How fleshed out are your PC(s) when you start playing?

[Omari Brooks]

As the title says how much information do you know about your PC(s) when you start playing? 

 

I'm mostly speaking to things that may not be captured during character creation. 

 

Some game systems aren't concerned with pre-establishing:  

• character's long-term goals  
  
• PCs being challenged on their convictions and beliefs 
  
• Previous relationships with individuals or factions 
  

 

I think I have found that I cannot play a character until the above details are sketched, at least roughly. If I don't have a strong feeling about any of them I use oracles and random tables to fill in the blanks 

 

What's the bare minimum amount of detail you need for your characters? 

Are there things that are only established during play?

What tools do you use to flesh out details?

[Solo RPG Gamer]

What's the bare minimum amount of detail you need for your characters?
 

For me, if the system does not pre-establish it, I'm more likely to create a little ephemeral background/backstory in my mind and sort of wing it, but I think I need a little grounding at least, if I'm playing scene based stuff. If I'm just dungeon crawling, all I need is a name, gender, a look, and the equipment.  

 
Are there things that are only established during play?
 

Maybe the character's personality in terms of their decision making. I don't always consider what I've written in the backstory (if any) when making decisions, so I find that most of the time the character's personality just emerges. That's also true with how competent they are. The dice can be very treacherous sometimes, even if your stats say you're the GOAT.

 
What tools do you use to flesh out details?
 

I found in the past that the Rory Story Cubes were great to create short & sweet backstories for PCs or NPCs. Oracles are very versatile, of course, so occasionally I use them for htis purpose. Random tables focused on this kind of stuff are great too (Lifepaths are awesome).

One tool I haven't used, but plan on using at some point are the Backstory Cards (link pending). They're meant  for connections between PCs, but there's no reason why I can't substitute another PC for some NPC in my character's history. 

[Janet Mayfire]

Characterisation is something that I've been wrestling with myself lately.  I've come out of the wonderful world of fanfiction, where creating original characters aren't something that get encouraged too much.  As a result, I'm somewhat challenged in this regard.

So far, the most successful "original" character I've used has been a carbon copy of myself in another setting, with most of the details scraped away for the purposes of later character development (she's an office worker with an unspecified job living on her own in a dystopian city of the future.  Full stop.).  For the record - she had an adventure with a strange artefact that she was relieved to be rid of, and then kept winding up in bed with people.  A dungeon crawl is something else where I could cast "myself" as the lead character, with suitable alterations for the required skill set.

But I've now found an Espionage Mission Generator online  (https://neverengine.wordpress.com/2016/08/17/espionage-mission-generator/ if you're interested) which has left me scratching my head and trying to create a lot more detail than I've needed before.  "I" am not going to be capable of this mission, even though I'm still using the dystopian world.  I'm going to have to come up with some kind of background, with relevant skills and a starting personality, as well as some fairly detailed mission goals and one of two "NPC" characters to play with.

I can't provide too much by way of tools - Adventuresmith has helped me create one of two situations and NPCs.  But I think that Google's search engine is going to be my best background research tool for character creation most of the time.