The Birth of a PC

One of the things I love most about tabletop gaming is the people I get to know. In the six years I've been playing, I've gotten to know tribal princesses, space mechanics, cultist runaways, and countless more. Some people play for the thrill of beating up great mythical beasts, some to build an empire, I play to make characters and learn their story.

There's lots of ways to go about building a character. I like to start from the base, pick a class I want to play and build up from there. I tend to stick to a few specific classes: rogue, warlock, warmage, dread necromancer, or monk. I can't get into fighting classes like Ravi. Then, while I'm building her character sheet (I always play girls, I just can't play a male character, unlike Ravi, who is just NOT ALLOWED to play a male character), I start to think about her backstory.
- Where's she from? We still don't know
- What's her motivation for leaving home to adventure? GOOOOOLD!
- Does she have any goals while she's adventuring? Keep Ravi from getting us both killed...
- Do I want her to be designed after a character I like from something preexisting? This always leads to hilarity. No exceptions.
- Have I made a character with this story before? I don't remember.

For Indeah, I wanted her to be a treasure hunter, and Factotum uses Intelligence for their abilities, so she was going to be smart. At her base, she was a female Indiana Jones, so I decided to name her similarly. (Our last name is Geness.) Yes, she does use a whip. No, she doesn't have a cool hat. Although, she used to have a foppy hat she stole from her sister's ex. Her parents were former adventurers and treasure hunters too. It was her basic persona, no personality, no likes or dislikes, just a simple, base person. I cannot give my characters much personality without the game. I can say they're polite, or spoiled, or any of various other traits when interacting with people, but it can't get detailed. I prefer to let them grow as we explore the world the DM created together.

In this case, it changed her a lot. Ravi joined the game at the start, and our characters were the same age. Suddenly, Indeah had a twin sister. She found a trinket in a dungeon, carved by a long-dead soldier. Suddenly, she started to collect things that seemed useless with the idea that maybe they can be used for improving relations or, if she was lucky, gear. Bouncing off each other, Ravi became the wild child and they don't talk about "three towns ago" because of her (and they don't visit certain temples, either), while Indeah became the straight-laced sister who tries to keep Ravi in check. Without the other characters and NPCs we've met, Indeah would be someone completely different. That's why I can't build a character completely beforehand. It's who a person interacts with and how they react that makes them who they are. I don't know who they've interacted with before or how they've behaved when they haven't had a chance to exist yet. And that's why I play tabletop games - to find all that out.

Happy rolling!

About Our Characters

Indeah is a Factotum/Rogue gestalt (Don't worry, we'll go over the classes and gameplay styles in future posts.) She's a down-to-earth girl, the strict and obedient one of the party who keeps the others in line. Regardless of how much Ravi dislikes it. She's the brains of the operation. She makes and updates the maps, researches the enemies, and owns the recon droid: a spider thief named Vizzini. When coming to a new city, Indeah promptly goes to the local library, establishing communication with whoever owns it. Her motivations are treasure, knowledge, and the safety of her teammates.

Where Indeah is the brains, Ravi is the muscle, and she's not content to use just her own muscle. Indeah's twin sister and the "younger" of the two, Ravi is the complete opposite of her sister: loud, brash, competitive, and can beat a dwarf at a drinking contest. And still take a drink after. She lives by the adage "Feed me, Fight me, F*** me, or Get out of my way." For the purposes of the safety of the general public, booze is also considered a food. In fact, for my purposes, it is a major food group. She's a Fighter/Ranger gestalt with prestige class levels in Beast Heart Adept. Ranger and BHA give her a legitimate pack of animals and monsters to travel and fight with. Currently her pack consists of a giant wolf named Westley (he's like a golden retriever in a horse-sized wolf's body), a worg named Buttercup (whose obsession with Westley is rivaled only by Ravi's obsession with one of the NPCs), and a manticore named Fezzik (who, although deadly, possesses the alignment of "yay hugs!"). When coming to a new city, she prefers to find the closest bar and establish communication with a bartender who likes to get paid to give her the weaknesses of men she'd like to take advantage of. Her motivations are usually her adage and the safety of her pets and teammates.

They may sound like a complete "odd couple" (understatement), but as twins, they know each other well and keep each other going, sometimes through mutual dislike of an opponent, sometimes through interest in a place to explore or a job that needs finishing, and sometimes, in Ravi's case, through "I did a bad thing and we kinda need to go now." I will admit it. This is usually the case.

But those are stories for another post. Happy rolling.