I’ve already had people ask me if there will be a Character Creation Challenge in 2022. I had so much fun participating and running the 2021 challenge that I knew I wanted to do this again. So here is the official announcement, yes we will have the challenge in January 2022. New year, new you (errr… new character). Have fun with this event.
For those of you learning about this for the first time, the Character Creation Challenge is for fans of various role playing games. You may have looked into a game or collected the books with the intention to play but never have. Or perhaps you have a favorite system that you always turn to for RPG sessions. Well the Character Creation Challenge is an event to create a new RPG character for each day in January (running parallel to the “new year, new you” theme) from what ever system(s) you choose. Once you have the character ready to play, post it on a website, blog, social media (use the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge) or message boards. The forums at RPG.net was a popular place that a lot of participants had posted their completed characters. UPDATE: The new thread on RPG.net for the 2022 Character Creation Challenge can be found here.
In 2021 I took part in this challenge by making different characters for different systems using just the core rulebook for the game. Because I would be creating on a daily basis, I used a spreadsheet to schedule out what games would be on which days. This way the games I was very familiar with would take place on my busy days. Games that I was not familiar with or had difficult creation rules were saved for my non-busy days (usually weekends). I was able to create characters for systems that I had not played in quite some time. It was a blast going through the steps that I had not taken in years. Some games I had remembered playing, but forgot how clunky the creation process was for a book printed in the 80s and 90s.
For 2022 I’m going to go with another random assortment of games. Some I thought about after seeing others post their characters (like Feast of Legends from Wendy’s) and others were from games that I had picked up over the past year or gifted to me by friends. There were also several games that I didn’t get a chance to use in 2021, so they will be strongly considered. I’ve also decided that I’m going to use official supplements for the game in my character creations for 2022 instead of just sticking to the core rules.
I had other participants tell me that they had chosen a theme (like all Witches as seen in different roleplay systems) or a favorite setting (Al-Qadim for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition) or even a favorite system (all characters were from Classic Traveler). When I first suggested this idea, I had one person respond that they wanted to try this with games they had never played or haven’t played in five years. If a common theme helps you with your #CharacterCreationChallenge then go for it.
As I was writing up this blog post, I visited several of the sites that had participated in the 2021 challenge. I think I’m going to try to come up with something for those who complete the challenge in January. I don’t know what it will be yet, but I’ll come up with something.
If you would like to participate, email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com and let me know where you will be posting your challenge characters at. If you are posting them on a website, I’ll add the link to my Character Creation Challenge page.