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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Shaman" data-source="post: 2071826" data-attributes="member: 26473">First, something I don’t see mentioned very often in threads on character creation is that the same principles apply to non-player characters – a GM interested in creating a memorable villain, rival, mentor, or ally should probably consider the same factors as players do for their characters. It seems counter-productive to create a world with 3D adventurers and 2D neighbors and scoundrels – more on that in a moment.Second, I think fusangite brings up an important point that bears repeating –I would like to see this included on every page of every book or article that deals with RPG character creation.For once I would like to see a character with a passionate hatred of orcs who’s never actually seen an orc, let alone had her village burned down and her family killed by them. I would like to see a character with a happy, prosperous childhood who becomes an adventurer because it’s fun and exciting, or to test himself against challenges, not because of some obsession born of a dark and stormy past.As a GM I like to see characters grow over the course of a campaign. Too much backstory, especially one in which the character’s present motivations are based on past traumatic events, acts as a straight-jacket that prevents the character from responding to the events of the campaign: the character is forever reacting in response to past, pre-game ordeals instead of acting on the trials faced in the campaign present.There’s a practical element to backstory to consider: I was presented a four-page character history for a 1st-level rogue, and on a lark I calculated the amount of experience the character would’ve accrued if all of the events of the backstory took place – it would’ve put her rogue at 4th-level closing in on fifth. Most player characters are young, with limited life experience (though certainly more than their peers among the larger society, which is represented by the difference in classes and abilities of PCs compared to most NPCs) – these characters begin adventuring during important formative years for their personalities, ambitions, and so on, and personally as a GM I would like to see more players attempt to role-play this process than indulging teenage angst as their raison d’etre.In practice in the campaigns I run, I’m less concerned with character backstory and more concerned with character goals: where does the character see herself in five years? ten years? From this I hope to see the player role-play achieving those goals, acting on ambition, reacting to success and failure, developing new goals in response to the events of the game.As I mentioned before I think non-player characters should be prepared the same way as player characters – for the GM this can be a prohibitive task, however. For practical reasons a broad-brush approach is necessary for all but the most elite NPCs. That’s not necessarily a bad thing however, for either NPCs or PCs. A broad-bush approach avoids the straight-jacket that results from the determinist thinking that fusangite described while providing salient details necessary to role-play interactions with other characters and response to in-game events. The key, IMHO, is that the broad brush-stroke should be a starting point for characterization, not an end-point – “crawling through dungeons, killing monsters, and taking their stuff,” is not an unreasonable place to begin, but hopefully the player will be inspired to guide the character into deeper water over time.For example, for my Foreign Legion d20 Modern game, I created character sketches for twenty-nine (!) members of the PC’s platoon. Each character starts with an identical stat block based on rank: légionnaire, légionnaire 1ere classe, caporal share a stat block, caporal-chef, sergent, sous-lieutenant share a stat block, and so on. Each character also gets about a half-dozen lines of descriptive text: birthplace, family, past experience, motivation for joining the Legion, personality quirks, and significant goals. I use this information to guide my interactions with the adventurers and the events of the game, but those interactions and events are ultimately more important to playing the NPC over the course of the campaign than my broad-brush initial description.For the most significant NPCs, I do invest more detail, a page or two that helps me deepen the characterization, about the same level of specificity I would develop for a player character. In the aforementioned Foreign Legion game, I created detailed backgrounds and goals for the CO of the player characters’ company and the regimental intelligence officer – the tension between these two characters will create situations in which the player characters will have to make hard choices with respect to duty, loyalty, and personal responsibility, the aspects of the campaign that will (hopefully) separate it from a simple war-game like Squad Leader.Finally (and please forgive me for this long post – if you’ve read this far, I thank you!), for PCs and major NPCs I develop my characterization before I develop the stats – the mechanics exist for me to create the character and are ultimately secondary in consideration. After I create the mechanical expression of the character, I may tweak background, personality, and ambitions a bit, as sometimes the mechanics do act as inspiration – I don’t take an all-or-nothing approach, but I do prefer to emphasize the character before the mechanics.</blockquote>

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