Personalities and Backgrounds
Welcome to the Guide!
In my experience, what makes role playing games so fun is the role playing! Yes, high pitched battles are a blast, but can get stale when that’s the meat of the experience. Developing and running a character that, over time, really comes to life makes gaming rewarding because eventually you get to know and care about this creation that is, ultimately, an extension of yourself. And so, this guide was developed for gamers like me that enjoy playing complex characters with a unique personality and background.
Chances are, outlining everything in this guide in detail would be time-consuming and unwieldy. At the beginning of a new game, few players want to spend a lot of time creating a personality and backstory profile—they want to start gaming! The good news is that this guide was designed to be modular. It is possible to start off with only a few items and build on them as you go. Here are the suggested minimum items that would make for a solid personality and background profile:
- Primary Motivator
- Emotional Disposition
- Outlook
- Integrity
- Birthplace: name, size, location
- Any pre-adventuring training or experience in a profession or craft
- One or two mysteries, conflicts, and/or significant past events
- Adventure trigger and/or quests
It is very possible to start off with a minimal profile like this and see how the character develops. It could be that certain questions start coming up that you want an answer for—like style of humor or religious background—but that you don’t need to get started playing. However you use this guide, either piecemeal or developing everything all at once, I hope that you find it useful for enriching your gaming experience.
Part I
PERSONALITY
Although there are a number of tables below and a lot of options, in the end the output is not all that overwhelming. Naturally, you can choose to detail only those traits that you find useful and interesting. With all of them assigned, the final result would look something like this:
| Primary Motivator | Recognition | Sense of Humor | Cynical |
| Emotional Disposition | Contemptuous | Sexuality | |
| Moodiness | Labile | Sexual Orientation | Hetero |
| CORE TRAITS | Libido | Lascivious | |
| Outlook | Pessimistic | Sexual Expressiveness | Flirtatious |
| Integrity | Unscrupulous | Sexual Expressive Style | Seductive |
| Impulsiveness | Controlled | Openness to sexual experience | Narrow |
| Boldness | Intrepid | Promiscuousness | High |
| Flexibility | Stubborn | Religion & Spirituality | |
| Affinity | Cold | Adherence | Agnostic |
| Comportment | Discordant | Tolerance | Intolerant |
| Interactivity | Reserved | Expression of beliefs | Occasional |
| Disclosure | Secretive | Converting others | Never |
| Conformity | Conventional | Attitude | Irreverent |
| Topics of Conversation | Himself; current events; politics | ||
| Quirks, Habits, & Oddities | Eavesdropping, pacing, constant grooming | ||
| Hobbies & Enjoyments | Gardening, woodworking | ||
One glance at this paints an immediate picture of what this person is like in a way that informs how he acts. What makes this process interesting is when there are items that don’t quite go together. In the above example, this character’s cynical, contemptuous, and unkind demeanor is somewhat at odds with his also being conventional and enjoying gardening. By coming up with an explanation for such small discordancies, you instantly tap into a richness that is fun and challenging to play. This is where background development becomes relevant, which we’ll explore in Part II of this guide.
Check out several examples on the personality profiles samples page.
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