The
Character Creation Guide
shows you step by step how to create an iconic character essential to an engaging story. It is intended for players in Role-Playing Games (RPGs) who want to develop an awesome character, or for authors with a story they yearn to tell. The guide can be used with any RPG and by any profession to raise your game to an artform. We'll gain a keen understanding of what really matters in role-playing and story-telling, so you can focus your design and play efforts more effectively. You'll spend less time and effort, and have more engrossing fun!
Specifically, we'll learn about:
How To Make a Character
- in four phases: Inspiration, Concept, Mechanics, and Performance
Fractal Blueprints for Great Role-Playing
- the ideals, objects, and policies that really matter
Four Cardinal Ideals
- Direction, Structure, Emotion, and Synergy
Five Objects Of Development
- Plot, Premise, Character, Environment, and Theme
First Design and Play Policies
-
Only create stuff that matters
and
Only do stuff that matters
Finding Inspiration
- drawing from sources like Setting, Proposition, Exemplars, Archetypes, and Tropes
Four Qualities of Good Inspiration
- Resonant, Specific, Original, and Promising
Imagining Concept
- gives us methods to design our concept and measures to test its quality
Four Qualities of Good Concept
- Clear, Distinct, Engaging, and Interactive
Designing the Character
- With the concept designs that naturally develop action story structure
Thematic
- Theme, Goal, Motive, Conflict, Destiny
Mutual
- Appearance, Links, Connections, Hook, Backstory
Dramatic
- Alias, Stakes, Persona, Instinct, Limit
Cooperative
- Aspects, Mystery, Belief, Lure
Setup
- Name, Gender, Occupation, Catalyst
Planning Performance
- learning enough to execute a character transformation matched with your story
Structure
- Phases and points of an action story
Portrayal
- Managing clichés and imbuing dimensions
Presentation
- Unfolding your story over key scenes
In addition, we provide specific Kim's RPG resources to help you create your character:
Mad-libs and Questionnaire
- Designed to prompt you through a useful character creation process
Universal Character Concept Sheet
- Usable in any RPG and easily customized to other fields
Character Examples
- Real characters drawn from the fantasy genre used to illuminate design
Our approach for character creation is useful for far more than just role-playing games. It applies universally to any fictional character and their performance, so these same methods are of great interest to all story content creators and performers: authors from any field, actors of stage and screen, producers of movies, improv troupes, and even songwriters. Behind the scenes the Kim's RPG Master Class is actually a distillation of best practices from those various fields.