There we go, updated the 48 questions with the two additional ones. Mind you #50 really is two questions, so now we're at 51!

I like things that semi-codify the personality of the character at character creation, but I'd go with something a little less than 50 trivia questions, my players would never want to answer all of those.

Generally I'd go with around 5 questions, like, where are you from? What caused you to leave? Who is important to you? What is a belief you can act on? And then a tailored question to the general theme of the campaign. Plus, add motivations in there and I also like for PCs to write down goals, short term and long term, and then reward XP based on fulfilling those motivations and goals.

From what I've seen mechanical rewards actually go a long way to encourage interesting dynamics and things happening without PCs worrying about not getting shafted for doing cool, fun, dangerous or stupid things.

So, anyone who participated in the StoryShop Kickstarter at a certain level should already have received their copy of “Character DNA” questions, which runs something over 280 items. This from people who are professional novelists and authors of various types of books, and which goes along with their various other items that they have come up with to help people learn how to write better.

Desslok’s list is rather shorter than that.

As pointed out, you don’t have to answer all the questions. But you might want to look at them and decide which ones are worth answering for a given character, as a way to help flesh out their motivations.

If you don’t like it, then don’t use it.

As for myself, I’ll probably look at some mixture of the StoryShop list and the lists provided here, and that should help me better prepare the NPCs that I’m going to be creating.

If you're looking for a way to just keep it simple, focus on your background before touching your character sheet. You'll hit on a lot of these points for sure, but there's no need to go quite so deep.

Wow. How to abuse your players AND ruin any chance of interesting characters in one easy tool.

Whatever happened to disagreeing politely?

Who does your character love? everyone has someone they love. even the most vile person.
Who does your character hate? Even the most noble person has someone they hate.
Why are they here? If you don't know this you don't know why they are in the party...kind of important.

Wow. How to abuse your players AND ruin any chance of interesting characters in one easy tool.

* Improv will tell you that ideas which are over thought suck. The responses to this questionnaire will either be over thought drivel or they'll be trite responses from players who don't want to waste time filling in the form.

* Narrative games suffer badly if players don't have the freedom to create on the fly and this level of background severely limits it. Play to find out what happens - don't ruin the excitement by Pre-codifying everything.

* The best roleplaying moment come from finding out what matters to a character - and they are best if discovered together with the player. You want to find out which s more important to a character, his mother or his ship? You give him an in game dilemma and sees how it plays out. You do not give the player a questionnaire ! Also flashbacks are a brilliant tool. As a GM you can flashback to scenes - in fact you can frame any scene you want. That most interesting childhood moment could have been a great roleplaying moment.

* Also, the most interesting moments of your chracter's lives should be the moments you are playing through. You never want to be trying to recapture former glories. If something really interesting happened to the character before, why aren't we playing through that.

Finally your players will either hate you for giving them unnecessary homework or will love the chance to produce narrative back door Demi-gods.

Yes, background details ARE important, but they are a framing tool. Past a certain point they don't add to the game - they actually detract, and this list has slipped well past that point.

I see no obligation for a character to answer them. But who knows... asking leading questions tends to get people thinking about their characters in new ways. Which is always worthwhile.

The more questions answered, the more facets of the character. I find that quickly creating a character with one or two quirks is enough to get stared in the game. As it progresses, the depth of the character and their personality get built along with the mechanics. As the character grows and experiences more things, other aspects of their personality and drive come out and are explored.

A brand new character isn't going to interact with a lot of X immediately -- they're usually focused on staying alive and accomplishing the first mission. Therefore it doesn't make a lot of sense to try to figure out what that character's position toward X is until it comes up in game. If the player -wants- to do that (and come up with a full backstory with a lot of juicy plot hooks), more power to them. However, as a GM, I wouldn't expect the players to answer 50, 100 or 300 questions about the various aspects of the character before they played them for a while. I've found most of the best characters are grown organically through play rather than plotted out in advance.

However, as a GM, I wouldn't expect the players to answer 50, 100 or 300 questions about the various aspects of the character before they played them for a while.

Exactly - I find the best way to use this checklist is to come in with a high level concept and enough of a framework develop a nice solid bedrock of background and personality. At the first game, answer what comes naturally to mind (which occasionally is all 50). Then, after a couple of weeks of playing, as the character begins to jell on the playing field, go back and fill in more.

Building a character is not a one-and-done process, but a fluid evolution over time.

Who does your character love? everyone has someone they love. even the most vile person.

Who does your character hate? Even the most noble person has someone they hate.

Why are they here? If you don't know this you don't know why they are in the party...kind of important.

Nah, a survivor of Order 66 would probably neither Hate nor Love, or atleast try to. (struggle is very interesting for a character)

The last one is in my opinion very important, maybe abit of the GMs task.

Over all I find the Questions very good, as I feel that sometimes the players don't know their own characters or the GM and the players have different ideas about how the character works.

Those help avoiding that and the more background a character has the more you can tie into the game to give the PCs actually more depth and charactes.

I would likely just use a few questions out of this list for my NPCs even. I like to have my character evolve as I play so I don't often create a very detailed background, but just reading over the list and picking one or two would be a huge boon to developing my character. Consider this list yoinked.

I personally really like this list. When I get the chance to play rather than run a game I tend to go through a list like this in my head. I like getting to know a character and taking the time to flesh out a background gives a clear picture of how they look at the world. When a character has a past they have a motivation for the future. A lot of RPGs have a shortened version included in the character sections that all too often get skipped over.

Good work Desslok

Who does your character love? everyone has someone they love. even the most vile person.

Who does your character hate? Even the most noble person has someone they hate.

Why are they here? If you don't know this you don't know why they are in the party...kind of important.

Nah, a survivor of Order 66 would probably neither Hate nor Love, or atleast try to. (struggle is very interesting for a character)

The last one is in my opinion very important, maybe abit of the GMs task.

Over all I find the Questions very good, as I feel that sometimes the players don't know their own characters or the GM and the players have different ideas about how the character works.

Those help avoiding that and the more background a character has the more you can tie into the game to give the PCs actually more depth and charactes.

Oh I am sure they would hate and love. Nothing says the person they love is alive. And really we don't get a choice on love. They may fight it.