Ramblings on Character: Daniel Beard

Building a character is a very involved process. You have to consider multiple facets of a fictional personality to make a totality of a person. And I love it immensely. The thing is though, I think characters have aspects of ourselves built within them. So what does it mean when you are making a character based on a specific franchise, or even (as in the case of Daniel Beard here) a specific person? What aspects come from you and which are derived from traits you admire and find interesting? I find it a delicate balance, too accurate, and you run the risk of it not making sense with the setting or even the other PC’s too far, and it won’t resemble your intent.

This experience was fun. With Daniel, I was able to communicate in real-time with listeners on the stream. Like Kim (the player of our very own C.A.S.P.A.R. on The Body Electric) who helped to guide me in the build of this Promethean. I was able to take that information and turn it into this man who is desperate for a connection to the point that studying the human condition became something dark, and almost sad. I have to say I didn’t dive into this to create a ‘Catfish’ but it is kind of fitting for a Promethean. I hope our listener who inspired him, likes him…

But that brings me to something that I think about often when starting a new game; I love having a group character creation or at the very least a discussion of initial concepts. It is vital, in my opinion, to the success of the game to ensure that the PC’s have a reason to co-exist. Talk with your Gm, and/or groups, even a ‘lone wolf’ needs a reason to be around the party. When you go into a game with that idea in mind, you can more organically build connections with other PC’s.  This is something I truly love about the PBtA/BoB* ethos. In them, you have questions tied to your playbooks (think class/splat if you are unfamiliar)  that build connections with another player to your “left” and “right”. I wish more games did this.  With the rising popularity of indie and narrative-oriented games, I expect we will. And I couldn’t be more thrilled. 

Here is Daniel Beards’ sheet. If you use him in any capacity hop onto our Discord, we would love to hear about it! 

*PBtA/BoB: stands for Powered By the Apocalypse and Belonging Outside Belonging. These are highly narrative games with simple but hyper-specific mechanics.