Character Creation: The Essential Step in Every RPG Campaign — Here’s Why
In this video, I discuss the crucial role that character creation plays in the success of any tabletop RPG campaign. Whether you're running Dungeons & Dragons, OSR games, or any other system, understanding why Character Creation is essential will set the stage for a great adventure. Watch to learn how building characters not only shapes your story but also fosters group cohesion, establishes campaign dynamics, and sets clear expectations for all players.
Highlights:
🎯 Why group character creation matters in RPG campaigns
📜 The role of character creation in shaping your story
🛠️ Establishing house rules and expectations early on
🧑🤝🧑 Fostering group collaboration and team dynamics
🚀 How emergent play allows characters to evolve naturally
At the risk of being somewhat Jesuitical, I’m interested that you mention that character creation can be a way for players to establish long-term character aspirations AND that it is a way of laying the groundwork for ‘emergent’ play and ‘flexibility’. I think we’d all agree that any decent character in a game where choices actually matter will change over time, which makes me wonder why one would bother to spend any time at all thinking about ‘long-term’ anything as an objective or immutable fact about a character. Of course, a character can be created that believes at the time of creation that they want to - I don’t know - haul themselves up from peasant farm boy to knight of the shire (say), or some other ‘progress’ that is ‘long-term’ in the sense that the character imagines it will take a long time. But that’s not quite the same as a player saying that they want their character to achieve the same thing as a ‘meta-fact’ about that character in the campaign. A character can (and should) change (and be changed) through events in play, and that surely has to allow for the possibility of a shift in long-term aspirations. So it seems odd to me to kinda sorta set these things in stone from the get-go. Of course, one may say that the stating of initial goals is just that - a provisional statement. But that seems to sit awkwardly with the premise that this process serves as some sort of touchstone that will inform the campaign as a whole.