This Feature is part of my True Campaign Managery Course. It’s all about how to launch and run the roleplaying game campaign you want to run and give it the best chance to succeed. If you haven’t been following it from the start, catch up with The True Campaign Managery Course Index.
I’m starting a new multi-part course module today all about the absolutely awful process that is character creation. It’s called True Character Creationism.
True Character Creationism: An Introduction
Hello aspiring True Campaign Managers and Managettes. We’re moving on today from policies and procedures and planning and thinking. It’s time to talk about how you literally get your campaign party started. It’s time to talk today — and for several lessons — about Character Creation.
This may come as a shock to you — even though I said it several times in all that crap about character death — but every roleplaying game player needs a character to play. Which means they’ve got to make one or you’ve got to make one for them. Because, yes, that is an option.
Incidentally, if you appreciate these shockingly brilliant insights of mine, there are lots of ways to support my work.
But seriously…
Players need characters. Getting characters out of players — or into the players’ hands — is giant-ass pain. Doing it right won’t necessarily make your campaign great, but doing it wrong can start your campaign with a painful slog or plant the seeds for total failure later. Well, that’s a bit hyperbolic, actually, but the point of this whole course is giving your campaign the best chance to succeed.
As you read, remember I’m teaching you — yes, you, sitting there, reading this horseshit — I’m teaching you how to make the best decisions about launching the campaign you want to run in the system in which you want to run it in. I’m not going to say shit like “random Character Creation is the best,” or “ban sorcerers, warlocks, bards, and gnomes; trust me,” or any crap like that. I want to empower you to make the best decisions for your campaign based on your Campaign Vision. Remember your Campaign Vision?
Keep that shit in mind when you decide what verbal diarrhea you want to spew all over my comment section.
Guess what? When I start campaigns, I sometimes make my players do the whole random character thing. Sometimes, I let them make carefully crafted, bespoke characters with point buy and shit. Sometimes I ban monks and sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I ask for detailed backstories. Sometimes I host a big-ass character generation party where we get pizza and make characters together. Sometimes I assign character creation as homework. It depends on the campaign I envision and the system I’m running.
That’s how you should be. If you have one — und precisely one — Character Creation method you always use, you probably suck at this. And I don’t trust — and neither should you trust — any Game Master who can tell you which Character Creation method is best without asking a lot of questions about your campaign first.
My point is, don’t expect specific Character Creation instructions from me unless I’m providing an example, and then it’s just that: an example. My goal is to help you make the right decisions for your game, not to make the objectively correct decisions I’d make.
What’s the Point of Character Creationism?
We’re all about goals here in this course and at Angry Games HQ. We do everything deliberately and with intentional purpose. We figure out what we’re trying to accomplish and then come up with a plan for accomplishing it. That’s why we don’t let random tables generate our games unless we’ve carefully crafted those random tables to fulfill a specific, explainable purpose.
So what’s the goal of the whole Character Creation thing?
Character Creation is the process by which each player somehow ends up with a complete character for the Campaign you’re about to run — a character that has everything necessary to start playing the Campaign and nothing that isn’t necessary — as quickly and efficiently and painlessly as possible.
Let’s break down the important points…
The Campaign You’re About To Run
The first key concept is this: Character Creation is about making characters for the Campaign you’re about to run. Every player character is made for a specific campaign. This is one of the few objective, correct absolutes I’m going to insist on here. I don’t care whether you prefer randomness or point-buy or lots of restrictions or complete freedom; none of that crap matters. But you must accept that characters are made for specific campaigns. Consequently and thusly, the Campaign Vision determines what characters can be made and how they get made.
A player character is the tool with which a player interacts with the game and the world. If the character isn’t a good fit for the game, it’s like playing a video game with a mouse and keyboard instead of a controller. Or playing with anything other than a PlayStation Controller. Because PC gaming is a sin and no one but Sony knows how to make controllers anymore.
Is this surprising? It really shouldn’t be. You’ve been here long enough to know this crap. If you’re running a fantasy campaign inspired by medieval Europe — also called actual frigging correct fantasy — you don’t need to let in any monks or guns or environmentalists. If you’re running a campaign about saving the world from the Shrub Niggurath the Leafy Chaos, you don’t need any lone-wolf plunderers angling to get rich even at the expense of his own party.
And that brings me to two important other points.
Everything Is Subject to Your Approval
For some reason, lots of y’all think you’re honor-bound to spell out every rule and restriction in advance and to accept anything you didn’t restrict in advance. I don’t know why, but you do, and you’re wrong. As a Game Master, you’re allowed to look at a character that was made entirely according to your rules and say, “Actually, I’m gonna say no on this. Come up with something else.”
Nothing goes into your game without your approval and you don’t actually have to justify that. You can say, “Yes, I know I said anything from the Complete Handbook of Shitty Third Party Feats is fair game, but actually, I forgot that Feat existed and I’m saying no. Pick something else.” You can say, “You can’t play an elf raised by dwarfs. That would never happen. Play an elf or play a dwarf; you can’t have both.”
And that brings me to the minor second point…
Characters are Stats Plus Story
A complete player character includes both its mechanical mathy stats and its flufferdoodle story crap. It ain’t just the numbers on the sheet, it’s also whatever else was written or invented for the character. Physical description, personality, motivation, backstory, personal relations, whatever. That’s all part of the character. So when I say “everything needs your stamp of approval,” I mean everything. If you don’t like the color of a character’s eyes or the name of his years-dead sister, you can reject that shit and demand a change.
That also means that when say “A complete character is everything it needs to start a campaign and nothing it doesn’t need,” I’m covering all the mechanical stats and all the flufferdoodle story.
So let’s get back to that…
Everything a Character Needs
A complete character includes everything necessary for the player to start playing that character in the campaign you’re running. It is on you to determine what everything necessary constitutes based on your Campaign Vision. That includes every mechanical stat and every flufferdoodle story detail.
Obviously, the game system will define everything in terms of mechanical stats. Most game systems spell out what it takes to make a character. Of course, if you’re adding any optional systems, you may need some extra stats that aren’t in the core instructions. If you’re using an Honor and Glory System, for example, you might need Starting Status or Family Honor or some shit like that.
It’s in the flufferdoodle story crap that things get trickier. It’s pretty obvious, for example, that every player must provide a physical description of their character, but what else might actually be necessary? That depends on the Campaign Vision.
Say, for example, you’re running one of those player-driven, exploration-based campaigns where every character’s chasing their own goal. You need personal goals from every player, don’t you? Subject to your approval, of course. Say, instead, you’re just doing an adventure-of-the-month campaign in which the characters just do whatever quest they’re asked. In that case, you probably need a single, broad motivation from every player to help you build quests the characters want to take. If you’re running a plotted campaign about saving the world, you want to know what makes each character willing and able to take on the world-ending threat, even if it’s just because they have the balls to fight when no one else will, even if it kills them.
So… everything the character needs for the player to start playing the Campaign with it is a lot broader question than it first seems.
And Nothing A Character Doesn’t Need
Here’s where I’m gonna lose some of y’all…
Every character must have everything they need to make the game playable, right? No shit. But it’s almost as important that every character has nothing they don’t need to make the game playable. You don’t want to bog Character Creation down with extraneous, unnecessary crap and you don’t want to let the players bog it down either.
Why?
Part of the answer will be revealed a couple headings down. Watch out for that. The rest of the answer, though, is this…
The whole point of a roleplaying game is — and I’m going to invoke the Apocalypse World engine here even though it makes me dry heave — the whole point of a roleplaying game is to play the game to find out what happens. Just as you, the Game Master, must evolve and adapt to the players’ actions, so too must the players evolve and adapt their characters to the game they’re playing. Players shouldn’t know too much about their own characters at the start of the game.
Every unnecessary blank you pre-fill — whether as a player or as a Game Master — becomes a psychological constraint. It makes you less malleable. This is pure psychology and I’ve gone through this shit a dozen times over now and don’t feel like proving the point again. Either you trust me by now or you don’t and I actually don’t care.
The point is, whether it’s down to mechanical, statistical crap, or flufferdoodle story bullshit, you don’t want anything you don’t need to start the game on any character’s dossier.
If you’re doing modern D&D, for example, and you’re not using Inspiration, you don’t need any of that Traits and Flaws crap. If you never plan to make a big deal about encumbrance or ammo — which is fine, by the way; even I don’t sweat encumbrance in some campaigns — tell people they don’t need to record gear weights and ammo counts. If you plan to mine the character’s backstories for your adventure plots, you need them, but otherwise, don’t ask for — or accept — written backstories. Not even just because you think it’s a fun activity.
And Nothing You Don’t Want Either
I Never Need a Psych Profile and Neither Do You
Do you know what thing lots of players try to hand you that you absolutely never, ever need? It’s a description of their character’s personality. You know, a few paragraphs explaining how the character behaves and what they believe and what ridiculous traumas made them that way? I ain’t saying characters shouldn’t have personalities — though it’s terrible practice for players to write them down for characters they haven’t played for weeks first — I’m just saying I never need it written down for me. I’ll see the character’s personality as you — the player — play the character. It’ll be reflected in your actions.
There are times when I need very specific aspects of personality — I often specifically ask for Motivations and usually use some kind of Alignment too — but apart from that very small, limited shit with specific uses, I do not ever need or want a note from the character’s therapist. And neither do you.
There’s an implied corollary thingy to the whole everything you need, nothing you don’t thing and it’s that you — the Campaign Manager — don’t want anything in your campaign that you don’t want in your campaign.
Now, everything’s subject to your approval and you can reject anything at any time for any reason, but if there’s some option you absolutely know you’re going to reject whenever it comes up, it’s worth letting your players know that in advance. You can restrict anything you don’t want in your game for any reason. You can restrict shit that doesn’t fit your Campaign Vision, shit that doesn’t fit the world you’re building, or shit you just kinda hate.
For example, I usually run campaigns about good people trying to leave the world a better place than they found it, so I usually restrict evil character options. I also prefer to run True and Correct Fantasy, so monks don’t have a place in the Angryverse. Gnomes annoy the crap out of me, so I rarely allow them either. Of course, I might choose to do things differently if the Campaign Vision warrants it. I actually have run campaigns in which an evil gnomish monk was absolutely, hypothetically possible.
The point is, True Campaign Managers curate the options they’ll allow. If there’s something they absolutely know they won’t approve, they let the players know before Character Creation starts. It’s better to restrict something in advance than to let a player go all the way through Character Creation only to refuse the Stamp of Approval at the end. I hope that’s obvious.
As Quickly and Efficiently and Painlessly as Possible
Let’s talk about how Character Creation actually sucks…
I know some players really dig Character Creation and I know there are even some insane Game Masters who think it’s a hoot, but the objectively real fact is that Character Creation is an obstacle to gameplay. No matter how short and simple you make the process, every minute spent on Character Creation is a minute you could be gaming but aren’t.
Moreover, for every player who loves weaving elegant character tapestries from disparate lumps of character option clay, there are between two and a thousand players who find the whole process tediously awful. The less experienced a player is, the more likely they are to hate Character Creation because it’s just a bunch of math and paperwork they have no context for which is keeping them from playing the actual, fun game.
Worse yet, every minute you, the Game Master, are involved in the Character Creation process is not only a minute you’re not running the game, but it’s also a minute you could spend on literally anything else. My video games ain’t gonna beat themselves and I can’t think of a more boring way to spend four hours than watching five people fill out forms by copying crap from a textbook.
This, by the way, is the other reason to not waste any time on extraneous crap in Character Creation.
The point is that Character Creation is necessary, but it’s terrible, and when you’re deciding how to handle it, you need to treat it that way. Every choice you make about the Character Creation process needs to take into consideration that Character Creation is a waste of game time.
That said, completeness matters more. I say that because I know some dumbass is going to use this section as an excuse to comment about how randomized, old-school generation is the best because it’s the fastest. Just because it’s fast doesn’t mean it yields the best results for every campaign. After all, McDonald’s is fast too. Dumbass.
A Two-ish Step Process
Character Creation is the process of getting complete characters into the hands of players so they can start playing the Campaign you plan to run. A Complete Character includes everything it needs to start the game — statistically and story-wise — and nothing it doesn’t and it’s specifically tailor-made for the Campaign in question. As a True Campaign Manager, it’s your job to figure out how to get that done as quickly and efficiently as possible because Character Creation is a suck-ass waste of time. That means that you not only need to decide what rules the players will follow to make characters, but also how you’ll shepherd them through the process. Unless you just hand them characters you make for them. That’s an option too.
Remember, there is no right or wrong way to handle Character Creation except as defined by your Campaign Vision. Don’t listen to any dumbasses in the comments who claim to know the one correct way.
Ultimately, then, there are two broad steps in the whole Character Creation Campaign Management thing. First, you — the Campaign Manager — determine what actually constitutes a Complete Character. What does a character need to be playable and what doesn’t it need? What options are available to choose from and what aren’t?
Second, you — still the Campaign Manager — decide how you’ll actually get Complete Characters out of your players or into their hands or whatever. What’s the actual, practical way you’ll manage the Character Creation thing?
And since this lesson has introduction in the title, you probably know that I’m going to end here by saying, “Those two broad steps will be discussed in the next few lessons.” But I’m gonna say it anyway.
That’s it for the introduction. In the next few lessons, I’ll take you through those two broad steps in more detail.
“Players shouldn’t know too much about their own characters at the start of the game.”
I have risen from my seat to briefly applaud. Can’t be said enough. Carve it on the moon with a frikkin’ laser!
Preach
The pros and cons I have found out:
Fully setup by player characters: takes a while, tends to over optimisations and can create big gaps in character powers depending on the player’s skill in building characters.
Too much Randomisation: makes average characters and can prevent players from playing what they want/like, prevent customisation too much.
My next try: semi random generation with a choice of race then pick between a couple randomly picked basic balanced backgrounds, including some specific skill and stat boosts. I get to this part with all the players, then them discuss class distribution depending on their race/background picks. At this point the players picks their class with a few specific spells/attacks and then have some stats points to optimize from this base and finally pick their equipment.
That’s for a series of one-shot adventures, where I’m trying to let players generate characters with their own touch to get them a little attached to them (and feel something when they are in danger) but not spend more than an hour building a whole balanced party.
They should teach creationism in schools if this was the creationism.
Thanks Angry. Solid stuff as always. Also evil gnome monks are now going to be my next campaign villains. The first time the players meet them they will laugh. The second time they will run. Thank you.
Every article you publish makes me want to run a game again. Going to have to make the time one of these days
“If you’re running a fantasy campaign inspired by medieval Europe … you don’t need to let in any monks”
Had a brief moment of “WTF” here, because my default image of monks is Christian guys in robes living in monasteries doing lots of praying (like we see in The Name of the Rose) which was very definitely a thing from medieval Europe, though not a great choice for a character class in a TTRPG.
But then I realised you meant the Asian martial-arts kind of monks from movies and D&D, and I totally agree with you.
You also don’t need monks since, by definition, monks adopt a monastic lifestyle and don’t become adventurers.
Yes to everything but your console comments 🙂
From Zork to King’s Quest to Wolfenstein to SSI Gold Boxes and Tower of the Mad Mage to Baldur’s Gate to Temple of Elemental Evil to Neverwinter Nights, I could burn in hell for just that short incomplete list of sins… Not to mention my soft copy of the D&D arcade scrollers still on my xbox360
Also, from a player perspective, character creation can be fun in the same sense that deck building is fun. It’s also player agency. I’m not a fan of playing with other people’s decks. This is my deck, there are many like it, but… Independent discovery is fine. Would l let someone else play with my deck? Yes, I have. I do agree that watching other people build decks would be not be fun, but some folks watch videos of other people eating, so there’s that, whatever that is. And yes, we are just talking about pretend elf games. Not all games come with character creation; you can have the car or the dog or the battleship, I always pick the shoe/boot. But when they do, why bother making creation random? If someone’s going to tell me to randomly write a bunch of crap I didn’t want, fking give me a pregen sheet and I’ll tell you if I want to play.
If I try to explain why some people whose preferences and motivations are different want, like, and prefer random character generation, are you just going to yell at me that it doesn’t make sense to you and those people shouldn’t like what they like and they’re wrong to want it? Because, when I try to explain why different gameplay motivations lead to different preferences for certain aspects of the game, I get that a lot.
I don’t yell or rant at people specifically, I try to challenge concepts. I don’t bemoan folks that watch shows that don’t entertain me, but if they engage and ask why I don’t like said show, I’ll give a brief explanation, which, by and far, is sufficient for most folks. I’m saying character creation can be fun from a puzzle-like perspective. If you know what you’d like your character to be like, but have limited options, then it becomes a challenge to make what you feel are your best choices. I like playing Star Fleet Battles, at every level, scenario selection, ship selection, scenario design, ship design… I love that stuff. As a DM, it may not be fun just watching folks fill out forms (or it might, I don’t know you), but it is your responsibility to assist your players so they have the best opportunity to have their character represent their vision. And personally, I do have fun engaging with my players to help them do that. An enthusiast wouldn’t need any help there, but it is helpful for GMing to know your players in general. I’m just saying, just like you prefer not to watch people fill out forms, I’d prefer not to have to fill out forms (that I have no control over). So if character generation is going to be extensively random, then just friggin give me a pregen, it saves us all time and grief. I like playing charades, but I’m not going to play the same request for Whose Line Is It Anyway for 6 friggin months. If I have to have a million monkeys and a million typewriters to play the character that is a valid combination of rolls, then just friggin let me have that combo.
And this is why I asked. I totally misread your comment. I thought you were expressing genuine curiosity about how other gamers with other motivations might prefer random character generation and was offering to provide insight. Even though I personally don’t like random character creation, a keen understanding of gamer motivation profiles helps me see why other people would not only like it, but prefer it, and what needs it fills for them. I was just offering to share since you seemed curious. I see now that you weren’t. Though that little speech where you re-explained your preferences as if I didn’t understand them the first time was part of what I was hoping to avoid by asking if you wanted the explanation or not.
In other words… cheerfully withdrawn.
Man, I need a sticky note on my computer that says, “Remember: When someone says, ‘I will never understand,…’ they’re telling the truth, not asking for help.”
I apologize for not having a clear point. Character creation is not “terrible”, inherently… This my exposition. Watching other people and ONLY watching other people copy and fill in forms is something arguably boring, but that you “cannot think of a more boring…”. I thought I had made the point that there should be significant interaction happening along with the copying and such. Those are the two points of contention I had with your article. Otherwise, I agree. The stuff on random character creation was probably unnecessary, but I wasn’t sure what your take on that was so I threw that in there anyway.