Character Creation

Audience: new players preparing their first character.

Learning goal: identify the core elements of character creation and understand how character choices shape play.

Prerequisites: you should understand the scene-choice-consequence loop (Scenes and Choices), because character creation is fundamentally about building a persona whose choices will drive that loop.

Starting from a concrete example

You sit down to play Brave Old World. The narrator asks: “Who is your adventurer?” You don’t yet have a character sheet, a stat block, or a list of abilities. You have a question. Your answer to that question — and the follow-up (“Why are they with the party?”) — is the seed of your character. Everything else grows from there.

This is character creation at its most minimal. Many systems add mechanical layers — attributes, skills, classes, hit points, equipment lists — but the core act is the same: deciding who this fictional person is, what they want, and why they are here.

The layers of a character

Character creation across RPG systems typically involves three layers, though not every system makes all three explicit:

Concept: who the character is in a sentence or two. “A former soldier turned traveling healer who can’t forgive herself for what she did in the war.” “A cheerful con artist who believes they are doing their marks a favor.” The concept gives you a basis for making in-character decisions — when a scene presents a choice, you ask what this person would do.

Narrative elements: name, background, personality traits, relationships, goals, fears. These are the fictional facts about the character. Some systems leave these entirely freeform; others provide structured prompts (bonds, ideals, flaws) or lifepath systems that generate background through a series of choices or rolls.

Mechanical elements: the numbers and categories that interface with the game’s mechanics. Attributes (strength, intelligence, charisma), skills (athletics, persuasion, investigation), special abilities, hit points, equipment, and resources. These determine what the character is mechanically good at — which rolls get bonuses, which actions are available, how much punishment the character can absorb.

The balance between narrative and mechanical layers varies widely across systems. Some games (many traditional systems) front-load mechanical complexity — you build the character on paper before you know who they are in fiction. Others (many story-focused games, including Brave Old World) minimize mechanics and let the character emerge through play.

Worked example: creating a Brave Old World adventurer

In Brave Old World, character creation is conversational. You answer two questions:

1. Who is your adventurer? Suppose you say: “Mira, a mapmaker who travels to draw charts of places no one has recorded yet.”

2. Why are they with the party? “Mira heard that the ruins to the north contain inscriptions in a language no one can read. She needs the party’s protection to get there.”

If the group is using the supplementary skills rules, Mira might have investigation +1 (she is observant by trade) and swimming −1 (she grew up in a landlocked city and never learned). These modifiers are negotiated at the table through consensus — every player must agree that the skill is reasonable.

That is the entire character. Mira’s concept (curious, scholarly, not physically imposing) will shape the choices she makes in play. When the party reaches the ruined village from the earlier lesson, Mira’s player might choose to search for inscriptions rather than confront the bandits — and that choice is character creation continuing through play.

Aligning characters with the group

A character doesn’t exist in isolation. Role-playing games are collaborative, and character creation includes making sure that the group’s characters make sense together. A grim horror game and a lighthearted comedy call for different characters even if the system is the same. A party where one character’s goals directly undermine another’s can create frustrating play unless all players have agreed to that tension.

Session zero — a pre-play session dedicated to establishing tone, boundaries, and group composition — exists partly to solve this problem. Creating characters together, at the same table, lets players negotiate connections, avoid redundancy, and build a group that has reasons to cooperate. See Safety and Consent for more on how groups establish shared agreements.

Exercises

1. Using Brave Old World’s two questions, create an adventurer in two sentences. Then choose one skill at +1 and one at −1 from the example list. Explain why each makes sense for the character you described.

2. Imagine two characters: a cautious scholar and a reckless mercenary. Describe one scene where their different concepts would lead them to make different choices in the same situation. What makes those differences productive rather than frustrating?

What comes next

The next lesson, Safety and Consent, examines how groups establish shared boundaries to ensure that the creative freedom of role-playing games remains safe and voluntary for all participants.