Some of you may know from last night i was generating characters for my story. Personal, i find the idea of the story and what happens to be the easy part, but thinking up unique characters, without prompts, is really hard for me because they are so vast. having played a few pen and paper RPGs in the past, i thought up a neat little way to generate some character that could then be fit into the story. here is a breakdown of how i work them out.

First of all, i have a seven "Stat" system. these numbers range from 1-18 and act as a guide to the person. The way you generate this number is via rolling 3d6 and adding the total together. Because you are rolling 3d6, you will never have below 3 in a stat meaning that you should assume that below that is life crippling/ unable to function with that stat and majorly debilitating. So to take away from this - below 3 i would not use, 2 would be life crippling problem and 1 would essentially make the user dead in any of the stat

Example: a Character has a stat of 2 in strength. They have three ways of functioning in the story. Firstly, they are a stephpen hawkins esq character who has a support "tool" that enables them a buff to the number while in it. this tool may not cure them of their problems, however it will enable them to while being physicaly worse (maybe even 1 lvl) at a higher stat level.Next, we have the "Alt Stat justification" method. In this method, we see the character has a higher alt stat that can be used to justifie the disability/imparement or make them have a bonus. some key examples of this would be paralympic champions, or Lennie from of mice and men.

The last method of using a 2 ties in with using a 1, in that it becomes more of a non-interactable character/debilitating to the point of being a point. an example of a 1 in int would be someone who is brain dead, while a 2 in int could be a person in a deep coma who ocasionaly surfaces lucidly. a 2 in wisdom could be someone so detached from reality yet able to connect/say useful information from time to time, where as a 1 would be someone who is beyond sanity.

so, above we have covered how we use the extream lows, lets now talk about the rest of the numbers, 3-18. an average human should be 10s across the board, however we all know this is not the case. with obesity, mental health, history, even down to genetics, we are all above/below the board. despite what we may want to say, not all humans are created equal, some are better than others. but the flaws add to character and are just as equaly good as the bonuses. remember, the key thing to note in writing a story over playing a game is you are not trying to win with these characters. your only limit is your imagination. if you want a overweight, charismatic character with too little street smarts, you can have it. if you want to be an beautiful bbw woman with high charisma and hots, but low const, you can do that. the sky is the limit with what you can create here, but its also important to note one golden rule before we go any further - all numbers are just a guide. if you get further into this character creation, remember, you can change the numbers to fit your idea. if you get halfway through and a character starts to take shape but you feel the numbers are not right, tweek them. its only a guide for you to use

Next, lets move on to the stats we have been talking about so far. here is a breakdown of what i use

Strength (str): this stat indicates the persons, well, strength, the state of their body, and how fit they are.

Dexterity (dex): in RPG this stat represents how nimble and dexterous you are with your fingers. in this, i use it also to represent how much they can think on their feet. someone can be physicaly dexterous and be able to be very tactile and nimble, or be mentaly dexterous, think hans shoots first kind of thing.

Constitution (con): this stat represents the characters state of the body, their endurance and drive. someone with a higher con essentialy can go "above and beyond" what others of the same stat could, example would be Paralympic champions who don't let their disabilities goven them.

Inteligence (int): i would describe int as book smarts, but also as raw mental functionality. this is the mental processing power stat so a high int could be someone in mensa, or a high functioning autistic character.

wisdom (wis): where as int is book smarts, wis is people/world smarts. a character can be low int high wis or high int low wis and be very different characters. socialites often have high wisdom and charisma in my books, as this allows them to read the situation with wisdom, then react with charisma.

Charisma (cha): this is NOT hots. your characters looks are not determined by charisma, this is their raw ability to interact with people, their way to charm a guard, give a speach or command an army. to give you an idea, when you see a guy batting well above his average? chances are if external things are not involved, it's down to raw charisma

Hots (hot): a stat i took from other systems, Hots is literaly what it says, how good you look. but the great thing about hots is it can work in a number of ways, for example, you can have an 18 in hots and be the hottest woman in the room in a traditional, or non traditonal way. for example, Furiosa from fury road would be an 16 despite missing a for-arm and having a distinct look to her. while say maybe a gorgon from myth would have a hots of 2 despite being beautiful, if anyone looks at them they turn to stone (so they can never use hots to help them.

lets end this section with an example. i'm going to generate the character bob right now. here are bobs stats| STR:14, DEX:9, CON:11, INT:12, WIS:8, CHAR:9, HOT:9|

So,looking at these numbers i'm going to say Bob is a bulky(str) college(int) guy who plays american football. however, he is not very nimble(dex) and is often sent to the bench unless they need his brute force. he is currently studying at college(int) however comes from a small town(wis) and has not experienced much of the world. he has a beaten up face from the last match where he got hit hard (hot) but is still well liked on the team (char)

Let me know what you think of this system of character generation, i have other stages i usually go through however this post is already extremely long.