BioWare Blog: Creating a Character

BioWare’s Jay Watamaniuk has penned two separate entries on the company’s blog (here and here) detailing the lengths he went to in order to create a proper character for a heavily modified Shadowrun campaign.

Recently, a friend pitched a long term Shadowrun game he wanted to run. His game would have two important house rule changes however: it would be a steampunk Victorian England era setting, and use the Fate rules. Still Shadowrun? In essence, yes, but some major differences needed to be taken into consideration for creating a character. I drew a complete blank for the character and needed some help.

Right away I started thinking about the setting: brick, brass, pipes, pollution, Dickensian clothing, old money, workhouses, poverty, English imperialism, emergence of modern science and on and on. I did not have a basic class concept of the type of character I wanted to play: fighter, spy/rogue, wizard/technology user, healer/support or a mixture. Sometimes I have a clear idea of what class I want to play and sometimes I don’t. Either way, I end up looking for inspiration in a variety of places. In the long, long ago era when the world was a primordial ooze before the internet I used magazines, art books, novels and movies for ideas. Today I add Google images to the mix. I work in pictures and always have. Even if I start knowing exactly what I want to play, I still go looking for pictures to get my thoughts in gear.

I used search terms from my list of setting descriptions: steampunk, clockwork, Victorian, and so on. I grabbed anything that struck my fancy in my searches, ending up with a folder of a few dozen pictures that seemed to resonate. How did I pick them? I don’t know, I just picked what I like without a definite plan. I have long since learned to trust my instincts when going through this process.