How much time do you put into creating your character?
HOw much effort do you put into creating your character?
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
All of these questions are meant for Players. I want to stress that there is no wrong answer here unless it is an answer that says what other people is doing is wrong or that is how the game is designed. Because that kind of answer is an intentional effort to gatekeep how other people play.
For my games, I generally have people make up two characters at the start. Those characters can be copies of each other for all I care -- I do it because death is always a possibility in my game.
But I also have a lot of stuff that helps create a well rounded character, a well developed character, and on the rare occasion I am asked to create a character for someone (or even just a character background) I generally will turn in a three page, single spaced narrative history wit values, habits, quirks, and more ghastly pathos than a human being should ever have to live through.
My custom character sheets include two pages for background and personality stuff. Because my players are big on role playing. But my game is atypical -- we don't do dungeons often, and we always have long, complex campaigns composed of several adventures and many side quests and really whatever the player feel like doing. I get excited when I can lure them into ruins or a small tunnel complex, lol.
But I am also not fond of my PCs dying on me mid game. It makes my life as a DM more difficult, and because we know the characters (the Player themself, the other players, and I, have all usually gotten to know a character well) there is usually a strong sense of loss that breaks up the session.
It is inconvenient, and when you spend 30 minutes inventing a background at a table with other people, you get invested. Death steals from that, strips from that, so I thought I would get other people's takes on the subject.
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
My characters identity, mannerisms, attitudes, and goals all come from their backgrounds
Die and stay dead? in my current campaigns they have mostly been like Yo-yo's I don't use death saves and our table uses is negative con as death we have had several close calls in the last year across both my groups but no actual deaths in this year.
I do not like killing characters either for much the same reasons. Besides there are things worse than death and i can do all of them to to my party
I used to present my DM with a 1500-1600 word backstory, which I wrote because it was fun for me, helps me develop the character’s personality) and I thought giving him lots of potential hooks was helpful. Over time, I’ve realized that many hooks aren’t that helpful, and it’s a lot to ask him to read that much. So it’s kind of evolved to me still writing that (again, I find it fun), but giving my DM a single paragraph with all the important stuff and still a hook or two. As for time, the writing takes maybe an hour. Actually making the character on beyond here is really fast, mostly because this edition is so streamlined.
The background ends up being pretty important, or at least usually it gets incorporated into the story. My group has a pretty wide range though, from in depth like I do, to the classic “This is Bob the fighter. He comes from over there. He fights things because he fights things.” I find the more players give the DM, the more he will fold into the story, which seems obvious. I think the disparity works pretty well because the people playing Bob types realize they’re not going to get a lot of character-specific development, and they’re ok with — they own their lack of engagement.
For death, we typically have 2 or 3 per campaign (our campaigns typically run 30-60 sessions. Homebrew.). Not per person, just all added together. I’ve had one die in most campaigns in my current group, though not in my current campaigns. I don’t find it impacts character generation at all, but making characters is one of my favorite parts of the game. So there’s actually part of me that’s a little excited when one dies, and I get to make a new one.
How much time do you put into creating your character? Depending of the character, the type of game between one shot, mini campaign or regular one, the options available to coose from, the connection to other characters etc it generally varies between a few minutes to a few hours.
How much effort do you put into creating your character? I generally put consideration thoughts and efforts into characters i make from research and development, moderate optimization of mechanical parts, writing backstory and finding portrait etc
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then? It's important to me. If playing in a campaign setting, i like to research on my deity, order, faction, racial lore etc...and make a backstory and origins that tie in with it as well as determining Background's personality traits, ideal, bond and flaws. In an homebrew world, i will inform myself on some the same aspects the DM made.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters? In games i run or play, characters rarely die but it often occur. While the risk is always present, it doesn't really change the time or effort i put into the making of most of my characters for i enjoy creating a character, fleshing it out wether it end up dead sooner rather than later.
How much time do you put into creating your character? Simple PC's, like Scout Rogues, and Battlemasters. maybe 10 minutes, as I use a 27 point buy, and only use a subset of the char species as per the PHB. Complex PC's aka spell casters, longer, only because of spell selection.
HOw much effort do you put into creating your character? Time = effort. Never do I scan the Net looking for a picture, not craft a mini. That has never been the intention of any game that I play in.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then? What's a backstory?
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters? Often. But that frequency has zero impact on MY PC creation.
How much time do you put into creating your character?
3-4 hours pre session zero, and another hour or 2 post session 0. I generally create 3-4 characters per adventure.
How much effort do you put into creating your character?
This really depends on the game, DM, and what information is available. Generally I put a fair amount of work into my characters but take all of the factors of the table into consideration. sometimes I have elaborate characters, others border on pre-gens.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
This depends on the group and the DM. I DM on occasion and understand the time it can take so I try not to create more work if the DM is busy and we are running a published adventure. In games where the DM has built a world I tend to get lore and build a character the DM can have as much fun with as I do playing it.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
I prefer playing games where death is a real possibility, and happens from time to time. I look at character death as an opportunity to play a different character. It is a game, and in 5e it can be difficult to create encounters that are balanced without the occasional PC death or even a TPK. A PC death here and there is part of the game and does not change the time and effort I put into a PC.
How much time do you put into creating your character?It varies greatly, depending on what use I think it'll get. For a one shot, "You have any ready-made characters for me?" For a campaign that's heavy on dice rolls, and light on RP, I'll focus only on the mechanical build, and come up with what else I need on the fly. If I know that both the GM and the group at large are into RP and story building, then I'll delve deeply into an appropriate backstory.
How much effort do you put into creating your character? See the above.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then? Again, it depends on the GM and the group. I love the story bits and the RP, but won't expend much effort if I feel that it'll not come into play.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters? In the early days, I lost low-level characters often; the higher level ones died less often, but sometimes in more spectacular fashion. Since I have returned to the game, none so far.
As long as the others at the table will allow me my two minutes of role playing their death, and wrapping up their part in the story, I'm fine with losing characters. I'm currently playing one character who, when the subject of resurrection came up in RP, stated bluntly that for religious reasons she wanted to move on, when the time came. If the others at the table interrupt my character's death scene, to move on to their next turn, then I feel that I have been cheated of my final moment with that character. Any [PC] death, immediately followed by another player saying, "My turn, I cast. . ." Does piss me off. That moment is lost, and getting back to it later doesn't have the same impact for the player.
[Regarding PC deaths impacting time spent on character building: My simple answer is no, frequency of character deaths does not seem to alter my character build time.]
How much time do you put into creating your character? Usually actually create the character using the tools here in about 10-15 minutes. Getting a creature type and class and assigning stats and such is usually pretty quick. Developing a backstory for them usually comes pretty smoothly for me as well, as I am pretty creative and have TONS of ideas for characters, as in who they are, how they feel about the world and what they hope to accomplish. I build their actual history around those ideas.
How much effort do you put into creating your character? I feel I put a decent amount of effort into a character who is going to be in a campaign, while something I create for short shots (we never do one shots, they always run 3-5 sessions lol) tends to be a pretty shallow creation. Backstory and such don't tend to be relevant in these short adventures, so I won't waste a lot of time working them up.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then? It tends to be relatively important, as there is often a tie to another character in the party and in some cases, a connection to the story we're boing fed into. We have a great DM who tend to pluck things from our backstories to draw us deeper into the story, so I try to have a few open "hooks" for him to latch onto and build a side tale from as needed. I further use my backstory to help develop the character further, as his experiences mold his responses to unfolding events. A previous trauma may resurface, giving the character a chance to develop a severe phobia, or possibly overcome an irrational fear. Giving my character depth allows me to more fully immerse myself. Not doing so and just diving into a game with a paper cutout type character makes me feel like some kid jacked up on Skittles and Pepsi nerd-raging at a video game.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters? Our games (our group as a whole) doesn't have a lot of character deaths. We who DM are pretty good at balancing our encounters and as players we are all pretty good at using sound tactics and not doing "stupid stuff" that will lead to certain death. We do have them and depending on how the player feels about the death, opportunity to bring the character back is usually an option. We as players may stuff the corpse into a bag of holding, to carry until we get to a major town and see if we can buy a resurrection of some sort. (Yes, this happened) We have had scrolls of resurrection made available to us as well and in one case, divine intervention (not the class skill or spell) because the character wasn't supposed to die and it would have created several issues with the ongoing tale. We have also allowed a character to simply die, if it fit the tale, the mentality of the group and what both players and DM were ok with. We started into Strahd once and lost a character in the Death House introduction. Being what it was and how we started off, none of the other characters in the group would have reasonable taken any extraordinary steps to try and bring that character back, so even though the player kind of wanted him back, it simply didn't make sense in that case.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
Time: I spend about 15-20 mins on a character sheet.
Effort: moderate. I'm big into flavor, so I'll find a pic I feel best represents my concept and decide how my character will speak, how I'll describe their spellcasting and physicality...But I guess that's the DM in me.
Backstory importance: high. It's vital I know my PC's bonds, history and motivations so I can roleplay them. RP is king in my games. That said, I'll write a paragraph or two of backstory, max. I don't care if the DM uses it. It's purely for me to understand the character.
Deaths: Not uncommon. My DM is a little old school. One campaign had 6 character deaths, half of which were not resurrected. The risk of death doesn't impact character creation for me, the ability to roleplay does. I'm not going to make a backstory for a one-shot PC. I won't get invested in a character I don't intend to keep. This kind of bit me in the rear with my recent game, because I specifically did not want to stress about losing her so I purposely gave her amnesia and no ties so I wouldn't get invested. I ended up not enjoying the character (and by extension, the campaign). Lesson learned.
As a DM, I don't like perma-killing PCs. It brings me no joy. Resurrection is always a possibility at my tables, especially since religion and the gods are a huge factor in my settings. In two years and 114 sessions, I only killed two PCs, and both got revived.
I will also add that the Three Sentence Backstory is a fun exercise and can often be exactly enough to have a good time. I have taken a few of my posts there and brought them into longer games I have played in. Sometimes less is more.
How much time do you put into creating your character?
Timewise, not a whole lot. Probably about 15 minutes.
How much effort do you put into creating your character?
Depends on what you mean by effort. I don't put much effort into the characters at creation, but I invest a lot by getting excited. The details often come out in play or when I'm thinking about the character between sessions - which time I haven't included in the 15 minutes figure, because it's so nebulous. My characters are mostly about personality, backstory is just explanation for it.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
It depends on the campaign. Mostly, not that important to me. I'm reasonably happy with the DM perhaps having a quest centered on my character's motivations or whatnot. Even if they ignore my backstory, unless it's something I've intentionally written to provide hooks, I'd be happy if they just did future facing development (how does my character deal with a situation and what are the ramifications? type of thing).
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
On average, there is probably a death in each campaign. My current one as DM has actually had technically three deaths. However, one was actually just a knocked unconscious but the player wanted to roll a new character so had him die instead. The second was semi part of the plot and was resurrected anyway. The third was killed by a blast that had exactly enough to insta-gib him. However, I felt bad for him because it was his first campaign, he'd played two sessions and had just bought and received his painted mini. As a result, I said he could just fall unconscious instead.
On average though, one dies in each campaign. This one just seems especially bloody.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
I put a lot of time and effort into my characters, including writing backgrounds. haven't had anyone die in my parties yet. I think a couple of one shots I was in could have become TPKs but we pulled it out. Oh, if you are playing DND, know characters can die at any time....and think of what your backup character would be like. And at that point, you probably know what works better for the party.
How much time do you put into creating your character?
It depends on how you count. I've had character ideas that came to me in middle school that I wasn't able to flesh out until just recently. But if you mean the time between when a friend proposes a game and when I email a one page backstory... Between three and eight hours? Of time spent on the character creation process. I'm in a phase where I rotate through a couple of characters, reinterpreting them as I add them to new stories, so that investment usually means updating and revising for theme.
How much effort do you put into creating your character?
Quite a lot, it seems. I try to spend a few hours in the week planning their interactions for the next session, and I often spend an hour or two writing dialogue for them.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
Vitally, although there's a balance. It's not a mistake that so many backstories involve lost family, lost loved ones, being orphaned. Characters with too many ties have problems being motivated to leave their ties behind. There's a dead end at too few connections as well. The happy medium is where connections make motivation.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
I've recently been running some games where I set out the intention of having character death be an integral part of the story. The result has been one of my longest and best campaigns to date. But in detail, a short campaign in which quite a few characters died preceded a much longer campaign in which only a few major deaths--and not all of them PCs--have served both as motivation and closure. And I should add that heretofore, I've been averse from character death entirely, but my takeaway has to be that stories which touch on mortality are better than those which don't.
How much time do you put into creating your character?
Depends on the group and the style of campaign that I’m joining.
If it’s a roleplay heavy group that is aiming to have a long-winded campaign with lots of drama and plot development, then I’ll spend a good 2-3 days thinking up an interesting concept and putting it together.
For more action oriented/dungeon crawl type games, I won’t put much effort into a backstory and will throw together a simple character with a few little talking points over an hour or two.
How much effort do you put into creating your character?
Similar to the previous question, I put more effort into a campaign that is going to involve a lot of character development. However, I never plan ahead for my characters as I like to live in the moment and have events and interactions decide how my little puppet will be shaped.
With serious campaigns, I’ll usually try to work with another player to build some sort of connection and will often leave a few areas of my backstory open for the GM to play around with.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
Honestly, the bulk of my backstory isn’t overly important and I’m totally fine with a GM not using any of it for their plots. The backstory is mostly just for myself to keep me in the mindset of my character, until events change them.
The story that we experience in the game is a million times more important to me than their past.
Connections to the world fairly important to me, I like to put a lot of effort to make my characters fit into the world and have meaningful reasons to go and do the things that an adventurer is going to put themselves through.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
I tend to build characters that will take the bullet for their comrades, so my characters are often the most likely to die if a situation is going to result in someone’s death. However, I’d say I’ve only ever really had 3 characters die in the past 8 years… so it’s a fairly rare event.
It doesn’t really make too much difference to the effort or time I spend on a character. If one dies, I’ll generally take a week out of playing to flush the previous personality from my system… even though I might not play for a week, I’ll often still sit in and attend as an observer so that the group don’t have to fill me in on any new developments.
How much time do you put into creating your character?
HOw much effort do you put into creating your character?
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
All of these questions are meant for Players. I want to stress that there is no wrong answer here unless it is an answer that says what other people is doing is wrong or that is how the game is designed. Because that kind of answer is an intentional effort to gatekeep how other people play.
For my games, I generally have people make up two characters at the start. Those characters can be copies of each other for all I care -- I do it because death is always a possibility in my game.
But I also have a lot of stuff that helps create a well rounded character, a well developed character, and on the rare occasion I am asked to create a character for someone (or even just a character background) I generally will turn in a three page, single spaced narrative history wit values, habits, quirks, and more ghastly pathos than a human being should ever have to live through.
My custom character sheets include two pages for background and personality stuff. Because my players are big on role playing. But my game is atypical -- we don't do dungeons often, and we always have long, complex campaigns composed of several adventures and many side quests and really whatever the player feel like doing. I get excited when I can lure them into ruins or a small tunnel complex, lol.
But I am also not fond of my PCs dying on me mid game. It makes my life as a DM more difficult, and because we know the characters (the Player themself, the other players, and I, have all usually gotten to know a character well) there is usually a strong sense of loss that breaks up the session.
It is inconvenient, and when you spend 30 minutes inventing a background at a table with other people, you get invested. Death steals from that, strips from that, so I thought I would get other people's takes on the subject.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
This is a good question .
the crunchy parts 30 minutes
The background any where three to six pages
My characters identity, mannerisms, attitudes, and goals all come from their backgrounds
Die and stay dead? in my current campaigns they have mostly been like Yo-yo's I don't use death saves and our table uses is negative con as death we have had several close calls in the last year across both my groups but no actual deaths in this year.
I do not like killing characters either for much the same reasons. Besides there are things worse than death and i can do all of them to to my party
I used to present my DM with a 1500-1600 word backstory, which I wrote because it was fun for me, helps me develop the character’s personality) and I thought giving him lots of potential hooks was helpful. Over time, I’ve realized that many hooks aren’t that helpful, and it’s a lot to ask him to read that much. So it’s kind of evolved to me still writing that (again, I find it fun), but giving my DM a single paragraph with all the important stuff and still a hook or two. As for time, the writing takes maybe an hour. Actually making the character on beyond here is really fast, mostly because this edition is so streamlined.
The background ends up being pretty important, or at least usually it gets incorporated into the story. My group has a pretty wide range though, from in depth like I do, to the classic “This is Bob the fighter. He comes from over there. He fights things because he fights things.” I find the more players give the DM, the more he will fold into the story, which seems obvious. I think the disparity works pretty well because the people playing Bob types realize they’re not going to get a lot of character-specific development, and they’re ok with — they own their lack of engagement.
For death, we typically have 2 or 3 per campaign (our campaigns typically run 30-60 sessions. Homebrew.). Not per person, just all added together. I’ve had one die in most campaigns in my current group, though not in my current campaigns. I don’t find it impacts character generation at all, but making characters is one of my favorite parts of the game. So there’s actually part of me that’s a little excited when one dies, and I get to make a new one.
How much time do you put into creating your character? Depending of the character, the type of game between one shot, mini campaign or regular one, the options available to coose from, the connection to other characters etc it generally varies between a few minutes to a few hours.
How much effort do you put into creating your character? I generally put consideration thoughts and efforts into characters i make from research and development, moderate optimization of mechanical parts, writing backstory and finding portrait etc
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then? It's important to me. If playing in a campaign setting, i like to research on my deity, order, faction, racial lore etc...and make a backstory and origins that tie in with it as well as determining Background's personality traits, ideal, bond and flaws. In an homebrew world, i will inform myself on some the same aspects the DM made.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters? In games i run or play, characters rarely die but it often occur. While the risk is always present, it doesn't really change the time or effort i put into the making of most of my characters for i enjoy creating a character, fleshing it out wether it end up dead sooner rather than later.
How much time do you put into creating your character? Simple PC's, like Scout Rogues, and Battlemasters. maybe 10 minutes, as I use a 27 point buy, and only use a subset of the char species as per the PHB. Complex PC's aka spell casters, longer, only because of spell selection.
HOw much effort do you put into creating your character? Time = effort. Never do I scan the Net looking for a picture, not craft a mini. That has never been the intention of any game that I play in.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then? What's a backstory?
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters? Often. But that frequency has zero impact on MY PC creation.
How much time do you put into creating your character?
3-4 hours pre session zero, and another hour or 2 post session 0. I generally create 3-4 characters per adventure.
How much effort do you put into creating your character?
This really depends on the game, DM, and what information is available. Generally I put a fair amount of work into my characters but take all of the factors of the table into consideration. sometimes I have elaborate characters, others border on pre-gens.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
This depends on the group and the DM. I DM on occasion and understand the time it can take so I try not to create more work if the DM is busy and we are running a published adventure. In games where the DM has built a world I tend to get lore and build a character the DM can have as much fun with as I do playing it.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
I prefer playing games where death is a real possibility, and happens from time to time. I look at character death as an opportunity to play a different character. It is a game, and in 5e it can be difficult to create encounters that are balanced without the occasional PC death or even a TPK. A PC death here and there is part of the game and does not change the time and effort I put into a PC.
CENSORSHIP IS THE TOOL OF COWARDS and WANNA BE TYRANTS.
How much time do you put into creating your character? It varies greatly, depending on what use I think it'll get. For a one shot, "You have any ready-made characters for me?" For a campaign that's heavy on dice rolls, and light on RP, I'll focus only on the mechanical build, and come up with what else I need on the fly. If I know that both the GM and the group at large are into RP and story building, then I'll delve deeply into an appropriate backstory.
How much effort do you put into creating your character? See the above.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then? Again, it depends on the GM and the group. I love the story bits and the RP, but won't expend much effort if I feel that it'll not come into play.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters? In the early days, I lost low-level characters often; the higher level ones died less often, but sometimes in more spectacular fashion. Since I have returned to the game, none so far.
As long as the others at the table will allow me my two minutes of role playing their death, and wrapping up their part in the story, I'm fine with losing characters. I'm currently playing one character who, when the subject of resurrection came up in RP, stated bluntly that for religious reasons she wanted to move on, when the time came. If the others at the table interrupt my character's death scene, to move on to their next turn, then I feel that I have been cheated of my final moment with that character. Any [PC] death, immediately followed by another player saying, "My turn, I cast. . ." Does piss me off. That moment is lost, and getting back to it later doesn't have the same impact for the player.
[Regarding PC deaths impacting time spent on character building: My simple answer is no, frequency of character deaths does not seem to alter my character build time.]
[EDITS]
How much time do you put into creating your character? Usually actually create the character using the tools here in about 10-15 minutes. Getting a creature type and class and assigning stats and such is usually pretty quick. Developing a backstory for them usually comes pretty smoothly for me as well, as I am pretty creative and have TONS of ideas for characters, as in who they are, how they feel about the world and what they hope to accomplish. I build their actual history around those ideas.
How much effort do you put into creating your character? I feel I put a decent amount of effort into a character who is going to be in a campaign, while something I create for short shots (we never do one shots, they always run 3-5 sessions lol) tends to be a pretty shallow creation. Backstory and such don't tend to be relevant in these short adventures, so I won't waste a lot of time working them up.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then? It tends to be relatively important, as there is often a tie to another character in the party and in some cases, a connection to the story we're boing fed into. We have a great DM who tend to pluck things from our backstories to draw us deeper into the story, so I try to have a few open "hooks" for him to latch onto and build a side tale from as needed. I further use my backstory to help develop the character further, as his experiences mold his responses to unfolding events. A previous trauma may resurface, giving the character a chance to develop a severe phobia, or possibly overcome an irrational fear. Giving my character depth allows me to more fully immerse myself. Not doing so and just diving into a game with a paper cutout type character makes me feel like some kid jacked up on Skittles and Pepsi nerd-raging at a video game.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters? Our games (our group as a whole) doesn't have a lot of character deaths. We who DM are pretty good at balancing our encounters and as players we are all pretty good at using sound tactics and not doing "stupid stuff" that will lead to certain death. We do have them and depending on how the player feels about the death, opportunity to bring the character back is usually an option. We as players may stuff the corpse into a bag of holding, to carry until we get to a major town and see if we can buy a resurrection of some sort. (Yes, this happened) We have had scrolls of resurrection made available to us as well and in one case, divine intervention (not the class skill or spell) because the character wasn't supposed to die and it would have created several issues with the ongoing tale. We have also allowed a character to simply die, if it fit the tale, the mentality of the group and what both players and DM were ok with. We started into Strahd once and lost a character in the Death House introduction. Being what it was and how we started off, none of the other characters in the group would have reasonable taken any extraordinary steps to try and bring that character back, so even though the player kind of wanted him back, it simply didn't make sense in that case.
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Time: I spend about 15-20 mins on a character sheet.
Effort: moderate. I'm big into flavor, so I'll find a pic I feel best represents my concept and decide how my character will speak, how I'll describe their spellcasting and physicality...But I guess that's the DM in me.
Backstory importance: high. It's vital I know my PC's bonds, history and motivations so I can roleplay them. RP is king in my games. That said, I'll write a paragraph or two of backstory, max. I don't care if the DM uses it. It's purely for me to understand the character.
Deaths: Not uncommon. My DM is a little old school. One campaign had 6 character deaths, half of which were not resurrected. The risk of death doesn't impact character creation for me, the ability to roleplay does. I'm not going to make a backstory for a one-shot PC. I won't get invested in a character I don't intend to keep. This kind of bit me in the rear with my recent game, because I specifically did not want to stress about losing her so I purposely gave her amnesia and no ties so I wouldn't get invested. I ended up not enjoying the character (and by extension, the campaign). Lesson learned.
As a DM, I don't like perma-killing PCs. It brings me no joy. Resurrection is always a possibility at my tables, especially since religion and the gods are a huge factor in my settings. In two years and 114 sessions, I only killed two PCs, and both got revived.
I will also add that the Three Sentence Backstory is a fun exercise and can often be exactly enough to have a good time. I have taken a few of my posts there and brought them into longer games I have played in. Sometimes less is more.
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How much time do you put into creating your character?
Timewise, not a whole lot. Probably about 15 minutes.
How much effort do you put into creating your character?
Depends on what you mean by effort. I don't put much effort into the characters at creation, but I invest a lot by getting excited. The details often come out in play or when I'm thinking about the character between sessions - which time I haven't included in the 15 minutes figure, because it's so nebulous. My characters are mostly about personality, backstory is just explanation for it.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
It depends on the campaign. Mostly, not that important to me. I'm reasonably happy with the DM perhaps having a quest centered on my character's motivations or whatnot. Even if they ignore my backstory, unless it's something I've intentionally written to provide hooks, I'd be happy if they just did future facing development (how does my character deal with a situation and what are the ramifications? type of thing).
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
On average, there is probably a death in each campaign. My current one as DM has actually had technically three deaths. However, one was actually just a knocked unconscious but the player wanted to roll a new character so had him die instead. The second was semi part of the plot and was resurrected anyway. The third was killed by a blast that had exactly enough to insta-gib him. However, I felt bad for him because it was his first campaign, he'd played two sessions and had just bought and received his painted mini. As a result, I said he could just fall unconscious instead.
On average though, one dies in each campaign. This one just seems especially bloody.
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I put a lot of time and effort into my characters, including writing backgrounds. haven't had anyone die in my parties yet. I think a couple of one shots I was in could have become TPKs but we pulled it out. Oh, if you are playing DND, know characters can die at any time....and think of what your backup character would be like. And at that point, you probably know what works better for the party.
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How much time do you put into creating your character?
It depends on how you count. I've had character ideas that came to me in middle school that I wasn't able to flesh out until just recently. But if you mean the time between when a friend proposes a game and when I email a one page backstory... Between three and eight hours? Of time spent on the character creation process. I'm in a phase where I rotate through a couple of characters, reinterpreting them as I add them to new stories, so that investment usually means updating and revising for theme.
How much effort do you put into creating your character?
Quite a lot, it seems. I try to spend a few hours in the week planning their interactions for the next session, and I often spend an hour or two writing dialogue for them.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
Vitally, although there's a balance. It's not a mistake that so many backstories involve lost family, lost loved ones, being orphaned. Characters with too many ties have problems being motivated to leave their ties behind. There's a dead end at too few connections as well. The happy medium is where connections make motivation.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
I've recently been running some games where I set out the intention of having character death be an integral part of the story. The result has been one of my longest and best campaigns to date. But in detail, a short campaign in which quite a few characters died preceded a much longer campaign in which only a few major deaths--and not all of them PCs--have served both as motivation and closure. And I should add that heretofore, I've been averse from character death entirely, but my takeaway has to be that stories which touch on mortality are better than those which don't.
How much time do you put into creating your character?
Depends on the group and the style of campaign that I’m joining.
If it’s a roleplay heavy group that is aiming to have a long-winded campaign with lots of drama and plot development, then I’ll spend a good 2-3 days thinking up an interesting concept and putting it together.
For more action oriented/dungeon crawl type games, I won’t put much effort into a backstory and will throw together a simple character with a few little talking points over an hour or two.
How much effort do you put into creating your character?
Similar to the previous question, I put more effort into a campaign that is going to involve a lot of character development. However, I never plan ahead for my characters as I like to live in the moment and have events and interactions decide how my little puppet will be shaped.
With serious campaigns, I’ll usually try to work with another player to build some sort of connection and will often leave a few areas of my backstory open for the GM to play around with.
How important is your character's background, the ties to the world your characters has, the story of that character up until then?
Honestly, the bulk of my backstory isn’t overly important and I’m totally fine with a GM not using any of it for their plots. The backstory is mostly just for myself to keep me in the mindset of my character, until events change them.
The story that we experience in the game is a million times more important to me than their past.
Connections to the world fairly important to me, I like to put a lot of effort to make my characters fit into the world and have meaningful reasons to go and do the things that an adventurer is going to put themselves through.
How often do characters die in your games, and how does that frequency of death or infrequency of death impact our time spent on characters?
I tend to build characters that will take the bullet for their comrades, so my characters are often the most likely to die if a situation is going to result in someone’s death. However, I’d say I’ve only ever really had 3 characters die in the past 8 years… so it’s a fairly rare event.
It doesn’t really make too much difference to the effort or time I spend on a character. If one dies, I’ll generally take a week out of playing to flush the previous personality from my system… even though I might not play for a week, I’ll often still sit in and attend as an observer so that the group don’t have to fill me in on any new developments.
I spend too long building characters, ngl
I put in WAY too much effort
I think that backstory is very important
And I'm kinda new to d&d so I haven't had a character die yet lol