Tag: weapon

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Player Resources

6 Ws of Character Creation

a-to-z-letters-wCharacter creation is perhaps my favourite aspect of Dungeons & Dragons. However, it’s not selecting the class, feats or powers that I enjoy. Sure, looking for synergies and developing a concept around the play style I’m interested in is fun. However, I spend just as much time working on the character’s background. I’m interested in the character’s story as this assists me in role-playing the character effectively. Whenever I’m creating a character I always ask the six W’s: Who, What, When, Why, Where and Weapon. The six Ws combine to fill in and flesh out the details of a character’s history.

Throughout April Dungeon’s Master is participating in the Blogging from A to Z Challenge. The challenge is to write a new article ever day in April, excluding Sundays. That’s 26 articles over the course of the month. To make things even more interesting the title of each article will begin with a different letter of the alphabet. Today we don’t just have one “W” we have six. We look at how asking the six Ws can help you develop a better character.

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Editorial Humour

Greatest Hits 2012: What Your Weapon Says About Your Character

While the Dungeon’s Master team enjoys some well-deserved vacation time, we’re breaking out the greatest hits and shining a spotlight on a few of our favourite articles from 2012. We’ve searched for hidden gems that our newer readers might have missed and our long-time readers will enjoy reading again. Enjoy a second look at these greatest hits from Dungeon’s Master.

Considering how common laughter is at the gaming table I’ve found that writing humourous articles is really difficult. Instead of going for outright funny ha-ha, I’ve had a lot more success writing observational pieces that demonstrate wit and focus on shared experiences most gamers will relate to and chuckle. In that vein I put together this article on the correlation between weapons and character personalities.

This is clearly a light-hearted piece that may seem a bit silly and simplistic at first glance. However, I’ll bet that by the time you get to the end you’ll agree with many of my observations and see the personality of some of your own PCs accurately paired to their weapon of choice. Think about this the next time you equip a character.

In the original article I asked our readers to add to my list of weapons. Here are some of their contributions. If you’ve got another one please add it to the comments below.

  • Rapier – You have a piercing wit as well as the sword. You also have a flair for the dramatic. (Al)
  • Flail – You enjoy making a mess of things, twisting people’s words or just tripping them up. (Eamon)
  • Tome – You possess a lot of power, but that power is a heavy burden. You have difficulty relating to others because you spend so much of your time inwardly focused. (dmscorpio)
  • Sling – You’re a child at heart, though maybe not so innocent. You try to get your way, and complain or lash out if you don’t. (Zeroarmada)

From March 21, 2012, Dungeon’s Master once again presents: What Your Weapon Says About Your Character.

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Categories
Editorial Humour

What Your Weapon Says About Your Character

“The clothes make the man.” It’s a pretty common expression. It quite literally means that you can draw a conclusion, and usually a fairly accurate conclusion, about a person’s personality just based on what they’re wearing. In D&D, the type of clothes (or armor) a person wears will usually indicate with great accuracy what class he is but it’s less likely to accurately indicate what kind of a man he is – for that you have to look at his weapon.

During character creation most players I’ve gamed with will equip their character before they determine his personality. I know that’s how I usually do it. But I’ve noticed over the years that the personality of a PC is very often directly related to the type of weapon he carries. It’s like the weapon imprints a specific personality type on the characters wielding them.

So I’ve put together a list of my observations. This is simply my first-hand account of how I see things. It’s not based on any scientific method or precise sampling, it’s just what I’ve seen over and over again in the many years that I’ve played D&D. I think that despite my rather loose methodology the results are surprisingly accurate.

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