Overwhelmed by Character Building?

Using a Pop Culture Character to Jumpstart Creation

Character creation is fun! Any experienced gamer knows this. But to the novice, all of the choices can seem overwhelming, particularly as you figure out how much one little decision has a ripple effect in shaping your character, and how much your character impacts your party, and indeed the flavor of the whole campaign… but, no pressure. Let me propose a strategy for confronting all of these beautiful, beautiful choices and the awesome awfulness of a blank character sheet: start out by selecting a pop culture placeholder. Because I personally have rather small children and a penchant for outlandish accents, the character that immediately rises to mind is Count Von Count of Sesame Street fame. Ah-ha!

Let’s sketch him out using the FACT system.

Focus: Investigator— “The more you learn, the greater you will be.” The Count is always trying to assess and account. This gives him benefits in Know Language and Ceremonialist.

Ancestry: Let’s make him a man, because inherent to Man are the ancestry features “Determined” and “Industrious”; however, in the spirit of fair disclosure, another reasonable roleplayer might make him an elf, especially because he has pointy ears and a love of culture. Under Ancestry, we must assign gender and age: male, ballpark age of three hundred years. As an immortal being, the Count’s age range is vast, but a specific age does shape your character’s presentation.

Class: Master, because of his interest in education, but again, Controller could be an equally valid choice, since the Count enjoys manipulating and ordering objects, and he is goal-driven.

Themes: Vampire. If I select the feature “Embracing Blood,” it requires the Count to have consumed the blood of a humanoid (Grover? Elmo? yikes), which certainly adds a little nuance to our old buddy. The Vampire theme, as a primal body origin, sets the possibility for our Count to be a little more violent— but you can pick and choose features, resulting in a range of potential vampiric qualities. Moreover, you could mix him with a Commander theme to play up the Count’s interest in order and subordination, or a Monk, to reorient him towards pacifism. A more canonically sanctioned blend, if I may, would be Vampire-Druid, the latter acknowledging the Count’s close relation to lightning effects and his tendency to summon bats.

Having established the Count’s basic FACTs (one, two, three, four facts of FACT, a-ha!), we can factor in his motivation. In his quest to enumerate the world, he chooses order over chaos (all responsible accountant-types do). He is shown to be helpful and trustworthy, as he frequently desires to help his colleagues with their math problems and has yet to give a wrong answer, as far as I know. Thus, he is Orderly-Good.  The alignment descriptors I would choose for him are “logical,” “helpful,” and “obsessive”— but that third one comes from the “Evil” category, so there may be some underlying complexity to our hero. An equally confident character-builder might choose “orthodox," "empirical," and "noble,” and arrive at a much stiffer Count than mine.

After I roll his foundation score, I have the opportunity to flesh out smaller details, or the lesser FACTs of his character: Features, Acumen, Competencies, and Talents. His features would, of course, depend on which theme(s) I settled on, and on my Count’s alignment descriptors. See how the choices I've made help me make the next set of choices? As for acumen, I think we can all agree that he would excel in Diplomacy and Education. He would also be strong in Stealth and, depending on how sinister you make his tendency to collect, in Thievery. Adding or subtracting acumen lends further color and focus to his character. As for competencies, the easy choices are Mathematics, of course; Dance, for he does a lot of it; Etiquette—have you seen his shoes and stately regalia?; and Geography, for he has the advantage of flight and an eye for detail.

For Talents, he might have Stepwise, which awards Damage Reduction: Trap Attacks because of his deft dancing skills, as well as Enduring Summoner, to enhance his ability to manifest bats. Here again, the possibilities are endless.

More pragmatically, in building a battle-worthy Count, you could arm the old gentleman with an ancient and venerable arquebus, or a long-range bow to avoid mussing his outfit and allow him to count his arrows obsessively, but for my money, he would take Glove Superiority to make gloves his implement, thereby weaponizing his fashion and literally placing lightning at his fingertips. Had I not combined Vampire with Druid or Wizard or another theme that enables spellcasting, I would then have to return to “Themes” and choose a suitable source for that magic, which brings to bear the key maxim that it’s OK to adjust as you go, even necessary, as you get to know your character. And with the Count, at least, more is more.

You can see, just from this thumbnail sketch, how taking a character from pop culture allows you to at least narrow the field, but how the RISE system invites you to personalize the character to such an extent that even a well-established figure like the Count could take many forms, and through the funnel of FACTs, become a character all your own. Once your character sheet is complete, you then have the fun of deciding whether to reveal the source of your inspiration or see if anyone catches on—but only if you can control the urge to speak with the Count’s signature accent.