#RPGaDay2024 - Day 14 - RPG with Compelling Characters

Day 14 of #RPGaDay2024 completes a second week that had some challenging prompts.

"RPG with Compelling Characters"  

Hmm... the players make characters compelling.  GMs take that draft and fine tune it with situations and encounters during the game. 

Perhaps they're looking for the appeal of character playbooks for game Powered by the Apocalypse?    But I can take that same character concept, boil it down into four cliches and I have a character for Risus.   

Are we looking at guidance towards character creation?  A little randomized chart goodness, with a little interpretation, can go a long way.  

For that 5e makes a valiant try with a "less is more" approach.  

When I started online gaming, I was handed a pre-generated character from the DM:  Falgor the Mighty, Elf Barbarian.  Tiny backstory, along with some background rolls out of Chapter 4 in the PHB.  Those four little pieces of info about bullying, tyranny, honor, and a shameful secret, was more than enough to insert me into a pre-existing game, and caused some moral quandaries later on.    It's not much, but it's much preferred to the 500-page backstory, the non-existent backstory, or even worse yet the "raised my ninja wolf monks with a vow against showing emotion... they're all dead too."

Falgor the Mighty

For the 2023 #CharacterCreationChallenge, I made a bunch of 5e characters, using both the PHB backgrounds, as well as the ones provided in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign. If I ever ran a 5e game, I'd probably grab Saltmarsh, and I would certainly use those characters as pre-gens.  There are enough connections and links in the background for some character-to-character familiarity, but and enough motivations to justify the campaign in general. 

Of course, in my personal games, I just have enough friends who are crazy enough BEFORE any random background rolls are needed.  Pigeon worshipping clerics, delusional land pirates, galactic exotic animal brokers... and that's all one player with three different games (2nd Ed AD&D, 3E, Star Wars d6).  Even in the game without any background and the 3d6 in order part of character creation (Red Box D&D), he gave me two pieces of information (He doesn't need magic, he's got the family business to fall back on  AND, he's old mentor still lives in town), and despite his name, Hugo Swam'Pass is one of the most essential characters on the online board... and becoming essential in his community.  That's more of a years of experience thing between player and DM, but the tools are now prominent to use and guide the novices to those same results.

Hugo Swam'Pass "A Scranton 10"   (Nightcafe)