What would you have done differently with these character prompts? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
Knowing of, or at least being willing to search for, the actual definition of words has helped me find the nuance in characters and not fall into b&w stereotypes. For instance, "prejudiced" means that the character does not wait for personal experience to form opinions of people/situations. A lot of "good" characters are prejudiced, but people don't define them that way because the word has a bad stygma. You see it in characters that are headstrong, set in their ways, traditional, mistrusting, etc. Many people who believe themselves to be morally good are actually prejudiced, they just happen to live in an environment that supports them. A character can also come off prejudiced based on past experience but not be actually prejudiced, which would show up in isolated case-by-case encounters with new individuals. Knowing the nuance of the words helps with keeping a character consistent without turning into a one-dimensional parody of itself
Good advice, and something I also find helpful when rounding out a character, or trying to find a succinct way to communicate to myself a character's vibe. You can really get a lot of mileage out of examining a word. If you want to go down a nerdy rabbit hole I find useful sometimes, look up the etymology of the word. I had an Npc who was built around the word "nice". But that word has evolved so much through time that I was able to build his entire personality around it. He was a very pleasant fellow, of little substance, who was very good at speaking at length about nothing at all, and treading carefully around anything of import which he knew little of (that being just about everything) and was quite careless with his own person otherwise. The PC's loved him, even though he was at his core kind of a useless individual.
@@mkang8782People need to have a judgement ready for new situations, or at least that's how we've been trained through the years. If, for instance, you hear tales of someone in dark clothes threatening and mugging passers-by, and you meet someone in black clothes, you are entirely forgiven for holding the prejudice that said person might be said mugger even if you cannot prove it. In personal experience, I went hitchhiking with a bunch of friends a few months ago. At one point I and a fellow hitchhiker friend (paired male-female, as is often recommended) got picked up by 2 immigrant boys from the Balkans (we were in Northern France by the way), who did not want to cross the border into Belgium, avoided the main road, and were asking all kind of personal questions to the female hitchhiker. In hindsight they probably just wanted to chat, but at the moment you do face the option that those people might have bad intentions and have to prepare accordingly. It's prejudice, for sure, but it still can pay to be cautious. It only gets nasty if this prejudice blooms into a general xenofobe and hostile attitude.
Years ago I used this website and it gave me something like "A wood elf paladin who's legs are made of living wood" and it reminded me of a sort of fantasy Darth Vader and it inspired a character that has become a core part of my world building/writing projects. This generator gives such cool character ideas, it's great
I once got "sorcerer from an abandoned castle charged for a crime he did not commit" right into "fighter who wanta revenge for being burned by a sorcerer" and now I have enemies to lovers gay npcs.
LOVE this video concept and can’t wait for part 2 from the DM’s POV. I’ve always wanted to DM this way and this video makes it feel more approachable for me
It would be nice if they had dragon patrons, but I would personally reflavor the genie patron for it. It has an elemental theme and is connected to treasure of some kind.
You realize that you got three warlock prompts because you put it out into the universe that you never play them, right? I may have to make use of this site on occasion if I am struggling to come up with a fresh concept. I definitely look forward to the next two videos in this trilogy.
09:55 You could have a "prejudiced" character be against a certain social class e.g. the nobility, believing them all to be corrupt - a typical "Eat the Rich" sort of mindset, rather than against specific races/species. Maybe the sort of "slavery" that they were sold into was more of a form of indentured servitude of the lower classes that the ruling classes took advantage of. Or given that the character is a cleric, maybe they're prejudiced against those that worship certain gods in the pantheon, or even those that worship gods in different pantheons.
If I were playing the Tiefling, I would make my backstory that they were unwittingly a cannibal. Maybe the noble family they came from were secretly cultists, and they were eating people, but my character was unaware of what was going on, and when they found out they left to go on a journey of redemption, but are haunted by the memory (and the hunger)
I was bored and throwing round some prompts from the website and funnily enough basically got Histix again "impulsive Gnome Cleric from an unchartable island who started a rebellion in the northern mountains"
The recovering cannibal reminds me of the Terry Prachett character who was a recovering vampire. They chose to use coffee as their new addiction. What if something happens to their coffee? Monstrous Regiment. New way to look at old tropes. Thank you for the great video.
There are actually a few reformed vampire characters throughout the series. Maledict is the one you mentioned, but we've also got Otto Chriek (who displaces the cravings onto his photography hobby, but still gets set off by seeing blood or a woman fainting) and Lady Margalotta herself (founder of the temperance movement, implied to use politics as her displacement activity). "The only thing more frightening than a vampire crazed with blood is a vampire crazed with anything else."
How can you be a cannibal without getting your hands dirty, you ask? Oh dear! By using cutlery, of course. I'm not a savage, you know. (Also: wasn't Starling the lady cop from Silence of the Lambs?)
Prejudice doesn't have to be e racial. (I'm 8 minutes in btw) There are way more ways to be prejudiced. Class. Hair color. Religious. Cultural. Ethnicity. And none of those have to particularly be race based.
I've always loved bending / breaking flavor of classes or subclasses to make a roleplay concept work. The go to example being reflavoring barbarian into sword master. Lightly /unarmored, highly accurate, highly deadly, turns lethal blows into glancing blows, danger sense. While there are some amazing third party dragon warlock supplements, reflavoring fiend into a red dragon, or fey into a pixie dragon, or such can go a long way and costs a DM nothing to say 'yes' to.
Part of me would love a dragon patron, but at the same time it's called OTHERWORLDLY patron, and it mentions in Fizban's (I forgot which part, the Elegy if I recall correctly) that they are intrinsically tied to the Material Plane, therefore not making them "Otherworldly" in nature. Would be fun to imagine though.
I would have gone with Pwyll (Pulsh) for the Half-Orc. Famously lied and fooled an entire nation into believing he was a king and god, was a noble prince who fell in love with Rhiannon (the goddess of horses).... like it's a perfect made up name for him
With all your making characters series I am surprised you haven’t done one specifically about making a character tied to a campaign setting. Like you make so much critical role content, I am kinda dying to know what sort of character you’d make in Taldore? Would you tie it to a favorite character or place or time from one of the campaigns? I’ve never played in the campaign setting but it seems intriguing to play some cool new exclusive class and maybe go hunting for wayward firearms or residuum for Percy. 😁
this video comes just in time, there a weekly west marches style game starting up at my local game society this thursday, which would be my first game that goes beyond session one! ive been using wtfimdndc to generate some ideas for characters. any tips for newbie players on what not to pick for their character?
My first character was basically a low-tech version of this. I made a list of the classes and backgrounds that interested me, picked a random one from each, and just rolled with it lmao
I like the life generator from Jsigvard gives a lot of good bullet point parts on your possible backstory as well as options to maximize or minimize how random you want it to be
I will play devil's advocate for a second, playing a fantasy racist in a world that follows through on your characters beliefs can absolutely be a blast. Killing monsters with no moral ambiguity, dwarves all love booze, knife ears are haugty tree lovers, etc. It isnt even soley the realm of laid back beer and pretzels games either, there is still tons of room to tell interesting stories in the super cliche exagerated fantasy land that works that way. From old school classics like LoTR to newer stuff like Goblin Slayer (a story where the characters are LITERALLY named after the tropes they fill mind you) tons of different stories of varying complexity can still be told. Stories dont have to be realistic or morally gray to be interesting.
What would you have done differently with these character prompts?
Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership!
www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
Mike: I'm not gonna be discerning.
Site: How about a literal racist supremacist?
Mike:... I might be a little discerning.
Knowing of, or at least being willing to search for, the actual definition of words has helped me find the nuance in characters and not fall into b&w stereotypes. For instance, "prejudiced" means that the character does not wait for personal experience to form opinions of people/situations. A lot of "good" characters are prejudiced, but people don't define them that way because the word has a bad stygma. You see it in characters that are headstrong, set in their ways, traditional, mistrusting, etc. Many people who believe themselves to be morally good are actually prejudiced, they just happen to live in an environment that supports them. A character can also come off prejudiced based on past experience but not be actually prejudiced, which would show up in isolated case-by-case encounters with new individuals. Knowing the nuance of the words helps with keeping a character consistent without turning into a one-dimensional parody of itself
Good advice, and something I also find helpful when rounding out a character, or trying to find a succinct way to communicate to myself a character's vibe. You can really get a lot of mileage out of examining a word.
If you want to go down a nerdy rabbit hole I find useful sometimes, look up the etymology of the word. I had an Npc who was built around the word "nice". But that word has evolved so much through time that I was able to build his entire personality around it. He was a very pleasant fellow, of little substance, who was very good at speaking at length about nothing at all, and treading carefully around anything of import which he knew little of (that being just about everything) and was quite careless with his own person otherwise. The PC's loved him, even though he was at his core kind of a useless individual.
The word "prejudice" sounds like "pre judge", which is exactly what the word's etymology is and fits with that definition you gave.
Everyone has prejudices.
Bigotry is rooted in prejudices, but, not all prejudice rises (or sinks?) to the level of bigotry.
@@mkang8782People need to have a judgement ready for new situations, or at least that's how we've been trained through the years. If, for instance, you hear tales of someone in dark clothes threatening and mugging passers-by, and you meet someone in black clothes, you are entirely forgiven for holding the prejudice that said person might be said mugger even if you cannot prove it.
In personal experience, I went hitchhiking with a bunch of friends a few months ago. At one point I and a fellow hitchhiker friend (paired male-female, as is often recommended) got picked up by 2 immigrant boys from the Balkans (we were in Northern France by the way), who did not want to cross the border into Belgium, avoided the main road, and were asking all kind of personal questions to the female hitchhiker. In hindsight they probably just wanted to chat, but at the moment you do face the option that those people might have bad intentions and have to prepare accordingly. It's prejudice, for sure, but it still can pay to be cautious. It only gets nasty if this prejudice blooms into a general xenofobe and hostile attitude.
Years ago I used this website and it gave me something like "A wood elf paladin who's legs are made of living wood" and it reminded me of a sort of fantasy Darth Vader and it inspired a character that has become a core part of my world building/writing projects. This generator gives such cool character ideas, it's great
"Lon has wooden legs but real feet." - Fishing with John
I once got "sorcerer from an abandoned castle charged for a crime he did not commit" right into "fighter who wanta revenge for being burned by a sorcerer" and now I have enemies to lovers gay npcs.
@@Cassapphic I'm stealing this
LOVE this video concept and can’t wait for part 2 from the DM’s POV. I’ve always wanted to DM this way and this video makes it feel more approachable for me
It would be nice if they had dragon patrons, but I would personally reflavor the genie patron for it. It has an elemental theme and is connected to treasure of some kind.
In the official lore, I think dragons typically create sorcerers rather than warlocks.
Going on the Gnomes have funny names, I have a backup Gnome sorcerer that is named Horkas Maekkelferce....why? Because I thought the name was cute.
You realize that you got three warlock prompts because you put it out into the universe that you never play them, right?
I may have to make use of this site on occasion if I am struggling to come up with a fresh concept.
I definitely look forward to the next two videos in this trilogy.
I love goofy gnome names. I remember one of my players made one named "Felix Bignoodle"
My halfling Barbarian is Beelzebub Kneecapper. "But on the streets, they call me the Bee's Knees."
Awesome series concept, Mike! Can't wait for the next 2 parts
09:55 You could have a "prejudiced" character be against a certain social class e.g. the nobility, believing them all to be corrupt - a typical "Eat the Rich" sort of mindset, rather than against specific races/species. Maybe the sort of "slavery" that they were sold into was more of a form of indentured servitude of the lower classes that the ruling classes took advantage of. Or given that the character is a cleric, maybe they're prejudiced against those that worship certain gods in the pantheon, or even those that worship gods in different pantheons.
I wish the Warlock's Patron was their Dragon Dad.
If I were playing the Tiefling, I would make my backstory that they were unwittingly a cannibal. Maybe the noble family they came from were secretly cultists, and they were eating people, but my character was unaware of what was going on, and when they found out they left to go on a journey of redemption, but are haunted by the memory (and the hunger)
That's the Wizard that was a reformed cannibal, though, right?
I was bored and throwing round some prompts from the website and funnily enough basically got Histix again "impulsive Gnome Cleric from an unchartable island who started a rebellion in the northern mountains"
The recovering cannibal reminds me of the Terry Prachett character who was a recovering vampire. They chose to use coffee as their new addiction. What if something happens to their coffee? Monstrous Regiment. New way to look at old tropes. Thank you for the great video.
There are actually a few reformed vampire characters throughout the series. Maledict is the one you mentioned, but we've also got Otto Chriek (who displaces the cravings onto his photography hobby, but still gets set off by seeing blood or a woman fainting) and Lady Margalotta herself (founder of the temperance movement, implied to use politics as her displacement activity).
"The only thing more frightening than a vampire crazed with blood is a vampire crazed with anything else."
I’m really curious about how the different classes factor into what you would expect to prep as a DM.
Lionel du Gray sounds like a young Bertram Bell.
How can you be a cannibal without getting your hands dirty, you ask? Oh dear! By using cutlery, of course. I'm not a savage, you know. (Also: wasn't Starling the lady cop from Silence of the Lambs?)
Prejudice doesn't have to be e racial. (I'm 8 minutes in btw) There are way more ways to be prejudiced. Class. Hair color. Religious. Cultural. Ethnicity. And none of those have to particularly be race based.
I've always loved bending / breaking flavor of classes or subclasses to make a roleplay concept work. The go to example being reflavoring barbarian into sword master. Lightly /unarmored, highly accurate, highly deadly, turns lethal blows into glancing blows, danger sense.
While there are some amazing third party dragon warlock supplements, reflavoring fiend into a red dragon, or fey into a pixie dragon, or such can go a long way and costs a DM nothing to say 'yes' to.
In a different channel, someone pointed out that it is kind of weird that there is no "Pact of the Dragon" Warlock subclass for Warlocks...
I am digging using this to come up with NPCs for my party, working out nicely so far.
Dang, I didn't know the existence of this page and it makes total sense. I'll visit just to have some fun.
I don’t know if there is a good 3rd party dragon patron out there, but I am definitely working on one
Did Fizban NOT give us a Warlock patron! I thought they talked about it a lot.
Nope they gave us a monk and a ranger, no warlock
Part of me would love a dragon patron, but at the same time it's called OTHERWORLDLY patron, and it mentions in Fizban's (I forgot which part, the Elegy if I recall correctly) that they are intrinsically tied to the Material Plane, therefore not making them "Otherworldly" in nature. Would be fun to imagine though.
This is also a great NPC generator!
This looks like so much fun! 🎉
I would have gone with Pwyll (Pulsh) for the Half-Orc. Famously lied and fooled an entire nation into believing he was a king and god, was a noble prince who fell in love with Rhiannon (the goddess of horses).... like it's a perfect made up name for him
With all your making characters series I am surprised you haven’t done one specifically about making a character tied to a campaign setting. Like you make so much critical role content, I am kinda dying to know what sort of character you’d make in Taldore? Would you tie it to a favorite character or place or time from one of the campaigns? I’ve never played in the campaign setting but it seems intriguing to play some cool new exclusive class and maybe go hunting for wayward firearms or residuum for Percy. 😁
this video comes just in time, there a weekly west marches style game starting up at my local game society this thursday, which would be my first game that goes beyond session one! ive been using wtfimdndc to generate some ideas for characters. any tips for newbie players on what not to pick for their character?
I absolutely would have gone half-drow for that second character too. Elves in caves just doesn't work any other way in my brain.
My first character was basically a low-tech version of this. I made a list of the classes and backgrounds that interested me, picked a random one from each, and just rolled with it lmao
Priceless.
Tanks
I have about 10 new character ideas after this video! Thanks, Mike! xD
I like the life generator from Jsigvard gives a lot of good bullet point parts on your possible backstory as well as options to maximize or minimize how random you want it to be
What a fun idea! I’m probably checking out this prompt generator next time I make a chara.
I love how the first character is almost literally a bg3 npc except a celric instead of an artificer.
Wait you cant say fuck on youtube really ?
If you say it too early in the video, you risk demonetization.
something tells me they need to fiddle with the weighting of variables
Hell yeah! So excited to see the rest of this! ~PocketCow
13:00 bastard is a gender neutral term!
I will play devil's advocate for a second, playing a fantasy racist in a world that follows through on your characters beliefs can absolutely be a blast. Killing monsters with no moral ambiguity, dwarves all love booze, knife ears are haugty tree lovers, etc. It isnt even soley the realm of laid back beer and pretzels games either, there is still tons of room to tell interesting stories in the super cliche exagerated fantasy land that works that way. From old school classics like LoTR to newer stuff like Goblin Slayer (a story where the characters are LITERALLY named after the tropes they fill mind you) tons of different stories of varying complexity can still be told. Stories dont have to be realistic or morally gray to be interesting.
Oops, all Warlocks