Tabletop roleplaying games are an important part of my creative process. Dungeons & Dragons was my first, but these days I’m a loyal Pathfinder player. Dominic Deegan was born from my very first tentative steps into making Wizards of different schools from a second edition D&D book, and I still use some of that creative energy when playing today.
I don’t rely on these games to write my stories, however. I’ve never done a storyline that was based on a campaign, but I’ve taken characters from those games and placed them in the comics. Dominic is the prime example of that here, and Makena being the latest. TTRPGs have become a sort of audition to see which characters I want to bring onto the “main stage” of my comic.
When I’m making these characters for TTRPGs of any system I tend to avoid writing lengthy backstories for them. I love starting from scratch because that is, to me, the beginning of their backstory. Starting with a mostly blank slate and letting the game write the character’s origin is a more organic way to develop a character than adhering to a pre-written backstory, in my opinion.
I’m currently playing a dwarf in the Pathfinder adventure path, Sky King’s Tomb. This dwarf began as a devout priest of the dwarven pantheon, loaded with spells and strengthened by his faith. He was okay, but not terribly interesting. Something was missing. I trusted the game, my friends, and the creative process to help me “find” who this character truly was. He eventually found a book about mushrooms, took to studying nature around him (this game takes place mostly underground), and eventually became a practiced herbalist. In a harsh battle with a spell-stealing opponent, he found his magic ripped away and I used that to give him a crisis of faith. My GM was generous enough to let me remake the character into an Oracle who was trying to rediscover his faith and new connection to the divine.
This character’s backstory was finally written by the game itself, and I finally found who this dwarf is: a former cleric who had his divine magic ripped away from him, only for it to be reborn in a way he doesn’t fully understand. He takes solace in his newfound love of the underground’s fungi and their various beneficial effects. This is something I could have written beforehand, but I trusted it to be found naturally. And I’m glad I did, because he’s become one of my favorite characters to play in recent memory.
If you’re a TTRPG player I recommend this method of character building. Let your original character concept be open to change and see what happens. Let the story’s events not only guide your decisions but shape your character. You may end up with something far different than what you originally envisioned, and possibly something far better.