Playing Your Character

Today, I'm going to offer some tips to help you improve your roleplaying skills.


1. Create a character that sounds fun.

When making your character, you should examine the options available to you, and see what most appeals to you.  If you've been playing for a while, it may be time to try something new.  I almost always play magical characters, but a friend recently announced he wants to try running a 4th edition D&D game, so I made a barbarian.  Honestly, I just wanted to try out the class, because 4th edition did something different with barbarians, and it looked interesting.  Another friend of mine called me last night to ask my opinion on a character concept he wanted to try: a half-orc paladin.  For a little perspective, paladins in 3.5 benefit from a high charisma, and half-orcs take a penalty to charisma.  Why would he choose a race so obviously ill-suited for his class?  He presented me the concept of a half-orc who joined the church as a paladin to try to atone for the atrocities of his people.


2. Establish at least a minor connection between your character and the rest of the party.

In the current 3.5 game I'm playing, my wizard, and the party rogue, decided that we were partners, traveling together, and we hired the rest of the party.  We constantly reference a contract in game that we asked each character to sign.  The rest of the players went along with it, because it worked for our party's origins, and the entire party didn't start the game at the same time, so when a new character joined, the other characters were already "employed" so when I offered them a contract, they agreed, perpetuating the concept of employment.

During the character creation process, it can be helpful to talk to the other players and find out what they're playing.  You could pick out one or two of them and ask them if they'd like a shared background, giving part of the party a preexisting camaraderie.  You could offer your services to the party as a mercenary, establishing yourself as someone who just goes where the money is.

Alternatively, you could be the outsider trying to prove yourself to the party.  That's how my 4th edition characters started.  The party already had three characters who had completed one adventure together, then I joined them with my warlord.  Almost immediately I proved my worth to them as a team leader, earning their respect.


3. Establish at least a minor connection between your character and the world.

The previous point is about your relationship with the other players.  This point is about your relationship with your gamemaster.  You'll have to work with the GM to figure out how your player fits into the world.  Sometimes this is as simple as "I'm playing a fighter, I want to be a former soldier in the king's army."  Sometimes this is as complicated as "I'm playing a fighter, I want to be orphaned and not know who my parents were."  This complicated origin is that of our 4th edition fighter.  He was raised by a paladin of Kord, a leader in the church, and has now discovered that he's the heir to the throne of the Nerathi Empire.

Sometimes you'll go into character creation with a clear story in mind for your character.  Sometimes you may want to see what your GM can come up with.  Either way, it's always a good idea to discuss things with your GM before the game begins.  You'll want to know where the game will begin within the campaign world, if there have been any major events just before the beginning, and if your GM is changing anything important from the default setting, or if the GM is using an alternate setting.


4. Give your character a name.

This one should be obvious, but I don't mean name your fighter Bob, the Strong and Fair, because then you're just the Big Stupid Fighter.  Put a little thought into your name and pick something appropriate to the setting.  I've had a player who was terrible at picking names.  He would reuse names from other media, use celebrity names, or just not name his characters at all.  However, he did get creative at one point when he had a pair of brothers, one a barbarian and the other a rogue.  He had no name listed on either character sheet.  The idea was that these two were in a bit of trouble, so he would give a different name every so often.  He told me he did know what their real names were, and he divulged them later so I could use them when writing that campaign as a narrative.

There is a plethora of random name generators floating around the internet.  They can produce names for various races and periods.  Here are some of my recommendations to get you started.

www.nine.frenchboys.net
www.seventhsanctum.com
D&D Name Generator
Star Wars Name Generator
http://www.namegenerator.biz/


5. Define your character's beliefs.

This one is more important in a polytheistic fantasy world.  Even if you aren't playing a cleric, paladin, or similar character, it can still be useful for you to decide which religion or religions your character practices, if any are more important to your character than others, and how devoted are you.  In most fantasy worlds, unlike reality, the gods are not silent.  Their divine servants constantly display their power.  The gods themselves may send messages to their followers.  It would be inconceivable for a character in such a world to be an atheist or agnostic.  However, there is interesting roleplaying potential for a character who believes such displays of divine power were performed through arcane magic and trickery, allowing for that one-in-a-million atheist.


6. Ask yourself "why?"

While playing your character, you will be presented with many choices: Quests or missions your GM has prepared for you to undertake, people to save, villains to kill, etc.  If you want a better roleplaying experience, before you agree to undertake such a venture, ask yourself "why would this character want to?"  If you have followed steps 1-5 above, you should have a decent idea of your character's background and beliefs.


7. Respond in character.

By now, you should have figured out your character's motivations, and their relationships between some of the other characters in the game.  During conversations, think about these things and how such a character should speak.  A character with higher mental abilities should speak more eloquently than one with lower mental abilities.  Try to avoid using modern vernacular in character dialogue.  A character in medieval Europe wouldn't say "cool" or "dude."  Likewise, neither would a character in the far future.  Languages change over time.  If you aren't sure what sort of slang your character would use, avoid it altogether.


Hopefully these tips will help you.  Nobody is expecting you to be a professional actor at the game table, or write an introductory chapter to Lord of the Rings when coming up with your character's history.  If you find one or more of these tips too difficult for you, that's ok.  Nobody masters anything on their first attempt.  Just like a character grows in levels, so too does a roleplayer grow from BSF towards Aragorn.