A few easy choices and a little help from a game master can bring your character to life. There are two primary ways to flesh out your character’s background. The first way works well if you have a character background already in mind: jot down the key points of your character background idea and keep that in mind while considering the choices below.

The second way is to consider what key background points the ideas below generate as you are choosing those points. For example, if your hometown turns out to be a city with a major slave market, perhaps making your character a former slave is an interesting idea. If so, did he run away? Did a friendly master free him? Or did something else happen? If the city’s dominant religion is a water-god like Neptune, perhaps your character should be a follower of Neptue. If he does follow Neptune he probably is comfortable on boats and may even have a profession related to the sea.

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Recently, our gaming group experimented with a mapping program instead of drawing out the maps. The mapping program had the option to only let players see to the edge of their light sources. This restriction had interesting effects on our game’s dynamic.

Our group’s fighter who would usually charge into battle always stopped at the edge of the lit area. Other characters could not shoot at foes outside of the light without a major penalty. It would be a shot in the dark. Literally. Ok, sorry about that.

A character shooting even just outside the area of light would barely see the target if he would see anything at all. If you’ve ever gone camping you can understand this: When you’re near the campfire you can see things in the light well, but there seems to be a point where you can just barely make out an object if you really concentrate.

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