Recently, I found a topic on Reddit that got me thinking about the trend of players making characters without input from either their fellow players or even the Dungeon Master running the adventure. I’ve experienced this in my own time running this game, leaving me stuck between a character that feels disconnected from the world or adventure, or telling a player that the character they spent time making won’t fit.
It’s a difficult situation with no clear answers*.
Do you as the DM accept whatever the players put forth, despite how it might chip away at the cohesion of the setting you’ve made? Do you as a player accept that you might need to adjust your character of choice to fit the DM’s world, even if it goes so far as to remove what you hoped to explore?
I’m hoping to provide some tips that can help you keep your characters off the cutting room floor and on the tabletop, from both sides of the screen.
Be an Adventurer
First and foremost, make sure you have a character that actually wants to participate in the adventure. Everyone who’s had any experience with the hobby has heard the stories of the lone wolf rogue who has no interest in being part of the game. There is a time and a place for saying “It’s what my character would do,” and explaining why your character doesn’t want to be part of the team or go on an adventure isn’t it.
The simple fact of the matter is: it isn’t only up to the DM to give you a reason to go on the adventure. We’ve all agreed to spend our time together playing this game, part of that means you have to decide why and how your character would do something you think they normally wouldn’t. Because if that’s all you give the DM, they might just agree with you, and ask you to try again. That’s what I’d do.
Another facet of being an adventurer – at lower levels, at the very least – is being someone without resources. Delving into dungeons and fighting aberrations, monstrosities, and undead is an insane thing to decide to do. For most, there’s got to be something to prove, or a lack of alternative options. Don’t try to give your character the means to solve the party’s problems with their connections back home. You shouldn’t have such standing that you can muster an army before you’ve ever seen a battle.
Also, remember this is a collaborative game. Don’t fall into tropes that would make your character vastly more important than the other player’s creations. The world might come to revolve around the party’s actions, but it shouldn’t ever be focused on one of you alone, always – everyone should get their time in the spotlight. Build out someone who has strengths that makes them valuable, but not someone who will be able to solve any issue by themselves.
Anchoring Yourself to the World
As mentioned in the post referenced, there is something to be said for the minigame of building characters in 5th Edition D&D. It’s a fun little pass time to tinker with when you’ve got the game on your brain but you’re between sessions. Maybe you were in the mood when the game got canceled last minute. Whatever the reason, there’s value in the process.
Unfortunately, the cool characters you design in a vacuum do not always translate well to a table.
When I was setting up my current game, I warned my players ahead of time that several of the races that had received official releases were not going to be available, but I hadn’t gone through the entire list. I had good reasons for each: some didn’t fit the setting because they would lend themselves too easily to a character that is a punchline more than a hero and while levity is welcome, I didn’t want to pull away from the more grim tone of the world. The race’s origin didn’t fit with the way I’d structured the planes for the setting. Or I just didn’t have them in mind since they didn’t all exist when I built the world, and there wasn’t a good way for me to retroactively add the entire race into my world’s history.
And, unfortunately, my lack of preparation led to me having to reject one of my player’s first characters. He wanted to play a Loxodon hero, and I rejected him. He settled onto a Goliath instead, and while he’s assured me he loves what his character is now, I still feel a slight twinge of remorse that I didn’t allow him his want.
I actually had an entire game collapse because of this. It was at our session zero (a pre-game meeting of all the players that I absolutely recommend every table engage with), and my players all wanted to play characters whose lineages I didn’t originally have plans to include in the world (I was hoping to run a game in my setting for the Red Watch books to help me flesh out a lot of the world). It ended well, though – I just ran a different game a couple weeks later in a setting with less restrictions.
I think the best way to engage with the world is to come to a session zero of your game with no preconceptions – well, maybe you can pick a class. Maybe. Magic might not work the way you assume, after all … And never stop thinking about the life your character might’ve had before they became an adventurer. Talk with your DM and work out where you would have been born, where you were raised and how, what kind of people you might know. Create connections for your character, people that they will want to help and protect – or people they will stop at nothing to find their violent satisfaction against.
The Clear Answer
Before, when I said there was no clear answer, that was misleading.
These issues, like all issues in a tabletop RPG, have an answer, a process, that will always help everyone come to a satisfying conclusion: discussion and compromise. Talk to each other. It seems so reductive to say that every piece of RPG drama can be solved by talking, but I have yet to encounter an issue that isn’t addressed after an earnest conversation. At the very least, it’s worth a shot.
Thank you for reading. Good luck out there, heroes.
Ben Stovall Blog 
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