Making a Character in WoD

Making a character in the World of Darkness

In a literal sense, building your character takes a few minutes after making the critical decisions of the sheet. After this comes the more challenging part, of coming up with a character that will be interesting enough to bother playing for any time longer than a few rounds. Something that can grow as you play, and engage with other players, instead of relying on a single trope or coolness factor to get by.

Let's break that down to its base components. With the right materials, in the right way, at the right time, you could even produce your Magnum Opus.

The Four Humours of Character

1. The Base - Concept and Foundation
2. Active Ingredients - Major Events and Traumas
3. Temperaments - Habits, Skills, Hobbies
4. The Recipe - Putting together your Character

Concept and Foundation

Unlike many other roleplay experiences within and without our niche, characters do not have as much definition in their page to guide their roleplay. For example a Lawful Neutral Ranger has more of a path definition than a 14th generation punk rock Brujah. When creating a character, they should not be born from a generic concept or a trope you want to play out. A baseline idea of what kind of person is being played is very important. Their entire life leads to their First Change, Embrace, or introduction to the Supernatural World of Darkness. A quick example of some baseline features for a hypothetical character:

• I want my character to be a woman.
• I want my character to be kind of a complete failure, who has lost their job at a brokerage and is wasting her evenings in the bay area nightlife.
• I want my character to be a human, that is embraced by a vampire on the server!

The first steps here are to start considering where they have come from, who they are, and looking into these topics so flesh them out. Someone employed in finance should be able to throw out some legit sounding statement about returns on investment, or derivatives.

Building this foundation might include what kind of brokerage she worked on, what exactly she did to get fired, or if she even really cares about the situation much at all. Since she is still a living human, she is likely paying rent on a lease. We'll go with that, moving on! When considering characters of a race, culture, religion, sexuality, or ethnicity outside of ones own familiarity, some research should be done to ensure it is not a trope heavy design. Unlike a group of players around a table, The Final Nights is ran and moderated to promote inclusivity and respect. We have players from every part of the world, from many walks of life and experiences. Offensive concepts or other potentially offensive stereotypes aren't allowed. Our character is going to be an American with roots to the British Colonies, born and raised in California.

Lastly, the foundations of knowledge for our character are important to know. For her, it is much more simple, as she is fully ignorant of the supernatural, but this doesn't mean she becomes a master of Kindred political life in a few weeks, months, or even years! She would be brought into the Traditions, the local hierarchy of the faction she is embraced into, alongside the struggles to control her Beast and the inability to answer what is happening to her without guidance from others. Important things for vampires of all knowledge levels to consider is where exactly their knowledge ends, who educated them, and what explicit lies and omissions have led to their current cosmology of the supernatural?