Building Better RPG Characters
I don't think this is the answer to all issues with character creation. I think there are a lot of people this advice will be useless for, but there are some that go into character creation feeling unsure about themselves. This advice is aimed at them.
What you're actually doing during character creation:
You're asking you're fellow players to help you tell the story of your character. It's really important to remember that you, and the rest of your group, are going to be spending hours and hours of your lives with the characters you create. If you want it to be fun hours and hours, then you need to make a character that you want to hear a story about. You have a vested interest in not only your character being interesting, but having them work well with the other players too.
You're agreeing on the verisimilitude of your world and the characters within it, so despite what some wizards from some coastal regions would have you believe your characters don't exist in a vacuum. Character creation should be more than deciding what flavor of murder hobo your character to be. Even if you're only playing a murder hobo in your game, you should at least know how they got wrapped up in the mess of the adventure to figure out where they want out of the adventure.
Now backward is sort of the opposite of what we just did. In this method you start by looking through the mechanics of the game and picking out what draws your attention. Maybe a certain weapon you want to be able to use, an ability you want to have, or one of the other myriad of character options. You create your character picking out whatever it is that draws you to that game, then create a backstory to justify the character.
Mr Gloomy's player things having a sniper rifle would be fun. Stealth would be good if he is finding places to set up his shot. The player also also thinks that Mr Gloomy would be good at hand-to-hand combat. The player also wants to be able to get in touch with old military contacts and stonewall anyone that tries to get information out of him. So the player selects all the skills and abilities they want, then creates a back story that tells how Mr Gloomy got all those skills he ended up with.
Wrapping it up:
Both situations give Mr Gloomy a backstory with things to explore and they both have their back story tied to the mechanics of the game. He is still the generic murder hobo character, but now he at least has a place he came from; which helps a player decide where he might be going.
Don't try to fill in 100% of the details of the character's past, because an absence in the story can be filled in later. You should have enough information about the character's life that you've got an idea about where your character is going or what they want out of their adventuring. Tell their story, don't just sit there waiting for their story to be told.
What you're actually doing during character creation:
You're asking you're fellow players to help you tell the story of your character. It's really important to remember that you, and the rest of your group, are going to be spending hours and hours of your lives with the characters you create. If you want it to be fun hours and hours, then you need to make a character that you want to hear a story about. You have a vested interest in not only your character being interesting, but having them work well with the other players too.
You're agreeing on the verisimilitude of your world and the characters within it, so despite what some wizards from some coastal regions would have you believe your characters don't exist in a vacuum. Character creation should be more than deciding what flavor of murder hobo your character to be. Even if you're only playing a murder hobo in your game, you should at least know how they got wrapped up in the mess of the adventure to figure out where they want out of the adventure.
What not to do during character creation:
Creating characters that you want to hear a story about doesn't mean making one you've lifted from some other story. In fact, lifting characters wholesale from other sources is a bad idea. When they've already had stories created about them, it will influence the expectations of what they should be able to do. It will create frustration when they aren't that way.
Similarly, despite a powerful temptation to do so, you shouldn't use yourself as the basis for the character you want to send off on an adventure. The association with the real you will be a hard connection to shake from your head if you start out thinking of them as a version of yourself.
In both of these cases you'll wind up holding back, because you've got some predetermined understanding of how the story should be happening. It's hard to imagine yourself being put into typical RPG situations. You may like to imagine these situations, but it's probably rare that you sit around and tell your friends about the time you pretended to be a 1920s detective hunting a cult of the old gods. There is no uncertainty in a fantasy. It's sort of the whole point. RPG's are all about the uncertainty of situations, that's why the dice get involved to resolve the uncertainty in a way that isn't influenced by player input.
Solutions to your problem:
I've come up with two approaches to character creation you can use with any game system that will help you avoid this: backstory forward and now backward. For the sake of examples I'll use the same bad character concept: the lone wolf/silent assassin/"bad ass" loner/generic murder hobo. It's just the broad strokes really. Let's call him Mr Gloomy.
Creating characters that you want to hear a story about doesn't mean making one you've lifted from some other story. In fact, lifting characters wholesale from other sources is a bad idea. When they've already had stories created about them, it will influence the expectations of what they should be able to do. It will create frustration when they aren't that way.
Similarly, despite a powerful temptation to do so, you shouldn't use yourself as the basis for the character you want to send off on an adventure. The association with the real you will be a hard connection to shake from your head if you start out thinking of them as a version of yourself.
In both of these cases you'll wind up holding back, because you've got some predetermined understanding of how the story should be happening. It's hard to imagine yourself being put into typical RPG situations. You may like to imagine these situations, but it's probably rare that you sit around and tell your friends about the time you pretended to be a 1920s detective hunting a cult of the old gods. There is no uncertainty in a fantasy. It's sort of the whole point. RPG's are all about the uncertainty of situations, that's why the dice get involved to resolve the uncertainty in a way that isn't influenced by player input.
Solutions to your problem:
I've come up with two approaches to character creation you can use with any game system that will help you avoid this: backstory forward and now backward. For the sake of examples I'll use the same bad character concept: the lone wolf/silent assassin/"bad ass" loner/generic murder hobo. It's just the broad strokes really. Let's call him Mr Gloomy.
Backstory forward is what most people are trying to do anyway. This method means you come up with your character's back story and then use the mechanics of the game (skills, moves, attributes, special powers, etc) to follow what makes logical sense for what your character would know how to do. Mr Gloomy lived a hard life. He was ex-military of some kind. He lost some great meaningful thing in his life (wife, child, sibling, etc) and that sent him to a dark place mentally. It took him years to get out of that. This adventure is his first since the loss. He's eager to put it behind him, but it still feels too fresh to him to let his anger and sadness go completely.
Mr Gloomy would have fighting skills from the military, maybe some non-military trade skill he used after he got out (mechanic, woodsman, farmer, etc), then he'd have some skill for hiding his mood/personality from people (intimidate, persuasion, etc). He'd have high strength and dexterity, but low mental fortitude to reflect the trauma of his loss.
Now Mr Gloomy has a reason for the skills he has and a reason for not talking to people generally, or hiding his true feelings. The loss he suffered also works as an easy character arc to work through (does he get over the loss, does he get revenge, does he recover what he lost, etc), but also provides context for his murder hobo personality.
Now backward is sort of the opposite of what we just did. In this method you start by looking through the mechanics of the game and picking out what draws your attention. Maybe a certain weapon you want to be able to use, an ability you want to have, or one of the other myriad of character options. You create your character picking out whatever it is that draws you to that game, then create a backstory to justify the character.
Mr Gloomy's player things having a sniper rifle would be fun. Stealth would be good if he is finding places to set up his shot. The player also also thinks that Mr Gloomy would be good at hand-to-hand combat. The player also wants to be able to get in touch with old military contacts and stonewall anyone that tries to get information out of him. So the player selects all the skills and abilities they want, then creates a back story that tells how Mr Gloomy got all those skills he ended up with.
Wrapping it up:
Both situations give Mr Gloomy a backstory with things to explore and they both have their back story tied to the mechanics of the game. He is still the generic murder hobo character, but now he at least has a place he came from; which helps a player decide where he might be going.
Don't try to fill in 100% of the details of the character's past, because an absence in the story can be filled in later. You should have enough information about the character's life that you've got an idea about where your character is going or what they want out of their adventuring. Tell their story, don't just sit there waiting for their story to be told.
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