One of the most important gaming sessions for a group is character creation. Before play can start the players need to have their characters, thus you usually have a character creation session (I call it Session zero). While you may not be playing much if at all, it’s important however to still come prepared with a small encounter, just in case. 

The classic and typical character creation session, everyone shows up and makes characters. Alternatively, have them create the characters ahead of time, new players would need one-on-one time. You could use this to have a veteran player make his character beforehand and then help the other players during Session zero. I did this with my Sunday Shadowrun campaign and it worked out well!

Players can either pick or make their characters. To pick a character, many starter sets and rulebooks come with premade characters (premades) that they can choose from. This allows drastically reduces character creation time and gets right into playing. Generally I let players make minor modifications to the premade character to fit with the player’s preferences. This is fast, but for some people is too restrictive. You can also use premade characters for inspiration.

The second method is to create your own characters from scratch. This lets players get creative and make their own unique character. This does take time and requires the knowing the rules. For a group’s first game I suggest sticking to the core rulebook. This helps keep players focused and is less overwhelming.

As a DM, your role in Session zero is facilitating character creation. Now while you don’t need to make a character, one of the best ways to help with character creation is by building your own character ahead of time. As an added bonus you can use this character in your campaign, as either the bad guy or some other character in your game. This will give you the much needed experience for when players ask the tough questions. Like “What’s an attribute?” or “How do I hit things?” These come up rather often, believe me.

In addition, read the book! You don’t need to read it front to back, but you should at the bare minimum read all the way through character creation. If you can get more than one copy of the core book, do it! Other players can look at the book while you work one on one with your players.

Even though character creation can take some time it is likely that your players will want to at least play a little once everyone is done. One of usual encounters is have the players battle each other in a small arena, such as a dream or bar fight. This teaches them quite a bit as well. For one how does their character work, two how do the other characters work and three how does the game work. DM’s, you get extra points if you can tie this quick encounter into the plot somehow _{(read below for an idea)}.

To help people get into their characters, make their character important enough to have a name. What I mean is call players by their character name. They spent all this time working on and thinking about their character, show some respect to them for it. Calling them “The elf” or “the rogue” it’s disrespectful and demeans the character. They have a name. Now this goes both ways, if your Dwarven Warrior name is “Targaklldeer Von McDoogle…” get used to being called “McDoogle” or “Tar” by the party.

In the end, character creation is a bit of fun, if a touch time consuming. Ultimately, do what works best for you and your party. See what they want to do. As long as you’re having fun, then that’s what counts. Next week I talk about running the first gaming session!

 

“The adventurers are spending their time in a local tavern. Suddenly a fight breaks out next to their table. During the fight one of the players gets bumped into and a paper is slid onto their person. It reads, ‘You are being watched. Meet me at <location> at <time>. There’s not much time.’

I’ll let you all ponder that over, until the next game session!”

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