When the Elemental Evil plotline was rolled out for Dungeons and Dragons Adventure League, Wizards released a player supplement, including new class options and races. One of them was my beloved Aarakocra. These vulture-like creatures always reminded me of Dark Crystal’s Skeksis. Plus, they’re from Dark Sun, my favorite of the Dungeons and Dragons settings. So, I built a character, found a Camaasi mini that would pass as my Aarakocra and headed off for my first Expeditions in a long time where I wouldn’t be the Dungeon Master.
Sad to say, although the booklet released for this season of Dungeons and Dragons organized play included the Skeksis knockoff as a playable race, I was informed minutes before game time they would not be allowed in organized play events. My brain reeled. I clutched my miniature to my breast and told it all would be okay. With fifteen minutes before the game would start, no blank character sheet, only a bag of dice and a Player’s Handbook, I had to come up with something to play. I decided to let fate build my character.
There are nine playable races in the Players Handbook. I rolled a D10 and would reroll should I get the ten.I got a 7. I counted down the list and got Half-elf. Neat. I never played one of those before. There are twelve playable classes in the book. I rolled a D12 and got a 12. Wizard. Crap. Those take longer to build, and I hadn’t made a magic user PC before in 5th Edition. I proceeded to roll randomly on all the tables in the Personality and Background chapter. What fate delivered was an elderly beginning wizard with an ax to grind with his mentor. He also was a klutz and had an odd sense of humor.
How could an old half-elf be a starting wizard? I combined the randomly generated elements and conceived of a half elf who’d apprenticed with a mean elven wizard. The mentor hadn’t properly trained his pupil and lied about how well the apprentice was progressing. The master bragged to all his wizard buddies about how he was messing with his student’s mind. The misused apprentice’s name became synonymous with clueless in the wizard community. The apprentice found out about this from another wizard’s pupil. Enraged from years and years of wasted time, he struck out on the road to adventure and self-learning.
I brought it all together by using an elderly man voice, calling everyone “whipper snapper” to convey the character’s essence.
I surprised even myself by finding creative ways to use prestidigitation to amazing effect. Moving through the burial chambers, I asked the DM if there were lots of ropes lying around. She said yes. I kept using prestidigitation to magically have the ropes rise and wrap around the many zombies’ legs. They failed their Dexterity saves and fell to the ground. The PCs with big swords swooped in to finish them off, without having to worry about being swarmed by the enemy.
Insert old man laugh here. (Editor’s Note: Done and Done. Be careful what you ask for…)
I am not a fan of min-maxing. I’m more interested in a personal journey for my characters. Yes, I lucked out and got a good mix of race and class with my kooky wizard. But what if I’d rolled up a barbarian gnome who gets into drunken rages? His career would be cut short, but I’d always cherish the memory of his brief adventuring career. I’ve DM’d at tables where the players recited the abilities their characters would take for the next ten levels. How boring to know these things! Where’s the surprise? Where’s the organic character growth?
When you force yourself to build a character from a handful of randomly selected concepts, you usually have something where you have no idea what’s in store for your character. For some of mine, I doubted if they’d make it past their first adventure.
Not only is building randomly generated characters a fun and exciting way to approach a game, it’s good practice for when you’re running the game. I’m sure this concept is discussed in many Dungeon Master books, but it really hit home in the One Ring book. Most NPCs are a difficulty number for the PCs. How difficult is it to haggle with the merchant? Can the old farmer be convinced to put up the party for the night? Can the dwarf talk his way out of a sizable bar tab? Coming up with the difficulty number for these tests should be fairly simple. In One Ring, the base difficulty number is 14. However, if you take a second to roll on a few tables for characteristics of the merchant, farmer and bartender, the difficulty number could be greatly affected. Subplots could be generated from these basic encounters.
Let’s say the merchant is on hard times and needs gold desperately. The Loremaster should drop the difficulty number from 14 to 10. Insightful characters might be able to see from his dirty clothes and hear his grumbling stomach the merchant’s in dire straits and can push for a better deal.
Randomly rolling for the farmer, we might learn he used to be an adventurer himself. He might be excited to have the group stay with him, so he could live vicariously through them.
We might randomly decide the tavern keeper has an enemy. Perhaps the teamsters, aligned with the owner of the town’s other tavern, is charging a special tax on delivering to the tavern keeper’s inn, and it’s about to put him out of business. The dwarf could repay his debt by convincing the teamsters to stop extorting the tavern keeper. It certainly would increase the difficulty number for the dwarf trying to talk his way out of his tab.
Last month I needed to whip up some pregenerated characters for a Deadlands Noir one-shot. I didn’t have any concepts, so I rolled randomly. All characters in Noir have to be human, so no trips on a race table, but there are a number of suggested archetypes in the book, so I used the list as a random table. Then, I used the 5th Edition Players Handbook Personality and Background tables to develop the characters’ motives and personality. I tailored these plot hooks so that each character had a dark secret. The student whose mother was dating the private eye… she was also in love with the private eye. The mother was having an affair with the bad boy of the group. The bad boy had been contracted to kill the patent scientist’s parents and carried in his pocket a ring taken from the father’s dead finger. The whole party was a powder keg ready to explode should anyone leak their secret. Ideally, I didn’t need an adventure prepared. The group could make the whole thing amazingly memorable and like a blood bath conclusion to a Tarantino film. That’s good noir.
This week, I’m running a Last Parsec space opera one-shot. Time to make more pregens. I rolled on the race tables, used the archetype list as a random table and used the 5th Edition Players Handbook Personality and Background chapter tables. Before Sunday I need to figure out the story and stats for a fish-man who’s a professional entertainer, part of a Firefly-like crew and employed by a Weyland-Yutani-like corporation. He’s very perceptive, physically weak, a notorious cardshark who speaks in rhyme. By the way, he has a live and let live philosophy and is protective of a keepsake— which is a source of forbidden lore.
If you rolled up these weird elements, it would be tempting to hit delete and start over, right? For me, it makes me hunger to know this original character even better.
The next time you play in a one-shot, let the fickle finger of fate create the blueprint for your character. With some creative interpretation of the results, you’ll create a character you want to keep playing.
Honestly, I now want to play the rapping fish-man carrying the Necronomicon.
Great article. Learning D&D for the first time now, and I love reading insight articles like this.