It came up in a discussion 'What skills make a good player?' and, recognizing blog-fodder when I see it, I started thinking and writing. I found my list of applicable skills growing out of control, so I stepped back to simply character creation, perhaps the quintessential act of tabletop gaming. After some thought, I have set making a character down into six parts: Concepting, Setting Integration, Group Integration, Characterization, Backgrounding and Optimization.
These aren't really 'steps' as much as they are bases that you should hit at some point, parts of the greater whole that is making a fake person for you to romp around with, whatever that may mean to you. Some people like coming up with their optimization first, then their characterization. Pay close attention to the second and third, though, because these are things that people very often forget to do, but a character without either of them will feel as awkward and inappropriate as a character who is poorly optimized, or a character who is poorly characterized, or a character with no background at all. So, without further ado:
-Concepting: The first step of creating a character is to come up with an appropriate idea. Usually, a concept is a handful of words, your quick pitch to your GM about what you want to play. Sometimes it will involve mechanics, sometimes it will involve personality, sometimes it won't have anything to do with anything at all. A few examples from my own past: "Kung Fu Jesus," "Amnesiac Penitent Assassin," "Murder Artist," "Bubbly Telepath," "AAA-Grade Badass Murder Machine." This is also the step that you should get used to doing, because of that second to last word: it's very easy to come up with ideas, but the ideas have to be appropriate to the game. Run your idea past your GM. If they hesitate at all, it's best to let that one lie rather than going 'No, no, I can make this work,' even if you can.
-Setting Integration: Making the idea work within the game that you're playing. This begins immediately after Concepting but will continue through character creation. Obviously, this requires at least passing familiarity with the setting you're playing in, which can be an awful lot of work if you're playing Exalted or Legend of the Five Rings or any of a number of games with settings that are extremely divergent from settings that you're naturally familiar with. However, it's still your responsibility to have some idea of the world you're playing in, so in these cases, if you're the kind of person who falls asleep on the fourth page of the setting chapter, your best bet is to talk to your GM extensively about the world and your character's place in it. While this dialogue should open shortly after the concept is created, it shouldn't stop until well after the game is underway, especially if you're not particularly familiar with the setting. Ask about things you should know, and try to find time to ask such questions while you're not at the gaming table. Setting Integration should interact with every other step of character creation, and should inform a lot of decisions: Characterization should be appropriate to the world, Backgrounding will require knowing a bit about the world, and your game mechanics will need to fit with the setting as well.
-Group Integration: This step is often overlooked, forgotten or not even considered. Role-playing is a group activity, and you should make an effort to make your character fit with the other characters that are being created. Ideally this should begin about the same time that you're doing your Setting Integration, but depending on how on the ball you are compared to the other PCs, you may not have the opportunity. Group Integration, like Setting Integration occurs in conjunction with every other step of character creation: make sure your concept and characterization aren't too much like any other characters', take the opportunity to interweave your background with the other characters, know a few people they know, maybe you met once and so have preconceived notions about each other. Make sure that, mechanically, you're not stepping on each other's toes. This will make that first session a bit less awkward and will give all the characters a slightly greater investiture in each other and the game itself.
-Characterization: When people talk about writing characters, this is usually what they're talking about, in addition to Backgrounding and Optimization. This is the nuts and bolts of what you'll be playing: personality, likes and dislikes, relationships, hopes, dreams, and so on. Nearly every game book will have a section on characterization, so I won't waste all their efforts and repeat them here. If you're new to gaming (or are assisting someone who is), don't discourage them from taking the easy route out: just make yourself or one of your favorite characters from fiction or history with a couple new additions. It's easy for those of us who've been gaming or writing or acting for years and years to be derisive of this style of character creation, but it's really as valid a method of characterization as any other.
-Backgrounding: Backgrounding is a related but separate art from Characterization, and while I put it after Characterization, some players like to begin with the background and work out where the character sits in the 'present' from there. Backgrounding involves sussing out everything that happened to the character before the game begins. Most GMs will ask for a single piece of Backgrounding that you need to do, usually a written piece of fiction about the character, introducing them. Some people get super creative with these, writing them as journal entries, in the form of a story told by them or about them or a dozen other ways. However, unless it's an exhaustive description of absolutely everything your character's ever done, (which it shouldn't be because nobody wants to read that), that is not all that Backgrounding is. Writing little anecdotes of things your character's done can give you something to talk about in-character during dull moments while your GM is looking up rules or hitting the restroom, and can add a lot of little personal quirks that add a lot to a character.
-Optimization: At last we get to the part of the character where you put the numbers to the personality and the history. I list this last not because it should necessarily be done last, but because it is the least interactive and thus requires the least input, aside from the aforementioned Group Integration and avoiding stepping on the other players' toes (IE: pick one of you to be the pickpocket, let the other one be the fast-talker, don't both try to do both). Now, I do think that being able to optimize your character is an important skill. Some people might call this min/maxing or power-gaming. I acknowledge that such things exist, but creating a character who is effective in the role that I have written for them is not doing so, unless I create a character who is dramatically better at their role than anyone else is at theirs, in which case I have not simply optimized, I have hyper-optimized, and that is a problem that needs to be addressed. When creating a character, resist the urge to get out the ruler and prove that your stat-penis is bigger than everyone else in some way. It's really hard, I know, and anyone whose gamed with me also knows that I could stand to take this advice as much as anyone, but that direction leads to hyper-optimization and mechanics breaking down. Someday I'll write a post about the issue of combat hyper-optimization vs mental or social hyper-optimization and how they're not at all balanced, but not today.
Let me also mention that Character Creation does not end when the game begins. Characters grow and learn and at the very least they get more powers, so at least one of these sections will continue after the game begins, and that means at least three will, because Setting Integration and Group Integration are part and parcel of all three of the final steps. Keeping in mind whether or not your planned upgrades are appropriate for the game the DM is running and the group that you are a part of is an easily overlooked part of making yourself not only a welcome addition to your local games, but also an effective member of your party, even if your character is someone who doesn't get along with the others.
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