For those of you who have reached out to me to make sure I’m OK, thank you. October and November were busier than I expected. I’m sorry that I made you guys worry, but yes there will be a 2025 Character Creation Challenge coming up this January. I’ve been itching to get back into my geek and RPG blogs. Especially since I’ve discovered how interactive the geek community has been on the BlueSky social media website. It was really reminding me of Twitter back in 2012-19 back when it was fun and a source of information. I’m seeing feeds as I want them (not four days later like other social media websites). When I ask questions, I get answers instead of ridicule. I’ve made a ton of new connections. I hope you all enjoy reading this blog.
I’ve been getting this website updated in preparation for the upcoming challenge. The 2024 entries and links of participating sites have been moved to their own section. This has the effect of making the main Character Creation Challenge page look pretty blank for participating forums and blogs. If you are participating again this year, shoot me a message and I’ll get you added. I’ll try to search out what I can, but I know I won’t get all of them. This event has been growing every year and now we have reached the fifth year. I can’t wait to see what creativity you all come up with.
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 online message boards. The forums at RPG.net was a popular forum where a lot of participants had posted their completed characters. Other active participating message boards included the RPG Pub and the RPG Geek forums (which had entries going for most of the year).
To the left of my computer I have a stack of physical RPG books that I’ve picked up in 2024. Brand new books included the Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition and some Kickstarter rewards. I had picked up some books from SaltCON, others were picked up from online purchases or found in thrift stores. On the PDF side of things, I’ve picked up a bunch of books from various charity bundles or just from the DriveThruRPG website. I’ll have a better idea which 31 games I’m going to use soon when I post my “Prepping for the 2025 Character Creation Challenge” post coming next month. I’m still crossing my fingers that one more kickstarter reward will arrive in time. Plus I don’t know if I’ll be gifted a game in the upcoming “Secret Satan” gift exchange that always happens on the RPG.net forums.
Some forever GMs use this as a challenge to create a character like they were actually going to just play. There are a few other themes posted on the main Character Creation Challenge page. Remember, this is for fun, so have fun with it.
It feels good to get an actual blog post up about Roleplaying Games. I know that I’ve been able to keep my Star Trek Quotes reports fresh, but I want to type, I want to pass on knowledge, I want to grow and explore. So look for more soon and thanks for being patient with me.
If you would like to participate, email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com, post on the TardisCaptain.com Discord Channel or find me on social media/message boards 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.
