Building Character

Statistics and Personality
Role playing is centered around the actions of a fictional game character who serves as the “playing piece” in an RP Game. Each player, except the referee, controls at least one player character, as they are commonly called. The referee controls everything else with which the player characters interact in the imaginary game world. As our playing piece, our avatar or alter ego, we players invest some degree of our creativity, hopes and aspirations in our character. It has been my experience that these character development efforts fall into two broad categories which I will label conceptual and mechanical.
Character generation, how we create the basic framework of the character, varies according to the specific game system, but all share the common goal of establishing the mechanical data that will help define the character’s abilities.  Many systems have borrowed the core six abilities of Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma from the World’s First Role-Playing Game. Add Class (or profession) and Race (or ancestry) and we have the core mechanical outline of a player character. (Mechanical in the sense that we have the data with which to apply the game’s rules so that outcomes, using dice where necessary, can be determined.) Many systems, including that first game which came in the White Box, allow for character advancement through accumulation of Experience Points resulting in progression to the next Level where additional class abilities may increase the character’s powers to deal more effectively with game challenges. This constitutes a mechanical building up of the character.
Characters in a role-playing game are often thought of as more than a set of values recorded on a character sheet. For many of us, we start to think of our character as a fictional “person” with personality. Some are “good” and therefore motivated to help others, right wrongs, and uphold just laws. Some characters may be played as if they are brave, risking their own well being in pursuit of the lofty ideals in which they believe. Some characters may be played as friendly and out-going, others as shy and reserved. It is part of the game’s fun to role-play your character as something different from yourself. How much of this “personality” is suggested by the data found on the character sheet is a matter for personal interpretation.
In role-playing games we build characters in two distinct, but perhaps interrelated ways. We jot down numbers and descriptors on our character sheet and rely on such data to mechanically navigate through the system rules. We also form a concept of who our character is, what motivates them and sets them apart from others and use this mental concept to role-play our character in the shared fiction of our game. And there-in exists much of the fun to be discovered and shared through playing the game and which establishes role-playing games as a unique entertainment form.