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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 3233193" data-attributes="member: 3146">Something to think about here (in support of what you just wrote), and this is my opinion: Interesting characters are not characters with a bizarre and improbable or dramatic backstory. Yeah, your ranger's family was killed by orcs and you hunted them in the mountians and then were lost in a blizzard and healed by a monk who taught you the virtues of forgiveness, etc, blah blah blah. Great. That would make an interesting story if written well. But it doesn't make your character interesting now.What makes your character interesting now is what he does and the choices he makes in difficult situations. Does your paladin insist on continuing on his mission to recover the relics of his god or make the diversion to stop a band of orcs that somehow slipped past the patrols. There are solid reasons to pick either one, but which choice you make is interesting. You've recovered a powerful magic item. Do you travel to the capital city and lay it at the feet of the king as a tribute to his governance? Do you refuse to sell it to the highest bidder because he is a wicked man and would use it to triumph over a good man in a duel? Or do you wash your hands of it all and say that what happens next is none of your concern? Let's say that an evil entity gives you a the ability to channel its evil into a death touch power. Your companions are fighting a losing battle and a villain is in front of you. Do you use the power, knowing that it is evil? Did you research it beforehand and discover that every use of the power puts the entity that much closer to breaking free of its prison? Do you deliberately try to set the entity free because you anticipate that its release will weaken other evils more than it harms innocents? Or do you not believe in guilt and innocence and only reason that its release will prevent more pain than it causes? When you are confronted with the realization that the villain you just spent nearly every spell you had in order was going to meet his master in the graveyard at midnight, do you say "we can't take him; we'll track him down another day" or do you say "I've five charges in my wand of magic missiles and three scrolls; this chance may not come again; let's roll!"Interesting characters are created by those choices. It is the courage and honor and virtue (or sometimes their failings in those virtues) in actual gameplay that make characters interesting. Without that, a character with an interesting backstory is just a dull character with an interesting backstory.</blockquote>

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