Making a Fantasy Character with GameMaster's Apprentice: Shen

 

Shen

Characters, you can't really play an RPG game without them. I primarily play simple solo games and I like simple characters but I do like a little back story. What's their motivation? What's their back story? What's their personality like? Do they like hot dogs?

I came across this post over on the Two Hour Wargames forums by davidlhsl and, on a whim, bought the GameMaster's Apprentice decks as he highly recommended it. I like card drawing and thought this would be a good fit for my character creation. No rolling dice and no flipping pages in a book, sweet!

Each card has a TON of information on it, as seen here:

This is the fantasy version but each card set has genre specific info on it.

For my uses, I primarily look at names, random events, sensory snippets, belongings, catalyst, location, and the virtue/vice. The difficulty and likely odds could be good. Does Shen like hot dogs? "No!"

Read on if interested...

 

Name: Let's build a character! I already know that his name is Shen, which was generated by a card draw.

Viture/Vice: His virtue is Temperance and his vice is Fraud. I will use this to create his personality. 

Fraud is easy enough as he is a thief! He's your run of the mill cheat, sneak, scoundrel, and pickpocket, although, not that great as one of his attributes is clumsy generated from the game Talomir Tales. This just adds more to his character. If I move him to another game system, I'd definitely try and incorporate this into whatever clumsy would be.

As for Temperance, I think I will make him be a teetotaler. Being one myself, I'm quite familiar with going into a bar with some friends and being totally out of place.

Catalyst: Inconvenient love. Ah, the classic story of the poor man in love with a princess. No, I think I will do something drastically different. Immediately popping into my head is he robbed someone's personal belongings and among the stuff was a letter that, of course, he read. It was a dear John letter and was so heartfelt that he couldn't help but respond, plus he knew she was single, right? The catch is, she is in a far off land. Shen hopes to raise enough money to visit her. Aha, sort of like Internet dating but in a Medieval fantasy setting!

Belongings: What does Shen carry with him? The card says "Hunting Weapons: Bow and arrows, bolos, boar spear." Hmmm...This was a tough one but then I thought "what would a thief have for hunting? Traps!" Snares, maybe a small game trap, floor spikes, etc. Keeping in mind that he's clumsy, thus not a very good hunter.

So with five card draws, we have a rough idea of what Shen is like!

I also use the adventure generator to beef up the story. Like if I'm going to raid a place, why? If I'm going to escort an NPC, what's the reason? You can see it at work in this post!