Little touches you give to your characters that often go unnoticed

What are some little things you like to add to your character that no one usually notices but you keep doing anyway because you enjoy it? Things like giving them a favorite food, what hand they're dominant with, etc. I often try to give my characters names with meaning ex. I had a soldier/guardsman from a walled city with a last name that can mean "fortification", as well as a pacifist cleric whose full name could mean "vow of peace", or my living wall of a fighter having a last name meaning enduring.

>Character takes research notes on points of interest, historical things, magic anomalies, etc
>Keeps a massive record of their travels and collects other books along the way
>Spends watches and spare time refining these as well as writing and constantly revising letters to his family, including a death letter/last testament, and prayers to give when he reaches a temple
>Character dies, party buries everything with him
I'm not in that group anymore

>Character didn't sleep when the party camped
>Only slept when they were in an inn and he'd have a room to himself
>Only slept near the party when he had gotten to know and trust them.

My viking character really likes cheese and spends a lot of time making sure her hair looks dope.

This is a trick question. The correct answer is none, because after awhile you learn that some things never come into play and stop bothering with them.
>I often try to give my characters names with meaning
So you're saying their names go unnoticed? Although, I've played with people who forget how their characters are called...

>My viking character
>her
Spotted the That Guy.

It's good that you keep a mirror handy, user.

In an online Black Crusade game I was in, I played an Iron Legionairre (who got terminator armour around the halfway point and never removed it after). It was a text-only game, and I never once described him as "walking" or "running" somewhere; he always "stomped", "thudded", or "charged". I thought it helped carry over a lot of personality, and apparently the GM agreed, since he stuck to the convention without me ever bringing it up when he had to NPC him on a week I was off.

In another online game, this time D&D 4e, I was playing a Pixie Wizard, with pic related being my character art. Since in 4e Pixies get a regular ability to shrink human-sized items to their size and grow them back later, I had him always use his hat like a tent - unshrinking it back to human size whenever he went to sleep, so it covered him up completely.

Generally I also do the naming thing, mostly a case of looking up names of a fitting language on Behind The Name and scrolling until I find one which sounds good and fits.

>Getting butthurt over a female viking in a tabletop RPG
You must be fun at parties.

DnD game that I'm in is pretty much "camping is always going to end in an ambush" so my druid's the obligatory watchman at night

sometimes the other pcs stay up with him to keep him company or talk, but they always end up falling asleep

so he usually tucks them into bed or gets them a quilt to lie their head on

The point behind this is things you add to your characters that your party/other players may not notice or pay attention to, but you do to make your character more fleshed out and believable.

By "giving my characters names with meaning" I mean that my group isn't usually familiar with name origins and the meaning behind them so even though it's almost never brought up, I enjoy giving them actual names with meanings relevant to them, not that my character's name is unnoticed.

In text roleplay, most of my characters have verbal tics. Not something really obnoxious, unless it's part of the character, just regular verbal tics, words or phrases they tend to use more often than normal ("Isn't it?" for example). I also do it in regular roleplaying, but it gets a bit muddled with my own tics.
Oddly, they all have favourite drinks, but I rarely think about favourite foods. Probably because ordering a specific drink at the tavern is more common.
They've also got specific fashion tastes, like the mage who only wears clothing with wide sleeves (to conceal wands and the familiar!) or the warrior who will never wear dull colors. But I'm not going to describe what they're wearing every session, so it's mostly in my head.

Almost every character I play has a whittling knife and likes to carve little wooden figurines and give them out as presents.

If it's a fantasy game, I almost always get boots with false bottoms in the bootheels, and secret a few small but valuable coins, rings, gems in case of emergency.

One time I played a Paladin whose backstory was almost entirely composed of lyrics from Black Parade.

Not a single person noticed.

My character was very homosexual, but also an officer in the army in 1800's England. He had a wife and kids back home, but spent the last 20 years since retiring out exploring the world and very occasionally fucking dudes.


It never came up and the game was canceled due to an especially shit player, but if it hadn't've been, oh boy, the exposition.

I don't think that's a little touch for a character. I think the op was thinking about eating apples before a battle or glass blowing Goblin vases.

One of my old characters had a tragic backstory about being orphaned in his early teens, but not before learning the rudiments of blacksmithing from his father, which allowed him to find work in a brutal mercenary troop, leading to him being a freelance mercenary
The giant sword he carried around was the last one made by his father, and had his makers mark right by the hilt
The backstory never came up, but it was my justification for playing a neutral evil fighter

My character wears custom inserts because he pronates.

I also once made an adventure that lasted 3 sessions, inspired almost entirely by a verse from Green Days Jesus of Seburbia
My players never noticed

Which verse?

Ofttimes I find myself with like one nonwep proficiency slot left after most of character creation is done, and I use this to decide my characters hobby
I played a wizard who also happened to be a damn good spearfisherman, a thief who made his own clothes, and a farmboy fighter who loved a good game of chess

"City of the damned
at the end of another lost highway
signs misleading to nowhere.
City of the dead
lost children with dirty faces today
No one really seems to care."

>No one really seems to care."
Well that did come true

I also once made a sandboxy adventure, where the map was based off of Summoners Rift from league of Legends
There were sidequests at every jungle camp, castles/towers/lighthouses/statues/bathhouses where every tower was, and even a river right down the middle running from Northwest to Southeast

It's more of a design tic, but they all have a star somewhere on their outfit or as a tattoo. I used to do it unintentionally, and then just kept doing it after I noticed.

Had a priestess character whose daily rituals I designed from the ground up. I carried a few vials of ceremonial wine to suit them.

I also gave her a passion for baking - or rather, every time we reached a new town or city, she was keen to check out the most popular bakery, to try their work. She was keeping an informal diary of the best bread she's eaten, and from where.

I'd say it's effectively little, considering it would only come up extremely rarely in instances where it wouldn't matter, and little touches would show up on occasion.

A disproportionate share of my characters tend to really care about their footwear. They'll spend good coin for sensible, tough, supportive boots, whether it's the dwarf diviner or the half-orc mercenary bard.

[Spoiler]I do the same IRL. Wearing a $200+ pair of Danners right now. [/Spoiler]

My evil character would constantly play with his ring nervously whenever the party talked kindly about him. It was a ring of non-detection to hide from the paladin. (Who later helped redeem my character)

Did the paladin redeem him with her vagina

Did you take notes yourself? Because it would be a cool idea, would be fun for the DM how you see the world

Played an Alchemist/Druid in a Pathfinder game once. Aside from an uncomfortable affinity for fire, he liked sampling alcoholic drinks, and typically got tossed out of any universities/colleges he went to. He also knew how to brew rather well.
Also, the name thing, I do that too.

Nah, just by being a genuinely fantastic bro. My character was evil, but still enjoyed the parties company. It got messy when characters from my backstory wound up being main antagonists.

He wound up betraying the party for his exgirlfriend by telling her our movements and secrets, which almost got the paladin killed. After that my character came clean to the party about being evil.

The paladin essentially said "Nah, that's bullshit, you're not a bad person, and if you are, you clearly don't want to be. Take that ring off, and no matter what happens, we'll deal with it." When I took it off, the DM declared that the paladin detected no evil. By the end of the campaign, I'd say my character was NG even.

Your most likely that guy.

>nondisruptive little character trait
>showing character growth overtime
>that guy
What?

>"Okay, so you guys are all going to camp for the night?"
>"Yeah sure"
>"Yep, lemme take a ration off"
>"Yeah, just let me do my spells for the next day real quick"
>"AKSHULLY I DONT SLEEP BECAUSE MY CHARACTER DOESNT TRUST THE REST URHV DAH PARTEE, I SIT WIF MY BAK TO AH TREE, EETIN AHN APPLE, CUTTING PEESES OFF WIF MAH NIFE"
>"uh, alright, so your taking watch...?"
>"NO, IM JUST NOT SLEEPING"

He never said that he's not taking watch.

What happened to you today, user? Do you need someone to talk to?

So... What exactly is the problem here? Could you be more specific?

You dont like Role Playing in your Role Playing Games?

It's you, you're the That Guy

I dunno man,
girlfriends been a bit off.
Work is stressful.
My best friend and I havn't spoken in a while due to shitty reasons.
Thanks for asking, user.
Sorry for being a cunt.

There, there. Go talk to your best friend/girlfriend. Or at least eat a few cookies and get to bed early.

Shit man, that sucks. Hope things turn out alright for you soon.


>Ranger likes carving figurines. Gives them to his daughter when the party returns to his home village between adventures.
>Wizard keeps a journal and is constantly taking notes. He also has a pair of glasses which he doesn't allow himself to wear due to the fact that they're very unfashionable, but he still reaches up to push them up every so often.

I had a character that lost an arm in-game, and it was very fun to try and decide their personality and how they'd react to their loss, or how they'd let the perceptions of other people affect them.

One of the more minor things that I did, that weren't as obvious among other traits, was having her hide what was left of her arm under her cape if she felt it was getting too much notice - like Wilhelm II would do with his slightly shorter right arm.

Jesus fucking christ user, you can't even put it away for Womens Day?

Rape your girlfriend, it's international women's day, show her you take her into consideration.

When ever I visit a city I visit the library to learn about its myths and heroes even though my character has dyslexia.
Scout out said city and make notes on its defenses and how it is vulnerable to attack.

Mix lyrics from Man'O'War into my speeches

Good to know I'm not alone in giving my characters names with a hidden (or blatantly obvious) meaning.

I know that pain. Got a $250 pair of Danner All-Weather boots six months ago, and after two hurricanes, five months in the Mojave and several hundred miles of walking, running and hiking they need to be replaced. Also have a pair of Bates Lights that need to be broken in again (for some reason) or just tossed out. So, now I need at least one set of $200+ boots or more. Fuck.

I use Sabaton to flesh out encounters and seiges.

PCs dwarf fighter has a noble background and left his house when they banished his cousin for practicing magic. After losing his cousin to obsession with strange magics, and years later ingame his house was destoryed along with the entire city as the bbeg, his posse, and his army came through the back door and razed the place.

The twist is that the posse contains one person from every players back story that they just left floating in game.

Monks peer that killed their master and searches for more power. Burnt down the temple and all the "forbidden teachings."
The thiefs mentor that used to be in a party with the bbeg and has been bound as his minion. He's good with words and twists his orders to do the least harm needed.
Barbarians brother that betrayed his father 300 style for rule of the clan. Clan got wiped out by bbeg and blamed on barb. Brother is in it for warpped justice.

I have the day/month for all my characters' birthdays and use them to do silly zodiac sign/numerology/astrology woo for them.

It is 100% bullshit, and 100% fun.

>ranger
Had a ranger with a hip flask he often took a nip from when nervous. He didn't drink to phase out, but to keep himself from talking and getting in trouble. The flask was a gift from his step-father. The two never saw eye-to-eye, but they worked together to support the family tavern. Much later in the campaign he found the location of his birth father, and became very (relatively) outspoken towards rescuing him.
During the rescue he was crushed to death.
He was revived by the party cleric, some other plot happened, and he goes to take a drink from his flask out of habit. He finds the flask crushed and empty in his pocket, but realizes that he no longer really needs it, because he doesn't need to keep himself bottled up and silent anymore. He still keeps the trinket, for sentimentality, but I thought it was a neat way to show his growth.

>paladin
Different campaign, playing a dimwitted, albeit physically massive, dragonborn paladin. He fled from his family after learning that their involvement in the church of Bahamut was only a front. It started out as a joke (to fluff over when I am writing in a campaign log) that he is nearsighted and dons tiny reading glasses to squint at a tinier book during downtime. He has to pinch the pages apart carefully with his talons.
Nobody has asked yet, but it's a small holy book, the kind that street preachers hand out, that he reads from every night. While he isn't much of a preacher, the dragonborn is a devout follower of Bahamut. The cheap book was the only copy of Bahamut's scripture that he could find, since he can't risk returning to the church.

Played an obnoxious vegan druid. Killed an ate one named character we interacted with between many sessions, keeping one of their personal effects on my person. Nobody caught on but I thought it would be funnier not to point it out.

traditional gamers. a supportive community that looks out for its fellow geeks/nerds
then theres this cunt.

this is my favorite board

I once had a character with incredibly low intelligence act as the party chronicler. She only started adventuring because her father told her so many fanciful tales of his adventuring days. She'd try to keep the stories in pictures and almost words, with a few symbols that meant nothing to everyone else.

I actually wrote down what we did each session without using words. It's a shame that game only lasted a few months

>I had him always use his hat like a tent - unshrinking it back to human size whenever he went to sleep, so it covered him up completely.

I always keep a PC diary/log written in character after sessions. Much to several GM's amusement when reading a characters thoughts on encounters both physical and social.

How did he always manage to not sleep?

I play the Walmart game with my starting inventory

My DM never even bothers looking at it anyway

The walmart game?

When I started my first game I was pretty quiet/in the background for the first two-three months (most of which was generic forest travels), despite having a character who was supposedly socially-inclined. I later incorporated it into the character by having them tend towards uneasy silence whenever we were innawoods, as he'd grown up in a large city and rarely been off the beaten trail before adventuring.

I also tend to add a lot of small tweaks to a backstory that I don't bother writing down because my backstories are long enough as is - little one-off encounters that helped shape my character's views and might come up in fireside banter. Coming up with a bunch of these helps occupy my brain while I work my deadend job.

>it's a "person uses broken Latin to make obvious and blunt allusions to the nature of a character in their name and expects praise for it" episode

J.K. Rowling did it, The Horus Heresy did it, it's not clever, kys

Virtue-signalling cuck count: 4

About par the course for Neo-Veeky Forums.

this is military grade autism

My Shadowrun ork street sam is secretly the most educated person on the team, with maxed academic skills at chargen. This will probably never be revealed in game, since everyone just thinks he's a puncher.

Wizard obsessed with "magic". Carried around a small box full of sponge balls, card decks, paper/cloth flowers, cheap props an other such paraphernalia; he used them mostly to entertain the party's ranger (whom he had a crush on), and kids (he disliked children, but better to have them oohing and aaahing at your cheap tricks than running around yelling and making noise).

Later on, it became actually useful, if not life-saving, when my DM decided that the country we lived in had been taken over by a magic-hating dictator. It became quite useful to evade capture by posing as a carnie/traveling entertainer ("What, me, a wizard? Nonsense! Those are just cheap tricks anyone can do with enough dexterity! Here, let me show you how to do a few card tricks!").

this is what happens when the alt right teaches you a new word and you over use it to empress them with it so they'll teach you more words.

Have you started calling yourself goy?

we really are starting to reach tumblr levels

>virtue signalling
>cuck
>being this easily triggered
Lmaoing at your life mate go back to your containment board

I take spell components.
You wouldn't believe the shit you can get away with when you catalouge those things, there's so much unique and absurd fluff in D&D ingredient usage it isn't even funny.

>someone wants to play a valkyrie or shieldmaiden-type female Norse character
>That Guy says both are no-no's, despite being central mythological characters and actual real-life historical figures respectively
>people are cucks for pointing out how bullshit that is

ok

m8, s'bait.
/pol/ can't spell Neo.

my character has started to drink a lot more as the weight of the quest bears down on him, the other party members think hes trying to have fun when in reality he is dying inside

I assume he means he buys something, uses it, then returns it to instead go and buy something else he needs.

My character refuses to eat with silver cutlery.

He always has an excuse not to get into temples whenever the party needs to, and he always seems to have something else to do when a priest is around.

He has been found missing from where the party was sleeping in two different nights, even though he did eventually show up by morning.

He always goes around with a hood during the day "in order not to be recognized".
No one in my group has found out I've become a vampire yet, even though the hints are clear as day.

Either that or the thing where you buy a small number of odd items together
to freak out the cashier(ex. Birthday cake, rat poison, sorry for your loss card)

Neat. How did you become a vampire without the party finding out?

A few shenanigans with the DM.

The session before we killed a vampire villain I explained to the DM I wanted to become a party and didn't want the other guys to know, so we roleplayed the blood kiss just me and him and resumed the story as if nothing happened.

The other players only know I spent an hour or so "torturing" the vampire by myself. Someday, they'll find out the truth.

*I wanted to become a vampire

No matter what I play, my characters always either pray or carry something like a necklace with their gods symbol on it. I mean in a world where gods are real, would it really hurt to pray to them?

Oh man, roleplaying traditional monster flaws is fun. You suddenly reminded me of a small larp experience I had last summer.

The story took place during the Inquisition, and was about the struggle between humans and the fading forces of surnatural. I was playing as an incognito fairy, in a (secretely) mixed group where everybody war wary of everybody else at first.
I always wore half-gloves when we ate or I had to touch iron door handles. If somehow some iron touched my skin, I would sneak out under a false pretense and put some red makeup on it to make it appear inflamed.
Strangely, nobody noticed anything strange, despite me wearing gloves in the middle of summer.

The best part was when I went out of the house we used as an inn to go buy some stuff. When I went back, I asked one of the group to open the door for me from the other side (I had forgotten my gloves).
Only, his character flaw was that he couldn't open doors (he was a ghoul, the smart vampire-like kind).
Since we had no idea we were on the same side, so to speak, the conversation went like this :
>I'm back! Could you open the door, please?
>Can't you open it?
>Well, uh, my hands are full?
>I... hurt my back.
>Seriously, open it.
>No, you.
>No, YOU open it.
>... I'll call someone.

LARP sounds like a lot of fun, but also sounds like it's extremely easy to fuck up with it and end up with an underwhelming experience.

"A real man sleeps under the watch of the stars."

They've yet to notice that he actually suffers from severe claustrophobia due to trauma from falling down a hole into a cave filled with roaches and rats.

I've done it twice, once as a player, the other as the GM. They both were small larps with no more than 8 players, all of us friends. It was extremely fun in both cases, but I'm pretty sure it's very different from the "classical", hundreds-of-people-in-armor stuff. We always had things to do, the games were very character-focused, whereas, to my understanding, classical larp is more build-your-own-adventure, because of scale.
The one I organized was a 1920's surnatural investigation. I used blacklight markers to draw marks all over the place (cleaned up blood, and the ritual circles made with it). At about the middle point of their investigation, the players obtained a flickering blacklight lamp "artifact" someone had crafted for me.
It worked SO well when they first lit it, in the dark, in the middle of an inconspicuous room I had covered in cabalistic signs and splashes of "blood". One of them actually screamed. This kind of effect is hard to achieve in ttrpg.
Oh yeah, and it was winter, the hills outside were covered with frost and mist. I was blessed with gloomy weather that was perfect for the story.

If you can find a group of friends willing to do it, and a place big enough to play without looking too much like a group of fools or psychopaths, it's definitively worth it.

>Friend asks me to join the Shadowrun game he is running, none of the players have much experience in table top games and are out a street samurai.
>Make the character an older mentor type character.
>On a whim make him a 'street philosopher', quotes late 80's early 90's music lyrics as 'philosophy', mostly punk/grunge rock and some hip hop.
>Character goes over well with the group, but no one catches the references.
>15 ish weekly sessions into the game, one player comments that I'm really good at making up one liners.
>Only the DM realized what I was doing.

I feel old.

Jooooooo JO

ooh, can we get some examples?

Religionbro here. I don't understand why my friends are not more interested in the gods of different RPGs; we play both 5E and Pathfinder.

Different user here - I'm calling that he quoted Eye of the Tiger at least once.

> One character would take the time to write letters to his wife, and would read-and re-read letters he got in return. He really really loved her, and his devotion to her was only second to his devotion to his duty.

> One character had a rather serious drug habit and would drug himself into a mindless stupor. He had to make sure he was never alone with his thoughts, up until the day he died he ran from his problems. He would rather face the deamons of hell or some unknowable horror from beyond than look into himself. More than anything he feared he would hate himself.

> One character was deeply passionate about food, as he often starved as a child. Wherever he went, he would feed the local children with meals he would cook and would teach them how to cook. He would then leave them with some money and some cooking equipment and tell them if they were good enough and worked hard enough they could sell their food and feed themselves. He never let those around him go hungry, even if it cost him all his money.

Sure.

>Group is planning for the run of the week.
>Some disagreement if we should try the sneaky option or skip straight to Plan B.
>"In the words of a great warrior poet of a bygone age; I didn't have to use my AK. Today was a good day."

>Team is in hiding after a run gone mostly pear shaped, waiting for the heat to die down.
>Everyone loudly wondering what the hell happened. The samurai speaks up from where he is sitting in the back of the room.
>"A philosopher long past had something to say about a situation very similar to this one. 'It was something unpredictable, but in the end it's right. I do hope, you had the time, of your lives.'"

I'll post more as I can/there's interest.

yeah, go on.

Speaking of names I made a posh con man called Lucien Midas, which roughly represents light gold

I dunno if this counts but I had a shardmind and my companions carved a smiley face into my character and it came in handy for some charisma checks like 4 weeks later when everyone forgot about it except me because I wrote it down

This sounds pretty awesome. I wish I knew people who were into this because I'd love to try it.

My Wizard is afraid of darkness and hates to get himself dirty, unless he does it for the sake of research, he always keeps some spare clothes in case of an accident. He loves yo estoy lamb chops with wine.
Everytime he gets some money, he sends a good part to his parents.
Sorry for bad english ;__;

So did you get huge penalties to everything for not sleeping for days at a time?

We know what you mean, user.

Do you still have that by chance?

Your English isn't too bad friendo. I teach college students that speak worse than you, and they're American.