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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janx" data-source="post: 5897351" data-attributes="member: 8835">I advise always having a table rule that PCs must be built to be acceptable to the rest of the party because the Player will be accepted into the party automatically, to avoid abuse of this auto-matic approval effect.For making PCs with personality, I have 2 approaches.  The first, like the Mechanic example, is I define my PC to be like an existing fictional character, but different.  The initial difference starts off with name, background story that has similar elements, but befits the setting and copyright law.What I'm usually looking for is manner of speaking, attitude, and reactional behavior.One of my last PCs was a half-orc barbarian in an arctic setting based on Sabretooth from the 1st X-Men movie.  My PC didn't work for anybody, have a healing factor and wasn't part of a human weapons program.What I took from it was the winter fight scene, wearing furs, gruff attitude, lethal anger problem, and less verbose manner of speaking.He was big, the strongest PC in the party, a bully (we had some discussions on how to handle that so I could 'act' mean, but still go along with the party), had an urge to kill things that seemed suspicious (rightly so as it turned out), and was not the party negotiator.The goal, wasn't to replay the source material's life.  Simply to give the player a sense of how to react to whatever happens in the game.  Do you get mad when an NPC wrongs you?  How do you talk to other people?  How do you go about getting what you want?This leads in to the other method I use.  Which is to answer questions like I previously mentioned.  What bad situation would anger your PC?   What bad situation would your PC keep his cool?  What is the speaking style of your PC (formal, gruff, causal, etc)?  What would your PC protect?  What does your PC not care about?the list of questions could be endless.  I always try to find a way to differentiate my PC from other PCs I've played in some distinctive fashion.  I've had a PC who only whispered, and his Raven familar did most of the talking, I've had a PC who sneaky and sly, like Batman.  I've had a PC who wasn't dumb, but had no concern for strategy or planning, and was gruff and direct.The way I see it, if you can define your PC's behavior in such a way that others notice that this PC is not the same person as the player, and not the same person as the last PC he played, you're doing something right and you are defining a memorable personality.</blockquote>

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