I've been involved in roleplaying games for about thirty years now, on both sides of the GM screen. While I'm the furthest thing from an expert in the field, I do feel long-term exposure has taught me a few things along the way, and I enjoy passing those on to others. There are tons of topics and options to explore, but I feel that perhaps the most important is remembering that mixture of excitement and fear when playing a game for the first time, when I was still unfamiliar with most of the rules and trying to find my place in the world as a player. With that in mind, I'd like to offer up a few tips for new and novice players that will help you navigate those twists and turns and hurdles you won't realize are in your way until they're almost smacking you in the face. Since D&D is the game I'm most familiar with, the examples I'll use will all come from this particular system, but many of them are applicable across a wide variety of products and systems.

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Last time, I revealed the single most critical rule a new player needs to understand. If you missed it, go catch up. We'll all wait for you.

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Back? OK, great! Tonight's installment is all about helping novice players bring their characters to life. There's one, and only one, hard and fast rule for character creation. Everything else is up for negotiation, but this should be the bedrock upon which all of your characters are based.

Ready?

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Build A PC Who Suits You, Not Just The Group!

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I can already hear someone mentally screaming about maintaining proper party balance, but hear me out here. I'm speaking to people who've never picked up the dice, or who haven't done so in a long time. New and novice players are different beasts from your typical grognard. Once you have some experience under your belt with how the game works, it can be a lot of fun to get together with your fellow players and hash out who's going to take what job (healer, offensive magic, damage-per-second tank, support buffer, etc...). There's nothing wrong with balancing a party to ensure they're maximally prepared for the adventure they're about to undertake.

But here's the thing: whenever you start something new, how long you're willing to stick with it is directly proportional to how much fun you're having while doing it. Remember last time when I mentioned how what drives most people to roleplaying is a desire to take on the persona of a specific character (or at least a specific archetype)? Han Solo-type rogues exist in every culture, whether your game takes place a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, or in the middle of a 21st-century zombie apocalypse. If that's the sort of character you want to be, then by all means, make that character.

Don't get hounded into rolling up a specific race or class just because it will help the group. If your party needs a healer, and you've found the Cleric to be enticing, by all means, make a Cleric and go wreck some undead. But don't just make a Cleric because that's what will be most helpful to the party, or it's what the other players want you to do. Make the character you want to play.

If you can't figure out exactly what you want to play (between races and classes, even vanilla Fifth Edition D&D offers up an enormous buffet of choices), talk to your DM and explain the character or type of character who appeals to you. You may want to play a Gandalf type PC, but between the Wizard and Sorcerer classes, you're not sure which one is the better fit. Or maybe you see things that appeal to you across multiple classes and need help narrowing it down--Clerics, Druids, and Paladins can all fit the 'kindly healer' motif, for instance, but they all go about it in different ways. Listen to suggestions, but don't let anyone else pick for you, and don't let anyone talk you out of your choice once you've made it.

One thing you'll find among long-time roleplayers is a knack for "min-maxing". You may also hear it referred to as being a "Munchkin". Most players after some experience with the game will do this unconsciously. In the world of D&D, for example, there are certain races and classes that combine better, or worse, than others. Fifth Edition goes a long way towards leveling the playing field, but it's a simple fact that some races are better suited to certain jobs than others. Dwarves, for example, get a racial bonus to their starting Constitution score, making them tougher and heartier than other races on average. If they come from a mountainous area, they also get a bonus to their Strength, making them hit harder than other races on average too. Because of this, dwarves are seen as ideal for jobs suited towards brawn and brute strength. Players interested in creating melee and brawling types, especially Fighters and Barbarians, are naturally drawn to dwarves, because their racial strength meshes well with those types of classes. Given identical starting attributes, a mountain dwarf Fighter will outclass a Fighter of virtually any other race every time. This is especially true in 5E, where characters are also allowed to pick backgrounds that can grant even greater bonuses and boons to 1st level PCs. Fighters, for instance, benefit greatly from the 'Soldier' background, and not nearly as much from the 'Entertainer' background, so it's common for players of Fighters to pick 'Soldier' over most of the others.

That doesn't mean that if you want to play a Fighter, you must (or even should) pick 'Dwarf' for your race and 'Soldier' for your background though! This gets to the second bedrock rule for character creation:

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One "Fun" Character Is Worth Fifty"Badasses"!

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What defines a "fun" character is open to interpretation, but the main point is that picking the race/class combination meant to "min-max" the character makes for a pretty bog standard character. There's nothing wrong with creating these types of characters, and new players can do just fine making up ordinary characters for their first forays into the world as they'll have a slightly easier time surviving. But, as the old adage goes, "It's role-playing, not roll-playing." In other words...

It isn't the numbers on your character sheet, but rather the persona with which she is imbued by you, which defines your character!

If you want to play a gruff, hard-drinking, ax-swinging Mountain Dwarf Fighter with a military background, that's awesome! (S)he will be a fantastic introduction to the world of D&D, and every party in the world is better served by adding another damaging-soaking tank to the ranks.

At the same time, don't be afraid to play against type. Stat-wise, Halflings make terrible Paladins: they aren't as strong as the other races, their bonus to Dexterity doesn't help them swing swords harder, and it's hard to find blacksmiths willing to make armor in their size. Paladins do best with high scores in a lot of different attributes, including Wisdom (which influences their ability to wield Divine magic), Charisma (which empowers their Class-specific skills), Strength (which influences to-hit and damage with melee weapons, not to mention lets them lug around all that heavy armor), and Constitution (which makes them hardier). Dexterity, while useful for all classes to avoid getting hit in combat, is less important to a Paladin than to a Rogue. In the case of the Halflings, they make fantastic Rogues for all the same reasons they don't make such phenomenal Paladins.

But role-playing is all about your imagination. Consider the circumstances that could result in a Halfling so driven by her innate good alignment that she straps on a suit of (extremely small) chainmail and a Halfling-sized two-handed warhammer and sets out on a personal crusade in service of a particular deity or religious group. A Halfling skulking through the shadows and cutting coin purses is a common enough sight at the gaming table. Everyone knows one of those after a few sessions of play. You don't need to ask questions. She's probably an excellent thief. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of Halflings just like her. She's the best at what she does, and what she does isn't nice.

She's a badass.

A plate mail-clad Halfling, dual-wielding shields like miniature batterings rams, leading the charge to re-take an Orc-sacked outpost in the name of Dol Arrah the goddess of Sunlight and Nature, on the other hand? That's a sight you don't see every day. She may not be the most ideally-suited to that line of work, and being all of three feet tall and forty pounds soaking wet means she doesn't cut a very imposing figure, but if your imagination didn't already start working overtime wondering what in the Nine Hells led her to this point in her life, I'll walk barefoot over a floor strewn with 4-sided dice. If you remember only one thing a week after reading this article, I guarantee it's that mental image.

She's fun (and, also, kind of a badass--I sure as shit wouldn't cross her!).

Never, ever, ever be afraid to make fun characters. You and your fellow gamers will remember them and their exploits far longer than you'll remember the average, ordinary, everyday PCs who serve as trope codifiers in the campaign world.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a Halfling Paladin I need to roll up...

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I'm hoping to make this an ongoing series, with new entries every couple of days. If you like this and want to see more, if there's a specific topic you'd like me to cover, or if I've made any mistakes, I invite you to chime in down in the comments section! Of course upvotes and resteems are great too, but I've noticed a fall-off in personal interaction in the last few weeks, and I'd like to see more. We all help one another grow, after all! Even if you aren't sure what to say, or your opinion is contrary to mine, let it out!

Then go visit @blewitt and harass him for a while. He may wind up selling you comics or giving away shares of Steem Basic Income or responding with a seemingly endless variety of GIF animations, but it'll all be worth it in the end.