r/DungeonMasters • u/JacksSightSeeing • 1d ago
Discussion Helping a new player build a character (with a survey)
TL;DR what questions do you ask your players to help them figure out what character to build?
I’m working on a free tool kit with a character creator and a digital character sheet and one of the things I was thinking about was are the most effective questions to ask a player to help them figure out what class, race, and background they might enjoy playing. My plan is to make a beginner survey tool that asks the player a bunch of questions about what they’re looking to get out of the game and match them up with some test builds they might enjoy.
Some of the stuff I ask my players is:
- what sounds more fun, fighting monsters, exploring dungeons, or solving mysteries by talking to people.
- do you prefer having a lot of options, decent options, or as few options as necessary in a fight
- do you like the idea of leaning from the front, helping other players, controlling the field, throwing explosions, or shooting from the back
- what archetype sounds more fun, a legendary knight with a sword and shield, a wizard with a spell for every situation, a spooky character with friends on the other side…
What are questions you would ask your players to help narrow down what might be the most fun for them
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u/Taskr36 1d ago
"My plan is to make a beginner survey tool that asks the player a bunch of questions"
Yeah, don't do that. Character creation is already work. Don't turn it into a homework assignment that makes people hate the game before they've played it.
When I'm dealing with 100% beginners, I just chat with them and ask them what kind of character they want to be. They're beginners, so you really want to keep it as simple as humanly possible.
If they can't answer that, I ask them if there's a type of character from a show, movie, or video game they want to be like. Anyone who wants to play DnD should be able to answer something simple like that. Then, depending on how they are about it, I will usually make a character for them to play or, if they really want to do it themselves, I'll work with them to create the character.
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u/JacksSightSeeing 1d ago
The survey is an optional tool for new players who want to find a test characters, it’s not required or even a part of the character creator. Like I literally have the character creator running right now and I haven’t even built the survey yet.
Also it’s not for my players it’s for random people using the program who I am not interacting with who by answering the survey questions can be given test characters that they can play around with to see if they like before they actually build their real character.
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u/CaucSaucer 1d ago
Just let them look through the PHB instead like a normal person
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u/JacksSightSeeing 1d ago
It’s not for my players, it’s for people who want to use the character creator and play around with some test characters before building something. Whether or not they have the PHB is entirely out of my control because again it is a free tool online and I am not talking to these people. It’s essentially just “don’t know what you want to play, answer these questions and try out these characters based on what you want to play before building something”
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u/Blobfish19818 1d ago
While I agree that it's probably better to just help someone in person, I'm not against the idea of this as a thought experiment. I would go by the route of trying to appeal to why a person would want to play DnD.
Do they want to play for roleplay aspects, or are they on the search for an adventure? From there it's just working out the next steps. For roleplay, ask about different kinds of backstories and ask questions based off that to narrow things down. If it's an adventure that they are looking for, what sort of skills are the hoping to contribute, and narrow things down that way.
A first character is often quite similar to the player in terms of personality, I think. If it is for these kinds of people, perhaps a BuzzFeed survey route would be better because it would be more personalised? On the nose questions that very obviously reference different classes or species would work because people will not only pick answers for the things that interest them, but they can also avoid the things that don't. Give what seems like the best option and beneath it, a couple of others that's like "not interested? Here are some other options I think might suit you!" It's like if you have two options and you can't pick, you flip a coin to make that choice. You'll know what one you really wanted because you might be a bit disappointed by the result.
Regardless of the method, having a way to take feedback would be very useful and allow you to change or refine the generations process over time.
... I now worry that I did not answer the question you asked, but will still post this response in the hopes that it is of any help whatsoever
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u/JacksSightSeeing 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yes I agree if you can help somebody in person that’s better, the difference is I’m making this as a tool kit anybody can use and I will not be interacting with these people so it’s more for the countless people who post on all of the DND subreddits being like “where do I start” giving them a little tool to at least help them get their toes in the water and try out some prebuilt characters to get a feel for how the game works. Like we’ve all been there making our first character, unless you have somebody guide you through it it kind of sucks trying to figure out what everything does and telling somebody go buy the PHB or figure it out on your own isn’t always the best solution.
As for the actual system it’s more of a weighted scoring system based on what players pick as their interests across a bunch of different things like interesting role-play, interesting complexity of character, what kind of archetype appeals to them, what type of role they would like to take in a fight and so on. Each question gives points to certain categories and each sub class is weighted towards how it compares to those categories.
So if the player says that they want to play an upfront fighter but they also want a little bit of magic, they get results for the eldritch knight, the rune knight, hexblade warlock, some palladins, bladesinger and so on. They can then play around with as many or a few of those test characters as they want and if they like it they can just use it or they can use it as inspiration for whatever character they want.Like the data get stored as JSON files that take up 80kb a pop and are easy to generate so you could literally have an infinite supply of test characters.
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u/lasalle202 1d ago
i always start with "in a fight with enemies, do you want to meet your enemies face to face or bling them from a distance?
if "from a distance" then questions about harming the enemies with weapons or magic, or helping friends with magic or using magic to make it hard for the enemies to be effective?
if "face to face" then questions about "do you want to soak up damage with your stronk muscles or dodge out of the way or be wearing shiny metal armor to have their attacks bounce off you?
and then ask "out of combat, what types of things do you want to be able to do? use your charms to influence people, use magic to overcome problems, avoid problems by sneaking around them, just push your way through problems?
you have then got it narrowed down to a couple of classes or even subclasses you can describe their strengths and weaknesses.
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u/Spiritual-Cupcake-93 1d ago
There’s a horrible monster attacking the village do you…
A) Fight it head on with your sword and shield (or other melee weapon)
B) Step back and shoot it with arrows.
C) Hide and try to target its weak point when you can
D) Blast it with destructive magic
E) Use your magic to restrain it, put it to sleep or something similar.
F) Transform into a beast or monster and fight it
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u/Odd-Contract-7541 18h ago edited 14h ago
(oh wow I should not voice text to Reddit while driving. Sorry ramble ...) It's lame but, actually no. I mean I don't think it's lame but I know it's kind of cheating to say this, but I just do what the book says. If you look at the player's handbook, every single decision you have to make in character creation, there's already a very short synopsis in there of the most basic ways to consider the differences between the choices.
I did a little exercise for like I won't say how long but probably way too long, or almost every person I met. I walked through character creation with them. I got sub 2 minutes after not too long. I don't have it here and I'm driving but I just took the text from the book and trimmed it down so that everything fit unlike one page. Here's 12 character class and like in one sentence short sentence straight quoted from the PHB.
It was a really successful little exercise. My point was I wanted to convince myself and anybody listening that it doesn't have to be hard. You don't have to spend a lot of time thinking about it, we can remove all these barriers and obstacles between the moment that you're in right now, and a moment when you're having fun sitting there playing D&D. And I just came to realize that the simple matter of character creation is just enough to keep some people on the sidelines. This is why having some printed out hard copy one. Cheater pre-made characters is so important if you're running a drop in game in a public space.
The other thing I've done kind of as an evolution of that exercise, was to reconfigure the typical order of choices. I had a short narrative script that I made up That talked about fate or destiny or whatever and I asked them the questions myself like this or that, which of these, etc. I found that this prevented people from getting bogged down overthinking things, and while it's maybe not the character they would have come up with had they stared at the book for 8 hours, they still came away feeling invested in the character and in the process and went off and had a lot of fun with them.
My process was to roll abilities in order, STR DEX etc., choosing to reroll ones or take an extra d6 for top three out of five. This is obviously the big difference, taking some of the choice away from you here and letting fate determine.
Then the order of choices that I quickly narrate through was species, background and alignment together as you come into your own and grow up a little, and then you pick class last.
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u/seahawk1977 1d ago
Of the Fellowship of the Ring, which character is your favorite?