Step Two: Determine a Character Concept
The second step in the character creation process
is to determine a concept for your character. A concept is a statement designed
to guide you in selecting your character’s abilities as you proceed through the
rest of the character creation process that takes the following form:
A
DESCRIPTOR
ROLE
who
MOTIVATION
As you can see, there are three elements within
the concept.
The first element, the descriptor, will be a single word that describes your character in
some general way. When choosing the descriptor for your character, try to use a
word that will describe your character’s appearance, a unique ability, or a
personality trait. Examples of words include attractive, telekinetic, lazy,
ripped, neurotic, cursed, boisterous, obnoxious, happy, or tragic.
The second element, the role, should reflect your character’s profession or else the main
activity your character spends most of his time doing. Examples of roles include
a swordsman, a drifter, a regular guy, a student, a soldier, a skateboarder, a
slacker, a cop, a pipefitter, or a United Nations Ranger.
The third element, the motivation, is a string of words that reflects the primary
motivation that gives your character’s life meaning and direction. It specifies
a cause, desire, or ability that drives your character to take the great life
or death risks required by a hero. Examples include:
- Wants to put the wrong things right.
- Seeks to get richer than Midas.
- Refuses to stop fighting until either he or his enemy falls.
- Is cursed by a past that haunts him to this day.
- Uses his special abilities to make the world a better place.
Once complete, your character’s concept will tie
your character in with the game world, give you and the other players a general
idea of what abilities and attitudes to expect from your character, and act as
a guide to help you make decisions you as you proceed through the remaining steps
of the character creation process.
Completing Step Two
To complete this step, you need to create your
character’s concept by writing a statement that contains a descriptor, a role,
and a motivation in the aforementioned format.
Hujraad’s Hacks: Figuring Out Your Character Concept
The first few times you try to make a character,
you may feel a bit overwhelmed by the seemingly endless possibilities. To help
overcome this feeling of “Where do I even begin?”, here are a few ideas to get
you started:
- You could base your character on a word, an extraordinarily good or bad trait or a combination of such traits, such as a blind man with phenomenal marksmanship.
- You could model your character on one from a book, play, movie, opera, mythology, fable, story, computer game, work of art, or epic poem. This is often a great place to start for beginners.
- You could base your character on fictional or real characters, or even yourself as you are, as you used to be, as you would like to be, or as you would hate to be. You could also base the character on other people in your life, either ridiculing them or exalting them by bringing forth what you perceive to be their outstanding traits.
Step Two
Example: Johnny Parkour
Ogun now moves on to creating his character’s
concept. Turning his attention to the first element, the descriptor, Ogun
decides that he would like to recreate a character he liked in a book he
recently read. He decides that the thing that he liked most about the character
was that the character was constantly diving into every action scene with a
complete lack of regard for danger, depending on his fancy acrobatics skill to
get out of sticky situations. Considering both the words “reckless” and
“acrobatic”, he settles on the word “acrobatic” and writes it down in the
appropriate space on his character sheet.
Moving on to the next element, defining a role for
his character, Ogun remembers how the character he wishes to recreate was
constantly provoking others into inadvertently performing heroic actions. He
likes this idea and decides to define his character’s role as a “provoker”,
writing it down in the appropriate space on his character sheet
Realizing that being an “provoker” could quickly
get on the other player’s nerves and cause disruption of the game, Ogun decides
to use his character’s motivation element to explain how his character’s role
will be helpful to the other players rather than cause problems. After thinking
a bit, he finally puts puts down the following phrase as his character’s
motivation:
“Finds inspiration in acting selflessly so that he
and those he cares about can accomplish their goals”.
Taken together, the three elements of descriptor,
role, and a motivation come together to form the following concept:
“An acrobatic provoker who finds inspiration in
acting selflessly so that he and those he cares about can accomplish their
goals”
Ogun shows his character’s concept to his Director
Sarah, who smiles and approves it. Ogun is now free to move on to the next step
of the process.
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