Personal Growth

[RogueDM]

No, I'm not discussing Enlarge Person. This is a roleplaying question, not a mechanical one. I have a player in the 3.5 game I'm running who is having a very difficult time in coming up with a personality for her character apart from one or two specific traits. She's normally very creative, so I've been trying to think up or find a list of Personality Test-esque questions to guide her in fleshing out her character. A few character sheets have had a start at this, but only a couple of useful questions.

Do any of you have tips, tricks, etc for making characters to graft onto your stat blocks? I'm thinking things like moral quandaries or straight-up questions on in-universe divisive subjects (social striation, economic disparity, religion, government, etc).

[Sylthia]

What campaign world are you using? If there's a specific location that she's from, she can include whatever political machinations are going on there into her backstory. What's her deity? She can be a zealot of it. What's her class/race? They all have stereotypes you can either embrace or play against type.

[Duke of Urrel]

Chapter Five of the Player's Handbook II is all about building a player character's identity. Not to delve too much into published material, I'll just give the headings of the main sections of the chapter.

Background: artisan, ascetic, drifter, farm hand, gladiator, guttersnipe, mariner, noble scion, soldier, tribal origin.

Personality Archetypes: agent, challenger, companion, crusader, daredevil, explorer, innocent, leader, martyr, mercenary, orphan, prophet, rebel, renegade, royalty, sage, savage, seeker, simple soul, strategist, theorist, trickster, wanderer.

Personality Traits: ambitious, angry, boastful, bold, brutal, calm, carefree, charming, connected, conservative, disciplined, driven, energetic, erudite, exotic, fatalistic, flamboyant, funny, greedy, kind, loyal, merciful, naïve, patriotic, peaceful, reformed, religious, serious, skilled, vengeful.

[Darth Stabber]

What won't your character do, and what would it take to get him to do it?

Is your character optimistic, pessimistic, open, reserved, cynical, naive, ect. Adjectives are important.

Relationships with family and home community members are also important for an individual's development.

[rexx1888]

flaws... note the lack of capitalisation. Im not talking about mechanical flaws, but character flaws. If you are having trouble making a character click, give them some ridiculous flaw and work from there. Why do they have that flaw, what has there life been like with that flaw, how did their parents deal with it etc. The useful thing about dnd is that point buy often hands you a flaw unintentionally in the form of a dump stat.

plus, once you get some steam going, you can move on to the positive aspects of a character and feel much better about them :)

[Zanos]

The 10 minute background (http://community.wizards.com/richmond-rollerz/wiki/The_10_Minute_Background) can be a useful skeleton for chugging out what sort of character you want to play.

[RogueDM]

My apologies for the extremely tardy response to... everything.

The campaign setting is one of my own devising, started them all as commoners in a small village. For background she had two brothers who were both killed in a pirate attack, her parents were the governor/governess of the village but after the decimation of the attack they left for the city, she chose to stay behind and became an adventurer to hunt down the pirates and free their captives.

Her feelings of obligation towards the captive (and surviving) villagers is her only notable personality trait while adventuring, but only comes up in 1/10 situations. During social portions of the campaign she plays up being a flirt and a touch easy.

I don't have her character sheet handy, but I don't recall her mentioning a deity or that her character is particularly religious.

She's a charisma focused human rogue.

Acknowledgement: As you can gather from the above she has a lot to build off of, but I guess just can't get a handle on her character's perspective or likely responses to most situations.

@rexx1888: I agree 100% about the personality flaws being important. As I think of it, most of my favorite characters have had some dysfunction or another (vain, idealistic, fatalistic, impatient, callous, etc).

@Duke of Urrel: One of my players has a hard copy of PHB2 (mine is pdf) I'll see if I can get her to part with it (since she's borrowing my PHB1!). Every resource helps!

@Darth Stabber: Good questions, I'll add them to the list.

@Zanos: Bookmarked. Looks interesting, I'll at least pass it along and hope she will at least spend the 10 minutes on it.

[rexx1888]

encourage her to play up her feelings of obligation as a form of explosive rage (levels in barbarian not necessary for someone to be angry), and then encourage her to "lose control" when interrogating pirates(or talking about them, or what to do with prisoners etc).

she may end up losing some alighnment but shes a rogue so no biggy. As long as there aint a pally or cleric around thats a zealous git, shell be fine. Also, encourage her not to point that at her party, or theyll get all angsty with her :P

think of it, how amusing would it be to have some gorgeous lass thats all flirty suddenly go berserk at the mention of pirates lol.

theres one option for her anyway, im sure there are plenty of others, but anger has always been really easy to roleplay. We all get angry, we know how it works :)

[Sugashane]

Even using the old Heroes Builder Guidebook can be good for getting a foundation on it. Personally I prefer to use it or use a character from a TV show, movie or book to use as the model for my character.

Example- I made a Diplomancer, who looks pretty much like John Stamos and who plays the care-free ladies man like Dean Winchester. Hilarious roleplay. Eventually my DM had Peter Griffin loaded up when he was describing to Cleveland his wife was cheating on him ("Bam bam bam bam bam bam...") every time I said he was going to do his nightly duties. Not only did I have the attitude made out and a solid idea of what he would say, I had a face to draw and edit for character portraits.

[angry_bear]

So she's well educated, and comes from a socially restrictive environment. Hence the morality of the character, and even how she now acts towards people she's romantically interested in. She's no longer restricted by overbearing parents looking over her every move, but she's still driven to do what's right because of her upbringing. Now she's kind of in a weird place in her life where she wants to do what's right by her family, her people, and at the same time experience the world and what it has to offer. What's the problem exactly? I'm really not seeing one to be honest.

[RogueDM]

So she's well educated, and comes from a socially restrictive environment. Hence the morality of the character, and even how she now acts towards people she's romantically interested in. She's no longer restricted by overbearing parents looking over her every move, but she's still driven to do what's right because of her upbringing. Now she's kind of in a weird place in her life where she wants to do what's right by her family, her people, and at the same time experience the world and what it has to offer. What's the problem exactly? I'm really not seeing one to be honest.

Point the first: She was fast and loose before escaping her parents, think rebellious daughter with disinterested wealthy parents.

Point the second: After their abandonment of the villagers she effectively disowned her parents, so not doing right by them.

Now, to address your actual point and question now that I'm done nit-pickingly correcting you on the specifics of my player's character... The problem is that she still has no sense of her character in day to day life. When flirting is not a viable interaction she is at a loss for what her character would do/say. She has a few major points to build on, but lacks the fine details that turn an archetype into a character. Some of this comes, I think, from a lack of reflection on the character outside of the instant she's required to talk; hence I'm asking for helping devising a sort of catalyst to help her start seeing the world through her character's eyes.

A, somewhat superfluous, update on that subject. After passing off a few of the earlier mentioned resources to the player she confided that she is thinking of rolling up a new character to replace her rogue. I say this point is superfluous since the same steps that would/could have saved this character can prevent subsequent characters from being unduly discarded.

@Sugashane: She started with Isabella from Dragon Age 2 as her role-model, but to be honest that character was rather two-dimensional so was unstable footing. I'm currently sitting on a Willie Nelson inspired gentleman drifter, a sort of gallant rogue, for my next go round as player.

@rexx1888: A good suggestion, but it sounds as though she's all but given up on her rogue, but may be useful to one of the other players who's character is the, sort of, dark reflection of the other "lass".

My own contribution to this topic is an observation from Robert Louis Stevenson in an essay on the nature of fiction. It's been a long time so I'll paraphrase: What we create in fiction is an extension of ourselves; things we want to be, or do, or to have done to us; both good and bad. This could explain my player's difficulty in connecting to her character as it's so far detached from who she is in real life that she may simply be unable to relate. When she mentioned wanting to roll up a new character I recommended a bard and play up the musical angle as she is a concert musician.

Thank you, everyone, for all of your assistance and interest thus far.

[Malimar]

I'm a big proponent of the idea of grudges (http://luduscarcerum.blogspot.com/2012/06/on-grudges.html) as the defining trait of a character. Who or what does the character hate? It can be cliche, but it can also be useful: it fleshes out a character, it can motivate adventuring (making the DM's job easier when it comes time to dangle plot hooks).

When I make a character, I like to pick a foe that my character hates, and then fill in why. When I can get the DM to coöperate, it's nice for the foe to be one that'll show up a lot during the campaign.

When I DM a plot-based campaign, I like to give a list of a few major foe groups and tell players to pick one (or more than one). Their character hates, or has a grudge against, or generally desires to defeat, that foe. Filling in all the details of why is the roleplaying/backstory challenge. (Because writing backstory and personality tends to be easier if you have a bit of armature to sculpt it onto.)

Only rangers get any mechanical benefit from it, but everybody should have at least one Favored Enemy.

[IIzak]

Since she has had this sort of sheltered upbringing, maybe she's kinda out to see the world and has this sort of wide eyed innocence about her situation. Or maybe she's using her flirtation to kinda mask a depression she's feeling about the death of her parents. she could have a poor me attitude or maybe like an i don't care about the world attitude.

[Miranius]

In my current campaign i let my players try to answer these questions beforehand:

Part 1: The Basics
1. What is your full name?
2. Who are/were your parents, siblins and other family?
3. Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics?
Part 2: Growing Up
4. How would you describe your childhood in general?
5. Where did you learn most of your skills and other abilities?
6. As a child, what were your favorite activities?
Part 3: Past Influences
7. Who has had the most influence on you?
8. What is your greatest regret?
9 . What is the most evil thing you have ever done?
Part 4: Beliefs And Opinions
10. What are your religious views?
11. Are you able to kill? Under what circumstances do you find killing to be acceptable or unacceptable?
12. Do you have any biases or prejudices?
13. Is there anything you absolutely refuse to do under any circumstances? Why do you refuse to do it?
Part 5: Relationships With Others
14. In general, how do you treat others (politely, rudely, by keeping them at a distance, etc.)?
15. Who is the person you respect the most, and why?
16. Who is the person you despise the most, and why?
Part 6: Likes And Dislikes
17. What is your most treasured possession?
18. What is your idea of good entertainment (consider music, movies, art, etc.)?
19. What, if anything, shocks or offends you?
Part 7: Self Images And Etc.
20. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
21. Name three things you consider yourself to be very good at, and three things you consider yourself to be very bad at.
22. What are your reasons for being an adventurer? Are your real reasons for doing this different than the ones you tell people in public?

[RogueDM]

@Malimar: To quote Jack Terricloth "If you are bored and you are listless you just need to get yourself an enemy." and "Some mornings I can't get myself out of bed, and I just think about my enemies, drag myself out of bed, and say 'what do you think about that?'" (Introducing the song "I Wouldn't Want to Live in a World Without Grudges")

@IIzak: A good angle. Most people do seem to play disaffected or callus characters in my experience. I mean, if we consider a lvl 1 adventurer to be new to the trade they all seem to deal with killing and loss disturbingly well. Either they are amazingly well adjusted, or terrifyingly maladjusted...

@Miranius: Would you mind if I copy that to put at my players' disposal?

[HalfQuart]

I usually start with a really loose background.. just really basic stuff, and let the character develop as we play, discovering things about him or her that I never would have come up with from the get-go. All the characters that I've really loved playing have evolved in that way.

That said, I've also had mechanically-sound characters that just never materialized into a fun role-play experience that I've retired.

So I'd say give her some time, but also give her the option to switch to a different character.