Last night I had an upbeat and jovial character creation session with my friend Frank T (from the Middle Kingdoms Adventure & Trading Co.), who has been keen to learn more about the approach I have been taking to character creation for the Northern Isles campaign.

Tomorrow’s episode of Roleplay Rescue podcast features a conversation between myself and the three players on what they have experienced in trying our experiment with bringing all the rules and dice rolls behind the screen. It’s a broadly positive verdict with some key learning for me as a GM.

Frank’s session was aiming to give him a taste of what we’ve been doing and I think he enjoyed it. The raw unedited recording of the evening is up on the Patreon if anyone is curious. Listening back, it seemed to me that Frank had a good time creating a shaping an interesting player character.

For me, the session reminded me of why I chose the approach and was a lot of fun. Listening to Frank respond to the mix of events and challenges that arose, choosing a few skills, and making key decisions made it really clear that character creation is as much play as anything else in roleplaying games.

The nice side effect of playing is that it always energises me towards wanting to play more. In this regard, I wish I could find a way to get Frank to the table with the others on a Saturday night because he’s a highly creative and very enjoyable guy to game with. At the very least, he has got me itching to develop my game further. That’s no small thing.

It’s these unexpected joys that arise from spontaneous play that are rich for me. I didn’t know what he would choose, or even have the foggiest what concept he’d arrive with… but we did make the session come alive and it was the highlight of my week.

So, thanks Frank. Hope you’ll come again soon.

Game on!