DnD characters can have almost infinite depth, and there are multiple ways to make your character more interesting. No one wants to play with or as an uninteresting character, which brings up a good question:
Are there any easy ways to make your character more interesting in DnD?
There are a lot of things you can do to make your character more interesting. For example, construct coherent and rich background lore for your character, develop some weaknesses for your character, and create a good repertoire with other players and NPCs. These are all things you can do to make your character more interesting.
There are more things you can do to make your character more personable and interesting. The details are oftentimes up to you, but these general rules are good to follow if you want to develop your character.
How Do I Make My DnD Character More Interesting?
There are a lot of things to consider if you want to roleplay a character that’s interesting and not shallow. Let’s go through it in detail below.
Background Lore
Movie actors often construct or read up on their role’s history. By doing this, they can more accurately portray the character on the screen. Think about it that way: if you have rich background lore for your character, it’s easier to get into the mindset.
By getting into the mindset of your character, it will automatically be easier to roleplay that character in an authentic way. Another reason why background lore is important for making your character more interesting is that background lore will create more narrative points where your character can be relevant.
For example, your character may have had some sort of trauma in his/her life, and seeing something similar in the present time brings up certain emotions. If your character has no such background lore, the opportunities for you to contribute in an impactful manner significantly decrease.
Finally, background lore should act as a summation of who your character is. You could argue that a person simply is the summation of his past experiences, and that can hold true here as well. Use your background as a way to motivate your actions.
Don’t Be One-Dimensional
Background lore is important, but don’t use it in a way where your character gets completely one-dimensional. Every person in real life has multifaceted characteristics, and if you want to make your character seem more authentic, have this in mind.
Having a character be angry, funny, or anything else, at all times, will make your character seem flat and uninteresting. I mentioned earlier that having interesting background lore is important to give your character more opportunities for good roleplay, and this works the other way as well.
Having a one-dimensional character will naturally give your character fewer opportunities to roleplay in an impactful and interesting way.
Create a Diverse Skill Set
In the same way that you should have a multifaceted personality in DnD, try to also have a diverse skill set. This will naturally make you more useful in more scenarios, and it’s more realistic.
Having a multitude of uses will make your character more useful, and give you more opportunities to roleplay in a meaningful way. Of course, it’ll also make your character more fun to play, in my opinion.
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Develop Dynamics With Other Players and NPCs
I don’t want to harp too much on how important it is to have meaningful interactions with other entities in DnD to make your character more interesting, but, yeah, it’s really important.
Create relationships with both players and NPCs to the best of your abilities. These relationships don’t necessarily have to be positive, either, but having a negative or positive opinion of a player or NPC can guide your character to make decisions.
For example, if your character dislikes an NPC, you will naturally have less inclination of helping that NPC out if it is in danger.
Of course, these relationships also provide motivation for conflicts and resolutions, which can be really interesting to roleplay.
Take Inspiration From the Real World
Fact is oftentimes stranger than fiction, and people are oftentimes more well-rounded and realistic than a generic fantasy character. That’s why it might be a good idea to take facets from the real world and integrate them into your DnD character.
This can be particularly helpful if you’re having a hard time creating a character with depth and personality. Don’t hesitate to look into historical figures to make your character cooler.
Develop Some Weaknesses
Even Superman has a weakness. If he didn’t, I’ll bet you that he’d be less interesting. Weakness is key to an interesting character. It’s also a lot more fun to play alongside a character with considerable weaknesses since he won’t constantly be a superhero.
A character that’s brave all the time isn’t very interesting, in my opinion. A character that’s brave most of the time and has some fears is more interesting. The fears provide your character with another layer of depth.
It can also give you some interesting narrative points and challenges that otherwise wouldn’t have been there.
What Makes a Character Boring?
In my opinion, your character is boring if it lacks the qualities described in the list above. This is obviously an opinion-based question, but for example, one-dimensional characters are just more boring than others.
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They lack the depth to roleplay in different manners, and can very easily become tedious to play as and with. Another thing that makes a character boring is a lack of weaknesses, as I mentioned earlier. A character with little to no weaknesses very quickly becomes one-dimensional and predictable.
Also, make sure your character has some goals or motivations. This can be a hard balance act since you can easily overdo it and make the character one-dimensional instead, but it’s something worth considering.
The last thing that I’ll mention is the roleplay factor: it’s partly up to you to make your character interesting in the way you actively roleplay it.
A character might seem very interesting when you look at its background story and stuff like that, but ultimately, it’s your choice whether or not to integrate those things in your roleplay.