Forums » RP Discussion » Character Building Process

Do you follow a process for character building?

Do you follow this process every time you create?

Do you just build character concepts and store them?

How deep into back story do you go before the sessions?
--
For me, the process depends somewhat on whether or not I'm using this character for a game with stats. Example: Pugilist, Fighter-Samurai, Paladin-Oath of Vengeance, Commander.
I'm typically also considering the setting. Who are the other players?

Oh, we ARE all traumatized orphan adventurers???? Ok! 🤣

(It has been said that regular happy people don't go adventuring. I tend to disagree, but, I'm ok with that.)

For 1:1 settings, it's usually starting with the theme.
Does my partner have an idea I'm building to pair with?
Is there an opening setting I'm able to take inspiration from?
Example: Towel Day RP. I can see who is there presently and how might I vibe off of that/ add to the setting?

For me, it usually starts with a concept I just can't resist (with the few exceptions of seeing other people's characters or ideas I just can't resist, in which case I cobble together characters for them).
Then I usually start building the key points of their life - what are their most important experiences, skills and/or possessions, and how did they gain those?
Are there any fun bits I'd like to throw in?

And that is often it.
Then I usually start playing the character, and usually, during the first five hours of play time or so, they'll tell me who they are.
While building the profile, their life starts to fall into place. While playing, throwaway lines, jokes or anecdotes will become canon over time. Basically, as they go forward, their backstory also starts to thicken.

My only problem so far is that some of my characters have two or three backstories in one, usually because I tried to stuff too many interesting bits in the character in step one, rarely because of growing backstories.

Honorable mention: One time, at a con, I've played in a CoC group. The game was to be dark and neo-noir themed. The DM tasked us with quickly creating a troubled member of the local police’s homicide division each.
We were a group of five players. Every last one of us decided to go for the same basic concept: a recently divorced detective, who drowns their trouble by throwing themselves fully at their work. There were some variants (one was an alcoholic, one was a single mother, I can't remember the rest), but it was very fun to introduce our backstory one by one and realizing we've just created the divorce-self-help-group of the local police department.
Since then "noir means divorced character" is a running gag in one of my groups.

For me, each character comes together differently. It can be the idea of a character, a plot that the character is born from, a character that breeds yet another character, something I watched that make me wonder what if and yet another character is born or just my imagination running wild and me just writing down snippets of ideas that later become story and\or character concepts. I can't even say which process I favor, because I find all of them end up leading to some really interesting characters (whether main, or side).

Usually start with a motivation I want to explore.

Everything comes from that - what they look like, their occupation within a setting, background lore. It starts with what would help me explore this motivation more in depth.

Usually built to setting, I might steal aspects of a character into another for a different setting, but I'm not good with AUs.

Generally a skeleton backstory, and make things up as I go - for the themes

Usually, my motivation sort of just creeps up on me. I sit down, and the character's shape is already in my head so I start thinking about them. Sometimes the idea ends there, but if I get excited for it I'll start piecing together what sort of person they'd be, and I look for pre-existing characters and ideas to look into and research. Generally, I'll pick someone like Bob from Bob's World (Not a real thing) and look into their personality, their lore, their ideals. I'll read quotes, theories, find music, all that remind me of Bob.

Once I get that, I look around some more, and repeat the process with other characters that I like and feel suit the role of my own character, while and from there I'll start mixing and matching aspects of them all together until I get a new concept that I feel fits. Then I apply my own lore, which I've built up over the years of RPing, to tie the character to my world, spent several hours to days on the profile, and then hope I can get an RP with them while my excitement is still high so that I can start actually getting into their head and developing them as a person, not a concept.

As for backstory, I usually start off with the basics to give them depth, and then build from there once I get into RP -- and I have to actually get into RP for this, because I have a bad habit of constantly changing things and flip-flopping if the character doesn't get used. Partly I think this is because, if they're not being used, then the only way I have of interacting with them is working on them, and if they haven't been put into an RP where they can actually develop, everything I know about them is under a constant Concept phase.

As a rule, I usually follow this process every time. Sometimes the motivation might change -- I have a couple unlisted characters that were made with for specific RPs -- but generally this is the way.