one guy who talks like Christopher Walken, one based on the shaman in the film Black Robe), sometimes, by people I know (especially a certain droning co-worker obsessed with finding the right forms).

Fedge123 · Dec 1, 2015

Wow, I wouldn't even know where to begin, I think I've dipped into the entire well of experience over the years to create characters. From books, movies, comics, real people I've met, hallucinations, neighbors, names, music, Art, miniatures, history, etc. I guess I just pray to The Muses and go with whatever the Ladies inspire me with.

CanadienneBacon · Dec 1, 2015

Although "mechanical" implies optimization, I chose mechanical because just over half the time when I sit down to draft I read through the source material for the game and see if a tidbit about a class mechanic or a piece of equipment or a combat maneuver or a spell jumps out at me. I build from that spark of an idea, based on a rules mechanic that I found flavorful.

Most of the rest of the time, my concepts are split about evenly between art and daydreaming. I either look at artwork and draft a character based on what I see in the art, or I have a theme stuck in my head that crawls out onto paper. I stay away from TV and books as inspiration. Makes me feel I'm plagiarizing. Wrong thinking, I know, but there you have it.

Noctem · Dec 1, 2015

Media for me, specifically images that I check out online. The image usually let's me create not only the mechanical but also the background for a character.

Bluenose · Dec 1, 2015

I don't make many characters that don't have some inspiration from more than one source. A theme from where the campaign area is set, a picture to inspire the appearance, some mechanics that would make sense of that, mix them together with a personality from someone I know and there's a potential character.

Corpsetaker · Dec 1, 2015

I start out with a beginning theme to my characters and allow what happens during the campaign shape my characters. I've shaped my characters around a particular magic item I've found before.

SmokingSkull · Dec 1, 2015

I chose other just because I don't rely on just one thing to make characters. For me I start with a concept based on what type of campaign I'm getting into. Once the concept is in my mind then I look through whatever the options/allowances the DM sets down for the game. If my concept can be created with what I have available then I proceed to fill in the blanks. The "blanks" are usually drawn from various sources plus my own creativity, take my current character for example.

The concept I had was "Big, strong and tough old warrior, experienced but scarred by a hard life." To emulate this I'm playing a Goliath Fighter who was a soldier in his younger days. Wizened and hardened by a life of conflict and loss, he comes off as harsh and anti-social. However the reason he is so is because he's lost everything that's ever mattered to him: his comrades, his wife and son, his clan and his home. As for other sources I based his personality off of bits from Big Boss and Solid Snake from the MGS games, Brick from Borderlands and Guts from Berserk.

Once the personality and story are in place the game mechanics take care of the rest. Admittedly this isn't the most original backstory ever created but it's one that I like and makes sense for the concept.

Lanefan · Dec 1, 2015

Voted "thematic" as that's most common for me, but I've now and then made characters directly inspired by (or direct copies of!) media personalities* and once in a rare while I'll try something just to see how its game mechanics work out though these I'll often quickly retire once the experiment's done.

* - including a Jack Sparrow clone...never a dull moment!

Lanefan