Character Building: Backgrounds and Personalities

So I've done mostly, if not entirely, GMing advice on The Author Trap to date. Since I intended this to be a blog about all aspects, I do feel a bit sheepish. My freewheeling topic choices have gotten the better of me and I've neglected the larger portion of gaming. Today's topic is one for the ladies.

Okay so that joke doesn't really work that well seeing as how there's a ton of women who play PNP games. No, today I'm going to go over character background, personality, and what you can do if you get stuck. I see this a lot, where someone wants to play but has absolutely no idea what or who they WANT to play. I have some tips, tricks, solutions, and secret weapons to get the mind-juices flowing and make it easier to build a rich character.

Basically, the first thing you ought to do is take stock of what you DO have in mind, and it helps to write it down. This isn't to make some sort of ordered list, but instead to get your mind churning on it. The ancient art of word association(the thing where you put a word in the middle of the page and make lines out to associated words) might help you figure out where you are. In fact, a lot of those dumbass brainstorming and note-taking skills you ignored in high school might help. Another thing to remember is that it's perfectly okay to start with any aspect of the character: Race, Class, Background, or Personality. Once you've got ONE down solid, it makes it easier to define the others by inferring.

What I mean is, all you need is one little nugget, and you can start layering on top of it just by asking questions. If all you know is that you want to play a barbarian, you can ask what sort of person would would BE a barbarian. You can ask what happened in their life to make them like that. You can ask what sort of race would celebrate those traits...or hate them. Really, that's the first secret weapon: Asking yourself what the opposite of what's expected is can open your mind to an interesting twist that'll hook your mind and pull out a really cool character. Sure, people like Grom Hellscream, Red Sonja, or The Hulk might be barbarians, but consider this: You could make a strong argument for Porthos, Casey Jones(the one with the hockey mask and the sports equipment) or Marv from Sin City. Now if you disagree with those examples, that's not EXACTLY the point: you can even just humor me and imagine if they were.

Actually, a lot of my interesting concepts come from a what-if. What if Batman was poor? What if an archetypal 'auspicious birth' golden child turned out to be a lazy slackass? What if the cold, unfeeling demeanor of a mercenary was due to social anxiety? It can help to take a stereotype and flip it around in some way, even if doing so leads you to another idea entirely. Maybe these twisted stereotypes are even just someone the character had met, or wants to be.

So sometimes it can even be pretty difficult to get that little nugget to start with. It's easiest to pick a class and race and go from there, but sometimes you don't want to do that. Maybe you want to form a personality first then decide on a class that fits it(or one that doesn't). For times like these, or for fleshing out a personality that's not very well defined in my head, I have my next secret weapon: Online personality and mental health tests. Yeah, they're usually bullshit. Yeah, they're not likely to tell you much about yourself...but that's not why we're taking them. Put yourself in the mindset of your character, your class archtype, or just some random popular character,  and take one as they would. This is an exercise to get your mind flowing and trailing along, and in time you can easily form something just because your experiences with the series of questions you answered. This list is something I found recently, and these "shitload of questions" lists can help too. Remember, it's less about answering accurately, and more about getting you thinking about the questions.

So background is USUALLY the one that comes last, but there's no wrong way to build a character. Ask what would've happened in the character's life to bring them where they are, to make them the kind of person they are. Ask how a popular character might be different if his experiences or surroundings were different. It's okay, even suggested to put a crazy situation or extraordinary circumstances in your background. It's compelling, and plenty of people in real life who you'd think were perfectly normal have been through a lot of shit. In a lot of circumstances you're also making things easier on the GM by being a little extraordinary. Consider these two simple, one-line backgrounds.

"I am a drow who was sold to a family of dwarves as a baby because my parents needed money for alcohol."

"I am a drow who left the Underdark at an early age because I felt I was different from other drow."

Both of these are fine to start a background with. They really are, even though the first one's ridiculous and the second one's bland. However, riddle me this: If you were the GM, which of these is easier to write a plot hook with? I'd certainly say the first one. Building strange things into your background can help a GM involve you in the plot or create a personal one. It's not WRONG to build someone who was a perfectly average person before the game started, but it's like handing them a glass ball. As in, it's smooth. Not very easy to put a fish hook in. I am the king of metaphors.

All in all, it's not wrong to start with some neat mechanical idea, or to base part of your character on a pop culture figure. The Dread Pirate Roberts is so fucking cool, how could I really blame you? I'd try to make it your own as opposed to mirroring the character exactly. Even twisting one little thing can make someone wildly different. So long as something gives you a nugget of an idea, and you arrive at the starting line with everything in order, there's no problem. Hell, you don't even really need a background to start if your GM is okay with that, so...I guess so long as you arrive at the 2nd set of hurdles with everything in order, there's no problem.