Stephan Hornick
Community Goblin & Master of the Archive
Platinum WoA
Wizard of Story
Wizard of Combat
Borderland Explorer
6 Ways To Help Your Players Develop More Compelling Characters
From JohnnFour | Published January 31, 2022
Roleplaying Tips Newsletter #1,188
How can we help players develop interesting and unique characters during play?
A player who really enjoys playing their character is almost always enthusiastic and makes more fun at the game table.
And feeling engaged and excited, plus having fun, is pretty much the best reward of all for roleplaying.
Here are a half-dozen ways to help players develop more compelling characters.
1. Go The Extra Mile
A little musing on each character goes a long way.
Aside from all the plotting, planning, and map drawing you may do between sessions, also spend a few minutes thinking about each player’s character.
Most GMs never do this.
This is something I rarely did either. But now, with a camera in every phone and digital tools for players, I can get character sheet snapshots quick and easy.
Between sessions, refresh your memory on:
- Backgrounds and Origin Stories (for tie-ins)
- Special equipment (for treasure and puzzles)
- Most powerful abilities (for encounter building)
- Session notes (in case you forgot a detail)
A trap I like to pounce with is when the party re-enters civilization. How does the PC seem, look, and smell to the fine citizens of Dungeontown?
It probably won't be pretty.
But in seriousness, if you invest time understanding and imagining the characters, you will include them in play more often in detailed ways sure to engage players.
Compare a standard merchant transaction where the character leaves 100 gold pieces lighter carrying some shiny armor, to an encounter where the smith refuses service until the PC is clean.
"Oi, you're nacht comint in t'here like dat!"
"What?"
"Ye smell like tha dead. Yer got some disease, from th' carnage trough ye be swimmin' in, no doubt about it! And ye ain't stinkin up me place!"
Roghan, the smith brandishes his hot tongs and waves them in your direction like he's purifying the spot you're in.
Two dogs come sniffing around you and one begins to lick the blood on your hobnail boots.
A boy screams across the street, dropping the basket of produce he was taking to market. His hand is over his mouth and nose, and he's looking at you like you might murder him.
Ok, ok. I hammed that up a bit. But the point here is, maybe for the first time, the world reacts to the character's existence.
And I've found when the world "sees" the characters, players respond in kind.
To accomplish this, practice between sessions picturing each character in their current state.
Soon you'll be able to summon to mind, in great detail, each character.
This will give you a plethora of details and cues for great roleplay. And therefore, more compelling characters.
2. Think Outside the Game Rules
Many roleplaying game rules do not cover character growth beyond experience points, skill levels, and standard equipment purchases.
For example, in D&D 5E character Ideals, Bonds, Personality, and Flaws probably never change during the campaign.
In the core books, at least, I do not believe there is any mechanism to fix a flaw via roleplay and get XP for that.
So you’ll have to think outside the game rules to make characters feel dynamic, and then teach your players to do the same.
The tip about scars below is a prime example.
Another example is to introduce a small new Flaw for each fumble on a saving throw. And let players roleplay overcoming their flaws for some reward during gameplay.
To prevent player frustration though, make it clear from the beginning that you, as game master, have final approval on all character developments that go beyond rule boundaries.
That way, players won’t feel like you’re getting personal or being arbitrary if you start disallowing or modifying player-driven character changes mid-game: they expect you’ll have a say in things right from the start.
Tips #4 & #5 below are examples of thinking “outside the box”.
3. Organise Your Character Development Ideas & Plans
After studying the character sheets and thinking up how you can help characters change and feel dynamic, create a Bingo card of character development ideas.
What are your favourite books and movies?
I guarantee the best ones have great character development.
Who they are at start is not who they wind up being at end.
Regardless of special effects, cool world, and twisty story, if the characters don't change you feel like something's missing.
Our hobby isn't about reading and watching.
We play to find out what happens.
Therefore, we cannot script character evolution. Players control that.
So what can we do to get the best of both worlds — character development in an interactive game?
Bingo!
In my Wizard of Adventure program I have several tutorials on this exact topic for a framework I call Treasure Table (WoAs: start here at Module 1).
It's essentially a Bingo card of opportunities, broken up into specific buckets for inspired adventure building, that becomes a prep and improv menu for your encounters and adventures.
We can get started on this today.
Get some paper or open Campaign Logger.
Make a page for each character.
Write all the character development ideas you can think of on their page.
Spend 3-5 minutes per character.
Keep these pages around so you can add and cross off ideas you use.
Next, choose the best idea for a PC who needs some spotlight time and integrate that into one planned encounter. Ideally, the first encounter of your next session.
Then mine your Treasure Table as you prep more encounters.
For example:
Roghan, the headstrong warrior.
They want a magic weapon.
- Idea: A signature legacy weapon.
- Idea: Weapon is part of their family heritage but father lost it. Quest for it.
- Idea: are gnomish. Add a gnome community nearby.
- Idea: Head-strong? Google for a table of insults to lure them into combats.
- Idea: Fighter school for when they level-up. Only this school's planning a coup.
That's going to be a great moment for my player!
And you can see I wandered there in my brainstorming.
Wandering is good!
Write down everything because you can remove the bad ideas later. There are no bad ideas today.
Seek every opportunity to work a character development idea into your storytelling.
The exercise itself will give you top-of-mind ideas to help your players develop compelling characters.
And then your pages of ideas can be used during prep and play to further develop PCs.
I also found that, while brainstorming ideas for one character, I could re-use those ideas for other characters too.
If you choose this approach, within minutes of brainstorming you'll have ideas written down for each character.
That’s some pretty valuable information for such a small amount of work because you can then generate ideas for:
- Campaign themes
- World building and hooks
- Plot hooks
- Adventure and 5 Room Dungeon seeds
- Encounters and conflicts
- Foes and NPCs to introduce
- Treasure
Two killer ingredients for great gameplay.
Who wouldn’t like that?
And with so many ideas floating around, the encounters you work on will sometimes write themselves.
4. Introduce Rare or Specialised Skills
An excellent way of developing characters in new ways while maintaining game balance is to give them access to rare or specialised skills.
I recommend the skills be minor but not costly to learn so players are motivated to pick them up.
For example, climbing is a pretty standard skill. And when a player gives his character the climb skill, I bet he’s not jumping up and down with excitement.
However, imagine that, spread throughout the current campaign area, is a species of tall tree whose fruits have some medicinal value.
The fruits only grow on the top two branches and the tree has evolved a superglue sap as a defence against hungry ground creatures.
A local ranger or woodsman in the area has developed a special technique for climbing the trees without getting stuck.
Through roleplaying with or service to the woodsman, a player negotiates training for his character to be able to climb these trees.
Technically, the character just has a slightly modified version of the boring old climb skill.
But the player won’t treat it that way!
The player will be excited about that special skill and feel their character is special.
And every time a party member has their wounds treated with a fruit gathered by the PC, the player will feel a little shot of pride.
A couple of other skill examples:
- Riding tricks
- Astrology
- Lip reading
- Gourmet cooking
- Fine carpentry