Think about a character you love or admire and pull out the stuff that makes them appealing to you. This is a good starting point, but the next step is to break those characters down to the traits they're made of. Steal traits, not peopleįirst-time roleplayers tend to latch onto famous and well-known characters and pattern their own after them. This is also a great opportunity to connect your character to others-perhaps they're old friends, or went to school together-to give yourself a ready-made thing to roleplay about. Talk earnestly about what you want from the game, and listen to everyone else so you can find solid middle ground to compromise on. It's better to do this early before you invest a lot of time in a character. Maybe that clumsy young spellcaster accidentally turned their master into a cat, and perhaps the child who escaped their moneychanger parent stole the funds to pay for their new life and has to evade mercenaries hired to retrieve them. These basic concepts will give you something to spin off from as you develop your background further.

The former leader of a street gang sets out to turn over a new leaf on a bigger stage.

The only child of a miserly moneychanger who wants to escape, travel the world, and see the ocean.

A bumbling young spellcaster who lacks confidence and mixes up their spells.

The goal here is to get a body of ideas to draw from (or to combine!) as you go through the process and not get stuck on finding one silver-bullet perfect idea. Instead, every time you come up with one, jot it down.

Keep your ideas short and simple-I shoot for a single descriptive sentence each-and don't limit yourself to finding the perfect one. Everyone's creative process is different, but what I find most helpful is to start by trying to pick a singular concept.

How to create your own game character