Pathfinder Pawns - Rise of the RuneLords
Pathfinder Pawns - Bestiary 4 Box
Character notebook/binder
Ipad
Writing tools
1 set red and gold
1 set clear w/flakes
1 set purple
1 set granite(missing D10)
1 set clear (missing D20, D10)
5 jade d10s
40 black d6s
Red and black counters
3 minis
1 Crown Royal Black bag

I'm playing tomorrow as Kettle in the FFT campaign (here) which hasn't been played in some time.

What sort of stuff do you bring as a player? What do you wish you could bring?

The 3 Rules of Character Backgrounds

When starting out with a character, the first thought you might have is, “Who is this character?” And that question is a massive part of why we play roleplaying games. It’s to play someone other than ourselves, to step into their shoes and approach their world in their own unique way. But most of us have only a vague idea of what we need to know. I’ve seen players who have no background and make it up on the fly, and players who write out pages and pages of history. Neither is right nor wrong, but eventually it all boils down to 3 basic rules.

Rule #1: Know Your Motivations

You have a history. It informs the decisions you make every day. Whether you realize it or not, decisions you make throughout your life are based on things that have happened to you in the past.

Why does this matter for your character? They work the same way as you do. Their upbringing as a child, positive or negative, may inform their reaction to a capricious nobleman. Or, their upbringing on the edge of a civilization may make them curious and daring. Do you need to know every event in your character’s life to know how they’ll react to a situation? No. But if you know this history, you can play your character better and they can grow with you throughout the game.

Rule #2: Great Minds Think Alike

Be open to changes. It’s a rule that works in life, and it works in games too. One of the most important aspects of roleplaying is that it is a group effort, and this can be a strength for making a character as well. Why limit yourself to your own imagination? When working with others to form a gaming group, it often is the case that each individual makes a character, and then the group comes together with little to no prior thought as to how they came to be a group in the fiction of the game.

This isn’t always the case, and there is nothing wrong with that approach, but making characters together means creating a group, not grouping separate characters. What if your cleric was not just a passing friend of your fighter, but they were siblings? What if your barbarian was the adoptive father of the rogue? Or the other way around? Or maybe two of your characters were war-time friends, or one stole something from the other and now owes a great debt?

All of this leads to the idea that a character doesn’t have to just be the invention of one person: it can be a great group exercise that leads to interesting roleplaying and a more enjoyable experience.

Rule #3: There Are No Rules

Of course, some of you probably saw this last point coming. Rules shouldn’t govern how you make a backstory, but they can help you get a good start. If there is anything that you should take away from this article, it’s that characters shouldn’t be limited by what you’re used to seeing or what one person sees.  Let them be as boundless as you are, and never stop striving to be better. 

Nate(also known as @GuessWhatTimeItIs on TUMBLR) is a full-time student, and a part-time DM with a passion for creating new ideas and getting his PCs into trouble. His current rpg obsession is Dungeon World, but Dark Heresy is his specialty. While he prefers to run the dungeon, he isn’t against fighting it out in dark with torch in hand. When he isn’t tearing his hair out over a map layout or errant plot point, he can be found playing video games, spending time with his family, and enjoying life in the frozen north.

So...

You've met one, or maybe there's one in your group right now:  The guy who plays the same character type over and over.  Or worse yet, reincarnations of the same guy, or long lost twin with the exact same equipment, Kronk II, etc...

I believe this happens because of a love of the arch-type, or because of the ease of playing a character that you've played before.  There's no searching through a hundred books if you exactly know which incantations you are going to take with your warlock, and have half of them committed to memory.

If I asked you to join my group with your go to character, what would it be?  Which rules are you so familiar with that you could essentially draw up the character without fact checking?  What would you pull out in a pinch?

For me, I've always had a stock wizard who self buffs(using the 3.0 durations of bull's str type spells) and uses utility type spells beyond that.  I know that if I play in Fae'run I can gain some extra weapon or armor proficiencies to make this build work with the regional feats, and I have a few tricks up my sleeve with regards to making the durations longer, the metamagic easier, or the effect +6 instead of +4.  Most DMs I've asked allow "Easy Metamagic" conditionally.  The "Bite of" line of spells suits this guy really well.

Anyway, regardless of system, let me know in the comments down below what your go to character type is, and some of the tricks you commonly use to beef 'em up.

Happy Rolling!

I'd like to hear about your first character in a tabletop RPG.

Game: DnD 3.5
Characters: Drunken Master and Ninja
Campaign World: Faerun

Mine was actually a pair of ninjas.  One a drunken master, and the other a true ninja styled monk.

Most people would tell me that these were no-where near optimized builds, and they would be right.  These were 3.5 monks with a few extra attacks, but they were no where near as combat-able as the other players' PCs.  I was totally ok with that though, because I actually got a lot into the story of the game, rather than the specific characters.

The magic items I geared them with was the spider-walking boots.  They ended up in tons more danger than if they would have never had them, LOL - but they were both risk-takers, and I thought it was awesome to imagine that I was a ninja walking on the ceiling waiting to get the jump on a dragon that could rip us both to threads ---> Thats what was supposed to happen anyway...

What really happened was that we got cut-off from the party, and easily became giant spider chow.

I did find myself scouring every book I could get a hold of in order to read all of the options available to me, and found that part of the game really fun.  I still love doing that to this day, although book scouring became googling.

Another thing to note was that I was really intimidated by all of the magic classes.  Even though I had the books at my disposal and I wanted to play some sort of caster, I made myself play a martial character.  My thought process was that I would end up holding up the fun by having to stop to look up spells all the time.

In retrospect maybe I shouldn't have played 2 characters at the same time(which was what all of the other players were doing) and instead concentrated on playing what I wanted to play, and learning how to do it well.

Over to you, what was your first character like?  Do you remember their name or back story?