I imagine I'm not the only one that sits there staring at a plethora of character concepts that I have made in the past whenever I join a new campaign. It's rather intimidating for me to take one of those concepts I've lovingly created and elevate it above the rest to becoming a true character.
A friend of mine just moved into town and he is starting up a game that will be based around our character's backstories (so almost anything goes) and I just can't make myself choose between these characters... (In fact I've added several concepts since I was told of this campaign)
So yeah, how many character concepts do you have sitting in a notebook, or a folder, or a word document or rattling around in your brain at any given time? I'm sitting at sixteen unused concepts currently.
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All the time. I have what is likely two trees worth of "potential characters" character sheets lying around the corners of my room, off in the background so to speak. And I abandon them and make new ones when other campaigns come up. Its really overwhelming, especially if there's a long time between me being informed of a campaign and the campaign actually starting...
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All the time. I have what is likely two trees worth of "potential characters" character sheets lying around the corners of my room, off in the background so to speak. And I abandon them and make new ones when other campaigns come up. Its really overwhelming, especially if there's a long time between me being informed of a campaign and the campaign actually starting...
me too
but it's more like 9 or 10 trees worth of characters.
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I've created half a dozen new characters (concepts and sheets) for an upcoming 7th Sea campaign alone!
And like The Drunken Dragon, if you give me more than a week to create a character before we start the game I am going to contemplate a new character every darn day until it does start.
But I think that's part of the reason WHY I love role-playing.
I have a character for every fighter archetype. 2 for the Two Weapon Warrior and 3 for the Brawler. And like 5 for the vanilla fighter when I didn't know about archetypes. Now I also have Magusen, Monks, Druids, a Cavalier, and quite a few barbarians. It's awful. I feel like they should all get equal love. But campaigns just don't come along often enough and my characters have good survival rates. Plus I fall prey to the "A new campaign is starting that means I have to make a characters a day till it starts and not play any of them" syndrome.
Edit. And don't get me started on down time. On weekends when we can't play I have to fill he void with something. And building a character is that something.
I imagine I'm not the only one that sits there staring at a plethora of character concepts that I have made in the past whenever I join a new campaign. It's rather intimidating for me to take one of those concepts I've lovingly created and elevate it above the rest to becoming a true character.
A friend of mine just moved into town and he is starting up a game that will be based around our character's backstories (so almost anything goes) and I just can't make myself choose between these characters... (In fact I've added several concepts since I was told of this campaign)
So yeah, how many character concepts do you have sitting in a notebook, or a folder, or a word document or rattling around in your brain at any given time? I'm sitting at sixteen unused concepts currently.
I've got right at 20 character builds that I consider 'perfected', covering pretty much every role and niche.
I generally try to whittle it down to three, ask the GM if any of those need to be eliminated out of hand due to the nature of the campaign and then let the rest of the group vote on which I run. After that, its just up to me to make the concept fit in with the party and the campaign RP-wise.
Actually, you'd be amazed at how often it ends up being my Master Summoner.
I have them in my brain
About a dozen characters
I mean other than my four pfs characters and my one home game character
Ugh my head hurts
I generally lose them as fast as I make them. Usually it goes something like: see a class and think "ooohhhhh"like a minion from despicable me. Then I walk around thinking up the concept, feats, gear, spells and background over the rest of the day. But the next day the character and concept is forgotten or overruled by something else.
Knowing that I'll be playing soon is another beast entirely. I remember the various concepts and builds in annoying detail for as long as it takes me to find the perfect character for the game, both in build, background and personality. Then I polish the concept and build for about a week, fleshing out background and social circles. Then I make something entirely new on the first session because someone else picked the same class and I panic because I don't have a backup plan x)
In reality; most of my concepts become npc's of various importance, since I gm far more than I play :-)
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This many. And that's just for Pathfinder.
.
.
.
Conservative Estimates:
244 Dungeons and Dragons v3.0/v3.5 (primarily Eberron & Forgotten Realms)
135 Pathfinder
128 Star Wars Saga
053 D20 Modern/Future/Past
040 Dungeons and Dragons 4E
Not counting characters that saw play. Total character ideas generated for the purposes of roleplaying? ~600+
Wow. I have been DM'ing for so long, that now that I have a chance to play, I can't come up with a single concept worth putting down. How in the bloody heck do you guys come up with so many, or even just a few, concepts?
-- david
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@Papa-DRB: I actually have a similar problem when I get on that side of the screen as well. I'm used to making "disposable" characters, so when I have to narrow it down to just one guy, it's tough to figure out which one is actually worth doing.
One thing I tend to do is build for the DM. My current DM and I have a rivalry over bards and whether or not they're any good, so I wrote up a bard that rocks his world. The other thing I often do is just ask the other players what they want, and take it as a challenge to figure out how to make a character that fits the role and is fun to play.
@Papa-DRB: I actually have a similar problem when I get on that side of the screen as well. I'm used to making "disposable" characters, so when I have to narrow it down to just one guy, it's tough to figure out which one is actually worth doing.
One thing I tend to do is build for the DM. My current DM and I have a rivalry over bards and whether or not they're any good, so I wrote up a bard that rocks his world. The other thing I often do is just ask the other players what they want, and take it as a challenge to figure out how to make a character that fits the role and is fun to play.
Heh - I've got a couple of Bards for you if you ever need more ammo in that fight...
One reason I don't mind GMing anymore is that it takes away the possibility of being lost in trying to choose which BA character I want to play.
So yeah, how many character concepts do you have sitting in a notebook, or a folder, or a word document or rattling around in your brain at any given time? I'm sitting at sixteen unused concepts currently.
Off the top of my head I've got six.
Ivan & Comrade Bearsky - Clearly insane Human Beastrider Cavalier and his (bear) lawyer.
The Crow with No Name - Cool, calculating Tengu Gunslinger that always gets the last laugh.
Markos Hutz - Freelance gypsy commando, seemingly without a care in the world (bard).
Simple John & Shakespeare - Human Witch with pig familiar posing as a dullard farmer taking orders from an oddly intelligent pig.
"Saint" Aldous - Alcoholic, whore-mongering gambler with a heart of gold, sometimes. Cleric of Cayden Cailean.
Ezekiel - Paranoid Human Anti-Paladin struggling to avoid the reality that he's fallen from grace (Evil campaign only).
Its really overwhelming, especially if there's a long time between me being informed of a campaign and the campaign actually starting...
This!
I never actually get stuck when it comes time to play, despite the fact that I have a bunch of potential characters lined up and waiting.
Usually I just say "What's everyone else? What role needs filling?" and then wait a few minutes for an interesting idea to pop up that fills that role.
If it's one I've been wanting to play for a while, cool. If not, I can still have fun with it.
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Zillions.
Well, seriously, probably as many as ravingdork.
I have well over a hundred each characters for Villains & Vigilantes and Vampire the Masquerade lying around, as well as many dozens of characters for GURPS Supers, Mutants & Masterminds*, Trinity*, Aberrant*, GURPS Fantasy, 1st & 2nd edition AD&D, 3rd edition D&D, Pathfinder (as one look at my aliases will demonstrate), etc.
Even with self-imposed restrictions (I don't like most Prestige Classes *or* most Archetypes, mostly play primary spellcasters), I still find crazy amounts of versatility just picking clerics of different gods or wizards of different schools or whatever.
Most games I show up with three to five fleshed out concepts, and then choose what's needed, or something that seems to mesh well with the others at the table. With my regular GM, it generally turns out to be the first one he doesn't reject outright. :)
*Games I've only actually gotten to play once or twice, usually at conventions, and yet still have 80, 30 and 44 characters statted up for respectively that I liked well enough to put on my website, let alone others that are still just on paper...
Heck, I found out I was going to play in Xendrik Expeditions at GenCon one year and, to play in two games, I made ten characters.
The only game I've played where I don't have a metric crapton of alts was Traveller, 'cause they kept dying during character generation...
... So yeah, how many character concepts do you have sitting in a notebook, or a folder, or a word document or rattling around in your brain at any given time? I'm sitting at sixteen unused concepts currently.
When it actually comes to decision time, I only have a few (2-4) in mind at any one time.
A lot of others: I think about but don't really want to play, were just a thought exercise, thought about for so long I'm tired of it, don't actually seem to work the way I wanted, obviously won't fit for this AP, won't fit with these players, won't fit with this GM, seems like too much work to keep organized, etc...