I love making new characters. I roleplay all the time, creating lots of little cinnamon rolls to cherish <3. But if youâre like me, maybe youâre bad at fleshing out your supporting cast. Maybe you just created a new character, and you havenât gotten to know them yet. Never fear! D&D makes it easy to figure out who your character is! All it takes is a little chance and puzzle-solving :)
I started a new D&D campaign a few weeks ago.
 The problem was, I didnât realize it was a new D&D campaign until I arrived! Everyone had thought about their charactersâwho and what they wanted to playâand I had no idea!Â
Comparing notes with the team told me we needed a healer/support character who could punch hard, and we probably needed someone who wouldnât make common folks run away screaming. With that in mind, I decided Iâd be a halfling paladin (which is basically a holy armored hobbit), and that my characterâs name would be Pumpkin Spice. With that in mind, I filled out most of my character sheet.
But I still didnât know who Pumpkin was. Sure, she was a brave, scrappy halfling. She had a badass Armor Class. But who was she other than a war hobbit?
Thankfully, D&D 5th edition comes with a set of character backgrounds that help you flesh out your characterâand you donât even have to make all the decisions yourself! Since I wasnât sure who Pumpkin was, I looked through the list of backgrounds (starting on the D&D 5e Playerâs Handbook, pg 125, or through the D&D 5th Edition Wiki link above).
Sheâs a paladin, I thought. Maybe she could be an acolyte? But Pumpkin didnât strike me as a ward of a religious temple, raised to service since her youth. With a name like Pumpkin Spice, she had to come from a familyâa family that baked, I thought. She was a paladin, so she probably wasnât a criminal or a charlatanâone would hope. Ultimately, I settled on the Folk Hero background for her, meaning sheâs a peopleâs champion who challenges tyrants. Then came the easy part.
In five minutes, I knew a lot of the big things about my character:
·     * She had led a militia against an invading army, which kicked off her life as an adventure
·     * She tries to always be fair and to see both sides in an argument
·     * Her ideal is fairness; she believes that everyone should be treated equally
·     * Her bonds are fragmentedâshe has a family, but doesnât know where they are
·     * She has a terrible secret, known by the members of her community, that keeps her from returning home
Once you have the big thingsâDefining event, Personality trait, Ideal, Bond, and Flawâputting your character together becomes like a puzzle. Of course, you could re-roll or alter any quality that doesnât work for you, but making all the disparate pieces of your character work together can be a lot of fun, and a much different challenge from building a character out of thin air.
Donât have a D&D game to play? You could still use something like this to build characters outside of D&D, especially in a fantasy setting. And if you donât have a dice set handy, roll some virtual dice.
Next time Iâll share some of Pumpkinâs full backstory and maybe even introduce you to Skreeeven Slyfeather, my new Aarakocra rogue created through the same method <3
