Leonine Roar

You already know your characters are more than the sum of their abilities and statistics.  You already know your characters have a unique look and a style all their own.  You have a sense of how they treat people and how they look at the world.  You have an idea where they’ve been, where they’re going, and most importantly… why!

Now the question is: how do you present and share all this truly awesome characterization in your head? 

The various PHBs, DMGs, and Essentials Rules Compendium offer a lot of guidance and ideas on filling out the ‘color’ surrounding your character – the roleplaying aspects that include appearance, personality, backstory and motivations.  Fleshing out these important aspects of your characters helps both them and your campaign world truly come alive.

Here I present a simple approach and template gleaned from all those excellent resources.  We use this ‘APBM’ format in my games both when I DM and play: 

Player Advantages

One of the biggest advantages of this format?  Keywords in each major category to help spark your imagine and inspire your creative writing skills.  Also, coming up with this additional character color helps you enjoy and better visualize your character, especially in those “But what would your character do?” situations that always come up during our adventures. 

Beyond that character creation-based advantage, the other huge advantage is providing everyone in your party and your DM clues on what roleplaying scenes and adventures really excite or grab your character.  You’ll find it’s extremely rewarding when your character’s personality shines during party banter – and you can find more tips on that in How To: Write Great In-Character Posts.  It’s also very rewarding for when you run into the people, places and things of your past while on your adventures, and for when you finally achieve whatever grand dreams your character dreamt – thanks to the ideas you shared with your playgroup. 

DM Advantages

The greatest resource for rich and engaging roleplaying and adventure ideas is the player characters’ appearance, personality, backstory and motivations.  Remember, D&D is a cooperative storytelling game; it is critical to directly include elements of the characters in the ongoing scenes and adventures of a campaign.  You create a richer, more engaging campaign and D&D experience this way. 

A grand, villainous scheme or campaign theme is a good start, though be sure to include numerous, clear, and important story and plot tie-ins with the true stars of the story – the D&D party, your players.  This simple tip, more than any, will keep your players coming back for more and excited to continue creating their stories in your shared campaign.

Customize It!

Make the APBM format your own by using different software, tools or media, like adding in images or videos.  A header with your character name on each page helps your readers remember your character’s name as they learn about you, but maybe you have other ideas for presenting your name.  Or perhaps switching a category heading and keyword around helps your writing or presentation. 

For example, for the Motivations category, you could call that heading Dreams instead.  Whatever captures your imagination and you feel best tells the story of your character’s roleplaying aspects, that is what you’re after.  (Kudos to my friend Erik for going with a Motivations header for one of his characters, as I originally had Goals, then Dreams, and now feel Motivations is probably the best of them all for this fourth heading!) 

Your Character Character Tips

How do you handle fleshing out your characters, whether as player or DM?  What roleplaying aspects do you focus on most?  Which aspect do you enjoy seeing most in-game?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 23rd, 2011 at 12:00 am and is filed under Characters, Creative Writing, Design, Mechanics & Efficiencies, Storytelling & Roleplaying. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.