Ravings of a Textual Deviant

Wow..time flies. This week Ginger asks

What inspires you to create characters? Do you have partially-developed characters in mind for use when you get into a new campaign? Do you shop characters around, or do you come up with new characters when you get into a campaign? Why? If you GM, are you bothered by receiving a solicitation for a ?generic? character, or does it enthuse you to get a solid proposal even if it?s not closely tailored to your game?

As a player…
Most of the time, I create my characters for specific games. I like hang back a bit and see how the party shapes up before I dive in, probably because I’d hate to have to put a great idea on the back burner because it wasn’t appropriate to the current game. I’m more likely to come up with a character’s background and personality, then fill in the skill set as needed. The current Thursday game is Planescape, which leaves character background wide open. I wanted to play an Asian character, but I don’t really like Rokugan very much. Instead, I talked it over with Rob, and we decided that I could be from some backwater plane (literally, as my character is part aquatic elf, part water elemental) that resembled the sort of mythic, Tang-dynasty China that would eventually produce a Chinatown like the one in Big Trouble in Little China. I also wanted to play a character who was very attractive, charismatic, feminine and proper. The party ended up being a bit light on the magic-using, so she ended up as a Taoist sorceress. (Personally, I think it would’ve been much funnier if my original concept of a half-dragon warrior had worked out, but I’m satisfied.)

As a GM…
Usually, I prefer to let players have a lot rope to hang themselves of room to maneuver. I can’t imagine any of my regular crowd coming up with something too generic. I will do my level best to shoehorn a character into a campaign, provided the player is a) willing to work with me in that process b) willing to accept whatever disadvantages come along with the irregularity. Basically, if the player is truly happy with the character, I’ll go along. (If the player isn’t happy with the character, it’s my job as the GM to help him/her get the character game-ready.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2004 at 11:42 am and is filed under Games & Gaming, Gaming Memes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.