Warmup: Justin

I want you to pick the bond, flaw, personality trait, and ideal for a Tiefling artificer named Troaxiaus.

Intro:

Main Topic: Character Creation Explained Simply + Useful Tools

In explaining the character creation we aren’t just reiterating the process as defined in the player’s handbook, though we are doing that to some degree. In doing this, we are attempting to help you think of simple ways to explain the process to novice players. You see this episode is about you dear listener-adventurer. Oh no… it’s about your players. We will work through this process to help you work through it with the noobiest of noobs to D&D. So let’s begin. We will first describe the different processes simply and then maybe give some tips or tools for helping players. As you’ll notice, the order we describe these is the same order described in DNDBeyond though we might recommend different ways of doing things.

Let me stress something as well. Making the character creation easy and fun is important because if your players never get past this part they will never play.

Race - Tanner

• Race can be a complicated or simple factor in your campaign, and you should plan out your stance (and your NPCs stances) before you recommend anything to your players. 
• Will you have racist NPCs, or will stereotypes be accepted from the get go (Tolkien-esque /typical fantasy)?
• If you are making your own world and campaign, are you reframing the races, and should that affect your player’s decision? Like, if orcs in your world are typically nerds, should you discourage your player who wants to be a warrior from playing them?
• In terms of stats, let them do whatever they find interesting. But, then encourage their racial choice to actually affect aspects of their role playing
• But, once again, people are not just walking stereotypes—don’t make your player be a copy and paste version. Also, encourage them during character creation to branch out (if they aren’t), or to consider their race’s environment.

Class - Justin

Aside from choosing your race, your class may have the most impact on your character. It will help you define how your character interacts in combat and in non-combat situations as well as how others will interact with you. That said, choosing a class can be very confusing. As a DM, I like to ask my players questions like:

• How do you like to fight enemies?
• What do you want your character to be good at in and out of combat?
• Do you want to use magic?
• If so, how complex do you want your magic to be?
• Are you ok with only getting one opportunity to attack during a combat round?
• What video games do you like to play if any?
• How does your character regard deity?

I have found that certain questions actually are a waste of time. These questions make it harder such as:

• What do you want your character to be able to do?
• What contributions do you see your character making?
• What weapon do you want to use?

In general, the more specific the question, the better. I would even go so far as to ask binary questions to force one answer or another.

Obviously, this is somewhat superfluous for a player who’s had the opportunity to play D&D for a second.

Abilities - Justin

The abilities portion is determining your natural abilities as well as how your race and class choices affect those. This is part of assessing your genetics and upbringing and how they affect your character. Simply put, if everything you do were split into 6 categories how good would your character be in those 6 categories. Consequently, that’s exactly how it works in D&D. 

So there are 6 categories: Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Constitution. You’re going to help your players determine the scores for those categories. There are 3 methods: point-buy system, manual roll, or standard array. Each has its pros and cons depending on the type of game you want to play. Most people end up picking the roll method so that’s what I’ll detail here.

You get 4d6 and then roll them. Take the highest 3 numbers and add them together, write that down. Then repeat that 6 times. Lastly, you can assign those scores to the individual categories. Then you’ll adjust those scores based on advantages given to the character from their background, class, or race. You then take your score and calculate your modifier which is just a number that actually gets added to your rolls. 

Now personally, I prefer to do this before choosing a class or race. I like it because I want to be able to strategize my choices with my race and my class. It really only matters if your race allows you to choose specific bonuses to abilities. Otherwise, do it the normal way.

I find that having a lot of paper nearby is really handy for this portion. You will be writing a lot if you aren’t using DNDBeyond.

Break

I want you to describe a situation in which the ideal of the character created in the very beginning is challenged by their flaw, bond, or personality trait.

Description - Justin

More than any other step in the character creation process of D&D, choosing your description informs your narrative storytelling more than anything else. I would highly encourage your players to really flesh out this section as much as possible.

Here again, the need for specific questions arises. Don’t just ask what your face looks like.

Ask questions like:

• What color are your eyes?
• How much do you smile?
• How big is your nose?
• How thick are your eyebrows?
• Do you have wrinkles in your face or smooth skin?
• Do you have any piercings of scars?
• Any facial hair?
• How severe are your cheekbones?
• Describe the shape of your jaw.

You could honestly go on and on. It can get fairly tedious, so pick the most prominent features. Imagine you are describing your character to a suspect sketch artist from the police. You need to be able to identify them from a crowd.

Apart from the simple physical description, you want to describe their nature and their history.

You’re going to help your player describe their character's ideals, bonds, flaws, and personality traits. This is how I would describe each to a player:

Personality Trait: If you were to hang out with your character for a week, what one thing would you say would stick out to you while just hanging out and chilling in your house with them?

Flaw: If you were your character’s roommate, what would annoy you the very most about them?

Ideal: If you had to summarize this character, what basic life guiding principle would you ascribe to them?

Bond: If this character were wanting to settle down anywhere, what force would pull them or stop them from doing that?

Those questions aren’t perfect but they help you narrow down to get in the right ballpark. Having those are incredibly important. More than anything, I would say the bond and ideal are the most important to have down in a concrete way. Why? Because I am definitely going to have their bond come knocking on the door and their ideal will definitely be challenged in a very specific way. Honestly, their bond might be the thing challenging their ideal, or it might be their flaw or their personality trait.

Here you can also help your player pick any allies they want to have. I don’t usually do that because I want that part to be in the story we write together but to each their own.

Equipment - Tanner

• don’t let them be overpowered. Nuff said. They will want to, but then everything afterward will come off lame.
• Now, if it is a one-shot, then you can give them more freedom.
• You will probably need to help your players choose their equipment based on their specialties.
• Question:

Conclusion:

Mentioned in this episode:

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welcome back to how to be a better d m i am here your co

host justin lewis with my co host tanner wayland and before we get into anything

else let's dive what i in with the warm up for today's episode sode tanner

i want you to today we're gonna be talking about character

m

creation so i want you to pick a

m

bond a flaw a personality

oh

trait an ideal for a hypothetical

m

tling artificer named

m

proaxius

okay so trotroaxius right so am i saying

hm

the right perfect

yep

okay so troaxiusis

m

bond is

oh

it's actually

ah

his uncle um

ah

it is his uncle lysander let's go with a classic name

yeah

who

yeah

who actually helped him get into artificing specifically he uh he kind of his uncle

was into that as well and he gave young troaxia

m

a little mechanical bird

m

that actually kind of like you could wind it and would hop

oh

around and that kind of got his interest into all things

a

kind of like tinkering like figuring how things work and building things and so that's

his bond his uncle and he

m

kind of has that physical representation through that little kind steam punk

yeah

mechanical bird um his flaw is that he does not

m oh

he's

ah

he gets upset when people don't give him permission specifically

m m

like he's

yeah

pleasant enough when you are doing something he doesn't care about or something he wants

but it's something that he's not a fan of he'll say it straight to

my

you and he's not going to be pleasant or

oh

like cut corners or anything he's a little bit socially stunted that way uh

so he's kind of blunt is what you're saying

blunt like blunt and also maybe a little unaware of how you

m

ought to

m

say those kind of things um

gotcha

his personality trait is i would

yeah

just say boundless curiosity

ye

he is just into finding out how everything works

yah

why people think

h

the way they do which also plays into

ah

his you know artificing kind of role like i picture him

hm

as someone who you know as everybody's talking he's over at the clock like

yah

the families air loom clock disassembling

h

it and then suddenly the family gets mad and he's like what do you have

against me

uh

you know

yeah

and then for the ideal his goal is to build something that the whole world

can

oh

just marvel at and come to see he doesn't know what it is yet

oh

but he wants something that um in the same way he's

m

fascinated by basically everything everyone will come from you know all over to look

yeah

at whatever it is in the town square right so kind of his ideal

well uh that is such a cool character i imagined him you know they go

to a family's house to get some information or whatever everyone is talking with the

family like you described he's taking a part the clock and then they have to

leave so he just leaves without putting it back together nd they're like what and

he's like sorry

yeah

i got to go and this is like this clock i think that that was

a very excellent character so done tanner thank you

thank you

listener for

m

thank you listener for joining us again on how to be a better d m

i'm here with my cohort tanner wayland who has as you heard he is an

expert dungeon master and character creationist is that is that the right term tanner

sure we'll call it

uh

that

uh well as you heard today we are talking about character creation uh more importantly

how to explain character creation to your players but before we get into that as

always we have a couple of house ping items we gotta you know sweep the

floor of the tavern as as it will first of all we are planning and

preparing for our one shot coming up in september we still have not released the

date of that so if you are interested make sure to click the link in

the show notes because spots are filling i think we have either two or three

spots filled up um and tanner actually will be

oh

the dungeon master so m tanner do you have any any

m

idea on how many players you're looking to have in this one at

um yeah i think this one i'm going to go for more than i typically

do i am shooting

hm

for about five players

gotcha

at this point

perfect and like i said we will reveal the dates for that as soon as

we pick them out second kind of announcement is we've toyed around with the idea

of doing live shows and having kind of the ability for you as a listener

to join in and be present while we record these episodes and uh you know

ask questions give back in the chat as it were so if you're interest in

that reach out to us on instagram at how to be a better d m

and let us know if that's something you're interested in if it is we can

easily let the r l or attending these episodes be available and you can watch

and participate and hopefully help us create better content and the ends are some questions

that are you know just plaguing the minds of thousands but any other announcements you

have tanner

no

oh

honestly that covered everything

sure oh and also we haven't done this in a while but is there anything

particularly that you're kind of noting out about or you're just supersiked about

m um well i just got a new laptop

oh

yes and and i'll just come out and say i think i told you this

before i've been interested in you know game development in terms of like video games

yeah

and stuff because some of my siblings have s interest in that as well recently

and so yeah that's what i'm kind of working on right now and it's very

fascinating and yeah gives me something that i'm just interested in learning in addition to

you know everything else so yeah it's me putting another thing on my plate

yeah

just like i definitely didn't need but i'm excited

i hear that it's like you're like about three months ago i was like that

it no more extra opportunities or extra things and then like the night after my

friend was like hey you want to you want to join us in this star

wars r p g and i was like

classic

oh crab i didn't end up joining but it just goes to show you whenever

you're like i have enough on my plate something else comes up but let's get

on to today's topic which is character creation explains simply plus maybe some extra tools

that you can use in helping your players create the best characters so first thing

to say before we kind of really get into this is just the goal of

today's show isn't to explain to you how to create characters because obviously you're a

dungeon master you know how to do that and plus that's obviously defined in the

player's handbook today's goal actually is to attempt to help you simplify the process for

your players so it's essentially to help you help the nubiest of nubes start to

play dandy that starts with character creation and so we're going to king describe the

different processes simply and then maybe give some tips or tools for helping you explain

and work through that process with your players and as you notice the order we

describe these is the same order described in dndbeond though you can do it in

different ways and we might recommend doing it in different ways but let me also

stress something else

m

making the character and helping your players make the character and doing that process as

an easy and fun activity is important because if your player does not get past

character creation they're never going to play anything else you want to add before we

start tanner

well the only thing i would add is that character creation should be for new

players it should be just such a treat because if you leave

m

it for them on their own

yeah

unless they're kind

oh

of how i was when i started

oh

out where i was like i'm the kind of person who when i get interested

in something i i'll just binge all of the info that's on that right i

know other

hm

people who aren't like that especially if it's someone who's like kind of a little

anxious a little nervous about joining and they're doing it because they're trying something new

or someone you know who frankly didn't want to and you finally convinced to be

able to play you need to make the character creation

oh

process

oh

almost as fun as the actual game itself so they

hm

can actually

yeah

get into it and so explaining each of these different aspects of character character creation

in a way it's simple but also enjoyable

oh

and let their imagination run wild that's kind of what we want

oh

to focus on a

agreed agreed well let's let's get right in with the first step which is choosing

your race

yeah let's go so with race i had a few thoughts on this obviously race

um in real

oh

world things is kind of a sticking subject

m

through all of history ever h

m

and the good news is and also the interesting news with

oh

dan d is that you can choose how much of a role race plays right

because if function functionally in character creation

oh

they typically give you some bonuses may be like

m m

it will determine how like the size of your character is many

oh

right but essentially that's like they can choose that and i think more experienced players

some of them might think more on the line of like oh what kind of

well kind of class in my building okay let's get me something oh i'm going

to be a rogue let's look for something that's you know got the staffs that

i want right um but like you know some extra dexterity things like that however

okay

i'm just going to say this right now you as the d m actually

yeah

have the biggest i guess the biggest role for how much race

m

plays a role in your campaign right because

hm

because

yes

players i mean i've

oh

found that they kind of fall into a few different camps but the most

yeah

prevalent are one they just kind of take the tulcanask

oh

lash typical

ah

fantasy stereotypes and they just run with it right if they're a dwarf they'll be

like oh i'm a dwarf and i like you know hammers and and all this

stuff and mining

oh

and beer you know and they're just

hm

kind stereo typical uh same for you know hobbits or half lings i guess all

right hand

yep

and elves and everything else and orks especially orks right if anyone ever tries to

play that they're gonna go immediately to that

yeah

um so it's either people

yeah

are just kind of embracing that comfortable stereo type or they kind of disregard it

and they'll just play however they want you know essentially treating the race as

m

as just a random kind of negligible

oh

factor in how they play the character and they're just in a way that's great

too

m

because you're not just making your entire

oh

character around a stereo type but there's nothing also wrong especially for a new player

if they're like oh i want to be a dwarf dwarf

um

you know it's

yeah

there's nothing wrong especially

oh

if they're playing the first time who are you to say oh that lacks a

lot of nuance but okay you know

yeah

it just doesn't

yeah

makes sense to do that however some players if they really are interested in that

idea or if your campaign that you're making like race

yeah

plays a keep component uh it's kind of on you to let your players

oh

know that right you're like hey i'm doing dwarfs a bit differently where i'm doing

works a bit differently here's the history in my campaign setting for them like some

players would enjoy

yeah

that tion so that they could actually incorporate that

oh

into their character right

if i can add kind of an example in the high rollers youtube channel they

have a campaign called eros which is an excellent campaign dungeon master mark him in

the world of rois the ork in that world aren't so much you know the

bloodthirsty uh you know green skinned ors from war craft right instead there they're still

kind of green skin they're large but they're seafaring you know and they're kind of

these these more like pirate s orkishpeopleyou know are kind of beholding to the

m

sea and their travelers and their voyagers which is kind of an interesting take on

being an or right

yeah exactly

oh

and i actually that reminded me i at one point was listening to a podcast

called friends at the table and similar thing the ores were all librarians in of

a secret society

yeah

delia right and

his

i thought

cool

that was a cool idea but the main thing is that you're really going to

want to know two things i guess if i were to boil it down one

what role do you want

yeah

as a d m for the what role

oh

do you want race to play in your campaign because if you're going to emphasize

it as in like oh i like conflict between the race or you know class

struggles or you know play into the star types or break away

oh

from them in specific ways then let your players know uh well they do their

character creation on the other hand if

m

if you don't care too much and your players don't care too much

oh

you know don't don't worry too much about this right it is still in the

end fan i see

oh

um just don't let any real race is stuff happened because i mean none of

my friends have ever had happened but i've listened to enough stories on youtube to

know it can so just you know yah make sure everyone feels comfortable at the

table

agreed agreed

aside from choosing your race you know number two is your class and that may

have the second most amount of impact on your character and it's going to help

you define your character and how they interact in combat and non combat situations as

well as how others interact with you so you know as a new player choosing

a class can be very confusing because especially somebody has never played dand coming to

a class you might say well what's the difference between a fighter and a barbarian

and you know as a d m i like to ask my players questions like

how do you like to fight enemies what would you like your character to be

good at in and out of combat do you want to use magic that one

is a really really good one because

h

sometimes they

m

sometimes they don't and then the fall up question to that is how complex do

you want your magic to be a kind of a little aside here you almost

have to know your player a little bit like i have a friend who is

excellent video gamer right and in our campaign he has been playing a barbarian and

you know we recently switched out his barbarian for a new class for a new

character you know he's a ranger now and i could tell that that was obviously

the better choice because he naturally has a mind for complicated game play you know

he's played lots of video games he understands and so seeing him just being a

barbarian raging and attacking it's a somewhat simplistic so i could see that he was

kind of stifled under not being able to do so much with magic and so

forth

yeah

you know what i mean

yeah

yeah

totally you know i think that when when it comes to helping your friends your

players choose classes you kind of need to

oh

just be straight with them because because if they don't know it's like hey if

you're this type

oh

of warrior you know without all these different feats

yeah

that makes it more um

h

like different abilities and

m

stuff that make it or interesting

yeah

then you're going to essentially

yeah

be going attacking a few times it's great

oh

if you like

yeah

just kind of overpowering and just kind of simple game play um

hm

if you want more complicated i go for the wizard and just if you

oh

present it like that i think some people can actually know enough about themselves to

also

oh

be like oh i would like either something n the middle or something simple

m

or complicated or

hm

what for right good point

sure and you can actually even like hone it in a little bit more and

you know say like are you okay with getting one attack during combat or do

you want more you know what video games do you like to play if any

and how do your charter how does your care to regard deity you can kind

of you know dig deeper there are questions though that i think can waste some

time um you know these are questions like what do you want your character to

be able to do because i found whenever i asked question they just say like

kill things you know or what what contributions do you see your character making and

that's just so general and vague that they're not really sure especially a new player

um so if they're new i would kind of move towards binary questions so like

would you rather be more stealthy or more defensive you know like have more armor

because those are natural other

m

you know natural opposites on a spectrum you either are really stealthy or you generally

have lots of armour obviously obviously you can be in the middle but kind of

you know what i mean

yeah yeah absolutely

oh

right and i think that you'll really the good

m

news about the class is that i think you'll mostly

oh

just have to explain it for the first time that a player is playing because

once they get into

hm

campaign

m

you know they're going to earn pretty quick what the other players do what you

know

ah

in their classes specifically and then their own

oh

and then from there if they don't like that class is the great news like

they can always

yah

find either story reason to

h

switch

m

you know that's totally acceptable

hm

or you know you just have their character leave an start new one but i

think for players that have been playing for a bit that they'll honestly they won't

need the whole explanation about different classes right

m for sure for sure the next portion is the abilities portion and that's determined

kind of your characters natural abilities as well as how your race and class and

honestly i don't know if race is the right maybe species might be better but

how you how your race and class choices affect those abilities and you know this

is kind of from a narrative sense you could say it's kind of assessing your

genetics and upbringing those affect your character so simply put if everything you do were

split into six categories how good would your character be in those six categories and

actually that's essentially how dandy works so i would actually use to explain to someone

who's playing dandy for the first time saying hey everything that you're going to do

in this game is split into six categories strength dexterity crismaintelligence wisdom and constitution and

i can explain a little bi mor about how to do that um but there

are three methods to helping your players kind of determine those scores and each has

its prose cons there's point by system manual role and standard array uh most people

end up picking the role method so that's this one i'm gonna talk about here

it's where you get four sixes and then roll them take the highest three numbers

add those together write those down and then do that six times and then you

you know assign each of those scores to individual categories and you are going to

adjust those scores based on the advantages given in previous choices honestly what

m

i personally like to do is i act i like to roll these before doing

anything else because and maybe this might be a little bit more complicated for the

new dandy player but i like to roll these before doing anything else because then

at least you see what options you have available and that can help you because

i mean we've talked about it before no one well minmaxing has its place but

it shouldn't i shouldn't be placed higher in higher priority than the story but you

don't want a character that's just bad right so you know having those scores beforehand

and being able to say okay i want this type of you know bonus from

my race this type of class and these types of abilities or skills links to

my class because of these scores that i'm choosing that's kind of how how i

like to go about it any thoughts tan

yeah i think just

yeah

really pointing out to your players the connection between

oh

the abilities and the skills will really add a lot to their

m

um to their experience

hm

right because otherwise

m

i don't know about you but like it always becomes

m

a game of okay well it's the main one i want cool that's the

h

highest one

m

and then what's

yep

the second one i want cool maybe i've got a racial bonus

oh

or whatever that helps bump that up so that's also high

oh

and then the other ones are kind of like yeah whatever but if it is

it

right

becomes like hey look at this close connection between the two

oh

what of these skills do you want to do better it becomes

oh

a little bit less ambiguous then just the abilities so yeah

oh

that's that's something that helped me and help other

oh

players i know kind of get more

oh

meaning out of the ability scores beyond those first

oh

two categories right

right i also realized that like for a new dandy player the character creation portion

might not feel too much like dandy because you don't really roll

oh

dice except for this moment so putting at the beginning might be

m

awesome just to help them feel like they're playing even a little bit even though

you haven't technically started playing yet

m

but also going back to you know number two having them think about the answers

to those questions you ask like what does my player like to do for the

group in you know when they're not in combat or how does my player interact

in combat that can really help them understand you know maybe i need more dexterity

because they want to shoot bows and arrows and things like that and

ah

and you know help them kind of figure all that out i would say in

this step though make sure you have lots of paper because you'll probably be writing

lots of stuff down if you're not using d and beyond which you probably should

but let's take a small break and actually go back to our first warm up

that we were talking about early tanner we're going to come back to troaxius i

want you to describe a situation in which the ideal of the character that you

created is challenged some way you know the idea that they want to create some

sort of invention or or machination that benefits the world that ideal is challenged by

the flaw bond personality trait that you came up with

uh yeah so i'm going to say it's his bond i'm going to go with

his uncle now why you might think that his uncle would be on board his

uncle actually

oh

ah was not someone who really wanted

ah

him to go

oh

crazy into artificing he wanted him to stay home

oh

with you know with his

m

with axiusis mother you know to stay

hm

home and actually be there with with the whole family and actually help with just

the local family business right and so then when do actually just had this idea

of like hey i'm going a go out i'm going to learn i'm going to

build this thing that's just amazing uh he actually got a lot of push back

and kind of brow his his uncle's heart to some extent just being like hey

you you're meant to be here and troaxius was like no i'm

yeah

meant to be out there doing something great so kind of the classic

oh

you know thing where he's just going against his family's wishes to pursue his ideal

and that kind of breaks up that connection right

well that is that that's a really good uh scenario and i think one of

the reasons why that is so good is because you can easily as a d

m involve that to create conflict whether it's tracks is writing letters home and getting

no response or they continually write letters to trace saying hey ore never going o

amount to anything or how everyone take it that's just a constant source for conflict

to help you know cause the player through the character or the character through the

player to make choices and in of change you know

yeah exactly i also like it because honestly any of those i chose bond because

i found that was most interesting to me at the moment but but there could

be any like the i could have found a way in fact i've thought

oh

about it since there's a way to turn that into something that would conflict with

oh

his ideal same for personality

hm

trait and i

oh

think that that's where you get a lot of the character

m

kind of the dynamic character moments is when you

eh

make sure

right

to kind of pit those against each other as a d m right so yeah

great point

i love that when moving on number four in the character creation process is the

description you know this is this is really what informs the story telling more than

anything else and highly encourage you to encourage your players to really flesh out this

section because it helps not only the players themselves imagine but also it helps their

players help the other players imagine the character that they are playing because you want

everyone to be immersed so i would encourage you to ask your character your players

questions like you know instead of just saying what does your face look like ask

questions like what color your eyes how much do you smile how big is your

nose how thick are your eyebrows wrinkles in your face or smooth skin piercing scars

facial hair severe cheek bones or kind of baby faced you can ask all sorts

of these questions you can go on and on and honestly it can get tedious

so what i would say is you know pick the most prominent features and imagine

you're kind of describing a character to a sub suspect sketch artist like at a

police station you need to be able to identify them from a crowd so you're

going to pick out the things that are identifiable the things that kind of stand

out but moving on going from just simple physical description you want to do scribe

their nature and their history and actually that's kind of why we were talking about

in the warm up and the break today we were talking about ideals bonds flaws

and personality traits and this is this is kind of how i would describe each

to a player for a personality it i would say if you were going to

hang out with your character for a week what one thing would you say about

them that kind of sticks out just while you're hanging out chillen in your house

with them and then about your flaw i would explain this and i would say

if you are your character's roommate what annoying thing do they do that just annoys

you the most about them and then their ideal is if you had to summarize

this character what basic life guiding principle what would you ascribe to them or kind

of what's their aspiration and their bond is naturally if this character were wanting to

settle down anywhere what force would pull them or stop them from doing that so

if they were going to go somewhere else or a specific location what would essentially

stop them from doing that or pull them in another direction and obviously those aren't

perfect but hopefully that helps you narrow it down into the right ball park um

but i'd say having those are incredibly important because more than anything they help you

create like i said conflict they help you help your players put themselves in situations

in which story can naturally happen because their character driven and anything

yeah

you want to add to or

yeah i think that's that's great like especially

m

i think both aspects are so important

m

the physical and kind of getting getnittygritty

yeah

with that can help them visualize

yeah

this person as as

oh

an actual character reason why i think that's important is because i think most people

will go towards a couple specific places when they

oh

start with character creation they'll probably think about maybe not

oh

all of the aspects of the character s like the ideals bonds flaws

oh

personality traits they might not think about all of them but they probably think about

a few things

oh

right that that's probably going to be the key

hm

of their character next to their class is like okay he's going to be this

kind of annoying or he's going to have this

oh

kind of like personality trait you know especially

yeah

if you're somewhat if you have a player that's very

oh

rismatic or creative they might think of any number of those things

oh

but then it's just kind of an amorphis character that is like one personality

yeah

trate you know and it gets a little

yeah

bland

yeah

ah and so making them go

oh

through the occasionally wrote step of

oh

of like actually describing everything about how they look

yeah

i think that that really helps them look beyond

oh

making a flat you know two d character

m

that that doesn't have too much depth or

oh

past or our history right

for sure and actually speaking of history this is also the step in which you

help your player pick their background and i used to i used to of uh

just give a full list of backgrounds and you can honestly do that for players

who are more experience but for for nobs what i would recommend is just saying

how did your character grow up and then have them kind of start going through

that story and if they haven't figured it out just kind of say like well

um you know where are your characters parents right now and that should help they

help them

m

figure out well they don't know their parents or they do know their parents and

they lived in this town and and from there you can kind of extrapolate their

background and then give them a few options um so people choose backgrounds based on

what perk gives you but i generally encourage my players to pick their backgrounds based

on the narrative backgrounds just because i feel like that makes the most sense but

yeah

after that you move unless you want to add anything else tanner

no yeah i would just add that if people are having a hard time choosing

a history

yeah

for their for their character kind of really delve into

oh

the bond section

m

and just be like hey what kind of allies or people

m

do you know throughout the world you

m

know that for good and bad and have them just kind of come up with

a few

oh

now it could be three you could before

yeah

m maybe like okay do they have a personal nemesis and we're not talking like

oh burned your family down or anything like but just

hm

like was there someone that you kind of had to grow with when you're younger

do you have

h

someone

m oh

that you know just like a business

m

friend that you would buy stuff from like doing all

yeah

this hell your player realized like okay they've been places before they can expect to

go

m

places going forward and meet these people and they need something to talk about so

i've got to

yeah

actually work out this this whole history thing right

awesome i love that i'd never really thought about like digging into the bond i

think that's a really excellent

m

piece of advice and the last piece of creating your character is is whipping them

so tenner

oh

walks through that

yeah so if you're like we said at the start this is kind of aimed

at

oh

starting players and there's a couple of things

oh

to keep in mind typically with care with equipping your characters

oh

there's going to be one of two ways to do it one and this is

very popular you know you have

oh

starter gear kind of just built in with your class

oh

your race you know just pendent on the choices you've

oh

shown chosen before this there's certain things that you have options to choose right

m hm

and you can find list

m

for those you know but they'll typically have like a weapon

oh

you know some armor some some various

oh

like kids and things like that and you can kind

oh

of just me you choose like tool sets and stuff like that

oh

just kind of rounds you out as a character is not going to give

oh

you like anything crazy out of the ordinary but as your on get the job

and personally i would recommend

oh

that for new players because the other option is

oh

where you kind of just have starting gold and that's dependent by

oh

class right for

h

example the artificer

m

like troaxiusuh

yeah

like the artificer starts with five d four times

oh

ten gold pieces that's kind of like their start and so that you could

h

have more or

m

less depending on how you roll

oh

and then if you choose to equip yourself with

oh

with that method you kind of just go down the list you know

oh

and like just

ah

buy whatever with the amount of gold you

m

have and

yeh

in there some

m

that works well for someone who's more experienced

oh

maybe has some specific ideas but for a new player i don't

my

recommend that all they'll see a huge list they won't think about certain thing

oh

and then they'll just kind of

yeah

feel a little bit lost

ah

you know i don't know what do you think justin

i think you're exactly right i mean it also depends on your skill as a

dungeon master um and how detailed you are about equipment because

oh

there are

m

i've played with dungeon masters who

yes

don't really give a rip about what's in an explorer's pack they don't really care

about certain sundry items too much um so if if you're able to really be

so detailed oriented that you can be like you didn't buy

m

that you don't have it then yeah i'd say definitely go with that um and

if you know your players can also be that way but doing the standard you

know standard equipment is just it's just playing easy and if you're level one then

you know if you don't have that equipment then i would say you're technically level

level zero

yeah

because you know what

m

what's a paladin without their shield and

m

sword or a barbarian without their great ax you know

yeah and a couple of things i want to just harp on here with equipment

one there will be some players

yeah

who will want to do the starting gold thing

hm

and they'll want to

ye

just get a very you know maybe not ven starting gold like regardless of the

typical

yeah

equipment they'll be like hey could i have this one really cool item

oh

my character just has it

hm

you know and especially a level one that's you know that's not great now as

levels

yeah

continue right and as players come in mid mid campaign

oh

that's or likely to happen right they're not going to have just the starting with

hm

equipment and that's totally fine but at the start of the campaign if you have

any players being like hey

oh

i want you know the vorpal played like right out of the gag

oh

you know and i'm going to say right now it's you're going to

yeah

while it might seem like you're going to bump them out by saying no

yeah

yeah like think about it one of the best things about this game is beating

a dungeon or an enemy or

hm

you know doing whatever and then getting equipment if they already have the best sword

they're going to get they're not going to care

oh

you know they're not going to care about

hm

all those about a huge portion of the game which is that

m

kind of random finding of things ah that's coming on for them so you really

need to think about the progression

oh

and their enjoyment in the campaign and don't just roll over

oh

because they really want that super cool item you know

oh

like that's there's a reason why most

oh

d ms and honestly the the manual suggests this

oh

as well if there if a player is going to have something

yah

in addition to the starting equipment

h

typically it's going to be like one personal

oh

item that doesn't have a mechanical

hm

like benefit at all it's just something to do with their character so with

oh

your players really let them know it's like hey at the start of the campaign

i'm

yeah

not going to let you just kind of house whatever unless

oh

of course they're more experienced and they're not going crazy obviously and they do the

gold by

m

system

m

but

okay

just let them know and be like hey i'll

oh

give you some good stuff later you just got trust me right

oh yeah yeah and i can't even see that now you can give your players

like some sort of magical item just as long as it's kind of it has

very specific use cases and it's not overpowered

m

like um now and in critical role campaign too you see the wand of smiles

or whatever that's a very specific use case you're not going to see that very

often used where it just makes people smile for no reason i don't know how

you could use that too often for some sort of advantage but i would be

okay giving my players like one of those each

m

just to give them a little

m

spice but just as long as it doesn't break the game

yeah that's that's a great point and oh yeah there was something i wanted yeah

so another thing and you kind of brought this up earlier there's some d ms

who frankly don't talk about you know okay did you pull out a torch okay

mark that you know

uh

thing or like oh

ah

do you

hm

have fifty foot of rope to tie that person up with

yea

you know they don't

my favorite

yeah

is crossbow bolts

yeah do you have the cross bow bolts do you have a okay you guys

have been traveling all day to the location do you have you know some rations

like they don't they

hm

don't play like that and if that's the kind of game you want then you

know that's that's fine in that case maybe the you know you just assume they

started with starter equipment or not and you're like just going to kind of hand

wave that stuff that i don't need to check if they have a better role

you know um

right

now i'm going to encourage some people even if your typical

m

campaign isn't like that you know try shaking it up like maybe like not for

the whole campaign maybe if you do one shot or

h

a specific section or like kind of arc of your

yeah

campaign consider you know doing that and actually like really

m

accounting for their provisions because i think that

oh

players would also get a kick out of that as well so long as it's

not

oh

you know they might enjoy it for a

oh

stretch of time if it looks like they're getting annoyed move past it

oh

but i think it's

yeah

a good way to change things up if you haven't

oh

been accounted for equipment already

agreed um just hearing you talk about that made me think of a few different

scenarios that you know i want to try and kind of got me excited for

starting new campaigns

h

what are

m

you going to do well well there you have it listener we we went through

the character creation process and hopefully helped you figure out how to work through the

process with someone who's never done it before in such a way that they're excited

to play they're not bored

m

and they've really like tenner said they've opened up their creativity and imagination and thought

something new and that

m

excites them so thank you for joining us again here at the tavern were always

happy to come here and have these conversations and like i said if you're wanting

to have these conversations with us on actually be you know here alive no not

in person but beyond line live while we are talking and participate that way let

us know um

m

again thank you so much for all the support it

m

it's really cool to see things growing week after week and just you know being

able to give you guys more help and hopefully better content if you guys have

any pointers on what we should say or what we shouldn't say again reach out

to us tan or any in final parting words for a listener

uh honestly you guys are going to do great you're going to make so many

wonderful characters that's it

excellent and we'll be back we'll be back next week with another great episode of

how to be a better d m until then my friend let's go ahead and