Roleplaying 101: Character Identity

It’s time to become a better roleplayer. This is Roleplaying 101.

First thing’s first, if you’re new to roleplaying games, then the Player’s Handbook should be your first destination for figuring out how to play a character in an RPG. It’s a great resource for early roleplayers, and the Personality Traits, Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws presented in Chapter 4: Personality and Background, are useful tools to refer back to if you feel like you’re drifting from the core of your character.

But let’s go beyond Ideals, Bonds, and Flaws. These character traits presented in the Player’s Handbook are an amazing starting tool for developing a character, but there’s more to roleplaying than just a few guidelines.

Taking your First Step Beyond “Fantasy You”

Even if you’re not trying to do so, your first D&D character—possibly even your first few characters—are probably going to be you, just in a fantasy world. Personally, I think that’s fine. A part of us always lives inside our characters, and it can be really freeing to just play yourself. At its most basic, the act of roleplaying is just asking yourself “what would my character do in this situation?” And if your character is basically yourself, it’s not hard to think of an answer to that question.

But it can also be fun to go beyond the “fantasy you” and put yourself in the shoes of someone completely different from yourself. What if you were a knight, bravely serving your liege lord and wooing princes and princesses at a grand joust? What if you were a violent brigand, lurking in the hills and stealing from merchant caravans? What if you were a different gender, or a different sexual orientation?

Whenever I create a character, I go through three steps:

  • Considering, embracing, and defying stereotypes and archetypes.
  • Creating or consciously refusing to create a backstory.
  • Based on the above, determining a motivation for my character.

Embracing and Defying Stereotypes

We all have assumptions about what it means to be someone else. We have stereotypical notions baked into our culture of what a knight is like, what a man or a woman is like, what a gay or otherwise queer person is like. In some cases, stereotypes can help us. The people who I play D&D with have never met a real-life knight before, so it can actually help everyone roleplay better if I lean into knightly stereotypes from films and pop culture a little bit.

This isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution; not all stereotypes are created equal. If you’re playing someone of a different gender, sexual orientation, or race than your own, it’s probably best to research and avoid playing into harmful stereotypes—especially if one of your fellow players is a part of that group. That kills everyone’s fun fast. Even in circumstances where you’re not likely to make your fellow players uncomfortable, it’s almost always a good thing to go beyond stereotypes. Reading up on what the life of a medieval knight was truly like will help you play a character that is more complicated and interesting than a simple caricature.  

I find it helpful to distinguish fictional stereotypes like the ideal of the courtly knight, and social stereotypes based on race, class, and so forth, by referring to fictional stereotypes as archetypes. Generally speaking, fictional archetypes are safe to integrate uncritically into your game, whereas it is almost always necessary to interrogate and research social stereotypes. Some fictional archetypes can be harmful, and some social stereotypes are completely benign, but this is a rule of thumb that’s served me well.  

You Don’t Need a Backstory — Unless You Do

This is probably the biggest misconception in gaming. When it comes to roleplaying, everyone’s preparation needs are different. I have friends who love creating extremely detailed backstories for their characters and play them to the hilt. I tend to create short backstories that are loose enough to allow me to invent new backstory events at a moment’s notice. This is exactly the same situation that Dungeon Masters face: some prep each session for hours before play, and some are able to wing it with nothing but a set of dice and a sheet of scrap paper.

The truth is that most people are somewhere in the middle. I recommend that everyone in my gaming group writes at least a paragraph about their character’s past to get into their heads, and they will write exactly as much backstory as they want—or need. If your natural inclination is to only write three bullet-point sentences of backstory, and that works for you, then you’re good. If writing a short story’s worth of back-history helps you get into character, then you do you!

My only addition is this: if you want to improve your roleplaying skills, try to do the opposite of what you usually do. If you usually write scant backstories, try going all out and really delving into what events made your character who they are. How have past traumas affected their current behaviors? The cast of Critical Role are all masters of creating characters informed by their oft-tragic pasts, especially in the case of Liam O’Brien’s wizard Caleb, and Sam Riegel’s rogue Nott.

Likewise, if you often try to dig deep into your character’s past, try living more in the present. Go into your first session with just a few sentences of history about how you got to the town you’re in and why you first picked up a sword. Then let your story be told by your in-game actions, not by the actions you imagined before the game began. You don’t have to stick with this new backstory style forever, but it’s worth trying at least once or twice; you might learn something about how you want to play future characters.  

All backstories are different, so don’t let me tell you how to write a backstory that speaks to you. But, if you’re in need of a good starting place, consider addressing these three points in your backstory:

  • Your social status. Were you born into poverty? Aristocracy? Has your social class changed throughout your life through great fortune or misfortune?
  • Your homeland. Some fantasy nations are cosmopolitan, so the culture of your hometown or motherland is more important than the stereotypical personality traits of your fantasy race.
  • Your family. What was your relationship with your family like? Are they still alive? Are there any other adventurers from your family? Are you friends, or rivals?

There’s one final point that should have its roots in your backstory, but it’s important enough to warrant special consideration.

Laura Bailey reacting in horror to Sam Riegel's story. Photographed by Chris Lockey.

What’s My Motivation?

All good characters in fiction are motivated. They don’t simply drift lazily from scene to scene, waiting for a story to happen to them. They want something, preferably with a burning passion, and will risk their lives to achieve it. Even if you don’t write a single word of backstory for your character, please give them at least a sentence’s worth of motivation. Most of the Ideals in the Player’s Handbook are pretty good motivations, because they’re almost all goals or virtues that your character aspires to.

If you want to deepen your motivation, consider these tips. This is going to expose my theatrical background a little bit, but all of these tips are tools that professional actors use to make their characters more vital and intense from scene to scene, and throughout an entire film, episode, or play.

Active Tactics

First, the best motivations (or “objectives,” to use theater terms) are active. You have to do something in order to achieve your goal. If you’re writing down objectives, use active verbs. These verbs are a tactic you use to accomplish your objective. A fighter’s objective might be “to slay the dragon Tharondraxxus.” A rogue’s objective might be “to convince everyone that I’m not a liar and a crook.” A druid’s objective might be “to stop the duergar ironsmiths from polluting Crystal Lake.”

Here’s a good list of active verbs that will help you create useful tactics. If you want to take it a step further, you may want to write down a dozen tactics that fit your character’s personality. What verbs would an aggressive barbarian typically employ? A forthright paladin? A shy wizard?

Objectives

Now that you know how to write actionable objectives, you should know about the two different types of objectives: short-term motivations (or simply, “objectives”) and long-term motivations (or “superobjectives”). A character may have dozens of objectives throughout an adventure. In acting, a character generally has only one or two objectives per scene, but can employ many different tactics to achieve their objectives. Since roleplaying in D&D is a form of improvisational acting, you fortunately don’t have to mark down your script with all the different tactics you’re using line-by-line. Instead, you may want to write down short-term objectives you think of while playing the game.

For instance, if you’re playing an adventure and learn that there’s a dragon guarding a hoard of gold within an ancient dungeon, you may want to decide if your objective is “to win glory from slaying the dragon,” “to become rich by stealing the dragon’s gold,” or “to gain knowledge by studying the dungeon.”

Superobjectives

Short-term goals are useful on a game-by-game basis, and having clear objectives can make you very popular with your DM, since they tend to drive the immediate story forward. However, your long-term superobjective is usually much more fun for you, the player. Superobjectives are the things you want to accomplish by the end of the campaign. They’re grand goals, and the best superobjectives relate to some deep-seated issue in your backstory.  

If an objective is something that motivates your character to complete an individual adventure or game session, your superobjective is the thing that propels your character to keep adventuring week after week. You may want “to become the richest rogue in the world,” “to restore the fallen elven realm of Myth Drannor,” or “to destroy the archdevil Asmodeus.”

You may have several superobjectives over the course of a campaign, with new ones cropping up as you achieve or fail your current superobjective. You may even have two or three superobjectives at a time, but try not to have too many long-term goals. Having one or maybe two major motivators will help keep your character focused and your motivation clear.

Making your Character your Way

I like making my characters as dramatic beings. Sometimes their gameplay abilities suffer for it, sometimes they don’t. If you want to play D&D in a more theatrical, story-driven, and roleplay-focused way, I hope these tips help you do so. Even if you don’t follow this advice exactly, let this advice inspire you to come up with your own method of creating a fun character to play dramatically.

Whatever you do, I leave you with the words my favorite acting professor always said to me. Your goal is “to tell a story magnificently to the audience!” And in this case, the audience is you, your friends, and your DM. So tell your story magnificently!


James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of  Waterdeep: Dragon Heist and the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, the DM of  Worlds Apartand a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his partner Hannah and their sweet kitties Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.

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