Character Roleplay Interview

[mf_hansen]

It is sometimes difficult to figure out your character's personality and background, but if you do not there is a risk of creating bland or one-dimentional characters that make decisions with seemingly random motivations behind them. I suffer from this myself on occasion, but fear not!

I noticed a couple of useful character interview questions you may wish to consider when fleshing out your character, taken from page 60-61 of the 3rd edition Ravenloft Core Rulebook (the numbers 01 to 13 each correlate to an interview question in that PDF/book):

FUNDAMENTALS
01. What do you look like? Attractive or not, distinguishing features?
07. Any routines or habits? Daily rituals, odd habits, funny quirks?
02. Where is home and family? Where you from, your family, current home?

PERSONALITY
12. Are you self-confident? Neurotic or Extraverted (I/E).
10. Sophisticated or not? Closed or openness to ideas (S/N).
11. Have any faith and trust? Untrusting or agreeable (T/F).
09. Rational or passionate? Conscientous or laid back (J/P).

AMBITIONS
06. What are your interests? Discussion topics, hobbies, shows, activities?
13. Why do you adventure? Instead of a peaceful life, by choice or not?
03. What will you fight for? Anything or anyone you would keep at any cost?

OBSTACLES
05. What do you hate or fear? Have any phobias or anger outburst triggers?
04. What do you regret most? Anything personal you want to forget or change?
08. What are your big secrets? What do you hide, and what if you revealed it?

For the personality group of questions, you may recognize some terms from the Big Five or MBTI personality types which you can to some extent map to your character's stats as follows:

Below vs above average CHA, for neurotic/introverted behavior vs extroverted socializing.
Higher of STR+DEX+CON vs WIS+INT+CHA, for practical/sensing vs intuitive/abstract thinking.
Higher of INT vs WIS, for objective thinking vs feeling/religious or agreeable decision making.
Lawful vs Chaotic, for conscientous/organized planning vs spontaneous/laid-back improvisation.

So far this has just been for personal use but I may as well share it and lay it out a bit instead of keeping it as an ugly txt file on a harddrive somewhere. You probably have your own tools you use when fleshing out characters for roleplay and developing their mindset; if so feel free to add them and your character development thoughts, tips or useful links (like tvtropes.org) below!

[Mayonnaise]

These are some great questions!