Super new to D&D and wondering what kind of creative processes people have for making their characters, worlds, monsters, events etc!
I've started going for a walk while listening to music and thinking up characters and their backstories: defining events, people they used to know, what kind of twists their lives took. Then when I get in I have a little word doc called my "character grimoire" where I write all this down, divided into sections, before coming up with basic stuff about them like their height, weight, hair colour etc. Finally I google 'questions for character building' and then pose them to my character, and basically fill out a little section of trivia about them using it. These are usually small anecdotes, random opinions the character has or habits and behaviours they exhibit. Last thing I do is a little doodle, and throw that on for good measure ahaha
The end result looks like this! But I'm wondering how everyone here builds their stuff and how they go about doing it :)
No one set method. Sometimes notecards and yarn all over the room (exaggerating, but you get the idea). Sometimes, blank page and just start writing. Sometimes, dice to set foundation and working forward. Sometimes, setting a target and working backwards (while not holding onto the target as a must-happen, things can change). Sometimes, a mix of any of them.
Music is for breaking up my mind, not focusing it. My brain focuses too easily and gets stuck, ignoring everything else. (My entire library is on shuffle all the time, including holiday music regardless when. Russian Punk followed by Easy Listening followed by Experimental Jazz followed by 1940's Rock followed by Banjo Jazz followed by Rennaissance Classical followed by Abstract followed by Trance followed by World Folk followed by whatever all at random.) So, no music if I want to focus.
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Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider. My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong. I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲 “It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I draw inspiration from everything. I am a "pure DM", which really just means I don't do player characters. Only did one in the last 22 years and a few months, and it was a one shot, lol.
I am a worldbuilder. Hell, even as I am building one there is another percolating in the back of my head and I just decided to stop fighting with them all the time and get them out in a fixed form, lol. I once created a 138-page book of notes just for doing it fast, to give my different cultures and places a feel that was different from their neighbors. By hand, not computer. (I miss it, lol)
I tend to build concurrently -- so the world grew up around the ideas for the adventures and all of that grew up around how we wanted to see different kinds of characters. It is a collaborative development, individual design process. I get feedback from my players what they would like, and there are no sacred cows -- every little bit of the game is open to suggestions or changes. Then I build the world, in bits and pieces, and they can offer feedback as we go. Takes a while for the really big stuff, and my own interests are involved (such as making the current worldbuilding the final version).
While doing it have custom playlists and little slideshows of images that spark and strike my fancy and curiosity. I have pictures that I know are all linked from some show or something, and yet when I run them none of the pictures are linked, even if they are supposed to show the same character because I just tell little stories -- sometimes inspired by the music.
For character development, I have 20 questions I ask, though really it ends up being about 30. The most important one is values (virtues and vices), and then all the ret. Sometimes someone will ask me to take a framework from those 20 questions and write them a backstory, and I like to do that as well -- usually around five pages, lol.
as for what it looks like, well, the Lore book is in "finished" form (it is being updated and tweaked as I finish the Handbook this month) and covers the setting without rules of any sort -- and you can download the PDF for it in my signature. Eventually the website for it will catch up -- it is about three years behind, lol.
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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
If you use the same method over and over, then that is the correct method to use.
If you use a different method everytime, then that is the correct method to use.
The secret is , there is no wrong way to develop worlds, stories, or characters. Well, except when you don't ever get it started, I can promise that method will never work. The first rule of D&D is have fun. The second rule is, if you aren't having fun, then you are doing it wrong....
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I am not sure what my Spirit Animal is. But whatever that thing is, I am pretty sure it has rabies!
My creative process? It starts with a "what if", then rolls on from there. I'm a writer, by passion if not a significant income-generating profession, and I love telling stories. My home brewed worlds often become novelettes, if not novels, before I even consider creating game scenarios from them. From there, assuming that I feel like adding game mechanics to an existing world, I might take the necessary steps to make the story's world playable. Full disclosure, I have not created a playable story setting since the mid-1990s.
I don't really have a process, but the main focus is interaction with the players. Even the cosmology of the world was influenced by one of my PCs. I have an oppressed dwarven race because another PC plays as a dwarf ex-soldier with an axe to grind against a corrupt superior. Another PC belongs to a cult that worships eggs and egg-laying creatures, and as a result the doomsday device (which began as a throwaway Macguffin from a one-shot) is a sort of bomb that produces an expanding egg-shaped void.
Beyond session 0, the plot really evolves based on what the players do. As a result of one detour they made way off the rails and some city guards they murdered, I had to devise a subterranean escape using an arcane digging machine.
I also take inspiration from published adventures and heavily adapt them for my world. I found one adventure called A Manse of Special Purpose, and I had wanted to do a subplot where one of the PCs inherits a noble title, so I had that be his distant relative's manor house. But I put my spin on it with more inter-planar oddities than the original, which had a more horror tone.
No one set method. Sometimes notecards and yarn all over the room (exaggerating, but you get the idea). Sometimes, blank page and just start writing. Sometimes, dice to set foundation and working forward. Sometimes, setting a target and working backwards (while not holding onto the target as a must-happen, things can change). Sometimes, a mix of any of them.
Music is for breaking up my mind, not focusing it. My brain focuses too easily and gets stuck, ignoring everything else. (My entire library is on shuffle all the time, including holiday music regardless when. Russian Punk followed by Easy Listening followed by Experimental Jazz followed by 1940's Rock followed by Banjo Jazz followed by Rennaissance Classical followed by Abstract followed by Trance followed by World Folk followed by whatever all at random.) So, no music if I want to focus.
I will admit to having built a wall of crazy of alliances and rivalries using a magnetic whiteboard and magnets for each NPC.
Generally I start with a monster. Say a red dragon, read the lore about it and start building an encounter.
Dragon attacks a town. So now I need a town name and why the players are in town. Having it be a sea side town helps explain why/how the players are there and so I can call it Greenbay. Greenbay is a small town and probably can’t afford an army so it relies on a city state/nation for protection. So I make a capital, I’ll call it rollendell. A nation has more then one city in it so I add Rhein and Vain elsewhere and throw some lore about how they united. Nations don’t exist in a vacuum so I add some elven forests, some dwarf mountains and maybe a Dragonborn tribe with a river.
So mostly expanding the scope as levels increase and threats grow more important
Oof. That's a big question! The creative process for creating my world would take me about as long to explain as it took me to create my world. I suffer from the common pitfall of obsessing over every little detail, causing the creative process to occasionally grind to a halt while I calculate the physics of the moon's ecliptic, or that time I created 14 different regional currencies with full charts of exchange rates only to decide, "Screw it, GP SP CP is just easier."
But characters, well, that's a bit easier. Let's do that.
I usually play support characters, because I love playing support characters. I'm not interested in the limelight or the killing blow. I am content to just help everyone else be a little better at what they do so the team as a whole can do better. So I usually play clerics. My latest cleric, who just finished a 2 1/2 year campaign last night, was a protector aasimar light cleric. Why? Well, back in 2020 I was rereading some Homer, the story of Odysseus and the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis. They were actually a rocky outcropping and a whirlpool on either sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Italy. So then I went onto Google Earth to look at that area to see if I could find any modern evidence of such things. Sure enough I found that the Strait of Messina does indeed have cyclonic currents at both ends - the Tyrrhenian cyclonic circulation on the north end and the Western Ionian Gyre on the southern end. And just across from the northeast tip of Sicily is the Italian town of Scilla. The Capo Pelloro lighthouse at Torre Faro guides ships safely through those waters today. So it stands to reason that a lighthouse probably existed at that spot since ancient times. Especially since the area is named Torre Faro (The Land of the Beacon).
So I imagined an ancient lighthouse operated by a small community of people dedicated to some deity of light and hope. My DM happened to have such a deity - Abrea. So I decided I would play a light cleric who grew up in this small isolated village that kept the Eternal Flame of Abrea lit. So now we get into background. He grew up in what was basically an isolated religious commune. So he never went to school. He knew only what the leaders of the village taught him. So Intelligence would be my dump stat, but combined with a high Wisdom he would be an empathetic and compassionate person. Which is exactly what I needed. Because that leads us to the next thing.
I don't just play characters that I want to play. I play characters that I NEED to play.
D&D is more than just a game. D&D is also a form of therapy. I have a very fast-paced and stressful job. So when I get to sit down and be Anzio Faro for a few hours each week, I get to relax and just be the nicest, simplest, most empathetic person I can be. In 2 1/2 years Anzio never once raised his voice, never once told a lie, and never attacked anyone first. Violence was always the last option. (((And if anyone from my group is reading this - we've been over this - that kid was connected to the bone claw and was about to summon the bone claw back to kill us all - she had to die. I regret having to kill her, but it prevented a possible tpk.))) Aaanyhow...
So you start with an idea, like a lighthouse. What does that idea represent? Light and hope. What subclass fits that idea? Domain of Light. What race fits that theme? Protector aasimar. What background did he grow up in? Acolyte.
So I go through that same process for every character I think I may want to play someday. BUT, there's One Last Thing! The voice! I can't play a character until I can hear their voice speaking to me inside my head. Since Anzio was based on Italian/Sicilian myths and landmarks, I decided to give him a very light Italian accent. And since he's an introvert who grew up in a small isolated village, he speaks softly. So I ended up with a voice I call "the sleepy pope". And since Anzio is a calm and gentle person (like I wish I could be) I decided he would look like one of the calm androgynous people from the paintings of the Italian Renaissance. A Botticelli, probably.
So that's it. And that's just once character. If you're still reading at this point - kudos. You may have the same obsessive problem that I have when it comes to character creation.
My home brewed worlds often become novelettes, if not novels, before I even consider creating game scenarios from them.
I'm in a similar boat, but reversed! I used to make a lot of little RPG Maker games years ago (stereotypically never finishing any of them), and many of my characters started out as party members or NPCs for those
then i do research on relevant lore, history and scientific information and write that into the story.
like how the mineral moonstone looks, selune's background and the meaning of each Elder Futhark rune in my haldir story
rammed out 4 backgrounds this last 2 weeks 3 for the group we start this month and one for myself
i also use storylines and backgrouds i have red or picked up in my years to add spice to my char. like haldir's flaw.
killing undead, necromancer's, vampire's and cult's who follow the 3 former.
have his priority, and it takes all his will power to not leave friends or the group he is with to kill those he hates. (like the dark angels from warhammer 40k do if they hear the wearabouts of fallen)
I often work backwards from the end of a campaign, making a sort of pencil outline for my story before I decide what parts to ink with pen and incorporate into the story. Then I color it in with some overarching lore that keeps things cohesive and connected, and go over the whole campaign a second time with a pencil to add little details: Villages, specific NPCs, types of creatures that live in the area, etc etc.
I don't add too much detail to my campaign, keeping it fairly plain and open to feedback. If one line I added looks a little out of place to my players, I tweak it a little. I never ink any of my extra details without player input, as I want to tailor the story to them as well: Not everyone has the same preference of art style.
In my opinion, a good campaign isn't one that's set in stone. Sure, you can still tell a story of your own, but your players should be the ones driving the story forward, and while you can gently nudge them in the right direction if it comes to it, it should always be the players' decision of where to go. The players are the paintbrush and the artist, and the DM is the person standing behind them, describing the canvas they prepared.
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Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
For making characters, I have found that picking a concept for what you want them to be or do and then fleshing that out using the available rules is a far better way to get a character that I will enjoy continuing to play. The few times where I have picked a mechanic or ability I like and then made the character as an afterthought, the character was stale and uninteresting for the game, and ultimately got dropped.
Most recent was wanting to make a character for a feywild campaign based on fairytale creatures (shrek, but darker). I chose pinocchio, and I decided to make him a gunslinger, using reflavoured crossbows (DM approved). I then went through the likely candidates of ranged profiles, checking things like paladins (almost all melee, typically), clerics, rangers, fighters, before finding that a certain combo of hexblade warlock, with improved pact weapon and pact of the blade, would give him a fearsomely powerful main attack. Him otherwise riding on charisma to see himself through, the character was then hashed out, finalised, and became a big hit with both myself and the other players.
I mainly DM, and the creative process could go any which way. Whilst I am running a campaign, I am also writing oneshots, using the momentum of the campaign as an inspiration for the topic or area of these oneshots. That way I can build the setting (EG: a magical music shop) and the oneshot adventure (EG: the musical instruments have gone rogue!) and keep them separate. If any of the players in the campaign play the oneshot, they may recognise the setting, and smile that the world is somewhat tangible!
For writing oneshots, I will consider a Unique Selling Point first, and then build from there. For example, one I'm working on is called Going Soft, and features the party having to try and capture the breath of a Gorgon. The USP I came up with for that one was "What if the party encounter something powerful, but don't have to kill it?". I then made a plotline out of it ("Wh ydo the party need the breath of a gorgon?"), which prompted a setting location, and then some further cool encounters from the setting and people involved. All coming from the concept of an encounter where they were harvesting the monster, not killing it.
I have to agree with what some people have been saying about music. Really helps to open up my brain a little and get the gears turning. I also love to use the PC’s backstories, they’re always a great inspiration, and it makes the campaign feel more focused and personal. Hope this is of some help to you, best of luck with your own worldbuilding an writing!
Super new to D&D and wondering what kind of creative processes people have for making their characters, worlds, monsters, events etc!
I've started going for a walk while listening to music and thinking up characters and their backstories: defining events, people they used to know, what kind of twists their lives took. Then when I get in I have a little word doc called my "character grimoire" where I write all this down, divided into sections, before coming up with basic stuff about them like their height, weight, hair colour etc. Finally I google 'questions for character building' and then pose them to my character, and basically fill out a little section of trivia about them using it. These are usually small anecdotes, random opinions the character has or habits and behaviours they exhibit. Last thing I do is a little doodle, and throw that on for good measure ahaha
The end result looks like this! But I'm wondering how everyone here builds their stuff and how they go about doing it :)
For how the character acts and behaves, I use the "2 lies and a Truth method" I will think of 2 fictional characters and 1 real life historical figure past or present. And imagine a person that is the combination of the 3. Or to put in a different way, a less sophisticated version of S.I.D. 6.0 from "Virtuosity".
Then I let them grow and develop based on how they interact with the world and how the world interacts back.
But, the inspiration for the character itself. I just write down any random thoughts or things that interest me as they happen, and eventually something pops up that seems fun. I let it come organically to me and don't try and force it. Its the only way I have found for myself I can operate around writer's block, is to just let it happen naturally, and then go back through afterwards and cherrypick through for what works or doesn't. Perfection is the enemy of good. I just try and come up with something good, it doesn't have to be perfect.
I'm still relatively new to D&D as well but I've been making characters and worlds for a few years now so I thought I would share how I do that.
For characters, I tend to base them off songs. I'll use lyrics of songs to help define the character's basic attitude. For the actual descriptions, I'll just pick random traits and add them over time since I work on several characters at a time. Over time those traits build up and then I find myself being able to imagine the character so I'll look for references close to that description and start working on drawing the characters up using those references.
For worlds, I have a basic rule I follow. What I do to the world will have an affect on the people. If I make an underwater world, I then have to decide how the people live and get around in that world. How they get around will then have an effect on the world and so will how they live. If they live in cities or towns, I then have to decide on how the buildings are made. So I start with a broad idea and slowly break it down into simpler details if that makes sense.
My creative process involves taking inspiration from videos games I play and books I read. But a lot of the ideas I have for world building come to me naturally. Listening to music might help with writer's block, especially music from fantasy games like Skyrim, Dragon Age, Dark Souls, or WoW.
Hi there :)
Super new to D&D and wondering what kind of creative processes people have for making their characters, worlds, monsters, events etc!
I've started going for a walk while listening to music and thinking up characters and their backstories: defining events, people they used to know, what kind of twists their lives took. Then when I get in I have a little word doc called my "character grimoire" where I write all this down, divided into sections, before coming up with basic stuff about them like their height, weight, hair colour etc. Finally I google 'questions for character building' and then pose them to my character, and basically fill out a little section of trivia about them using it. These are usually small anecdotes, random opinions the character has or habits and behaviours they exhibit. Last thing I do is a little doodle, and throw that on for good measure ahaha
The end result looks like this! But I'm wondering how everyone here builds their stuff and how they go about doing it :)
they/them
avatar by @niseo
No one set method. Sometimes notecards and yarn all over the room (exaggerating, but you get the idea). Sometimes, blank page and just start writing. Sometimes, dice to set foundation and working forward. Sometimes, setting a target and working backwards (while not holding onto the target as a must-happen, things can change). Sometimes, a mix of any of them.
Music is for breaking up my mind, not focusing it. My brain focuses too easily and gets stuck, ignoring everything else. (My entire library is on shuffle all the time, including holiday music regardless when. Russian Punk followed by Easy Listening followed by Experimental Jazz followed by 1940's Rock followed by Banjo Jazz followed by Rennaissance Classical followed by Abstract followed by Trance followed by World Folk followed by whatever all at random.) So, no music if I want to focus.
Human. Male. Possibly. Don't be a divider.
My characters' backgrounds are written like instruction manuals rather than stories. My opinion and preferences don't mean you're wrong.
I am 99.7603% convinced that the digital dice are messing with me. I roll high when nobody's looking and low when anyone else can see.🎲
“It's a bit early to be thinking about an epitaph. No?” will be my epitaph.
I draw inspiration from everything. I am a "pure DM", which really just means I don't do player characters. Only did one in the last 22 years and a few months, and it was a one shot, lol.
I am a worldbuilder. Hell, even as I am building one there is another percolating in the back of my head and I just decided to stop fighting with them all the time and get them out in a fixed form, lol. I once created a 138-page book of notes just for doing it fast, to give my different cultures and places a feel that was different from their neighbors. By hand, not computer. (I miss it, lol)
I tend to build concurrently -- so the world grew up around the ideas for the adventures and all of that grew up around how we wanted to see different kinds of characters. It is a collaborative development, individual design process. I get feedback from my players what they would like, and there are no sacred cows -- every little bit of the game is open to suggestions or changes. Then I build the world, in bits and pieces, and they can offer feedback as we go. Takes a while for the really big stuff, and my own interests are involved (such as making the current worldbuilding the final version).
While doing it have custom playlists and little slideshows of images that spark and strike my fancy and curiosity. I have pictures that I know are all linked from some show or something, and yet when I run them none of the pictures are linked, even if they are supposed to show the same character because I just tell little stories -- sometimes inspired by the music.
For character development, I have 20 questions I ask, though really it ends up being about 30. The most important one is values (virtues and vices), and then all the ret. Sometimes someone will ask me to take a framework from those 20 questions and write them a backstory, and I like to do that as well -- usually around five pages, lol.
as for what it looks like, well, the Lore book is in "finished" form (it is being updated and tweaked as I finish the Handbook this month) and covers the setting without rules of any sort -- and you can download the PDF for it in my signature. Eventually the website for it will catch up -- it is about three years behind, lol.
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
If you use the same method over and over, then that is the correct method to use.
If you use a different method everytime, then that is the correct method to use.
The secret is , there is no wrong way to develop worlds, stories, or characters. Well, except when you don't ever get it started, I can promise that method will never work. The first rule of D&D is have fun. The second rule is, if you aren't having fun, then you are doing it wrong....
I am not sure what my Spirit Animal is. But whatever that thing is, I am pretty sure it has rabies!
My creative process? It starts with a "what if", then rolls on from there. I'm a writer, by passion if not a significant income-generating profession, and I love telling stories. My home brewed worlds often become novelettes, if not novels, before I even consider creating game scenarios from them. From there, assuming that I feel like adding game mechanics to an existing world, I might take the necessary steps to make the story's world playable. Full disclosure, I have not created a playable story setting since the mid-1990s.
I don't really have a process, but the main focus is interaction with the players. Even the cosmology of the world was influenced by one of my PCs. I have an oppressed dwarven race because another PC plays as a dwarf ex-soldier with an axe to grind against a corrupt superior. Another PC belongs to a cult that worships eggs and egg-laying creatures, and as a result the doomsday device (which began as a throwaway Macguffin from a one-shot) is a sort of bomb that produces an expanding egg-shaped void.
Beyond session 0, the plot really evolves based on what the players do. As a result of one detour they made way off the rails and some city guards they murdered, I had to devise a subterranean escape using an arcane digging machine.
I also take inspiration from published adventures and heavily adapt them for my world. I found one adventure called A Manse of Special Purpose, and I had wanted to do a subplot where one of the PCs inherits a noble title, so I had that be his distant relative's manor house. But I put my spin on it with more inter-planar oddities than the original, which had a more horror tone.
I will admit to having built a wall of crazy of alliances and rivalries using a magnetic whiteboard and magnets for each NPC.
Generally I start with a monster. Say a red dragon, read the lore about it and start building an encounter.
Dragon attacks a town. So now I need a town name and why the players are in town. Having it be a sea side town helps explain why/how the players are there and so I can call it Greenbay. Greenbay is a small town and probably can’t afford an army so it relies on a city state/nation for protection. So I make a capital, I’ll call it rollendell. A nation has more then one city in it so I add Rhein and Vain elsewhere and throw some lore about how they united. Nations don’t exist in a vacuum so I add some elven forests, some dwarf mountains and maybe a Dragonborn tribe with a river.
So mostly expanding the scope as levels increase and threats grow more important
1-5 is mostly local village threats or crime
5-10 Stuff that can threaten cities
10-15 Threats to nations
15-20 Threats to the universe?
Mostly nocturnal
help build a world here
Oof. That's a big question! The creative process for creating my world would take me about as long to explain as it took me to create my world. I suffer from the common pitfall of obsessing over every little detail, causing the creative process to occasionally grind to a halt while I calculate the physics of the moon's ecliptic, or that time I created 14 different regional currencies with full charts of exchange rates only to decide, "Screw it, GP SP CP is just easier."
But characters, well, that's a bit easier. Let's do that.
I usually play support characters, because I love playing support characters. I'm not interested in the limelight or the killing blow. I am content to just help everyone else be a little better at what they do so the team as a whole can do better. So I usually play clerics. My latest cleric, who just finished a 2 1/2 year campaign last night, was a protector aasimar light cleric. Why? Well, back in 2020 I was rereading some Homer, the story of Odysseus and the sea monsters Scylla and Charybdis. They were actually a rocky outcropping and a whirlpool on either sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Italy. So then I went onto Google Earth to look at that area to see if I could find any modern evidence of such things. Sure enough I found that the Strait of Messina does indeed have cyclonic currents at both ends - the Tyrrhenian cyclonic circulation on the north end and the Western Ionian Gyre on the southern end. And just across from the northeast tip of Sicily is the Italian town of Scilla. The Capo Pelloro lighthouse at Torre Faro guides ships safely through those waters today. So it stands to reason that a lighthouse probably existed at that spot since ancient times. Especially since the area is named Torre Faro (The Land of the Beacon).
So I imagined an ancient lighthouse operated by a small community of people dedicated to some deity of light and hope. My DM happened to have such a deity - Abrea. So I decided I would play a light cleric who grew up in this small isolated village that kept the Eternal Flame of Abrea lit. So now we get into background. He grew up in what was basically an isolated religious commune. So he never went to school. He knew only what the leaders of the village taught him. So Intelligence would be my dump stat, but combined with a high Wisdom he would be an empathetic and compassionate person. Which is exactly what I needed. Because that leads us to the next thing.
I don't just play characters that I want to play. I play characters that I NEED to play.
D&D is more than just a game. D&D is also a form of therapy. I have a very fast-paced and stressful job. So when I get to sit down and be Anzio Faro for a few hours each week, I get to relax and just be the nicest, simplest, most empathetic person I can be. In 2 1/2 years Anzio never once raised his voice, never once told a lie, and never attacked anyone first. Violence was always the last option. (((And if anyone from my group is reading this - we've been over this - that kid was connected to the bone claw and was about to summon the bone claw back to kill us all - she had to die. I regret having to kill her, but it prevented a possible tpk.))) Aaanyhow...
So you start with an idea, like a lighthouse. What does that idea represent? Light and hope. What subclass fits that idea? Domain of Light. What race fits that theme? Protector aasimar. What background did he grow up in? Acolyte.
So I go through that same process for every character I think I may want to play someday. BUT, there's One Last Thing! The voice! I can't play a character until I can hear their voice speaking to me inside my head. Since Anzio was based on Italian/Sicilian myths and landmarks, I decided to give him a very light Italian accent. And since he's an introvert who grew up in a small isolated village, he speaks softly. So I ended up with a voice I call "the sleepy pope". And since Anzio is a calm and gentle person (like I wish I could be) I decided he would look like one of the calm androgynous people from the paintings of the Italian Renaissance. A Botticelli, probably.
So that's it. And that's just once character. If you're still reading at this point - kudos. You may have the same obsessive problem that I have when it comes to character creation.
Anzio Faro. Protector Aasimar light cleric. Lvl 18.
Viktor Gavriil. White dragonborn grave cleric. Lvl 20.
Ikram Sahir ibn-Malik al-Sayyid Ra'ad. Brass dragonborn draconic sorcerer Lvl 9. Fire elemental devil.
Wrangler of cats.
I'm in a similar boat, but reversed! I used to make a lot of little RPG Maker games years ago (stereotypically never finishing any of them), and many of my characters started out as party members or NPCs for those
they/them
avatar by @niseo
i just start writing and it comes to me.
then i do research on relevant lore, history and scientific information and write that into the story.
like how the mineral moonstone looks, selune's background and the meaning of each Elder Futhark rune in my haldir story
rammed out 4 backgrounds this last 2 weeks 3 for the group we start this month and one for myself
i also use storylines and backgrouds i have red or picked up in my years to add spice to my char.
like haldir's flaw.
killing undead, necromancer's, vampire's and cult's who follow the 3 former.
have his priority, and it takes all his will power to not leave friends or the group he is with to kill those he hates.
(like the dark angels from warhammer 40k do if they hear the wearabouts of fallen)
I often work backwards from the end of a campaign, making a sort of pencil outline for my story before I decide what parts to ink with pen and incorporate into the story. Then I color it in with some overarching lore that keeps things cohesive and connected, and go over the whole campaign a second time with a pencil to add little details: Villages, specific NPCs, types of creatures that live in the area, etc etc.
I don't add too much detail to my campaign, keeping it fairly plain and open to feedback. If one line I added looks a little out of place to my players, I tweak it a little. I never ink any of my extra details without player input, as I want to tailor the story to them as well: Not everyone has the same preference of art style.
In my opinion, a good campaign isn't one that's set in stone. Sure, you can still tell a story of your own, but your players should be the ones driving the story forward, and while you can gently nudge them in the right direction if it comes to it, it should always be the players' decision of where to go. The players are the paintbrush and the artist, and the DM is the person standing behind them, describing the canvas they prepared.
Former Spider Queen of the Spider Guild, and friendly neighborhood scheming creature.
"Made by spiders, for spiders, of spiders."
My pronouns are she/her.
Web Weaver of Everlasting Narrative! (title bestowed by Drummer)
For making characters, I have found that picking a concept for what you want them to be or do and then fleshing that out using the available rules is a far better way to get a character that I will enjoy continuing to play. The few times where I have picked a mechanic or ability I like and then made the character as an afterthought, the character was stale and uninteresting for the game, and ultimately got dropped.
Most recent was wanting to make a character for a feywild campaign based on fairytale creatures (shrek, but darker). I chose pinocchio, and I decided to make him a gunslinger, using reflavoured crossbows (DM approved). I then went through the likely candidates of ranged profiles, checking things like paladins (almost all melee, typically), clerics, rangers, fighters, before finding that a certain combo of hexblade warlock, with improved pact weapon and pact of the blade, would give him a fearsomely powerful main attack. Him otherwise riding on charisma to see himself through, the character was then hashed out, finalised, and became a big hit with both myself and the other players.
I mainly DM, and the creative process could go any which way. Whilst I am running a campaign, I am also writing oneshots, using the momentum of the campaign as an inspiration for the topic or area of these oneshots. That way I can build the setting (EG: a magical music shop) and the oneshot adventure (EG: the musical instruments have gone rogue!) and keep them separate. If any of the players in the campaign play the oneshot, they may recognise the setting, and smile that the world is somewhat tangible!
For writing oneshots, I will consider a Unique Selling Point first, and then build from there. For example, one I'm working on is called Going Soft, and features the party having to try and capture the breath of a Gorgon. The USP I came up with for that one was "What if the party encounter something powerful, but don't have to kill it?". I then made a plotline out of it ("Wh ydo the party need the breath of a gorgon?"), which prompted a setting location, and then some further cool encounters from the setting and people involved. All coming from the concept of an encounter where they were harvesting the monster, not killing it.
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I have to agree with what some people have been saying about music. Really helps to open up my brain a little and get the gears turning. I also love to use the PC’s backstories, they’re always a great inspiration, and it makes the campaign feel more focused and personal. Hope this is of some help to you, best of luck with your own worldbuilding an writing!
Be Excellent to one another. Rock on dude.
For how the character acts and behaves, I use the "2 lies and a Truth method" I will think of 2 fictional characters and 1 real life historical figure past or present. And imagine a person that is the combination of the 3. Or to put in a different way, a less sophisticated version of S.I.D. 6.0 from "Virtuosity".
Then I let them grow and develop based on how they interact with the world and how the world interacts back.
But, the inspiration for the character itself. I just write down any random thoughts or things that interest me as they happen, and eventually something pops up that seems fun. I let it come organically to me and don't try and force it. Its the only way I have found for myself I can operate around writer's block, is to just let it happen naturally, and then go back through afterwards and cherrypick through for what works or doesn't. Perfection is the enemy of good. I just try and come up with something good, it doesn't have to be perfect.
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I'm still relatively new to D&D as well but I've been making characters and worlds for a few years now so I thought I would share how I do that.
For characters, I tend to base them off songs. I'll use lyrics of songs to help define the character's basic attitude. For the actual descriptions, I'll just pick random traits and add them over time since I work on several characters at a time. Over time those traits build up and then I find myself being able to imagine the character so I'll look for references close to that description and start working on drawing the characters up using those references.
For worlds, I have a basic rule I follow. What I do to the world will have an affect on the people. If I make an underwater world, I then have to decide how the people live and get around in that world. How they get around will then have an effect on the world and so will how they live. If they live in cities or towns, I then have to decide on how the buildings are made. So I start with a broad idea and slowly break it down into simpler details if that makes sense.
My creative process involves taking inspiration from videos games I play and books I read. But a lot of the ideas I have for world building come to me naturally. Listening to music might help with writer's block, especially music from fantasy games like Skyrim, Dragon Age, Dark Souls, or WoW.