Meeting Your Main Character

Name: Pretty self-explanatory, what do you call yourself?

Pronouns: Also pretty self-explanatory, how do you want people to refer to you?

Adventuring Class: In most role-playing games characters have a class or job that defines the role they play within their adventuring party or within society as a whole. Commonly encountered classes include:

• Barbarians - channel their emotions into a rage to fight monsters

• Bards - inspire other party members through music and performance

• Clerics - heal party members and cast spells to fight off evil

• Druids - commune with nature and transform into various animals

• Fighters - master various fighting styles and weapon types to dominate combat

• Monks - train in martial arts to hone physical and spiritual strength

• Paladins - defend the good and holy with strength, charisma and leadership

• Rangers - hunt and track prey to survive the rough wilderness

• Rogues - sneak and steal to solve problems and gain the upper hand

• Sorcerers - chosen by fate to wield a powerful and unpredictable magic

• Warlocks - contract with supernatural beings to untap magic powers

• Wizards - study a variety of magics to build, destroy or transform reality

These basic classes are just the tip of the iceberg. Creators have added many, many classes across various games and stories. Acrobats, advisors, amazons, artisans, berserkers, clairvoyants, dancers, merchants, muses, ninjas, princesses, sages, scholars, spies and valkyries are just a small sample of the options available to us.

If high fantasy is not your thing, we can also look at the roles everyday people fulfill in their regular lives. These might include roles within a family (parent, partner, provider), roles within a workplace (manager, fixer, helper), career roles (teacher, medic, athlete, artist) or roles that reflect our skills (negotiator, researcher, mender).

Take a few minutes to think about the various roles you play in life. Is there a connecting thread? Is there a particular role you most identify with or a role that makes you feel the most proud? What word would best describe that role?

Alignment: How do we align ourselves with other forces and factions in our world?

We can think of alignment as existing along two dimensions. The first runs from good to evil and the second from lawful to chaotic. Lawful characters generally follow the rule of law, tradition or other personal codes. If they respect more virtuous interpretations of those codes and rules we would consider them lawful good. If they bend laws to serve wicked ends or uphold unjust rules we would consider them lawful evil. Chaotic characters, on the other hand, are more likely to follow their hearts, make spur of the moment decisions and are less concerned with rules placed on them by others. When they are guided by a moral conscience - even when it rejects what others say is right - we would consider them chaotic good. When they act rashly to satisfy greed, spite and hate we would consider them chaotic evil. Many characters exist in the middle of either spectrum and might be considered lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, neutral good, neutral evil or simply neutral depending on where they fall.

Where would you place yourself on these axes? 

Social Identities: Remember these identities from our theme exercise?

If not, take a minute to review that exercise now. If you feel comfortable, please write down your identities across each domain. Then, add a star next to the identities you think about most often. Add a question mark next to the identities you would like to learn more about. Finally, add an exclamation point next to the identities that have the greatest effect on how you are perceived.

Ability Scores: Role-playing games use ability scores to determine whether a character will succeed at various challenges. We will use them here to learn a bit more about where you excel and where you might need extra assistance.

• Strength - a measure of physical power

• Dexterity - a measure of agility

• Constitution - a measure of endurance

• Intelligence - a measure of reasoning and memory

• Wisdom - a measure of perception and insight

• Charisma - a measure of force of personality

Abilities are scored on a scale of 0-20 with 0 being complete and total absence of an ability and 20 being superhuman levels of that ability. For example, someone with 0 strength might be unable to move a single muscle in their body while someone with 20 strength might be able to push the planet out of alignment. A rock has 0 intelligence and an all-knowing deity has 20. In any given ability, a score of 10 is about average for a human character with scores between 8 and 14 being pretty common.

Please take a moment to assess and score your abilities.

Dimensions of Wellness: We discussed the dimensions of wellness in our theme exercise. As a reminder, the 10 dimensions are:

• Physical wellness: how we move our bodies; what we eat and drink; our medical care; pain; sleep

• Environmental wellness: how we maintain our personal spaces; our relationship to nature

• Spiritual wellness: how we find meaning and purpose in life; our ethics, morals and values

• Emotional wellness: how we identify, express and manage our feelings

• Occupational wellness: our professional fulfillment; our work/life balance; the pride we take in our work

• Intellectual wellness: our experiences of creativity, curiosity, learning, teaching and critical thinking

• Social wellness: the relationships in our life; our sense of community; our experiences with trust, boundaries and communication

• Financial wellness: financial security; access to shelter, nutrition and quality of life

• Sexual wellness: safety and pleasure in sexual settings; experiencing our desired romantic and sexual intimacy with whomever we choose

• Cultural wellness: feeling connection and belonging within our chosen cultural groups; feeling accepted and validated in our identities

Please take a moment to score each domain on a scale of -5 to +5. A score of -5 means “I am badly hurting in this area of my life” while a score of +5 means that “I am feeling exceptionally well in this area of my life.” A score of 0 means “this area feels neutral - I am not hurting, nor am I doing particularly well.”

Adventuring Skills: While these skills are lifted directly from the adventuring guides of Dungeons and Dragons, we can also use them in our everyday lives. Please review the descriptions below and then make a checkmark next to any skills you possess.

• Athletics: running, jumping, swimming; staying afloat in rough water; breaking things

• Acrobatics: staying on your feet in a tricky situation; performing acrobatic stunts

• Sleight of Hand: picking someone’s pocket; concealing or cleverly manipulating a handheld object

• Stealth: escaping notice by moving silently and hiding behind things

• Arcana: recalling lore about spells, magic items and the planes of existence

• History: recalling lore about historical events, people, nations and cultures

• Investigation: finding obscure information in books; deducing clues about how something works

• Nature: recalling lore about terrain, plants, animals and weather

• Religion: recalling lore about gods, religious rituals and holy symbols

• Animal handling: intuiting an animal’s intentions; calming or training an animal

• Insight: discerning a person’s mood and intentions

• Medicine: diagnosing an illness; determining what killed the recently slain

• Perception: using a combination of senses; noticing something that is easy to miss

• Survival: tracking, foraging, finding your way in the wilderness; avoiding natural hazards

• Deception: telling a convincing lie; wearing a disguise effectively

• Intimidation: threatening someone into doing what you want

• Performance: performing music, dancing, creating art or telling a story

• Persuasion: honestly and graciously convincing someone of something

Executive Skills: Every day we use a variety of cognitive skills to manage our lives, stay organized and regulate our emotions. Please review the descriptions below and then make a checkmark next to any skills you possess.

• Emotional Control: the ability to manage emotions in order to achieve goals, complete tasks or control and direct behavior.

• Flexibility: the ability to revise plans in the face of obstacles, setbacks, new information or mistakes.

• Goal-Directed Persistence: the capacity to have a goal, follow through to the completion of the goal and not be distracted by competing interests.

• Metacognition: the ability to stand back and take a birds-eye view of oneself in a situation.

• Organization: the ability to create and maintain systems to keep track of information or materials.

• Planning/Prioritization: the ability to create a roadmap to reach a goal or to complete a task.

• Response Inhibition: the capacity to think before you act – this ability to resist the urge to say or do something allows us the time to evaluate a situation and how our behavior might impact it.

• Stress Tolerance: the ability to thrive in stressful situations and to cope with uncertainty, change and performance demands.

• Sustained Attention: the capacity to maintain attention to a situation or task in spite of distractibility, fatigue or boredom.

• Task Initiation: the ability to begin projects without undue procrastination, in an efficient or timely fashion.

• Time Management: the capacity to estimate how much time one has, how to allocate it and how to stay within time limits and deadlines.

• Working Memory: the ability to hold information in memory while performing complex tasks. 

Physical Traits: What do you look like?

Physical traits could include build, complexion, hair color and texture, piercings, tattoos and more. Is there anything unique to your appearance? What do people first notice about you?

Personality Traits: What makes you you?

Personality traits could include, your sense of humor, your level of extroversion vs. introversion, how you experience your emotions, how you relate to others, your openness to new experiences and more. How would you describe yourself to others? How might others describe you?

Goals: We’ve already identified a few goals in the theme exercise. If you haven’t completed that activity, you might want to go back and do so now. We can write those goals again here.

Strengths: What are you good at? What makes you feel most proud of yourself?

Strengths can show up in any area of our lives, including academic subjects, athletic activities, creative pursuits, executive functioning, interpersonal relationships, self-knowledge and self-regulation and much more. 

Values: What is most important to you? What type of person do you want to be in the world?

Our values are separate from the goals we can achieve, instead they are guiding principles that drive our actions. Read through the following (extensive, but incomplete) list of values and see what resonates with you. When you are done, please add the 2-3 values with which you most identify to your character sheet.