If I really boiled it down, there'd be two types of 'games' I've 'played' here on RPOL: Action Adventures, and Collaborative Fiction. Of course there are the anomalies that are a bit of both - or something altogether different. But for the most part, it's either dice heavy action set pieces, or deep, immersing collab fiction.

From hack'n'slash to novel writing and everywhere in between, believable characters that you can connect with are essential. For me at least. I don't get much kick out of disjointed character constructs, who might give you one impression about their motives or flaws, but then act conversely the next minute.

I know there are numerous methodologies and exercises out there, easily Googleable, to help develop characters - from protagonists to background NPCs.

However -- There is a glut of writing expertise here on RPOL - so I wanted to open the door to the community for hints, tips, advice, Do's and Don'ts, exercises, and well... anything in relation to Character Development.

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Of particular interest to me, and perhaps just a starting point for this thread, are solo games on RPOL. 1P vs GM, so to speak.

Filling out a character template is all well and good to get started. But I think what really drives longevity in games here is deep & rich character development.

So how do you go about setting up your players to focus their writing, or their characters?

One development tool I've recently read about is 'The Knot'.



By clearly defining one or two knots, as a GM I can then be sure to weave the plot and NPC interaction around exposing and confronting these knots.

Eventually, a character is forced to address their knot - and either change for the better, or take some large dose of physical or mental damage - potentially permanently debilitating.

So now, after some time of playing, I'm asking my characters to pluck out at least one knot for their characters. With the intention for us to refocus our efforts on exposing, confronting and addressing the knot over the coming chapters/acts/story arcs.

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What tools do you employ to develop your characters or player's characters - either as a GM, or player?
This message was last edited by the user at 03:53, Wed 26 Nov 2014.

I try, as much as possible, to look at actual people I know when developing a character.  By that, I don't mean that I make characters that emulate people I know...far from it, because I have no interest in role-playing my assistant, or the production manager, or the drama teacher I do makeup for...

But they give me hints about things I can do to make my characters more 'real'...does my character have a chronic physical condition?  Phobias?  A sweet, unassuming exterior with a hard-as-nails manner behind it?

I also make my characters competent, but not perfect.  They're good at what they do...but they have plenty of room for improvement.  And they know it.  There's a whole world of frustration, for me, involved in playing with characters who are 'good at everything', or at least think they are (unless it's done for comedic effect and they're actually routinely incompetent, but that gets old in a hurry).  And by 'flawed', I mean flaws that are actually plausible...for instance, I look at Jar-Jar Binks and say, "How the pancakes did that guy survive to adulthood?"  I've played in games with characters that were strong enough to bite through a steel bar...but in order to make them that strong, the player made them stupid enough to be confused about why their teeth shattered when they tried it (not an actual reference to any of the games, just an extrapolation...there was one guy who somehow learned to be a master swordsman, for instance, but he was too stupid to figure out how to work a doorknob...)

And don't cling blindly to your character's origins...I have one character that I'm playing who started out as a fairly anti-social type.  Being competent, however, he got promoted to a leadership position.  I've been having a lot of fun playing him try to reach past his anti-social tendencies because his duties require it, where I could have stuck to the 'I don't like people, and I especially don't like crowds of people' formula and he would have been a total stick in the mud to play.  I don't nail down every aspect of my character at creation...some of them become evident over the course of the game.  And my characters definitely evolve and change as games progress.  That might fall more under 'Character Advancement' than 'Character Development'...but I build my characters knowing that they are going to be changing, and not knowing for sure what all those changes are going to be.

Yeah, like Facemaker noted, a hook is always a good thing for characters. I had one character in a Sci-Fi epic who was an ace pilot, and comms expert, but he had a real hang up around women, he shuddered and was incredibly shy. Then the story arch put him and a wild gal together and a short romance brought him out of his shell. We had a GREAT time running that out, and the character developed on his own.

I try to allow my characters to develop a life of their own. After a time I do not have to wonder "what would he do" ... I just type and the character do what THEY want to do.

And then again, some characters are just card board cut outs. I know a few real to life card board cut outs. They are what you see at first glance.

Is there a quick-guide, or check-list you run through to flesh out your characters?

I've never quite codified how I develop characters, but I think I have a few bits of advice I would share with other people that conveniently ask.

I normally start by finding a PC that will match the game, etc., and I have a strong preference for always doing something different than I've done before. Once that's settled, normally I design a character to share at least two traits of my own -- but taken to some extreme.

For instance, if you're not a very emotional person, maybe your character is either bombastically emotional or dead-faced to a degree you couldn't reach (though no visible emotions tends to be boring).

If you consider yourself relatively intelligent, you can have a character go with a "dumb" or "genius" angle. If you have a bit of worry about how prideful you are about certain things, you can have the character be a complete annoyance to everyone with his ridiculous levels of pride, or have serious self doubt.

This is a baseline in effect. When you come to a situation in-game and you're not sure what to do, you can easily start with "What would someone like *me* do or say in this situation? OK, but what would the *character* do, given that he/she has a much more/less pronounced trait?"

You as a player probably have an instinct to go one direction in a given situation, so you can easily remember that the character in question actually has motivations that skew away from yours or exceed yours.

Aside from that baseline, add other traits and behaviors to taste. One or two pronounced "oddities" is good for making your character memorable to the others and for yourself.


I also tend to have a so-so backstory that services to begin with, and flesh out my character's history as the story goes along (and as the mood strikes me). This happens organically and I'm always prepared to revise my earlier notions if something else seems more interesting.

You would do well to remember things your character has done in the past to not appear wholly contrary though. But if nothing was said in-character or "established" as a fact of your character in a particular area, then it's whatever you want it to be.


Contradictions aren't bad. All of us are hypocrites at some level, and we don't follow all the rules all the time. I tend to like when a PC or NPC exhibits relatively obvious but believable hypocrisy, as long as the situation is distinct from previous situations and not "random mood swings." Maybe your character always likes to hear the other side's story before passing judgment -- but won't try to listen at all in certain situations. Very realistic.

I think it's good practice to highlight in some way the incongruities or situational differences, so it's not jarring for others. You can write how your character is put in a foul mood due to something or other, or is "uncharacteristically" this or that.


As a GM, I've never really done character-focused games, more plot-focused. But you can pick players that seem to go in the direction you want for the game pretty easily by defining your RTJ. Players will self-select for your game.

Other than that, I try to use whatever back story the players have submitted as hooks, even collaborating with the player for certain scenes: "Would it be OK if I used your character's relationship with so-and-so group to have an NPC here that is kind of annoying?"

Reacting to what they do in the game and noticing trends of course is good for the flow of any campaign. If the character turns out to be really interested in cleaning up crime, you can work more crime-related issues into the story, etc.