Words of Creation

[ancientempathy]

Targoth had been sitting alone at the table with his mug of ale for a few hours now, watching the tavern wenches walk by with mild interest. The brute was more interested in acquiring gold that night more than bedding a wench. That’s when Tymora thought to grace him with some luck.

“The bartender told me you’re a mercenary for hire,” asked a hooded fellow. His size and appearance was that of a human, but his face said otherwise to Targoth. He could tell this man was of mixed blood before him.

After a quick swing of ale, Targoth leaned forward and grinned wide, revealing yellow teeth while his right eye held an interest twinkle. “Yeah that sounds about right. Why? You got somethin’ that needs takin’ care of, pal?”

The half-elf pulled back his hood. He wasn’t ashamed to reveal himself, especially not in the City of Splendors. “I’ve a task for you to complete. I’ll pay half now, in the amount of 500 gold, and half later after you complete your mission.”

While taking another drink from his mug and listening, Targoth nearly chocked at the high price.

“However…” said the half-elf, “I must know about you more before I go hiring you. The price is a good incentive, yes?”

Introduction

A characters background is crucial. Knowing how to develop a character before Role Playing begins is very important too, and this can be hard at times because ideas may be dry, and you (the player) end up not knowing where to begin.

It is my hope that this thread provides many new perspectives into developing a background for a character. I will provide several different ways on how it can be done and why one would choose this course. The targeted audience for this thread is new players and any incoming new-ones in the future. =) I’m sure though, that maybe one of our older players here might learn a new thing or two from this thread as well.

It is important to understand that the purpose of this thread is not to teach how to make a character build. For ex. Paladin/Fighter. This thread is to help make a background for your character.

How to Begin

There are good ways and bad ways to begin. I’ll do my best to touch up on a few different approaches, and let the readers decide if it is good or bad for them. Feel free to not limit yourselves to only these options either.

Race Click me: A lot of people first choose a particular race to make a character. People may choose to go this route because they may just like a particular race.

Deity Click me: Many players may choose a deity first above all else, on account of religion being rather important within the Forgotten Realms setting.

Geography/Region Click me: Have you ever read books that spoke about the Silver Marches, Waterdeep, the Moonsea, or Cormyr, and thought to yourself…I want to be from there? Players can do this, and have done so. There are many regions available to pick and choose from.

Example 1

I’m presently working on a new character. I began first by choose a deity. I wanted Azuth. I researched where there are some followers of Auzth. In my research I found that Halruaa would best suit me. The population of Halruaa has a large number of humans, and I wanted to be a paladin to Azuth, so I chose human as my race, and then chose paladin as my class. The personality for an Azuth paladin will be something I role play in game.

Example 2

I really like dwarves. In particular, I really enjoy shield dwarves. In my research of shield dwarves I found that some of them can come from Impiltur. Also in my research, I discovered that Dumathoin happens to be the main deity within the dwarves pantheon that the shield dwarves favor a lot.

Research and Knowledge Limit

Knowing little can be a good thing and knowing too much can be bad. Consider limiting your characters knowledge of a certain race, to his only. But even that can be limited. Unless you’ve plans to fashion a scholarly-type of character, then he or she might not know of how the Netheril Empire fell, or how suddenly there are many more dwarves in the world today, due to the Thunder Blessing. Scholars, even if high enough lore and knowledge, always consider to limit yourself.

Don’t just make a complete village idiot though, by all means. Consider giving your character the knowledge of knowing his region of birth, his city of origin, and the political ups and downs of his area. Perhaps he knows of the heroes that established some lands near by, too.

Knowing where your character came from adds greatly to your characters background. Place of birthday says a lot. Who you worship says a lot too. The region where your from likely has deities that they favor, so perhaps choosing those favored deities as your own characters might not be a bad idea either.

Example 3

Targoth held the Zhentarim in high regard for their ideals and ways. He is from the Moonsea. Targoth favors Bane, like many of his other kinsmen, but Tymora as well, knowing that with her luck he could be successful in life. He served his time in the military before setting out to live the life of an adventurer and mercenary. Those who marched along his side knew that the man was well educated in Bane’s doctrine, and of the Moonsea’s history.

Example 4

Aravilar Moonbow looked out across the ocean with a smile across his face. The priest and wizard of Labelas Enoreth felt the urge to go back to the mainland as well, like what many of his other kinsmen were doing. The Retreat was over. He had studied the history of Myth Drannor extensively, knows of his peoples history well, and wanted to help the elves on Faerun. He planned to make for Evereska first before traveling to the Cormanthor forest for a personal pilgrimage too. While on Faerun, he further plans to research into the history of humans and dwarves.

Strengths and Weaknesses

When I first began playing my paladin, Randal Evenwood, I knew right-away that it wouldn’t be any fun playing a perfect character. What does this exactly mean? A paladin that’s seemingly ‘flawless’, always fighting against evil and doing his best to win, is actually boring in my eyes, and perhaps into the eyes of your peers too. There needed to be a weakness…there needed to be a means for him to nearly fall and crash, nearly burning up and almost turn evil even. Learning from his mistakes, and then coming up ontop, sparked excellent role play, and not just for myself, but for others who were close to Randal.

A part of giving your character a flaw involves being impartial to your character.

Being impartial grants you the room to not take any offense (not a whole lot at least) or develop much frustration when something negative occurs with your character. Having flaws opens up a lot of room for role play and further character development.

Example 5

Ghardin and Cynthia sat together side by side within the inn room upstairs. The situation weighed heavily within Ghardin’s mind: he was a paladin of Ilmater, and to sit so close and talk so casually to a follow of Talona caused discomfort. Cynthia was beautiful though, and he was captivated by this beauty. There were several instances where Cynthia tried to crawl in his lap, but he disallowed. Ghardin was already dating another, and Cynthia was treading on sensitive grounds with him. He broke down once her lips touched his own.

Example 6

Halonya, a military general in Chessenta, loved coin. Any and all work she did, she expected it to bare coin for her in the end or be paid enough coin to satisfy her greed. In the eyes of the public she did her best to exemplify the ideal citizen, showing generosity even, and a courage unmatched by anyone of the land. Secretly she struggled with her greedy nature however, and only her closest of friends and advisors knew of this struggle.

Example 7

Thorik loved to bask in the blood of his enemies. A sadist and corrupt gold dwarf, Thorik traveled the lands slaying any and all who opposed him. The sufferance he brought seemed countless in his life. To Thorik though, it wasn’t enough. He truly wanted balance, and the question of ‘true happiness’ ran through his mind on a daily basis. Many considered him mad. Only Thorik truly knew that he was lonely, and wanted to find the happiness of love; that which he always yearned for.

Conclusion

I spent a lot of time typing up informative threads that should help people during a players research while developing a characters background. Hopefully with this thread, what may have seemed like ‘mumbo jumbo’ of other informative threads I have, can now be looked upon as being more useful . They are there to help as much as I, or any other player on here or DM, can do. I am a firm believe of developing a little history of a character before role playing is initiated, as it can help set a certain tone to a lot of things for the player, and provide some guidance in the long run.

Always remember to have fun too, but not at the expense of other players =)

Links

Lore of the Lands main board
frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=lore

Deity information subboard
frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=lorepatheonplat

Races of Faerun information
frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=frclotlraces

Geography thread with regions
frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=lore&action=display&thread=1929

Roleplay Ideas, Suggestions, and Discussion

frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=roleplaydiscussion&action=display&thread=692

frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=roleplaydiscussion&action=display&thread=816

frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=roleplaydiscussion&action=display&thread=792

frc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=648

[brian333]

I guess I agree mostly with what's here.

But what I do first is to think of a personality I'd like to play. Not alignment, necessarily, but how does this person interact with others? What makes him special? No matter how well or poorly built from a mechanics PoV, if I'm not interested in the caracter, I will grow tired of playing him.

For example: none of my characters are stupid. I can't empathise with stupid people, and it makes my play of stupid PC's less than enthusiastic. It's a character trait, but if my intended build requires me to have an int of 6, I know I won't be playing that character for long.

Explore the possibility of crafting the personality first. After that, things fall into place.

Example: Nather Welteel
Good Points = Optomistic, gregarious, fun-loving, kind
Bad Points = Hedonistic, lecherous, vain, opinionated

Okay, as a youth with these personality traits, what career path attracted him? Two leap out: bard and cleric. You can choose another class, certainly, but opinionated gregarious folk like an audience, and in this case, a captive audience is preferred. I chose Cleric.

Race is even easier. While the personality I've discribed can belong to any race, logic can eliminate many choices. Dwarves are rarely portrayed as optomistic, Elves are rarely portrayed as hedonistic, Gnomes may be lecherous among their own kind, but rarely have you heard of gnomish half-breeds, Half-orcs are rarely gregarious. I'm left, (by my own logic, not necessarily yours,) with a choice between Half-elf, Halfling, and Human. Halfling is out because my character thinks of himself as a lady's man and most of the ladies are much too large for a hin, so it's a toss-up between Half-Elf and Human. There were many elven and half-elven characters already on the server, so I chose Human.

With the same logic applied to abilities, it's easy to choose among them.
Str = Not a priority for personality, priority for combat
Dex = Not a priority
Con = Not a priority for personality, priority for combat
Int = Not a priority, (Min 10 because the player hates stupid!)
Wis = Priority for personality and for combat
Cha = Second priority for personality.
So, with this in mind, I max out Wisdom it's got two priorities. I put enough points in Dex and Int to avoid penalties because they have no priorities. I'm left with three abilities each with one priority to split the remaining points.

Alignment in this case is easy too. Kind and Hedonistic stand out in his personality traits. He's Good, and not Lawful. Being gregarious makes Chaotic an unlikely, though not impossible, choice. So, Neutral Good.

Diety and domains popped out too. Can you think of a diety that this fellow is much like? Lathander stood out for me, but if the personality had not been such a good fit, I could easily have eliminated most of the deity list just from the personality traits. The domains allowed to clerics of Lathander are limited, so I chose Sun and Strength as most fitting my character.

Feats and skills use the same method of logical analysis based upon their personality. For example, max healing skill because his Kind and Gregarious personality traits show he has empathy for his fellows.

Not all choices require a personality-based reason, but the more you have the more versimilitude, (or realism,) you give the character. In this case I chose Extra Turning feat based on his deity choice, (Lathander hates undead,) but also because I know clerics tend to meet a lot of undead, and wanted to be prepared.

For you this method may not work, but I encourage you to inject personality into the building process as soon as you can. It not only makes decisions on what choices to make during the build easier, but it helps you to begin play with a character rather than a set of stats and a desire to kick butt.

[TermaForever]

Sometimes character flaws are something I have the most fun playing, especially the ironic kind:

Adelius: The guy is freaking paranoid at this point. His psyche has been tossed into the salad shooter one too many times.

Gareth: The man has the personality of a brick.

Mervail: When it comes to cities and the shady side of life, he's clueless. Often with humorous results ;D

Darius: Arthritis. Nuff said.

Usually when I create a new character, I start with a pre-existing concept of mine. As a wannabe writer, I have a lot of those handy. Also provides a great name pool. Mervail and Adelius are two good examples of characters like this. Neither of them are particularly close to their concept character (Adelius is a few light years from his) but it certainly gives a starting point.

And never forget unusual can be good. As long as it isn't complete nonsense that goes so far against lore to not even be funny (or breaks a server rule) having a character that makes people scratch their head can lead to a fun experience for all.

And never be afraid to give a concept a try. If it doesn't work out, try another one. I have so many characters on my vault it isn't funny. Most of them I do not play anymore. Some may come back, most probably won't.

Background, background, background! Gives excellent tavern talk and can provide a new level of meaning to a character. Sometimes just hinting a bit at background can be enough to draw people to your character as they wish to unravel the mystery of the character. Its also great for explaining motivations, since few people are actually born saints or demons.

Thats all.

[ancientempathy]

brian333 said:

For you this method may not work, but I encourage you to inject personality into the building process as soon as you can. It not only makes decisions on what choices to make during the build easier, but it helps you to begin play with a character rather than a set of stats and a desire to kick butt.

If I know my past, I know my personnality, based on how I was raised, and my influences. Taking that into mind when I character build I already knock-out alignment and statistical stuff as well, because I'll be keeping in mind my races history too and what deity I selected

[Munroe]

brian333 said:

Example: Nather Welteel
Good Points = Optomistic, gregarious, fun-loving, kind
Bad Points = Hedonistic, lecherous, vain, opinionated

Okay, as a youth with these personality traits, what career path attracted him? Two leap out: bard and cleric. You can choose another class, certainly, but opinionated gregarious folk like an audience, and in this case, a captive audience is preferred. I chose Cleric.

This reminds me of another Lathander cleric I know. One with bard levels...

[Teneas]

*bump* Came to my attention again. Is a good read.

[ancientempathy]

I'll get around to fixing those links of mine to either work, and or not have 37 in it, too.

Edit: Links are all fixed.

[ito]

Over the course of a couple of years role-playing on NWN, I've stumbled on two very exquisite resources for helping people--both new to role-playing, and role-playing veterans--come up with nifty ideas for character backgrounds.

The first one is Forgotten Realms Helps, an amazing almanac of information about the Forgotten Realms with an easy to use interface. This site is what helped me to learn more about the Forgotten Realms without reading one word of the novels. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about the world their character is going to inhabit.

And, the second one is the Hero Builder's Guidebook, referenced here. It is a wonderful resource for designing character backgrounds. I would especially like to see a fuller version of its random background generating abilities than the one given in the article. Alas, my programming/coding abilities are non-existent.