I am typically a game master when I game. It is the role that I enjoy the most, and I think that the world building part of the GM's "job" is a big part of what I enjoy. But I do sit on the opposite side of the GM's screen from time to time* and being a player. So, does "world building" apply to character creation?
One thing when you're world building is that you're likely going to come up with a level of detail that you're never actually going to use. You have to prepare for the assumption that you aren't going to be able to prepare for everything. When you're a GM, you can prepare on the fly by using the actions of the players as a springboard when you have to take things into a direction that you weren't originally prepared to take. As a GM I like to prepare "set pieces" that I may, or may not use. These set pieces can be locations, or they can be the broad strokes for an NPC that might get called into play.
Now, before I get too far into this, I should point that that this isn't the only way to make a character, and I don't think that what works for me is going to work for everyone. Or that it should work for everyone.
Before I get into the nitty gritty of what I do, let me talk a little about my process. Mechanics come last when I'm making a character. I like to get an idea about who a character might be before I start to work out how a character works out mechanically. However, there has to be a difference between figuring out who a character is and overworking a character. It is a fine line to toe, because I prefer a character that emerges during play than one that has everything worked out about their past. When I am a GM I tell players that the idea behind a player character is to engage in the ongoing story of the campaign, rather than focusing on the details of what has happened before the campaign started. Having a backstory is important for a character, but it shouldn't be so spelled out that it limits what that character that can do going forward.
When I start building a world for an ongoing campaign, or when I start building a character, I create a vision board. Sometimes this is a physical vision board (or even a scrapbook), and sometimes I use a service like Pinterest. Ultimately I end up using both in the same way, so the type that I use is dependent upon my end need. If the vision board is something that I will share with others, or others in the group will contribute to, then I will most likely use something sharable, like Pinterest.
Now, guidelines are guidelines, and if you feel that you like any of these ideas and want to add them to your process, then I suggest using my procedures as a starting point to develop your own ideas.
Right now, I am starting the process for making a character for a Call of Cthulhu game that will probably start in July with one of the groups of people that I game with. We're talking about setting the campaign in Berlin of the 1920s, so I started the process of making a character from that point. Outside of having seen Cabaret on stage about 20 years ago (and probably longer ago since I last watched the movie), I didn't really know as much about the place and time as I would have liked, so I started the process of doing some research. For this particular campaign, my research starting point was Christopher Isherwood's book 1930s novel based upon his time in Berlin called The Berlin Stories. If you haven't read it, it was the main influence upon the aforementioned Cabaret. If you aren't as interested in musicals, the book might be a better starting point.
At the same time that I was starting all of this an artist friend on social media picked up a book on Weimar-era Germany by author and filmmaker Mel Gordon and was sharing some photos of the book. When I looked up that book, I found another book about a personality from the time and I decided to order them both. Warning before clicking those links, neither of these books are all that safe for work. The nice thing about Voluptuous Panic is that it is mostly a book of photos and illustrations, so it became the center of my vision board. Right now I have a bunch of Post-Its throughout the book, marking images that are important for me. I'd share a picture of the book, but if you clicked through the link above you would understand why Morrus wouldn't be thrilled with me putting it into the article.
At this point, I am getting an idea of the tone of the time period. For me, in the process of creating a character, tone is more important than specific details, because ultimately the game will just be a fictional version of what happened in history anyway. This period was a time of great social and political upheaval, which lead to a great deal of cultural change. But, since this is going to be a Call of Cthulhu game, the Weimar period makes a great choice because it gives a lot of entry points for your occult baddies of choice.
Now that I have the basics of the setting that are important to me clear in my head, I can start to figure out the background of my character. We just finished up another Call of Cthulhu story set in the Victorian era, and the GM suggested that we could connect our 1920s and Victorian characters in some manner. My Victorian era character was a woman alienist who was a cousin to the fictional character of Carnaki, The Ghost Finder. As often happens in Call of Cthulhu adventures, things for the characters didn't go as well as they thought that they might and the party nearly died. With that game done, I had my character "retire" to the Caribbean to study the anthropology of Voodoo societies and convalesce to recover from her injuries.
I'm not 100% on the new character yet, but I am seeing her as a niece of my Victorian character, a native of Cuba. I'm guessing that my last character will end up in Havana at some point and start a family. The relevance of the arts (painters, photographers, filmmakers and dancers) exploded in the Weimar period because that often happens in times of staggering economic inflation. People look for cheap entertainment, and entertainment that will take their minds off of the world around them, and music and dance often fill that bill. Cuba is pretty well known for its dancers, so having a Cuban dancer relocate to Berlin to learn more about the (then) styles of modern dance wouldn't be a huge stretch.
This is sort of the ultimate extension of a Call of Cthulhu dilettante character. How does a dancer fight Cthulhu? Very carefully. One of the things that I like best about Lovecraftian gaming is that it is just as important to have characters who know things as it is to have characters that fight things. We know that fighting the creatures of the Mythos typically ends poorly for characters (doing that in our game nearly got our characters killed). I see my next character as having learned from my previous one. One of the basic concepts of Lovecraftian fiction is that underneath what people believe to be true about occult happenings in the world is the actual truth of the Mythos. This means what my next character learns from my previous one (off camera) can still be relevant to the "truths" of the world of the game.
The 1920s are pretty done to death in Call of Cthulhu, but taking a different perspective on them means that we can hopefully create a different sort of story than those adventures that have been used in this period previously. Whatever it is, we will end up having a good time.
Now, after all of this my next step will be to mechanically build the character with the GM and the other players. And then we play!
This is really just a quick overview of the processes that I use for character creation and world building in my games. Hopefully you'll see something that you haven't used before and you'll have a new tool in your toolbox for building things in your games.
*I don't actually use a GM's screen at any time, and probably haven't in 30 years.
Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash
One thing when you're world building is that you're likely going to come up with a level of detail that you're never actually going to use. You have to prepare for the assumption that you aren't going to be able to prepare for everything. When you're a GM, you can prepare on the fly by using the actions of the players as a springboard when you have to take things into a direction that you weren't originally prepared to take. As a GM I like to prepare "set pieces" that I may, or may not use. These set pieces can be locations, or they can be the broad strokes for an NPC that might get called into play.
Now, before I get too far into this, I should point that that this isn't the only way to make a character, and I don't think that what works for me is going to work for everyone. Or that it should work for everyone.
Before I get into the nitty gritty of what I do, let me talk a little about my process. Mechanics come last when I'm making a character. I like to get an idea about who a character might be before I start to work out how a character works out mechanically. However, there has to be a difference between figuring out who a character is and overworking a character. It is a fine line to toe, because I prefer a character that emerges during play than one that has everything worked out about their past. When I am a GM I tell players that the idea behind a player character is to engage in the ongoing story of the campaign, rather than focusing on the details of what has happened before the campaign started. Having a backstory is important for a character, but it shouldn't be so spelled out that it limits what that character that can do going forward.
When I start building a world for an ongoing campaign, or when I start building a character, I create a vision board. Sometimes this is a physical vision board (or even a scrapbook), and sometimes I use a service like Pinterest. Ultimately I end up using both in the same way, so the type that I use is dependent upon my end need. If the vision board is something that I will share with others, or others in the group will contribute to, then I will most likely use something sharable, like Pinterest.
Now, guidelines are guidelines, and if you feel that you like any of these ideas and want to add them to your process, then I suggest using my procedures as a starting point to develop your own ideas.
Right now, I am starting the process for making a character for a Call of Cthulhu game that will probably start in July with one of the groups of people that I game with. We're talking about setting the campaign in Berlin of the 1920s, so I started the process of making a character from that point. Outside of having seen Cabaret on stage about 20 years ago (and probably longer ago since I last watched the movie), I didn't really know as much about the place and time as I would have liked, so I started the process of doing some research. For this particular campaign, my research starting point was Christopher Isherwood's book 1930s novel based upon his time in Berlin called The Berlin Stories. If you haven't read it, it was the main influence upon the aforementioned Cabaret. If you aren't as interested in musicals, the book might be a better starting point.
At the same time that I was starting all of this an artist friend on social media picked up a book on Weimar-era Germany by author and filmmaker Mel Gordon and was sharing some photos of the book. When I looked up that book, I found another book about a personality from the time and I decided to order them both. Warning before clicking those links, neither of these books are all that safe for work. The nice thing about Voluptuous Panic is that it is mostly a book of photos and illustrations, so it became the center of my vision board. Right now I have a bunch of Post-Its throughout the book, marking images that are important for me. I'd share a picture of the book, but if you clicked through the link above you would understand why Morrus wouldn't be thrilled with me putting it into the article.
At this point, I am getting an idea of the tone of the time period. For me, in the process of creating a character, tone is more important than specific details, because ultimately the game will just be a fictional version of what happened in history anyway. This period was a time of great social and political upheaval, which lead to a great deal of cultural change. But, since this is going to be a Call of Cthulhu game, the Weimar period makes a great choice because it gives a lot of entry points for your occult baddies of choice.
Now that I have the basics of the setting that are important to me clear in my head, I can start to figure out the background of my character. We just finished up another Call of Cthulhu story set in the Victorian era, and the GM suggested that we could connect our 1920s and Victorian characters in some manner. My Victorian era character was a woman alienist who was a cousin to the fictional character of Carnaki, The Ghost Finder. As often happens in Call of Cthulhu adventures, things for the characters didn't go as well as they thought that they might and the party nearly died. With that game done, I had my character "retire" to the Caribbean to study the anthropology of Voodoo societies and convalesce to recover from her injuries.
I'm not 100% on the new character yet, but I am seeing her as a niece of my Victorian character, a native of Cuba. I'm guessing that my last character will end up in Havana at some point and start a family. The relevance of the arts (painters, photographers, filmmakers and dancers) exploded in the Weimar period because that often happens in times of staggering economic inflation. People look for cheap entertainment, and entertainment that will take their minds off of the world around them, and music and dance often fill that bill. Cuba is pretty well known for its dancers, so having a Cuban dancer relocate to Berlin to learn more about the (then) styles of modern dance wouldn't be a huge stretch.
This is sort of the ultimate extension of a Call of Cthulhu dilettante character. How does a dancer fight Cthulhu? Very carefully. One of the things that I like best about Lovecraftian gaming is that it is just as important to have characters who know things as it is to have characters that fight things. We know that fighting the creatures of the Mythos typically ends poorly for characters (doing that in our game nearly got our characters killed). I see my next character as having learned from my previous one. One of the basic concepts of Lovecraftian fiction is that underneath what people believe to be true about occult happenings in the world is the actual truth of the Mythos. This means what my next character learns from my previous one (off camera) can still be relevant to the "truths" of the world of the game.
The 1920s are pretty done to death in Call of Cthulhu, but taking a different perspective on them means that we can hopefully create a different sort of story than those adventures that have been used in this period previously. Whatever it is, we will end up having a good time.
Now, after all of this my next step will be to mechanically build the character with the GM and the other players. And then we play!
This is really just a quick overview of the processes that I use for character creation and world building in my games. Hopefully you'll see something that you haven't used before and you'll have a new tool in your toolbox for building things in your games.
*I don't actually use a GM's screen at any time, and probably haven't in 30 years.
