Jhank's Spellbook: Unlike most spellbooks that have space to expand, as a Divination spellbook it already contains every spell she's ever fated to know. She just doesn't understand what they are yet.
I have a similar concept! A drow wizard who found what is basically a thick scrap book but because each page uses different fonts or because it's littered with stains from pressed flowers and random pieces of papers and some pages have at some point fell out and then have been glued back wherever, it's hard to decipher more complex spells. This tome is a total mess so she's copying those spells she deciphers into her own book and that's how she levels up
"Nervous artificial spy bean." To me, that's a coffee plant turned into an Awakened Shrub. She can mimic an ordinary houseplant if she keeps perfectly still. But her own caffeine makes her jittery, which means it's really hard for her to stay still. And if she's caught, she'll probably be executed. No pressure.
Okay everybody, I’ve learned that my understanding of the word haberdashery was incorrect, you can stop telling me!! I can’t change the video now that it’s posted
Hey you unhesitatingly used *Retinue* correctly … and … AND to be fair, that fucking generator isn’t using Haberdashery correctly… I thought what you thought, Hat Maker because “from” implies there’s a place where this Haberdasher sells their Haberdashery/hats.
Oh how we love the internet for it's insistence on brutally demoralizing us as they try to correct our every mishap. Just tell them all that you were working from the Sharvar Dictionary volume MMCIV and if they care to verify they are welcome to head over the the Purogh system in the Andromeda galaxy and check the definition themselves. If not then they can just go lick a 10 day old sun dried Orc turd.
You're not incorrect in your use of the word haberdashery, actually. I looked it up and it does involve the making of hats, but a haberdasher also deals in men's clothing in general. Basically, if you want a suit you go to a tailor. If you want tophat and tails, you go to a haberdasher.
The small war-forged spy posed as a noble child's toy. When she escaped to deliver a report of some dire plot, it was assumed she was stolen, and the noble child adored their toy friend, hence there is a reward for her return.
whenever i make NPCs i use a table i made on powerpoint that randomises race, gender, sexuality, alignment and age. mostly there to make sure i don’t keep making the same barkeep accidentally
"Nervous Artificial Spy Bean" - Literally my Star Wars character for a campaign that I've used for a year now. It's a Pitdroid that was designed by a smuggler, so it was trained on smuggling teams. Eventually the teams dispersed/ its creator died, and it was left on its own to just continue doing things along the lines of smuggling. The droid's name? 540R7 (Short). Everyone just refers to it as R7. I did have at the start of the campaign the droid was rundown from needing repairs, so it had a nervous tick that's cliche with rundown robots where its sentences when it was speaking had repeated words and its head would tick to the side repeatedly. So I guess I already had the Nervous Artificial Spy Bean.
As soon as I heard Nervous Artifical Spy Bean I also thought of a droid! Threepio's nervousness with R2's ability to go anywhere... And your pitdroid sounds great! I sort of miss my Star Wars campaign, though I played online with strangers and ultimately I just didn't jell with most of the other players. Good DM though.
@@Ken-1313 Shame that your campaign didn't turn out too well. And thanks for the compliment about my character's origins. You didn't even get to hear about its/his greatest moments during the campaign.
uh my star wars character was an old battle droid which was scraped together out of old battle droid/mechanic parts as a playmate and guardian for kids. Once the kids got older one of them took the robot with him. My Droid had mechanic knowledge and medicine knowledge to fix up himself and the kids. Savety of kids is still his highest priority (his owner [another pc character and bounty hunter] isn't a techie, so he can't reprogram him). The name of the Droid is R0G3R. Oh and he will shut down if someone points something that looks as a gun (finger pistol, twig etc) on him and say 'pew,pew'. Oh and sometimes sentences from the old battle droid programming shines through, for example when the jedis in the group activated their laser swords for the first time, R0G3R said something like: "Kill the jedi scum' and then proceeded normally
I like how characters are generated in the newest version of paranoia. Not only are you choosing good things for them but having bad slapped on them. Basically you all sit in a circle and if you choose a +5 in firearms the person to your left, I think it’s left it doesn’t matter if consistent, gets a -5 to fire arms. Next you give your character 3 description words, usually positive or neutral. Then the person to your other side changes one to it’s antonym. After all that, you get a random mutation and secret society both from decks of cards (although you usually get a blank card or card that says you don’t have one.) this can give you these insane characters. For example an agitating insightful romantic who is anti-mutant although they have the ability to grow an extra arm.
I second this ^ Paranoia has an incredible way of making characters! I once ended up with an absolute creep with descriptors Cunning, Nerdy, and Repulsive (Repulsive was originally Charming before it got swapped), then was given a mutant power to excrete a sticky glue-like substance from my hands… not the character I initially had in mind, but an absolute blast to play!
I was going to comment 10 Candles, which has a simpler version of this. For those not familiar, it's a game for tragic horror oneshots. You all start by picking a strength and a weakness, then the GM tells you to pass the strengths to one side and the weaknesses to the other. Then you form those into rough character ideas, and then everyone gets to pick a secret for the person to their right, that their own character knows. ("I have seen you..." worship the monsters, kill someone who wasn't a threat, etc..) The GM is included in this part, meaning someone picks a secret for the monsters and someone has a secret only the monsters know.
I'm running a campaign where the characters are all doing court-mandated community service. I gave them an additional character creation tool to choose their crime from type of crime (Personal, Property, Aiding + Abetting, Statutory, Financial, or Organized) and how good they were at the crime (Seasoned, Petty Criminal, Wrong Place / Wrong Time).
Knowledge that I once didn't have and feel I must pay forward, because I used to make this mistake too: a haberdasher specializes in making men's clothes (at least in American English), not hats specifically.
I’ve always loved the character creation in Traveller, with its career paths and random events that can find you playing characters you never expected. I always recall one player who started out with the idea of playing a bookish scientist and wound up as a cynical army washout with a chip on their (cybernetic) shoulder.
[9:20] She was given as a gift to an affluent & powerful family as a toy/playmate for their daughter. She was to make sure she was the daughter's favorite to ensure she'd always brought along. Even if that meant other toys would occasionally go "missing". In the background she would spy, learn all she could, and reporting it back to her handlers via the Sending spell. Forced through endless tea parties, dress-up, & braiding of hair, she now hates anything cute, but is physically designed to look and act as adorable as possible.
Traveller, a sci-fi game, has a super fun character creation process! You determine your character's childhood stuff, then go through however many years you'd like of life, choosing what kind of schooling or career you want to pursue and then rolling to see how it goes, what kind of events happen during the process, how well you get paid, etc. It does a wonderful job reinforcing the themes of the game, where your personal choices are important but always tempered by political powers, money, and luck in an indifferent universe. It is, quite famously, possible for your character to die in character creation from injuries or events. Another favorite of mine is Blades in the Dark. Character creation is super collaborative, because you're all in the same organization or gang or whatever, and you also get to build the organization together! It gets its own character sheet and everything
When it comes to interesting character creation, I can't praise City of Mist enough. It's system is similar to Fate, where you build your character out of four "themes", broad archetypal character aspects which in turn contain different "tags" that further flesh out these aspects. The great thing is that there's no standardised stats or similar. A theme could be anything, from a traumatic childhood event or their job as a coroner to their love of chewing bubblegum, so there's almost no limits to your imagination and the skills you can equip your character with. On top of that, CoM is all about your character being a mortal vessel for a mythological or cultural story, like the legend of Herkules or the "Bloody Mary" Urban Legend. Pairing these larger-than-life aspects with the aforementioned mundane options for skills and themes can lead to fantastic characters caught between myth and everyday life.
My method for creating characters is: A idea pops into my mind, sometimes a race/class combo (like lizardfolk ranger) or a "gimmick" like "highest armor class possible at lv 1, not counting tortles" or a name, like "gillthunder". Then if it's a good idea. It gets made into a character. For those who want to know, the "Highest AC at Lv one" became a Mt dwarf Draco sorcerer, with a ac of 21 with armor,dex, and the shield spell, who acts more like a fighter or barbarian then a mage, (med armor and a Warhammer, with the occasional spell) and left home because of a midlife crisis, and can't return home untill he's slayed a chromatic dragon. The lizardfolk Ranger is a gloomstalker who was forced to leave the swamp after the rest of his tribe was captured by slavers, and doesn't know common (I plan on having them learn common by lv 6) And "Gillthunder" is actually a combo of type 2&3. Their gimmick is that they're a triton Storm sorcerer,with 2 levels in Tempest cleric and fighter (16,2,2 at Lv 20). This way, at Lv 9, they can cast lightning bolt, use Divine domain power to make it deal max damage (42ish) then action surge and cast another lightning bolt, with the empowered metamagic to reroll a few 1s on the damage. So, best case scenario, that's around 100 damage in one turn. Anyway, they were born in the plane of water, and their goal is to find a way home. Keep in mind, what iv just shared is the basic overview of the characters.
Mtn. Dwarf? Why wouldn't you just play a halfling or the like for the +2 dex? If you started with an 18 Dex your Draco Sorc AC would be 17 before Shield(22 after). If there was some good rolling going on you could get to 20 Dex, bumping you all the way to 23. I wouldn't count a 1 round AC as the best you could do anyway. It needs to be more consistent than that for me. In which case you max out at around 19 w.o. any spells. Bidet
I created a character based on the question: “How many different books can I use to create one character?” My answer was six. The character is a fairy (Wild Beyond the Witchlight) with the dhampir lineage (Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft). She’s a ranger (Player’s Handbook) with the drakewarden subclass (Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons), but she also uses some variant class features (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything). She has the anthropologist background (Tomb of Annihilation). Unfortunately, I’ll probably never get to play her, since I’m my group’s DM, and even if I was a player, I’m pretty sure no sane DM would allow a character who requires six different sourcebooks to run. (I mean, I’d allow it, but I’m pretty sure I don’t qualify as a sane DM.)
The Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars RPG has a system called 'Obligations', where you pick something from your character's backstory that will come up and cause them minor - or not-so-minor - stress from session to session. It's generally someone who you owe something or a hidden secret in your past. The GM rolls a d100 at the start of each session to see whose Obligation is in effect, and if you roll a multiple of 11 then the session's story will relate directly to the hook. It's a neat way of making sure that everyone has some tie to the world in general that the DM can use, as well as giving opportunities for character-focussed episodes.
I'll have random vivid spikes of imagination. Like for instance my brother got his shoe laces caught on barbed wire while we were on a run once and I immediately thought of metal thornbushes for some reason. My next thought is how/where can I attach this idea to one of my characters. This idea in particular brought me to dwarves harvesting it these metal plants. Then I thought they likely came from mechanus due to being metal, meaning a clan of dwarves who regularly travel to mechanus to harvest metal plants. That led me to attach this concept to a character I've had on the backbones a chaotic good dwarf who had an argument with his clan and left them to pursue the path he wanted rather than the one they chose. The lawful neutral nature of mechanus would clash big time with his personality so it absolutely makes sense that he would but heads with his family pressuring him to fit the mold so he could join their business. This further developed since he was a wizard I thought he was likely being trained to be the clans portal master, but rather than choosing conjuration to help open the portal to the planes he chose evocation which better fit his personality. This is what finally pushed him and his clan apart for good.
Ok… I now absolutely love the idea of a whole party getting the “mistaken for a famous knight” bit, and we now have a party mistaken for a knightly order..
Check out Traveller, character creation is a miniature story. It's the only RPG I can think of where your character can die during creation (among other events that actually lead to a character!)
@@GinnyDi maybe I misunderstood you - I assumed that your previous character died, so you're making a new one ("ongoing campaign"), thus the joke. I don't think the death of a character is a bad thing, as long as it's meaningful/epic, and players are fully aware that it can happen. Not sure what you mean about bad DMs.
A cipher system actually has a pretty interesting character creator you can mess around with. You have your type which is basically class, but you also have your descriptor. descriptors is a one word description of your character that gives you benefits, and the descriptors are stuff like a appealing, tough, unlucky, cowardice Etc. Then there's Focus which is something fun and funky you can do, like speak to the dead or turn into a werewolf. Because of this system we had a player in one of my games make a wizard who was unlucky, and also a werewolf.
Jhank, my beloved. I loved her and then I heard "eats the fingers of enemies" and man if that isn't a weirdly good selling point! I feel like she'd have the potential to have a really great arc.
I've recently fallen in love with the character system for the Dishonored RPG. There's the standard Archetype (read Class) selection, but the second element is an Outlook that codifies your characters attitude and personality into mechanical features and bonuses, something that's always felt D&D lacks
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you turning me onto these generators. Character creation can be so daunting after a while, and these seem like just the sort of inspiration to keep me from rehashing the same characters over again. The Springhole method reminds me a lot of the Cypher System, which I'm sure you've heard of. Essentially, your character's identity comes down to a simple phrase: "I am a [adjective] [class] who [verb]s." You're filling in the blanks from a preconceived list of descriptors that lend definition and depth to how you experience the world. :)
One of my favorite ways to get brainstorming about a character is to randomly generate names in a language different than my own. My personal favorite is when I found the Gaelic name Deòiridh, which according to the generator means "Pilgrim". After deciding I wanted to play a Sorcerer and quite literally flipping a few coins, I presented my idea to my DM and I love how she turned out. My play group is really big on reflavoring mechanical stuff, so my Dhampir Stone Sorcerer, Deòiridh, is a lesser devil living in the Nine Hells. She has always found the mortal races fascinating, and her genuine curiosity led her to make a contract with a higher-ranking devil, serving them directly for 100 years in exchange for an uninterrupted 50-year stay within the mortal realm. All this from a super awesome sounding name (pronounced DAY-wah-RID I think, the internet wasn't super helpful on that) that means "Pilgrim".
I love the thought of a tiefling bard haberdasher! I'd make her a kind of Mad Hatter character, whose hat changes with the spells she casts, and uses it as a casting focus. That'd be an absolute blast!
Triumphant fluffy traveler queen sounds like a moth-kin who amassed a gathering of merchants with her and now leads an entire caravan of a trading hub that acts like a mobile village or town
Dang, I kinda had my own nervous artificial spy bean. In this case he was a small sized warforged originally built as a spy, but after some glitch occurred with a magical artifact, he gained an insanely high intelligence score. He’s nervous in a sense because almost no one in the world understands him when he speaks, because it’s on such a higher level of thinking, so he’s trained himself to keep quiet.
My favorite character generation system was in the old TSR Marvel Superheroes game from the early 90s. You're making a superhero, you roll up random powers, origins, and weaknesses, and then you get to make up a superhero name - what could be more fun?!
I think a cool one is City of Mist, where a main part of character creation is your characters mythoi, basically your powers, and these can come from any fictional or non-fictional character, event, item or idea/concept, so your character’s powers can come from Iron man, Cthulhu, Einstein, Excalibur, Pandora’s box or Chekhov’s gun.
Yes, Ginny! Constraints are often the best way to determine our backstories. We each rolled up a full random character, and at least for me, the stories wrote themselves. 🙂
I really like the Over the Edge character creation system because you essentially make up abilities rather than being limited to a fixed list or set. I like Traveler for its life path system. I like Dungeon Crawl Classics for its funnel for beginning characters and also for the way spellcasters have to roll for how well they have learned their spells and it affects their casting going forward.
I like the character creation of Turbo Fate: You start with a concept, for example 'Half-Giant Forest Ranger in a British Wizard Highschool' followed by a Flaw, which is a character trait which brings your character more often in trouble then its useful, in our example something like 'Oh, I shouldn't have said that'. After these two main sentences, you can write a few more traits of you character which are positive but could also be used sometimes to create interesting problems. After that you just have to fill out the stats, which in Turbo Fate are not even real skills is just how your character does things, so you put points in daredevil, sneaky, forceful etc. Oh and you can describe your own stunts/Equipement and the like
Ehdrigohr is a FATE core setting, and the character creation is a group effort, and it's amazing; everyone basically chooses an element and an animal that sort of defines the character, and then as a group you flesh out what that means and how you all came to work together and some of the complications along the way. It's also just a wonderful setting made by a cool person, and that makes me love it even more. Invisible Suns is similar, but I haven't played that one yet, just did the character creation part.
Thanks Ginny for the generators ! I've played a lot of RPGs since the 80's and I have always found the Merits and Flaws system a nice springboard to define my new character. You can find it in Mythic Greece RPG or anything using the HERO system or in the Classic World Of Darkness with the Storyteller System. Basically you can pick up advantages that cost points (that can be anything from housing or money to fighting/magic skills to magical heirlooms) if you accept to bear a flaw you pick from a defined list. Want a bigger advantage ? Take more flaws (ouch) or a debilitating one like blindness/deafness. Flaws and Merits often imply character traits and help you get your sea legs from day one of the campaign. Of course, they're optional but they can lead to really fun and challenging roleplaying.
Another one I recommend donjon. And to collect, print and use the r/dnd random dice charts. I'm also writing a book with lots of random generator dice charts in it now, and been writing my own dice charts for many years. I just finished a d% NPC secrets chart yesterday, which could also be used for PCs! I recommend dice charts in conjunction with generators and your own original ideas. Always remember if a result feels wrong or doesn't suit the alignment or purpose of the character Don't use that result! Also use things as a starting point and come up with more from there! Fun video, thanks.
The Warhammer Fantasy TTRPG gives you bonuses for playing a randomly generated character, honestly I think it'd be worth trying. For D&D all my most fun characters come from when I'm joining a game in progress or changing characters, because now I'm actually thinking about how they're going to fit into the story that's already been established rather than creating them in a vacuum and just throwing things that feel cool into the mix.
I am basically obsessed with the relational character building in Urban Shadows!! Each character has debts (owed to them and that they owe to others), which can be used to build connections and tensions with other players and NPCs. It’s such a clever way to bring different types of characters into a narrative together, rather than grouping a party and hoping that it makes sense because we want to play as a group even if the characters don’t have a relationship. :)
I find them great for tapping into your creativity, I start there and start making changes that suit the character I have in mind, and partway through I'll get a new idea and completely start over 😁 helps get over that block. Another good starting point is something I've learnt through creative writing, taking aspects from tour favourite books/TV shows/movies etc. And mix them together to create something new. My current character is loosely based off of Disney's Tangled (taken from her village by a mage, experimented on and kept locked in a tower, personality is curious and excited by the world and all the new experiences once she escaped), and her Echo Knight abilities are inspired by Peter Pan losing his shadow. And after escaping she lived as an orphan in a city for a while. You could take a character from one book, backstory from another, with a few other bits and pieces added in to make it your own :)
So I love powered by the apocalypse games as your playbook already gives you an arch type and helps you create something fun. Your moves also help inform your character and what they do.
Or nervous as she always comes close to getting caught but because she’s so clumsy, she always finds a way(by accident) to get herself out of trouble lol
I'm not super into the game itself, but Traveler has an AMAZING character creation process. You make choices and roll on tables for life events that encompass maybe 20-50 years of your life (depending on when you choose to quit and say "this is my character"), and at the end you've filled in the gaps through storytelling and have a fully realized character without the need for any initial concept. It's a pretty fun process. But again, to me, character creation is better than the actual game.
At ALLL time I'm the second option. Literally took me MONTHS during the school year to decide what species my character is. Still is technically up for debate BUT back story, family's backstop, a few traditions and quirks that every family had AND the 3 main animal helpers have their backstop and personality cemented in! Lol
I already love all three of those characters. 😂 My first time using WTFIMC I got "a cruel dwarf barbarian from a high end brothel who dreams of opening their own inn." Just thought I'd put that one out there.
I agree so hard that working with constraints tends to lead to more creative and satisfying outcomes!! So far I've found the subclass/subrace options restrictive yet open enough that ive been inspired to make so many characters just by seeing one option that sparks my interest and finding ways to twist it to something that fits my tastes. Actually the first generator is extremely helpful in coming up with traits to give an extra dimension to my characters and distinguish them from each other more. This is great
I feel extremely called out by the first 30 seconds of this video. How could you do this to me? Also, I absolutely know the feeling of my brain overflowing with ideas at all times _except_ for when I'm actually trying to make, or pick, a character for a campaign. I'm always at a total loss when the moment comes to decide what character to play. Thank you for introducing me to tetra cube. This generator seems absolutely lovely and very fun to mess around with. Jhank (Hammer) is a name that makes me smile, and I cracked up at your reaction to the classic lizardfolk cannibalism angle. The concept of a character keeping a "snack pouch" of their enemies' fingers is ridiculous and I love it. Springhole looks like a fun exercise in taking a basic concept and fleshing it out into a fully realized character. Aside from the "Triumphant" part, "Spooky Warrior Girl" describes my Eldritch Knight, Luna, pretty perfectly. As for your Nervous Artificial Spy Bean, that is an incredible phrase, tbh, and I love giving warforged or robot characters names relating to some serial number they have. The name I always come back to time after time is "Adaptive Infantry: Nemesis Series #13" or "Ainsley". Her sister units are named similarly. Nemesis #03 is "Noel", and #10 is "Io", for example. Ainsley and her sisters are Zealot Barbarians whose rage is them activating an overclock mode called the "Nemesis Drive". All of Ainsley's weapons are also named after other Greek gods like Nemesis, such as her greataxe, Thanatos Edge. I already knew about WTFIMD&DC?, and keep a list of favorites for potential future use. Such as "OVER-CAFFIENATED TORTLE WIZARD FROM BALDUR'S GATE WHO IMPARTS THE SAME MORSEL OF WISDOM FOR EVERY SITUATION" or my personal favorite for how sweet and adorable the character sounds, "DEMURE ELF FIGHTER FROM THE GUARD'S ACADEMY WHO FAILED TO PROTECT THE ROYAL FAMILY".
I love giving myself constraints. I am well known among my friends as the go to for character creation help and so I often just show them my collection or if none give them ideas I’ll ask questions.
I have a friend who loves to use different songs as the inspiration for her characters and when she DMs she has made that a requirement for her players a few times. Each player needs to submit a character song that was either in whole or in part and inspiration for the character or that the song can provide a quick synopsis of the character or their personality. Was really interesting the one time she required all characters to be based on Disney songs
something I have to talk about surprisingly often Jhank is not necissarily a cannibal cannibalism is either the ritualistic consumption of human flesh (based on the lizarfolk quirk jhank does it cause its convineint, not for any kind of ritual) *or* consumption of the flesh of a creature the same species as you. of course, if it is a campaign where you fight lizardfolk and Jhank eats the fingers of the dead lizardfolk, that is caniballism, but only in the specific case of eating lizardfolk.
I’m probably one of the only dnd players who doesn’t have a stash of characters in reserve, because I just love my current character so much, I can’t imagine her dying and me needing a new character. But this has definitely helped give me a way to generate a new character when I need one
We typically think of a random idea, and run with it as far as we can, like an intelligent, noble/well-groomed Dhampir Barbarian. We recently made... 9 characters that are all "the same" character. Like, they were all once the same character, until their soul got shattered apart across the world. So they're all the same race and have one or two core personality traits (and the bond to try and reunite with their "soul siblings"), but are all 9 distinct characters, from the naive/excitable archeologist wizard, to the brooding, aristocratic fighter, or the tired/travel-worn ranger. As a system with DID, these characters are all in a way like each of us, and we each bring a bit of ourself to each of these.
As someone who plays a Tiefling Bard, I really enjoyed the WTFUMD&DC? character concept. Also, I have a pirate-y tiefling rogue with a special hat to accommodate her horns, so that was cool too! But my favorite is probably Smol Bean Warforged. Such a wonderful juxtaposition of ideas!
15:30. back in the 80s, Traveler and Cyberpunk used a 'lifepath' character generation method which I really liked; generating your character was like a mini-game itself that baked in a quick and fun backstory, but sometimes it could be too confining as to your control over the characters final form.
Love this video. These generators are gold and I think this is an excellent example of using them to create a more complex, engaging, and personal characters. Awesome awesome advice and a video I will for sure share with future players!
This is a great one. Reminds of a similar discovery my group and I made many years ago. We were perusing an old 2nd edition supplement - one of the Guidebooks, though I couldn't swear which, and it had an NPC maker near the back of the book. It was loaded with like twenty questions about family and wealth and place of origin (generic geography terms like tropical island). It looked cool so we started rolling dice and wound up spending hours on the first night just making character backgrounds. And then coming up with a Race and Class that would work the best. It was great. It went very much like you describe where most rolls were great and with a little creativity applied they turned to gold. Sometimes you would need to reroll one or ignore one that just didn't fit but it was still very impressive. It was also rather enlightening - up to that point I thought my characters were pretty creative but I found out then and there how much room for growth there was. Have a cupcake day! : )
I haven't even finished the video and I'm already inspired: Jank is an artificer but all of his spells are jerry-rigged items made of garbage. He will cast Shatter using nothing but a string, a skull, and an orc's fart
We have used the tables in Xanthers guides to randomly roll charactees. We then add a random background and traits. I have made a few interesting characters that way. Wikdemount adds more options that are fun. My favorite was a Rock Gnome barbarian noble. It was a pretty neat character and the background and how he became a barbarian was really fun.
Vampire v5 has you build a web of relationships and create a set of convictions (with mechanical use) that require a relationship with a mortal for each one. It means, when done, your character has grounding and a place in the world. Plus, as Storyteller, I can make plot points off them.
Pinya - Centaur Sorcerer (Draconic Bloodline) - Guild Merchant. I don't want to think to much of how there got Dragonblood into her ancestry. I guess it is more like "she allways had it in her"- thing "and now the appearance of a mythical create in the world had unlocked her powers. Yes I really like that one from tetra-cube.
Runequest has a system for generating a whole family history, going back to the character's grandparents, that is designed to give the characters a sense of where they fit in the world, its history, and its social structure. Cyberpunk 2020/Red also feature lifepath generators that, in addition to siginifcant life events, also focus on creating relationships and potential sources of conflict. Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed also apparently has a very robust lifepath generator, though I don't have any personal knowledge of this and have to rely on the testimony of other TTRPG TH-camrs.
You have probably heard of this, but the Fate Core RPG has a really cool collaborative setting- and character-building process, where the players build setting and characters together and relate them to each other. There's also a worksheet/booklet called Spark In Fate - free on DriveThruRPG - that walks you through building your Fate Core game step by step, but you could really use it with any system. It's great for a Session 0.
Me: has five custom characters that he'll probably never play Also me; has only played one session of DnD with a pre-made character (i.e. not made by me)
Character creation in Traveler is interesting, and it almost requires a session zero, so the players can connect there characters, so "party" creation is also part of it.
I got a tip that a good way to envision an evil charater is that they are generally selfish, while a good character is selfless when following the alignment system.
Jhank's Spellbook: Unlike most spellbooks that have space to expand, as a Divination spellbook it already contains every spell she's ever fated to know. She just doesn't understand what they are yet.
I have a similar concept! A drow wizard who found what is basically a thick scrap book but because each page uses different fonts or because it's littered with stains from pressed flowers and random pieces of papers and some pages have at some point fell out and then have been glued back wherever, it's hard to decipher more complex spells. This tome is a total mess so she's copying those spells she deciphers into her own book and that's how she levels up
Brilliant.
Indeed
Reminds me of my character. He has a frozen spellbook that thaws out further when he levels.
@@Anonymous_Individual amazing! Stealing this.....
"Nervous artificial spy bean." To me, that's a coffee plant turned into an Awakened Shrub. She can mimic an ordinary houseplant if she keeps perfectly still. But her own caffeine makes her jittery, which means it's really hard for her to stay still. And if she's caught, she'll probably be executed. No pressure.
Sounds like a Pathfinder Leshy Rogue or Investigator to me.
Deal but only if we have them have a steamy romance with the awakened tea shrub from the opposite side.
Okay everybody, I’ve learned that my understanding of the word haberdashery was incorrect, you can stop telling me!! I can’t change the video now that it’s posted
Hey you unhesitatingly used *Retinue* correctly … and … AND to be fair, that fucking generator isn’t using Haberdashery correctly… I thought what you thought, Hat Maker because “from” implies there’s a place where this Haberdasher sells their Haberdashery/hats.
Oh how we love the internet for it's insistence on brutally demoralizing us as they try to correct our every mishap. Just tell them all that you were working from the Sharvar Dictionary volume MMCIV and if they care to verify they are welcome to head over the the Purogh system in the Andromeda galaxy and check the definition themselves. If not then they can just go lick a 10 day old sun dried Orc turd.
They could still be called Nightcap, if hats are their favorite item to sell out of all the men's clothing they have for sale.
You're not incorrect in your use of the word haberdashery, actually. I looked it up and it does involve the making of hats, but a haberdasher also deals in men's clothing in general. Basically, if you want a suit you go to a tailor. If you want tophat and tails, you go to a haberdasher.
The small war-forged spy posed as a noble child's toy. When she escaped to deliver a report of some dire plot, it was assumed she was stolen, and the noble child adored their toy friend, hence there is a reward for her return.
This made me want to cry actually
I got: CHECK THIS SHIT OUT, I'M GOING TO BE A FUCKING
BROAD-MINDED HALF-ORC PALADIN FROM THE NOW DRY SWAMP WHO NEVER TURNS THE OTHER CHEEK
I got Shrek
@@Grey_Shard From a windy city? Cubs or White Sox?
Now play him in your next campaign and see how long it takes your party (or your DM, if you feel so bold) to figure it out. 😂
Shrek is an oath of the ancients paladin change my mind
MELODRAMATIC TEIFLING BARD THAT ESCAPED FROM A PRISON COLONY AND IS SEARCHING FOR THE PERFECT CULINARY DISH
Huh
ANXIOUS GNOME MONK FROM THE ENDLESS CORNFIELDS WHO HAS SERIOUS DADDY ISSUES
I'm smelling a new series here. Maybe once a month do a random character vid. Maybe have a vote and cosplay the winner at the end of the year.
Would LOVE this I just love watching people flex their creative muscles in such weird and unique ways.
A livestream! So we can discuss/brainstorm character ideas together.
This is so fun!
As a forever DM, these seem like they could be pretty rad for making NPCs. Have you found any generators that are more directed at creating NPCs?
hello mr i dislike getting recognized for my checkmark. Love your dnd stuff btw
I believe Tetra Cube has an option for creating npcs
There are some apps for that, if you don't mind having to download
whenever i make NPCs i use a table i made on powerpoint that randomises race, gender, sexuality, alignment and age. mostly there to make sure i don’t keep making the same barkeep accidentally
tetra-cube lets you choose civilian vs adventurer. Depending on what you need the NPC for, one of those would probably get you what you want.
I hope to hear the story of I'm Pretty Sure She's An Elf going on the classic D&D adventure Against They Might Be Giants.
Sounds fun, I wonder how she'll react to maybe Silverondin...
Clearly that would have to be set in Istanbul (*not* Constantinople).
She never told me (she never told me)
She never told me she was a mime.
Triumphant Spooky Warrior Girl? She exists, her name is Yasha.
i'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought that LOL
Yeah.
Lol same
I checked these out and have to share: ANXIOUS TIEFLING WARLOCK FROM A RUN DOWN TAVERN WHO IS SECRETLY FOND OF EMBROIDERY
I love that so much
I love her already
Stolen! (read: I'm stealing that prompt)
"Nervous Artificial Spy Bean" - Literally my Star Wars character for a campaign that I've used for a year now. It's a Pitdroid that was designed by a smuggler, so it was trained on smuggling teams. Eventually the teams dispersed/ its creator died, and it was left on its own to just continue doing things along the lines of smuggling. The droid's name? 540R7 (Short). Everyone just refers to it as R7. I did have at the start of the campaign the droid was rundown from needing repairs, so it had a nervous tick that's cliche with rundown robots where its sentences when it was speaking had repeated words and its head would tick to the side repeatedly. So I guess I already had the Nervous Artificial Spy Bean.
As soon as I heard Nervous Artifical Spy Bean I also thought of a droid! Threepio's nervousness with R2's ability to go anywhere... And your pitdroid sounds great! I sort of miss my Star Wars campaign, though I played online with strangers and ultimately I just didn't jell with most of the other players. Good DM though.
@@Ken-1313 Shame that your campaign didn't turn out too well.
And thanks for the compliment about my character's origins. You didn't even get to hear about its/his greatest moments during the campaign.
uh my star wars character was an old battle droid which was scraped together out of old battle droid/mechanic parts as a playmate and guardian for kids. Once the kids got older one of them took the robot with him. My Droid had mechanic knowledge and medicine knowledge to fix up himself and the kids. Savety of kids is still his highest priority (his owner [another pc character and bounty hunter] isn't a techie, so he can't reprogram him). The name of the Droid is R0G3R. Oh and he will shut down if someone points something that looks as a gun (finger pistol, twig etc) on him and say 'pew,pew'. Oh and sometimes sentences from the old battle droid programming shines through, for example when the jedis in the group activated their laser swords for the first time, R0G3R said something like: "Kill the jedi scum' and then proceeded normally
"Let's generate some fucking characters".
I'm dead.
I like how characters are generated in the newest version of paranoia. Not only are you choosing good things for them but having bad slapped on them. Basically you all sit in a circle and if you choose a +5 in firearms the person to your left, I think it’s left it doesn’t matter if consistent, gets a -5 to fire arms. Next you give your character 3 description words, usually positive or neutral. Then the person to your other side changes one to it’s antonym. After all that, you get a random mutation and secret society both from decks of cards (although you usually get a blank card or card that says you don’t have one.) this can give you these insane characters. For example an agitating insightful romantic who is anti-mutant although they have the ability to grow an extra arm.
I second this ^
Paranoia has an incredible way of making characters! I once ended up with an absolute creep with descriptors Cunning, Nerdy, and Repulsive (Repulsive was originally Charming before it got swapped), then was given a mutant power to excrete a sticky glue-like substance from my hands… not the character I initially had in mind, but an absolute blast to play!
I literally wrote this comment and then saw that you beat me to it! 10/10, highly recommend.
I was going to comment 10 Candles, which has a simpler version of this. For those not familiar, it's a game for tragic horror oneshots. You all start by picking a strength and a weakness, then the GM tells you to pass the strengths to one side and the weaknesses to the other.
Then you form those into rough character ideas, and then everyone gets to pick a secret for the person to their right, that their own character knows. ("I have seen you..." worship the monsters, kill someone who wasn't a threat, etc..) The GM is included in this part, meaning someone picks a secret for the monsters and someone has a secret only the monsters know.
I think Nightcap would wear a fedora and sing Shirley Bassey-esque jazz.
I'm running a campaign where the characters are all doing court-mandated community service. I gave them an additional character creation tool to choose their crime from type of crime (Personal, Property, Aiding + Abetting, Statutory, Financial, or Organized) and how good they were at the crime (Seasoned, Petty Criminal, Wrong Place / Wrong Time).
I was literally just having writers block trying to come up with a character, this video is perfect timing!
Omg I also use DnD character generators to help me make characters for my stories 😂
"Sad Damaged Traveler Son" wait, did that generator just make Caleb Widowgast?
"Artificial Hyper Library Grandpa" I want to play that
Love the idea a Missionary selling d&d since most God fearing people I know also fear d&d
Tiefling virtue names are really fun to play with, especially taking into account the meaning behind them
Knowledge that I once didn't have and feel I must pay forward, because I used to make this mistake too: a haberdasher specializes in making men's clothes (at least in American English), not hats specifically.
I’ve always loved the character creation in Traveller, with its career paths and random events that can find you playing characters you never expected. I always recall one player who started out with the idea of playing a bookish scientist and wound up as a cynical army washout with a chip on their (cybernetic) shoulder.
All this Traveller talk reminds me I haven't watched a Seth Skorkowsky video in a while
Ginny: talks about the spy bean
me, immediately falling in love: oh no
[9:20] She was given as a gift to an affluent & powerful family as a toy/playmate for their daughter. She was to make sure she was the daughter's favorite to ensure she'd always brought along. Even if that meant other toys would occasionally go "missing". In the background she would spy, learn all she could, and reporting it back to her handlers via the Sending spell.
Forced through endless tea parties, dress-up, & braiding of hair, she now hates anything cute, but is physically designed to look and act as adorable as possible.
The "Lifepath creation" from the Star Trek Adventures TTRPG is really great.
“A little warforged, as a treat!”
The best line in this video lol
Traveller, a sci-fi game, has a super fun character creation process! You determine your character's childhood stuff, then go through however many years you'd like of life, choosing what kind of schooling or career you want to pursue and then rolling to see how it goes, what kind of events happen during the process, how well you get paid, etc. It does a wonderful job reinforcing the themes of the game, where your personal choices are important but always tempered by political powers, money, and luck in an indifferent universe. It is, quite famously, possible for your character to die in character creation from injuries or events.
Another favorite of mine is Blades in the Dark. Character creation is super collaborative, because you're all in the same organization or gang or whatever, and you also get to build the organization together! It gets its own character sheet and everything
When it comes to interesting character creation, I can't praise City of Mist enough. It's system is similar to Fate, where you build your character out of four "themes", broad archetypal character aspects which in turn contain different "tags" that further flesh out these aspects. The great thing is that there's no standardised stats or similar. A theme could be anything, from a traumatic childhood event or their job as a coroner to their love of chewing bubblegum, so there's almost no limits to your imagination and the skills you can equip your character with. On top of that, CoM is all about your character being a mortal vessel for a mythological or cultural story, like the legend of Herkules or the "Bloody Mary" Urban Legend. Pairing these larger-than-life aspects with the aforementioned mundane options for skills and themes can lead to fantastic characters caught between myth and everyday life.
My method for creating characters is: A idea pops into my mind, sometimes a race/class combo (like lizardfolk ranger) or a "gimmick" like "highest armor class possible at lv 1, not counting tortles" or a name, like "gillthunder". Then if it's a good idea. It gets made into a character.
For those who want to know, the "Highest AC at Lv one" became a Mt dwarf Draco sorcerer, with a ac of 21 with armor,dex, and the shield spell, who acts more like a fighter or barbarian then a mage, (med armor and a Warhammer, with the occasional spell) and left home because of a midlife crisis, and can't return home untill he's slayed a chromatic dragon.
The lizardfolk Ranger is a gloomstalker who was forced to leave the swamp after the rest of his tribe was captured by slavers, and doesn't know common (I plan on having them learn common by lv 6)
And "Gillthunder" is actually a combo of type 2&3. Their gimmick is that they're a triton Storm sorcerer,with 2 levels in Tempest cleric and fighter (16,2,2 at Lv 20). This way, at Lv 9, they can cast lightning bolt, use Divine domain power to make it deal max damage (42ish) then action surge and cast another lightning bolt, with the empowered metamagic to reroll a few 1s on the damage. So, best case scenario, that's around 100 damage in one turn. Anyway, they were born in the plane of water, and their goal is to find a way home.
Keep in mind, what iv just shared is the basic overview of the characters.
Mtn. Dwarf? Why wouldn't you just play a halfling or the like for the +2 dex? If you started with an 18 Dex your Draco Sorc AC would be 17 before Shield(22 after). If there was some good rolling going on you could get to 20 Dex, bumping you all the way to 23.
I wouldn't count a 1 round AC as the best you could do anyway. It needs to be more consistent than that for me. In which case you max out at around 19 w.o. any spells.
Bidet
My first character was a lizardfolk gloom stalker and I absolutely loved playing them.
I created a character based on the question: “How many different books can I use to create one character?” My answer was six. The character is a fairy (Wild Beyond the Witchlight) with the dhampir lineage (Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft). She’s a ranger (Player’s Handbook) with the drakewarden subclass (Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons), but she also uses some variant class features (Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything). She has the anthropologist background (Tomb of Annihilation). Unfortunately, I’ll probably never get to play her, since I’m my group’s DM, and even if I was a player, I’m pretty sure no sane DM would allow a character who requires six different sourcebooks to run. (I mean, I’d allow it, but I’m pretty sure I don’t qualify as a sane DM.)
The Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars RPG has a system called 'Obligations', where you pick something from your character's backstory that will come up and cause them minor - or not-so-minor - stress from session to session. It's generally someone who you owe something or a hidden secret in your past. The GM rolls a d100 at the start of each session to see whose Obligation is in effect, and if you roll a multiple of 11 then the session's story will relate directly to the hook. It's a neat way of making sure that everyone has some tie to the world in general that the DM can use, as well as giving opportunities for character-focussed episodes.
I need to see a campaign with Jhenk, AS and Nightcap! I love them already!
Those generators are fun.
(and I loved your "sponsor moment", especially the insistence of a song to teach. )
I'll have random vivid spikes of imagination. Like for instance my brother got his shoe laces caught on barbed wire while we were on a run once and I immediately thought of metal thornbushes for some reason. My next thought is how/where can I attach this idea to one of my characters. This idea in particular brought me to dwarves harvesting it these metal plants. Then I thought they likely came from mechanus due to being metal, meaning a clan of dwarves who regularly travel to mechanus to harvest metal plants. That led me to attach this concept to a character I've had on the backbones a chaotic good dwarf who had an argument with his clan and left them to pursue the path he wanted rather than the one they chose. The lawful neutral nature of mechanus would clash big time with his personality so it absolutely makes sense that he would but heads with his family pressuring him to fit the mold so he could join their business. This further developed since he was a wizard I thought he was likely being trained to be the clans portal master, but rather than choosing conjuration to help open the portal to the planes he chose evocation which better fit his personality. This is what finally pushed him and his clan apart for good.
Ok… I now absolutely love the idea of a whole party getting the “mistaken for a famous knight” bit, and we now have a party mistaken for a knightly order..
Check out Traveller, character creation is a miniature story. It's the only RPG I can think of where your character can die during creation (among other events that actually lead to a character!)
Oh gods, I remember that. I think I actually did have a character die during creation the first time I tried Traveller.
"I'm working on a new player character for an ongoing campaign"
I'm sorry for your loss.
Man, some of y’all play with shitty DMs, huh?
@@GinnyDi maybe I misunderstood you - I assumed that your previous character died, so you're making a new one ("ongoing campaign"), thus the joke.
I don't think the death of a character is a bad thing, as long as it's meaningful/epic, and players are fully aware that it can happen.
Not sure what you mean about bad DMs.
Ah, I thought you were implying that any character you create will inevitably die. No, I just meant I'm joining an existing campaign.
A cipher system actually has a pretty interesting character creator you can mess around with. You have your type which is basically class, but you also have your descriptor. descriptors is a one word description of your character that gives you benefits, and the descriptors are stuff like a appealing, tough, unlucky, cowardice Etc. Then there's Focus which is something fun and funky you can do, like speak to the dead or turn into a werewolf. Because of this system we had a player in one of my games make a wizard who was unlucky, and also a werewolf.
Yeah, the "adjective noun that verbs" concept can be super useful even outside of that system.
"Yes! Love a good Cannibal" is probably my fav Ginny Di sentence to date
Jhank, my beloved. I loved her and then I heard "eats the fingers of enemies" and man if that isn't a weirdly good selling point! I feel like she'd have the potential to have a really great arc.
valid to eat fingers
Love these generators! Will bring them to our table and share. Thank you, Ginny!!
Thanks. I think I'm gonna go and lose hours upon hours of my life now, clicking through these generators. 😂
I've recently fallen in love with the character system for the Dishonored RPG. There's the standard Archetype (read Class) selection, but the second element is an Outlook that codifies your characters attitude and personality into mechanical features and bonuses, something that's always felt D&D lacks
I just started playing a lizard folk Druid and it’s really fun
I can't tell you how much I appreciate you turning me onto these generators. Character creation can be so daunting after a while, and these seem like just the sort of inspiration to keep me from rehashing the same characters over again. The Springhole method reminds me a lot of the Cypher System, which I'm sure you've heard of. Essentially, your character's identity comes down to a simple phrase: "I am a [adjective] [class] who [verb]s." You're filling in the blanks from a preconceived list of descriptors that lend definition and depth to how you experience the world. :)
One of my favorite ways to get brainstorming about a character is to randomly generate names in a language different than my own. My personal favorite is when I found the Gaelic name Deòiridh, which according to the generator means "Pilgrim". After deciding I wanted to play a Sorcerer and quite literally flipping a few coins, I presented my idea to my DM and I love how she turned out. My play group is really big on reflavoring mechanical stuff, so my Dhampir Stone Sorcerer, Deòiridh, is a lesser devil living in the Nine Hells. She has always found the mortal races fascinating, and her genuine curiosity led her to make a contract with a higher-ranking devil, serving them directly for 100 years in exchange for an uninterrupted 50-year stay within the mortal realm.
All this from a super awesome sounding name (pronounced DAY-wah-RID I think, the internet wasn't super helpful on that) that means "Pilgrim".
I love the thought of a tiefling bard haberdasher! I'd make her a kind of Mad Hatter character, whose hat changes with the spells she casts, and uses it as a casting focus. That'd be an absolute blast!
Triumphant fluffy traveler queen sounds like a moth-kin who amassed a gathering of merchants with her and now leads an entire caravan of a trading hub that acts like a mobile village or town
Not gonna lie I love your characters for the sponsorship spots actually watch every sponsored ad because you make it seem so interesting
Dang, I kinda had my own nervous artificial spy bean. In this case he was a small sized warforged originally built as a spy, but after some glitch occurred with a magical artifact, he gained an insanely high intelligence score. He’s nervous in a sense because almost no one in the world understands him when he speaks, because it’s on such a higher level of thinking, so he’s trained himself to keep quiet.
My favorite character generation system was in the old TSR Marvel Superheroes game from the early 90s. You're making a superhero, you roll up random powers, origins, and weaknesses, and then you get to make up a superhero name - what could be more fun?!
I think a cool one is City of Mist, where a main part of character creation is your characters mythoi, basically your powers, and these can come from any fictional or non-fictional character, event, item or idea/concept, so your character’s powers can come from Iron man, Cthulhu, Einstein, Excalibur, Pandora’s box or Chekhov’s gun.
Yes, Ginny! Constraints are often the best way to determine our backstories.
We each rolled up a full random character, and at least for me, the stories wrote themselves. 🙂
I really like the Over the Edge character creation system because you essentially make up abilities rather than being limited to a fixed list or set.
I like Traveler for its life path system.
I like Dungeon Crawl Classics for its funnel for beginning characters and also for the way spellcasters have to roll for how well they have learned their spells and it affects their casting going forward.
Something I really love to do is starting with a word and make a pun (either with the name, class or race), and then start adding stuff to it.
I loved your lizardfolk character! Divination wizard has been on my to-play list for a while and I'm already so intrigued by her backstory
Totally agree with the introduction. I have heard from multiple people, "Restriction breeds creativity."
I like the character creation of Turbo Fate: You start with a concept, for example 'Half-Giant Forest Ranger in a British Wizard Highschool' followed by a Flaw, which is a character trait which brings your character more often in trouble then its useful, in our example something like 'Oh, I shouldn't have said that'. After these two main sentences, you can write a few more traits of you character which are positive but could also be used sometimes to create interesting problems. After that you just have to fill out the stats, which in Turbo Fate are not even real skills is just how your character does things, so you put points in daredevil, sneaky, forceful etc. Oh and you can describe your own stunts/Equipement and the like
Ehdrigohr is a FATE core setting, and the character creation is a group effort, and it's amazing; everyone basically chooses an element and an animal that sort of defines the character, and then as a group you flesh out what that means and how you all came to work together and some of the complications along the way. It's also just a wonderful setting made by a cool person, and that makes me love it even more. Invisible Suns is similar, but I haven't played that one yet, just did the character creation part.
Thanks Ginny for the generators ! I've played a lot of RPGs since the 80's and I have always found the Merits and Flaws system a nice springboard to define my new character. You can find it in Mythic Greece RPG or anything using the HERO system or in the Classic World Of Darkness with the Storyteller System. Basically you can pick up advantages that cost points (that can be anything from housing or money to fighting/magic skills to magical heirlooms) if you accept to bear a flaw you pick from a defined list. Want a bigger advantage ? Take more flaws (ouch) or a debilitating one like blindness/deafness. Flaws and Merits often imply character traits and help you get your sea legs from day one of the campaign. Of course, they're optional but they can lead to really fun and challenging roleplaying.
Another one I recommend donjon. And to collect, print and use the r/dnd random dice charts. I'm also writing a book with lots of random generator dice charts in it now, and been writing my own dice charts for many years. I just finished a d% NPC secrets chart yesterday, which could also be used for PCs! I recommend dice charts in conjunction with generators and your own original ideas. Always remember if a result feels wrong or doesn't suit the alignment or purpose of the character Don't use that result! Also use things as a starting point and come up with more from there!
Fun video, thanks.
The Warhammer Fantasy TTRPG gives you bonuses for playing a randomly generated character, honestly I think it'd be worth trying. For D&D all my most fun characters come from when I'm joining a game in progress or changing characters, because now I'm actually thinking about how they're going to fit into the story that's already been established rather than creating them in a vacuum and just throwing things that feel cool into the mix.
I am basically obsessed with the relational character building in Urban Shadows!! Each character has debts (owed to them and that they owe to others), which can be used to build connections and tensions with other players and NPCs. It’s such a clever way to bring different types of characters into a narrative together, rather than grouping a party and hoping that it makes sense because we want to play as a group even if the characters don’t have a relationship. :)
Great stuff as always. In our last campaign our changeling character used tetra-cube to decide what his character would look like each day
I find them great for tapping into your creativity, I start there and start making changes that suit the character I have in mind, and partway through I'll get a new idea and completely start over 😁 helps get over that block.
Another good starting point is something I've learnt through creative writing, taking aspects from tour favourite books/TV shows/movies etc. And mix them together to create something new. My current character is loosely based off of Disney's Tangled (taken from her village by a mage, experimented on and kept locked in a tower, personality is curious and excited by the world and all the new experiences once she escaped), and her Echo Knight abilities are inspired by Peter Pan losing his shadow. And after escaping she lived as an orphan in a city for a while. You could take a character from one book, backstory from another, with a few other bits and pieces added in to make it your own :)
So I love powered by the apocalypse games as your playbook already gives you an arch type and helps you create something fun. Your moves also help inform your character and what they do.
I love using the last generator. So much fun to spark ideas and roll with them into more developed characters.
Or nervous as she always comes close to getting caught but because she’s so clumsy, she always finds a way(by accident) to get herself out of trouble lol
I'm not super into the game itself, but Traveler has an AMAZING character creation process. You make choices and roll on tables for life events that encompass maybe 20-50 years of your life (depending on when you choose to quit and say "this is my character"), and at the end you've filled in the gaps through storytelling and have a fully realized character without the need for any initial concept. It's a pretty fun process. But again, to me, character creation is better than the actual game.
At ALLL time I'm the second option. Literally took me MONTHS during the school year to decide what species my character is. Still is technically up for debate BUT back story, family's backstop, a few traditions and quirks that every family had AND the 3 main animal helpers have their backstop and personality cemented in! Lol
I already love all three of those characters. 😂 My first time using WTFIMC I got "a cruel dwarf barbarian from a high end brothel who dreams of opening their own inn." Just thought I'd put that one out there.
*hides their piles of 170 characters on D&D beyond*
I agree so hard that working with constraints tends to lead to more creative and satisfying outcomes!! So far I've found the subclass/subrace options restrictive yet open enough that ive been inspired to make so many characters just by seeing one option that sparks my interest and finding ways to twist it to something that fits my tastes.
Actually the first generator is extremely helpful in coming up with traits to give an extra dimension to my characters and distinguish them from each other more. This is great
GINNY thank you omg this came at a perfect time, we're starting a session zero for Eberron tonight!! now time to brainstorm!
I feel extremely called out by the first 30 seconds of this video. How could you do this to me? Also, I absolutely know the feeling of my brain overflowing with ideas at all times _except_ for when I'm actually trying to make, or pick, a character for a campaign. I'm always at a total loss when the moment comes to decide what character to play.
Thank you for introducing me to tetra cube. This generator seems absolutely lovely and very fun to mess around with. Jhank (Hammer) is a name that makes me smile, and I cracked up at your reaction to the classic lizardfolk cannibalism angle. The concept of a character keeping a "snack pouch" of their enemies' fingers is ridiculous and I love it.
Springhole looks like a fun exercise in taking a basic concept and fleshing it out into a fully realized character. Aside from the "Triumphant" part, "Spooky Warrior Girl" describes my Eldritch Knight, Luna, pretty perfectly. As for your Nervous Artificial Spy Bean, that is an incredible phrase, tbh, and I love giving warforged or robot characters names relating to some serial number they have. The name I always come back to time after time is "Adaptive Infantry: Nemesis Series #13" or "Ainsley". Her sister units are named similarly. Nemesis #03 is "Noel", and #10 is "Io", for example. Ainsley and her sisters are Zealot Barbarians whose rage is them activating an overclock mode called the "Nemesis Drive". All of Ainsley's weapons are also named after other Greek gods like Nemesis, such as her greataxe, Thanatos Edge.
I already knew about WTFIMD&DC?, and keep a list of favorites for potential future use. Such as "OVER-CAFFIENATED TORTLE WIZARD FROM BALDUR'S GATE WHO IMPARTS THE SAME MORSEL OF WISDOM FOR EVERY SITUATION" or my personal favorite for how sweet and adorable the character sounds, "DEMURE ELF FIGHTER FROM THE GUARD'S ACADEMY WHO FAILED TO PROTECT THE ROYAL FAMILY".
12:53 is almost precisely my Teilfing Bard, but he worked as a server and actively fleeing from people
I love giving myself constraints. I am well known among my friends as the go to for character creation help and so I often just show them my collection or if none give them ideas I’ll ask questions.
I have a friend who loves to use different songs as the inspiration for her characters and when she DMs she has made that a requirement for her players a few times. Each player needs to submit a character song that was either in whole or in part and inspiration for the character or that the song can provide a quick synopsis of the character or their personality.
Was really interesting the one time she required all characters to be based on Disney songs
something I have to talk about surprisingly often
Jhank is not necissarily a cannibal
cannibalism is either the ritualistic consumption of human flesh (based on the lizarfolk quirk jhank does it cause its convineint, not for any kind of ritual) *or* consumption of the flesh of a creature the same species as you. of course, if it is a campaign where you fight lizardfolk and Jhank eats the fingers of the dead lizardfolk, that is caniballism, but only in the specific case of eating lizardfolk.
I’m probably one of the only dnd players who doesn’t have a stash of characters in reserve, because I just love my current character so much, I can’t imagine her dying and me needing a new character. But this has definitely helped give me a way to generate a new character when I need one
This video makes me not feel so bad that I have over four dozen different characters that I haven't played yet love your channel.
We typically think of a random idea, and run with it as far as we can, like an intelligent, noble/well-groomed Dhampir Barbarian.
We recently made... 9 characters that are all "the same" character. Like, they were all once the same character, until their soul got shattered apart across the world. So they're all the same race and have one or two core personality traits (and the bond to try and reunite with their "soul siblings"), but are all 9 distinct characters, from the naive/excitable archeologist wizard, to the brooding, aristocratic fighter, or the tired/travel-worn ranger. As a system with DID, these characters are all in a way like each of us, and we each bring a bit of ourself to each of these.
As someone who plays a Tiefling Bard, I really enjoyed the WTFUMD&DC? character concept. Also, I have a pirate-y tiefling rogue with a special hat to accommodate her horns, so that was cool too!
But my favorite is probably Smol Bean Warforged. Such a wonderful juxtaposition of ideas!
15:30. back in the 80s, Traveler and Cyberpunk used a 'lifepath' character generation method which I really liked; generating your character was like a mini-game itself that baked in a quick and fun backstory, but sometimes it could be too confining as to your control over the characters final form.
Love this video. These generators are gold and I think this is an excellent example of using them to create a more complex, engaging, and personal characters. Awesome awesome advice and a video I will for sure share with future players!
This is a great one. Reminds of a similar discovery my group and I made many years ago. We were perusing an old 2nd edition supplement - one of the Guidebooks, though I couldn't swear which, and it had an NPC maker near the back of the book. It was loaded with like twenty questions about family and wealth and place of origin (generic geography terms like tropical island). It looked cool so we started rolling dice and wound up spending hours on the first night just making character backgrounds. And then coming up with a Race and Class that would work the best. It was great.
It went very much like you describe where most rolls were great and with a little creativity applied they turned to gold. Sometimes you would need to reroll one or ignore one that just didn't fit but it was still very impressive. It was also rather enlightening - up to that point I thought my characters were pretty creative but I found out then and there how much room for growth there was.
Have a cupcake day! : )
Sad damaged travelers son . . .I FEEL PERSONALLY ATTACKED!
I haven't even finished the video and I'm already inspired: Jank is an artificer but all of his spells are jerry-rigged items made of garbage. He will cast Shatter using nothing but a string, a skull, and an orc's fart
I love the use of the book of mormon tune during that bit!
I love using the last one. Sometimes I use it just for a good laugh.
We have used the tables in Xanthers guides to randomly roll charactees. We then add a random background and traits. I have made a few interesting characters that way. Wikdemount adds more options that are fun.
My favorite was a Rock Gnome barbarian noble. It was a pretty neat character and the background and how he became a barbarian was really fun.
Vampire v5 has you build a web of relationships and create a set of convictions (with mechanical use) that require a relationship with a mortal for each one. It means, when done, your character has grounding and a place in the world. Plus, as Storyteller, I can make plot points off them.
I love the idea of a small warforged, and now really want to play one!
City of Mist uses Myths of old, but also concepts and popular media brought to life, like Schroeder's Cat or moster movies.
Pinya - Centaur Sorcerer (Draconic Bloodline) - Guild Merchant.
I don't want to think to much of how there got Dragonblood into her ancestry. I guess it is more like "she allways had it in her"- thing "and now the appearance of a mythical create in the world had unlocked her powers. Yes I really like that one from tetra-cube.
Runequest has a system for generating a whole family history, going back to the character's grandparents, that is designed to give the characters a sense of where they fit in the world, its history, and its social structure. Cyberpunk 2020/Red also feature lifepath generators that, in addition to siginifcant life events, also focus on creating relationships and potential sources of conflict. Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed also apparently has a very robust lifepath generator, though I don't have any personal knowledge of this and have to rely on the testimony of other TTRPG TH-camrs.
You have probably heard of this, but the Fate Core RPG has a really cool collaborative setting- and character-building process, where the players build setting and characters together and relate them to each other.
There's also a worksheet/booklet called Spark In Fate - free on DriveThruRPG - that walks you through building your Fate Core game step by step, but you could really use it with any system. It's great for a Session 0.
Me: has five custom characters that he'll probably never play
Also me; has only played one session of DnD with a pre-made character (i.e. not made by me)
After jamming the whole video long, I have to say that the background music is very well chosen xD
Character creation in Traveler is interesting, and it almost requires a session zero, so the players can connect there characters, so "party" creation is also part of it.
I got a tip that a good way to envision an evil charater is that they are generally selfish, while a good character is selfless when following the alignment system.