The First Wobbly Steps

Developing a Background One of the best ways to flesh out your character is to come up with a detailed background. We are products of our environment and a character is no different. Every piece of background information you have will guide the way your character's personality will develop. Do not be afraid to develop background information that will never be told in game. Nothing in your background is pointless. No one may ever know how that spider that dropped onto your face while you were sleeping as a child is what led to a life time of arachnophobia, but you know it ,and it may shape the way your character reacts to many different things. He may not only be scared of spiders will jump out of his skin if someone brushes his cheek softly and unexpectedly. Each choice you make concerning your character's background helps  you to develop a stronger sense of roleplay that will affect the way your character reacts and make your roleplay more believable.

Your Character's Family Family makes us what we are. Nobody has more influence on our personal development than the people who raise us and surround us as we grow up. Family should be a large portion of your background try to give the importan people in your background as much personality as possible. A cold and uncommunicative father will have a far different effect on a young child than a loving yet irresponsible one. You don't need to have players in the roles of your relatives in order to have actual relatives. You may have an entire family stock full of cousins, a couple of siblings and that  one crazy old great-aunt your mother never talks about, without ever seeing them come to life in game.

Developing a Personality No character should ever be defined simply as an "evil" character or a "nice" character or a "dumb" character. If a character has these traits it is for a reason. "Why" is the most important question you can ask yourself about a character both in developing a background and in developing a personalitly. If you've already established a well thought out, detailed background you probably have a good idea of what your character's personality is. Below you will find a few tools to help you in developing your Character's personality.

Techniques for Developing a Background and Personality

1) Imagination and the big What If.  Take a few moments and imagine what you would like your character to be like. Then ask yourself, "What if I really was an undersized Tog with a great desire to prove my self worth to my family" Now start to answer this question using as much imagination as you can possibly dredge up. After you have a good basis for your background ask yourself "Why you are an undersized Tog with a great desire....." Was your family poor and you were undernourished? were you picked on as a child? Did your father belittle you for your size? come up with as many questions and answers as you can. The more details the better.

2) Fill out a Character Background Questionaire Form.  There are dozens of these questionaires available from all sorts of sources from authors tools to roleplay tools. They come in varying sizes and cover varying degrees of detail. I've developed my own that is DragonRealms specific, 18 Questions, that you can use to develop your DR character's background.

3) Brainstorm.   If you don't know what brainstorming is click here (use your browser's back button to return to this page.) Best done with paper and pen, start off with some aspect of your character that you've already decided on and take it from there.

4) Personality First. Decide how you want your character to act and work backwards from there. Establish a history and background that will lead to character as you envision it.

5) Random Character Generators. Many of these are available for use by GM's to create NPC's. Use one to come up with the basis for a character and then use other techniques to flesh it out. You may also use this site to somewhat randomly develop a character using the Personality First Method. The Personality Generator

Remember while using any of these techiniques to never do anything "just because" If you give everything your character does purpose and reason he will become a believable and exciting character.

A couple of lists to help you in creating a personality for your Character