I enjoyed a video on being a player at the table recently and wanted to share it with you all. It goes a bit long, I feel, but at the heart of it, for me, is that a D&D character shouldn’t just be a backstory stapled to a stat block. They should be an engine for play.
A person with needs, contradictions, blind spots, fears, assumptions, wants, and opinions that will actually form attachment to the world, story, NPCs, Players (and their characetrs) and, of course, sometimes collide with the world and with the party.
The best character choices are the ones that give the table something to work with.
Know what role you’re playing in the story in the dramatic sense. Are you the skeptic? The heart? The moral compass? The chaos goblin? The truth seeker? The person who says the ugly thing out loud? The one who makes bad decisions for interesting reasons? Your task is to bring something alive to the table that can be challenged, tempted, wounded, proven wrong, and transformed.
It touches on a misstep I see a lot of players make: arriving with every answer pre-written, or an end-game expectation. I believe you'll see better results if you leave blank spaces. Let the campaign teach you who your character is.
Track what your character believes. Track who they trust. Track who they resent. Track what scares them, what they’re avoiding, what they keep pretending not to want. Hell, do yourself a favor and jot some notes you observe in what the other players do here for their characters and they'll LOVE that too.
Because that’s where the actual characters in your campaign live. Not in the backstory or the expectations you set away from the table, but in the moments of pressure, development, change and its impact, and how it all feels during play.
The trick is to make choices that are strong enough to matter, but flexible enough to evolve. Think of the game you're playing and consider this: Your character is loaded dice. Roll them and let the moment shape what they become.