I am not sure how to describe my character creation process. To a certain degree, by the time I am consciously paying attention to a character concept, it is already a fully formed combination of personality, appearance, rough background, and class. This is because my brain is always kicking around character and story mechanics 24/7 (albeit not always for D&D). Inevitably, whenever I crack open a D&D book, reading it causes my brain to start developing story and character ideas.
For example, I actually developed a bunch of character ideas by just sitting down and reading the d20 Modern Cyberscape book's list of cybernetic enhancements. By simply trying to imagine what some of those cybernetic enhancements would look like in use, I ended up developing the characters they were attached to. I ended up with at least three characters inspired by that book alone.
Part of how my brain works is that I create a character my creating an amalgam of traits possessed by characters from books, TV, videogames and so on that I like. Of course, as soon as a character is actually introduced into a D&D game, the character's personality often ends up being somewhat different that I originally intended. This is usually because a character's personality is mostly defined by how they play off of the other PCs and NPCs. I have also had characters end up turning out differently that I intended because of mechanics. For example, I once came up with a young, silver-haired, female Mystic Theurge who I intended to be extremely smart and intuitive, but was physically quite weak. When it came time to roll up stats, I rolled up the highest point value character yet seen in the campaign (and we were using a generous stat rolling method). She ended up having well above average Str and Con in addition to her smarts.
For example, I actually developed a bunch of character ideas by just sitting down and reading the d20 Modern Cyberscape book's list of cybernetic enhancements. By simply trying to imagine what some of those cybernetic enhancements would look like in use, I ended up developing the characters they were attached to. I ended up with at least three characters inspired by that book alone.
Part of how my brain works is that I create a character my creating an amalgam of traits possessed by characters from books, TV, videogames and so on that I like. Of course, as soon as a character is actually introduced into a D&D game, the character's personality often ends up being somewhat different that I originally intended. This is usually because a character's personality is mostly defined by how they play off of the other PCs and NPCs. I have also had characters end up turning out differently that I intended because of mechanics. For example, I once came up with a young, silver-haired, female Mystic Theurge who I intended to be extremely smart and intuitive, but was physically quite weak. When it came time to roll up stats, I rolled up the highest point value character yet seen in the campaign (and we were using a generous stat rolling method). She ended up having well above average Str and Con in addition to her smarts.