I have two players who absolutely REFUSE to even try when it comes to making characters...

I have two players who absolutely REFUSE to even try when it comes to making characters. I suspect that one of them is basically a sociopath, and has no interest or understanding of the minds of other people.

The other one has point blank refused to even try to come up with ideas one the grounds that "they aren't good at being creative".

Is there anything you can do to help rehabilitate players who are convinced they can't make characters? I'm not asking for an epic soap opera, just something so that I'm not imagining you in a costume. I've tried getting them to use the background generators that 5e comes with, but they don't seem to get it.

>inb4 5e a shit

I know, but the group refuses to play anything else

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Is there a reason you don't just make their characters for them?

Then don't play with them. It is not your job to change people.
You have demonstrated the basic human ability to use the internet to seek advice.
Now use it to seek more compatible players.

>"So the first step to playing the game is to make your characters. First you have to come up with a concept, and-"
>"I'm not doing that."
>"No, see, you can't play if you don't make a character. You need a character to play."
>"I don't want to do that."
>"If you want to play, you need a character. That's just how the games work."
>"I'm not good at being creative."

Just make simple characters for them and maybe next time they play they'll know what they want to do. Especially if you introduce a character somewhere they're interested in.
And do it in shotgun fashion where you throw out a bunch of flavorful NPCs and expand on the ones they respond to the most.

I tend not to get this so much as getting players who have a "default character", which usually is just their personality, but ruder and nastier to everyone.

Get them to pick a race and class. Then start asking them questions. Use the questions and answers to build a character for them.

Leading questions are good. For example, "Why did your character cancel his wedding ?"
Maybe you get an answer to the question. Maybe the player objects to the question as they don't think their character would ever get married. Either way, you have got something from the player.

It's more work for you. But worth it if you don't want to eject the player.

This is actually what I usually do, but when I ask them questions (particularly the second one) I just get "I duno" and a shrug, and a bank stare.

I tend to have a lot of roleplay in my games, to the point that multiple sessions go by without any combat whatsoever. I think part of what's going on is that the other three players are really freaking good roleplayers, with character voices, acting out behaviors, all the rest of it, and the two above are embarassed and feel like they don't measure up.

Then send them packing. They're refusing to put the bare minimum into the game and expecting to get something out of it. Roleplay has its own "conservation of energy" so to speak, and if they put nothing in then they're a net loss in terms of resources at the table. It's clear they don't want to be there.

Cut em loose mate

I did this once as DM. I gave the players pdfs and characters sheets and told them to come to the game with level 1 characters. When we got together for the first session they had no characters and admitted they didn't even touch the pdfs, but they brought snacks so I forgave them. Then I offered to take them through character creation, but they were too daunted by the process. In the end, I scrapped all my plans and handed them the sheets I had for some mary sue DMPCs I was saving for another game. I spent half an hour answering questions about their characters and game rules, then we finally got rolling. Turned out for what they lacked in literacy they made up for in creativity. We had stupid fun rolling across the multiverse starting wars, terrorizing gods, punching planets to smithereens, and discovering the true meaning of what it was to be a irredeemable asshole.

My first character was a premade character. Or own DM's homebrew system and he wanted to showcase all his classes without overlap. System is kind of bad but it helped me through all the startup.

You need to fight inertia when you first try to learn a game system. Many can overcome this problem with force of will, but for many more they just either don't have the will or are too intimidated or otherwise unable to tackle it. It might be for many reasons, but ultimately you're not their psychologist nor do you have a duty to fix their fucking heads. If you they can't and won't play even after you've shouldered the work of character creation for them, then drop them because they won't make the effort and can't get over themselves enough to participate.

You can put newbies on training wheels, and there's no shame in that. If they refuse to learn anyway, then why are they even in the game?

get new players.

I'm not in the "get new players" camp, but RPGs are essentially collective storytelling. It's not the GM's job to do everything, the players have to contribute too. If they're not willing to do that, they're essentially abusing the privilege, as far as I'm concerned.

That said, I put this together for use in my games, and I make my players go through it while we make characters. Feel free to use it if you think it might help you.

>"Okay. See you later."
Then turn to the rest of the group, and start that.

Thanks for the resource. There's some good basic advice here. I'm going to use it to shore up my own character concept right now.

Right now it's all mechanics, but your suggestions for character motivation just gave me a "oh, DUH" moment so I'm going to put some flesh to those mechanics.

>tfw you avoid ttrpgs despite liking them because you're this person.

Why not just make a character?

Glad to be of service.

Yeah, it's basic, but I'm a big proponent of a solid foundation. I think that any role-player, regardless of skill level or veterancy can benefit from something like this.

I'd have to decide on someone's name, history, relationships, goals... and I don't know how to go about that.

Random generators for what you can easily figure out. Let the GM fill-in-the-blank for anything you can't randomly generate.

>a sociopath
>and has no interest or understanding of the minds of other people.

Isnt it great how you can tell who uses Modern Media as their dictionary?

What does modernmedia.co have to do with it? Are they run by sociopaths?

This is what you could make use of, or at least browse some examples. Being tossed random traits is like being forced into a Whose Line Is It, Anyway scenario (can be fun). Or, scramble traits and pick the things you like.
Just know that it's an important skill to imagine how a person is created out of events and thus become exhibited through traits... which is more of the realm of creative writing.

>Just know that it's an important skill to imagine how a person is created out of events and thus become exhibited through traits... which is more of the realm of creative writing.
No idea how to do that. I'm hoping that having a generated starting point will at least help me do something.
Also concerning is that my lack of experience/competence leaves me no way to tell if whatever I arrive at is garbage.

>Before moving on, did you
pick one of the following?
> A brooding loner, with no ties?
> A psychopath?
> An amnesiac?
> A wanderer whose parents were killed by orcs (or setting equivalent)?
> A thief who presses every button and steals from the party?
>If so, you should probably start over,
so don't pick something dumb.

>A loner who pops out of nowhere with a trench coat and a katana isn't interesting.

This guy really understands players, and what many of them would try to get away with.

>ctrl+F: "steal" = 0 results

Tell them to pick a character from fiction and then shove them into the setting.

>It's Indiana Jones with swords
>It's Jack Sparrow with a lazer pistol
>It's Gaston only he's a lizard.

Coming up with a terrible character is still progress from not coming up with a character.
Baby steps.
for the babies.

I DM and am a player in a handful of games with a player who is like that. his past few characters have been about as think as the paper they're written on. few examples being:

"I'm a career thief rogue... who came out of retirement"

"I am a wizard who loves to blow stuff up, be stereotypically curious, and flaunt my 'INTELLIGENCE OF 28' despite making the vast majority of dumb choices and mistakes"

"I'm a gnome oracle. I'm special because I visited Nirvana and my name is Kurtis Grohl... being a gnome.means I am insufferably annoying while also being bad at my job."

now normally these make a good(ish) step 1, but those descriptions are as far as their depth goes.

We have been dealing with them by making them the butt of many jokes and awkward situations. and since my group continues play if one player needs to drop for work or whatever the party group runs the character of the week and it typically turns into stress relief. when that fails casually waiting for one of those INT of 28 mistakes to result in character death and looting the corpse is a good pass time.

These are the people randomly generated characters are made for.

Although (if you excuse my arm-chair psychology), anyone being that adamant at not even attempting something has some deep seated issues.

>I think part of what's going on is that the other three players are really freaking good roleplayers, with character voices, acting out behaviors, all the rest of it, and the two above are embarassed and feel like they don't measure up.

Maybe you could have one-on-one sessions with them? Or with just the two of them? Could be one-shots, could be a short adventure. Just what it takes to help them come out of their shell.

OP here

This is great, thank you. I'll give this to them and see how they do with it.

Honestly, just steal from your favorite animu characters. That's what most actual writers do, and I guaranfuckingtee your DM has done that at least once in the campaign.

Creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.

What is Modern Media?

That's not a bad idea either.

>"Alrighty, this probably isn't the game for you then. Can you arrange your own ride home or should I call a cab?"

Maybe try to recognize that different people engage with rpgs in different ways and tailor your game to the players you have?

>blaming the GM for literal autist players
>you should cater to the lowest common denominator

Ya ok

Iktf, we've got someone in our group who plays either himself, the character, or some meme thing.

Which is bizarre because he's a perfectly fine DM, he just has no clue how to be a player.

Drop them.

Not that user, but I can't even describe my own personality, you think I can describe, let alone portray consistently, somebody else's? The most that'll happen is a thin backstory and a couple of adjectives that will never affect anything because I don't know how they would affect something.

It will be garbage
But that's OK

A good way to start is to think of a character in fiction you wouldn't mind "being", then mutilate certain details. You'd be using a known archetype as a foundation, which is basically the whole process of "creativity".

Ask what their favorite character is.
Ask for their favorite character trope.
-Very Important- THINK of what they say
The Punisher and Giving final chances? We can work with that.
Xena warrior Princess and crippling Alcoholism? You've got it
Any of the members of Dethklok longing for a more normal life? Let's do it

Have them play a character they know and love, but make sure there's a character traits they can/have to flavor themselves. Then once they get over their autism and realize doing this shit at a basic level is easy as fuck.

However if they come at you with "Sauske, Brooding Loner with Family Issues who rapes constantly" then you know to tell them to get the fuck out and see a damn therapist

that's pretty nice user, but good thing I play with people that are not from Veeky Forums, or my favorite character would be immediately rejected. In fact people would call it "orphan shota elf with mommy issues" instead of what it really is.

An Orphan Shota Elf with Mommy Issues AND a sick Dual Katana build?

nah, a bow, useless at close range, and in need something to feel the hole that his family left in his life.

one of the best role players i know is a face blind sociopath. the inability to feel real empathy is no determent to playing a game of pretend read up on directing and acting exercises. ask them about their favorite characters from books and movies and work from there

Give them a character image and make them stat it out and make a backstory

Just use this;
>> rpg.ashami.com/

As the first guy you're replying to, that thing is useless for solving my problem. Any chimp can slap descriptors on a page. For me, that's as far as they'll ever go.

Are these acceptable motivations for adventuring?

>"So the first step to playing the game is to make your characters. First you have to come up with a concept, and-"
>"I'm not doing that."
>"No, see, you can't play if you don't make a character. You need a character to play."
>"I don't want to do that."
>"If you want to play, you need a character. That's just how the games work."
>"I'm not good at being creative."
Are you sure they actually want to play?

I have trouble thinking how far the GM wants to go.

My first few times I completely fleshed out a character, had a small little story written about them about their past and motivations and basically everything about them.

GM never really cared or asked about it and we just went in doing generic stuff, back story really didn't matter.

And that's not necessarily not caring, since most of its done in your head as you roleplay with others.
But I'm not going to make an in-depth backstory from the start if the GM doesn't want one because its likely to change and its not worth the effort. and more importantly i just feel autistic if i'm trying too hard and everyone else is just there to roll dice and kill goblins

get a better group
these sound like the sort of people that acusse you of being high if you say anything remotely creative.

Print yourself out a character sheet for both of them, and just ask then what their character's name is.
Then run them through a small quest (that can chain into your main campaign) while determining their stats, alignment, and inventory/equipment based on their decisions. Write them down yourself for them, then at the end give them their characters, and spend another short quest explaining to them how the stats work.

It's pretty much every established fictional characters origins, so yeah.