So, where do you guys find your ideas for your characters? Do you begin with the class and race and build a personality from there? Do you take characters from movies, television and other media and try to recreate them in a given system? Where have your characters come from?

~SE++

Given that most games here around are d20, I start with a class that sounds mechanically fun to play, then try to cram as many reasons to have people hate me as possible into the backstory. Needless to say, Tiefling is my favorite race.

Okay, well, sort of. Generally, I start with a class. Then I make some personality point that I want to play, and justify it in his backstory. That makes some more points I can justify, which quickly gives you at least three major parts of a life you can detail. Then you can go from there and justify how the person would act based on what you have. And then I bounce back and forth from there.

I do things backwards I suppose...

I get whatever information I can about the world, from there I try to imagine a fairly average person in that setting and start building a personality and mannerisms. Once I know that I play around with which classes that sort of personality would fit best in, and then normally consider at least one class that it wouldnt normally be suited in.

However if I'm joining a game that already is in progress, or am the last person building the character I do try to figure out what class or role the group could use mechanically. And from there normally dont have too much problem fleshing out a decent character concept.

I think its the little things that really bring a character to life, and a lot of people like to focus on larger broad concepts but I find that the things you often dont think about tend to make the character more than just numbers on paper.

I generally start by thinking of what I want the character to do and get a basic idea of their personality. Everything else flows from there.

I normally have one "key" point, then by compiling tons of little things it helps to put together the big picture.

In d20 games, I tend to start off with a pretty generic race + class combination I want to try and build up from there. The first time I played 3.5, I just wanted to play a barbarian and from there, I created a backstory that she was (or believed she was) a selkie who had lost her seal skin and was stuck as a landbound human.

In NWoD, I sort of go the other way and instead start with a concept, like "the crew's cook" or "cricket violinist" or "Ursula from The Little Mermaid" or "I want to have a zombie throne like Liliana Vess".

Backstories are easy for me, so details are not a problem. But I usually only play characters that are interesting for me, something with a hook for me get into. So that can trend toward bizarre, non-optimal characters. In my current adventure, that's why I'm using a Dragon Disciple instead of the typical tank.

In 2nd Edition, I would have loved to play a dual-class thief/psion for a sort of master thief that could get in anywhere, and more importantly get out of anywhere. Not my fault 2nd Ed psions are grossly unbalanced! But boy that would have been a blast!

So that's how I end up with melee Bards, Spellswords, Soulknife tanks, and other oddballs. They won't take over the universe, but I have a blast with them, and I don't have to feel guilty about min-maxing characters since they are starting at a disadvantage, to give 'em the best chance. Great characters and optimal development = fun, fun, fun that I might actually survive with.