Learning Creativity?

When I think back to my first character (pic related), I remember how the GM had already created these vague profiles of the characters we could pick.

The Soldier, the Hacker, the Conspiracy Theorist, the Civilian, that sort of thing. Didn't really have anything beyond a vague backstory of how they'd got to this point, and he left the rest for us to fill in.

I picked the soldier, and the rest just seemed natural really. Figuring out who he was, and what he'd do in situations based on that. Like how he used to tell the others stuff about his life that I knew weren't true, but he liked trolling them because they wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Nobody ever called me on it.

Consume roleplaying-related media to improve your understanding of the genre. That's probably the best advice I can give to a newcomer. Remember that almost all roleplaying games are meant to emulate some body of fiction, so the more familiar you are with a given game's source material, the more you'll get out of it. Also most of those works are simply enjoyable to read even if you never plan to roleplay in your entire life. These lists contain most of the staples, but game manuals will generally contain recommended-reading lists and recommended music. They don't put those lists in there for shits and giggles; check them out for any game you plan on playing.
>1d4chan.org/wiki/Category:Approved_Media

There isn't any shame in taking inspiration from existing characters and ideas. The key is to make it your creation instead of someone else's. My current character, for instance, is similar to Adam Jensen in concept (I actually got inspired by seeing a picture of him), but I never *told* anyone that's where I got it, I changed his backstory, name, appearance and other identifying characteristics. If you tell people "this guy is basically XYZ character", then you fucked up because everyone will expect you to play a clone of that guy.

Also, the only way to get good is to try it out. I put in a good three or four years playing dnd 3.5 as a total munchkin asshole before I realized that roleplaying is the fun part, not just a character creation minigame. Focus on having a good time, not just on winning or getting big numbers. Eventually you may learn to balance those things and become the chosen one or something.

It helps to have a group that is supportive in helping you get good. I imagine that you will go through quite a few terrible and/or flaky groups before you find some good people. If you're in a group that you don't like, then my best advice is to get out. Remember that you can salvage friends from multiple groups and invite them to a new one.

>the rest just seemed natural really
It's a nice story, and lying to PCs who can't really check what you're saying is an interesting thing to do, but if that part of the process seemed natural in any way to me this thread wouldn't exist
I've consumed a lot of roleplaying-related posts, but I am behind book-reading wise
I'm pretty bad at friendmaking so trying to salvage a group I'm not staying in sounds rather hopeless, but the rest of that sounds pretty good, I guess. I mean, I also can't make new backstories and appearances and whatnot but it's a good idea for if I ever stop sucking

As an advent reader I can not stress enough how useful reading is. It is one of the main modes of information transfer that is largely self reliant. Video will be around for forever thanks to the internet which is great. But video is the passive media. While reading requires a bit of interpretation and visualization.

Video is spoon feed. Reading is self feeding

Kind of in the same boat OP, my characters tend to be specific facets of my personality and not much else outside of a couple of gimmicks. In complex situations that don't tickle one of their few personality traits, I kinda just do whatever I would do in that situation. That's how most people RP a good number of their characters, at least from who I've played with.

As for DMing, grab a short published adventure and run that. It's really nice to have 80% of the campaign written out in a book, and get to focus your creativity on the other 20% off the rails hijinks your players get into

Creativity is overrated. The true meat is in execution. The most original of ideas can easily be ruined by a poor execution.

Fake it 'till you make it.
We were all 13 years old once, with an heart of gold and a notebook full of "cool" adventure ideas.
They all sucked. We sucked. Terribly.
We got over it, tried and tried, and learned from experience.
So,in short, just do it. Go and GM. Write down adventure ideas as they come to you. Plagiarize medias your players wouldn't read.
10 years from now you'll be where we are now. Debatimos how many Spiders would fit a drow vagina. You'll look back to this moment and curse me.
The cycle will be complete.

It always baffles me when people say they don't have creativity. All I do is think about what sounds fun & do that. If I think a tsundere Drow Priestess of Lolth is fun, I'll do that. She'll be quick to heal & then half-heartedly blame her allies when she runs out of magic to keep healing. If I think an archeologist monk that's good with improvized weapons and doesn't want no trouble is fun, I'll make not-Jackie Chan. He will naturally become a more original & developed character as time goes on & I incorportate more things I find fun (that are also suitable traits to add without contradicting anything else I have established). If I think that exploring a world where everything but the players is 10x too big, I'll run a game on that. They can befriend pixies and almost die when clearing the rats in the inn's basement.

Just think, "What does OP find fun?" And do that. It is that easy for me, hopefully for you, too. Worst-case scenario, you build a magical realm and start learning another good life skill: hiw to subtlely hide your weird fetishes in wholesome activities.

OP, have you ever actually tried to do this stuff?

I'm not getting at you here, listen to me. I find a lot that when I try and think things through, I've got no idea what to do. But, when I actually just forge ahead and do it anyway, everything seems to line up and make sense.

Possibly try that?

I don't like it, but I guess it is a good idea, especially for someone like me
GMing seems scary but that's a good strategy
You still have to have creativity in your execution, isn't that what makes it good in the first place?
It's really not that easy for me
If I were attempt to emulate you it'd probably be a basic [Generate Character]->[Determine Funness of Character]->[Repeat until a Fun Character is generated] type thing... but I don't have the ability to spontaneously generate characters in the first place, the only qualifiers I can add on a whim like that are mechanical, like race or class. Baffled though you may be, that's really the level I'm at
I tried an intro pathfinder session once, played a pre-gen. It was okay, though it didn't seem very roleplay-ish, which was fortunate for me given my incompetence but at the same time I never really got to test any of that stuff

Others have said it already but I'll just act like a hammer hitting your skull:
Read.

Read everything.

Steal everything you read and use it in your characters.

>roleplaying related posts
It is good to keep up, ideally on sites that are more sophisticated and better-moderated than this one. But over-reliance on discussion forums will often condition you toward the meta and a very rules-focused approach, and toward avoiding cliches instead of playing with them to help you find what's fun and interesting to you. And each place has its own quirks and culture to it. I recommend shopping around, so you at least have somewhere to go when you don't want racial slurs thrown in your face.

>behind in book-reading
A lot of it is online and free at this point. I don't even touch meatspace books. Take a few minutes from your life to google some of those sources. It's well worth it, and much better for an aspiring roleplayer than gobbling up shitposts over here.

Far as backstory-making and stuff, it's just writing, so I think the key is to just do it. Your first characters may well seem dreadful and cliched and overwritten, but once you've played enough you'll figure out what's necessary and helpful, what you can develop during play, and what you can do without. You might as well get the awful characters out as soon as you can. But always hold onto those old sheets and backstory documents, as you may want them later!

>You still have to have creativity in your execution, isn't that what makes it good in the first place?
I'm not him, but not quite. What makes it good is having fun while you're playing. A bit of passion helps, a bit of creativity helps.

>Funness of Character
This is a common stumbling block. Fun-having is not entirely a function of your backstory or anything like that. I could hand the exact same character to two different people and expect them to have very different executions. Fun is a thing that happens while you play, it's not a predetermined thing.

My recommendation is to experiment in actual play. No matter what you make, even if someone else made your PC, even you're using the most expected and generic-seeming characters imaginable in the game you're playing, because every time you will learn something about what you do or don't enjoy. Over time you can use that knowledge to help yourself achieve greater fun.

My point about fun characters wasn't about not knowing what I find fun, just that I can't think up character ideas to even try to test for levels of fun
You raise a fair point though

You could start with ideas straight from the example characters given by the rulebooks. A lot of games have background/personality modules that make it very easy. If the game you play doesn't have one, you can use one intended for another game. I won't tell on you.

Damn, when I realise how few books I read nowadays, most of my time consumed by brainlessly F5ing chans and youtubes....

And bumping the few threads that are cool on tg.

Consume works of fiction, especially books, that will show you the inner workings of people that are very different from you. It's even better if it's foreign and/or old books.

Take some theater classes

Use helpers to make characters; it's easier to play someone else when it's an archetypal and well-defined person instead of a name and a class on a sheet of paper. (an example: rpg.ashami.com/)

Just do it. It's make believe, no sane person will judge you for being a newb.

My first character was boring as sin. You get better as you play. Get out there user.

a good way to start comfy is to just b ursmelf
and then change a few things here and there
Eventually you'll find a nice point for your first character and then you will just build experience from those around you.
alternatively, spectate games on R20 or someshit

Yeah, it's easy to compare yourself to people who are very "good" at roleplaying and get a bit despondent, but, really, it's just something you'll learn and your early efforts are not going to be as a good as somebody who's been doing creative stuff for years

Also, OP, my advice would be - just keep trying. There's hope for you, don't get too hung up on what your character would do, whatever you say the character does is what the character does, and any inconsistencies are unlikely to get noticed and, if they do, you can come up with a reason for why they acted that way. If you're not sure, follow the lead of somebody who is. Opt to have your character do things that moves the game forward and doesn't disrupt the experience; you can have the most in-depth, creatively worthy character ever, but it doesn't matter one fucking bit if they don't really do much of anything or make the game un-fun for others.

Basically, take a chance, play the game, bounce ideas off other players and your GM, let characters develop through playing the game from one-dimensional characters to something a little more fleshed out and have fun. The enjoyment of RPGs is in the playing, not so much the post-game and between-game analysis.

READ READ READ READ READ

>pick books and read them

that's food for your brain, the more you know, the more stories you heard/read, the more material your brain has to work with

also something i do, altough i do it because i work in animation is studying real people, how they move, how they react, their gimmicks (and i hope to be writing this right because english isn't my first language) little things like that make your characters seem more real.

Also when creating a character think about more than 1 dimension of said character, not only his core personality, but what he likes, what he dislikes, his virtudes and defects, decide if your character is obsessed about something, if he has some irrational fears and think about their past, think about your characters as if they where real people you know

Wanting to improve is laudable, and fear of performance is commonplace. Some people’s favorite characters that they’ve spoken of fondly for years after the fact have been one-dimensional characters. Luchadore Half-Orc Barbarians, Bluegrass playing Troll Bards, Dickbag Thieves, Smite ‘n’ Purge Crusading Paladins, even the Pacifist Healbot Cleric, each has an easy to understand central hook. Maybe they don’t seem too compelling on their own, but RPG’s are an ensemble cast affair by their very nature; you don’t have to prop up the whole story by yourself.

Do not despair! Find a group and play, so long as you’re not an intolerable human being you should find a warm place at the table. At the end of the day, it’s a game, not high art. So long as you’re not actively making things harder for others to enjoy, you should avoid the title of That Guy.

Piotr was your first character?

I GMed that game. You were my favorite player. I'm sorry, I really wanted that game to succeed, but two certain other players, especially one, were just fucking INSUFFERABLE, and it wasn't just the yurifaggotry.

Had I known you were so new, I probably would have put in a lot more effort to keep that game alive. I must have made a very negative impression of the hobby as a whole.

Must be another Piotr, I dropped out due to work and never really got back into the game when I played Piotr.

S-seriously?

It was whatshername, the other player whose character lost an arm, she was the weird one, right?

If that picture is the one, then it was you. The XCOM game.

It's been a while. Maybe your leaving or absence was the reason I didn't feel too bad about canning the game?

Yeah, Serafina's player was...really focused on playing a very specific character and didn't understand the anti-transhumanism elements that I told them about. And they came as a unit with Theresa's player, and while Theresa's player was good, Serafina's player was like "I WANT TO BE THE PRETTY AI SPARKLE WAIFU", and then the yurifaggotry came in, and I just wanted to get out of there.

I hope you've found other games, if one of you is from my game, and more reliable groups.

A holiday gift, then.

youtube.com/watch?v=k6AMj3HLiXY

Pulled from the Paul Hardcastle album I was listening to on a nearly daily basis during the brainstorming and running.

No, I'm the one who posted the pic in the first place, that's me, the one who was in the XCOM game.

And, I only left when you cancelled the game. Got really upset about it, remember?

As for finding other games, I've tried to join four since XCOM. The first never started because the GM ran out on us, the second I left because my PC got killed in the second session, the third never started either, and in the fourth I was the only one who really tried to RP and it caused so much friction with the other players that the GM cancelled things.

Yeah...

Nice to see you again, though, friend. It's been too long.

I'm not sick anymore, by the way. Got so bad I ended up in hospital for two months, nearly died, but I'm better now.

You're always welcome in my games. I'm currently running a D&D 5e game that will probably end by summer.

I don't know if I'll decide to run something sooner than that, or if I'll wait for that period of time. But if you're still interested in the hobby, hit me up on skype or steam if you still have me listed on those. I rarely communicate through anything but IRC, so I really can't remember which of the many people you are on my unpruned contacts list, but if you wanna keep in contact, that's great.

And I'm glad that you're better now. Shit, I knew you weren't well, but I didn't realize things got so bad.

I only have you on skype. You stopped responding to any of the messages I sent, so I stopped sending them.

Your steam might be good though, use it more often than skype now.

And, after how the last one ended, I think I've had enough of RPGing for a good while. Plus I don't really have the time for it nowadays, I've started uni.

Finally, yeah, it got bad. Like, really bad. Might fill you in at some point.

It seems like you are concerned about the FIRST hurdle, which is not really creativity itself (Which as many have said you can just address later, also READ MOTHERFUCKER), but rather the fundamental ability to comprehend what an RPG is and roleplay effectively.

My preferred exercise is this, if only because pretty much anyone can attempt this, not because it's necessarily easy:
Think of someone you know... kinda well. Like, ideally we're talking someone you chatted with for a few hours at one point but otherwise give very few fucks about, probably haven't seen them in over a year, but they aren't a total stranger, you managed to figure out one or two things about them, what sort of person they are etc.

Now, what would you consider would be the most likely thing they'd be doing literally right now? Ideally, you've picked someone that you have basically no ability to make a GOOD guess of this, but your best odds of success lie with "Well they're a human being, so they're probably sitting down somewhere because people spend most of their life sitting down..." and then working from there.

Now, the final part, once you have that kinda figured out, is lets say they found themselves doing what you were doing... 3 hours ago. How would they have handled differently? Maybe they seemed like a more angry person or something, they might be the kind to get bored of whatever it was you were doing and fucked off.

At this point, you've at least established an ability to think in terms of a normal, non-murdering human being who is not you. Baby level roleplaying is pretty much always going to deal with characters who are fundamentally human, so you should take inspiration from the real humans you know.

If you're really socially isolated, and you need some character inspiration, just get $20 worth of coins and put them in your pockets and go chat with a homeless person. They'll appreciate the company, and they're pretty much always nuts enough to be PC inspiration.

youtube.com/watch?v=9EMj_CFPHYc

Surprised nobody has posted this. I often refer back to it myself, and it usually works out for me.

Step 1: Realize that nothing is original
Step 2: Stop caring about being original
Step 3: Create something that you would enjoy playing/reading/hearing/etc.
Step 4: Realize that it's going to be trash.
Step 5: Accept all valid criticism and use it to make your next work marginally less shit
Step 6: Repeat Steps 3-5 until you get something that isn't shit.
Step 7: Repeat step 1-6 with with another idea that you wish to pursue.

Just don't get too discouraged and keep trying.

Technically, you can skip the "it's going to be trash" if you spend a LOT of time on it and get frequent feedback mid-development.

But it'll be so time and effort investment that you probably won't even break even vs the "making lots of crap till you make something good" method.

So yeah just experiment and have fun.

I agree completely.

That said:
>As an advent reader
I think you meant "avid reader" there, Henry Bemis.

>that's really the level I'm at
Not that user but I have some advice:
Steal.
Steal like a mitherfucking riot.

Here's an excercise:
>pick a character you like from fiction, tv, book, movie, vidya, whatever.
>pick another one you like
>Combine them into one person, drop traits that don't fit, adjust them until it makes some kinda sense
>now do that two more times so you have 3 characters
>then adjust them and stat them to the same level to work in your system and setting if choice.
>change what needs changing to make it work
>now write down a terrible story about how the first two characters meet, fight, then team up against the third.
>read you story and then burn everything if you want
>then do it all again, feel free to change the story to some other cliche.

Mix Dracula with James T Kirk and make a Forgotten Realms character.
Mix James Bond with Indiana Jones and make a Shadowrun character.
Mix Harry Potter with Darth Vader and make a Deadlands character.
The idea is not to craft wonderful, unique, original characters.
Nobody starts with those. Few ever get to those.
The idea is to make a character you understand the motivations of.
If James Tiberius Dracul is a character, you know he is willing to defend his community, no matter the personal cost and yet still finds time to sex up a pretty girl.

Creativity is not something that is learned like math or history.
It is something that is learned like sex or baseball.
You need to do it.
To get good at role-playing, you need to do it, even if it's badly at first.

I totally picked those examples randomly, but Anakin "Skywalker" Potter from Deadlands actually works.
>"Yer a shaman, Annie!"
>Orphan teenage shaman overcomes his angst through befriending the party in a dangerous adventure.
I like it.

The point is to beat the mentality of "it has to be original" or "it has to be good" out of yourself until you just sit down and create shit.

You can't have an ego and pursue a hobby that includes entertaining others.

Then add it in yourself! If you know what you want to fix, then do it. This is what creativity is.

This is an interesting exercise. Failure is almost guaranteed, but the principle doesn't really depend on success
>Just don't get too discouraged
That seems like the real challenge to all the grinding-based methods, provided they work. It all seems terribly disheartening.
I have a feeling that the iterations won't actually improve anything, but it's worth a shot. This exercise also makes it pretty clear how deficient my body of knowledge is in general
Knowing that something is broken or missing is not the same as being able to fix or add it

>Knowing that something is broken or missing is not the same as being able to fix or add it
It should at least be enough to nudge you toward a solution, so just try it out and stop acting helpless.

Don't care about Veeky Forums's opinion. Your first PC will probably suck, but you'll be able to enjoy them anyways as long as you just focus on having a good time. Same thing applies even more to your first time GMing. If you join a group with experienced people, follow their lead as long as they're pleasant people that improve the experience for others. Don't place too much pressure on yourself, if you're not feeling comfortable immediately then slowly build up your confidence by gradually getting more directly involved in things.

It's a hobby, and like all hobbies you can only truly experience it by doing the hobby. And like most things the only way to get better is to do the thing.

This. Just give it a shot, OP. Come on now.

Here, I'll build a mad libs thing for you.

Once upon a time, [character name] was born into a(n) [social or economic standing] family. The [character race] was [content/not content] with their life. When they were [entering adulthood/entering adolescence/late childhood/early childhood/babby], something important happened. This thing was that [important event in character's life]. This shaped them by [important developmental consequence of important event].

It's a start. This is how this usually goes. Just try a bit, help yourself.

Don't overthink it when it comes to roleplaying a character - you are not an actor, and this is not theater or a psychological movie. Just give them a trait or three, and play them up to eleven, because, honestly, otherwise nobody will even pick it up. You need to ham it up at the table, thats what everyone does. Don't try to make deeply nuanced characters, because RPG characters rarely start deep, and they shouldn't, they can develop and become deep as you play them, but don't expect to start out with a fully fleshed out persona.

>I have a feeling that the iterations won't actually improve anything, but it's worth a shot.
I'm sure people have said the same thing about throwing a baseball.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Practice

>This exercise also makes it pretty clear how deficient my body of knowledge is in general
Like the gentleman said, read.

>That seems like the real challenge to all the grinding-based methods, provided they work. It all seems terribly disheartening.
People in general are angry, caustic individuals who will find any reason they can to shit on you and everything you've done.

So it's healthy to explain that everyone is going to say that you're trash simply because it's easier to deal with knowing that it's happening as opposed to pretending the world is gumdrops and sunshine only to wake up and realize that nobody is obligated to make you feel good as a person.

In fact, I'd dare say that if more people did that, we'd be a lot better off because then we'd be willing to accept criticism w/o going full meltdown.

Bump

>Marked for death by necromancer
>murders a tribe of indigenous people
yeah that sounds par for the course in deadlands

this is the kind of thread I would archive and keep forever

My advice would be the following if you want general advice:

- steal whatever the fuck you can, ram it into a blender with other things, then serve the setting/lore smoothie to the players as the game requires. If that fails, give it several thick and generous coats of paint.

- You're running a tabletop game, not writing an award winning novel. Don't fret too much over the details and just roll with it. Hell one time I thought I was explaining far too little in the game but the players were happy.

- Don't over explain, leave room for new ideas and creativity to flourish between you and your players.

different user, but I'm pretty sure I'd do enough shitting on me and what I've done for everyone