Designing a Table-Top RPG: Characters and Resources

Who do you play as and what do they acquire?

Mar 05, 2025

man with steel and chainmail armor holding sword — Photo by Henry Hustava on Unsplash

Role-playing means taking on a ‘role’, aka a ‘character’. So your system has to have a means of creating a character, how that character is defined in the game world, and how to determine or generate stats that differentiate one character from another. Character creation rules are as varied as the many systems out there. In Roll for Shoes, you start as nothing and generate skills as you do things in the world. In D&D, you are strictly defined by your race, class, ability scores, skills and feats. In Blades in the Dark, you have a Playbook, abilities, gear, allies and enemies. In Thousand-Year-Old Vampire, you have Resources and Relationships. You might have something as simple as a couple traits, a single descriptive sentence, or a background. You might generate stats by randomly rolling dice, spending points, or flipping a coin. The choices are endless.

You have to figure out what works best for the system/setting you’re thinking of. Do you want it to be an in-depth process that takes a good chunk of time, or do you want it fast and loose? How invested do you want players in their characters? How defined is the setting? Blades In the Dark has a very defined setting and as a result, you really embed your character in that setting when you make them. You also have to consider death in your game. Does it come often? Is combat deadly? Is death determined by the dice or the players? Different games make different choices. If character creation takes a long time and players get very invested, it can be very frustrating when a character dies. Of course, if there’s very little investment, a player won’t feel enough of a connection to care what happens to a character. What works for your setting and system? If death comes often, you may want to use random generation to speed things up. To increase investment, don’t just use numbers and stats, include things like traits, backgrounds, personalities, etc. Even when generated randomly, these quirks and ‘fluff’ pull players in. If your game is more about the story and less about random chance, if death isn’t a big part of your game, you can make your character creation that much more in-depth and involved. Really give your players a full-fledged character to embody.

Character creation is also embedded in the rest of your system. I talked about Resolution previously, and a character’s stats are likely going to affect that somehow. They might have backgrounds that provide bonuses, skills, special abilities, etc. You have to determine how a character can show what they are good at, as well as how they improve. Part of that might be the gear/equipment the characters begin with, which can tell a story all on its own. I’ll get into equipment more in the next game design article.

What I will delve into here is a specific type of gear/equipment I’m calling resources. What do your characters search for? What do they need? What do they want? What do they want to gather? It might be loot, gold, treasures, gems, artifacts, magic, power, influence, etc. but whatever it, it should reflect the setting. In D&D, characters acquire gold and magic items (and experience points but advancement is also something I’ll go into another time). Characters go on quests and adventures in order to acquire these things. In Blades in the Dark, it depends on your ‘Crew’ but every crew wants to increase their ‘rep’ which is basically influence and move up in the criminal underworld. Resources are important because they need to be tracked, or you could say they need to be tracked because they are important. They’re on the character sheet for a reason. In Mothership, you gain and track a negative resource, ‘stress’ which works well with the horror setting it’s a part of.

brown round coins on brown wooden surface — Photo by Dan Dennis on Unsplash

I really liked how, in Kal Arath, rations are one of the resources you have to track and consume each day. It adds a survival element to an TTRPG that I’d never really considered before. I got into role-playing with, first The Wheel of Time d20 RPG, and then D&D 3.5, where that type of survival aspect wasn’t really considered (or maybe it was, but, like carrying capacity, felt too annoying to keep track of with everything else). It almost felt like a video game system attached to a TTRPG (I now know systems like this are part of many TTRPGs, just sharing my experience) and after playing Kal Arath a few times, I got the feeling it’s very similar to a rogue-like video game, with the random weather, hex generation, and survival aspect. I loved that, especially as a solo experience, and what really made me think about what I could do with Niv Lova.

Character Creation and Resources in Niv Lova

I pretty much copied Kal Arath’s character creation for Niv Lova. I liked putting 4 points into 5 stats and the simplicity of it. I added some random tables for background generation and ‘purpose’ generation, similar to Kal Arath but a little less defined, more open-ended, tables that I think really helps solo players get an idea for their character and get going. I put together a basic survival equipment package for characters to begin with as well as coming up with a specific location your character is heading to that you can randomly generate, if you have trouble getting started. I think that’s where many solo gamers stumble, is giving the character an immediate purpose/goal to strive for, so it’s definitely something I wanted to include.

I also took Kal Arath’s simple ‘skill’ system and adapted it for the Niv Lova setting. Again, I like the simplicity and the choices you’re forced to make as you level up, whether you want to make your character better (+1 Stat), hardier (+hp) or specialized (take a skill).

As for resources, like in Kal Arath, you also have to track Food, which you consume once per day to avoid going hungry, but I wanted more. I added Bandages which you must use after taking damage in order to stop bleeding, and Scrap you can scavenge for in order to repair broken/damaged gear or craft new items. Now, this does add upkeep for the players, as it’s more things they need to keep track of. Consuming food once per day, remembering to use a bandage after getting hurt, tracking how much scrap they have and how much they need to repair/craft, etc. It’s a calculated decision and after playing, it is quite a bit to keep track of. But I like what it adds. It forces the player to scavenge for more things, it allows me to have gear in different conditions, forcing the players to really work towards gaining better gear. It makes taking damage riskier, as you need to make sure you have bandages to stop bleeding. It brings the survival aspect even more to the forefront, which I think really works for setting I’m going for.

Kal Arath leaves it open to what the consequences are for not having food, which I like as it gives you freedom, but I wanted to make specific consequences. I needed mechanics for going hungry, as well as bleeding, and liked the idea of Conditions. Characters gain conditions as they engage in the world which can negatively (or in a few cases, positively) affect them. They can bleed, go hungry, and even become soaked and cold. Again, this drives the survival aspect of the game. Your character is constantly fighting against the weather, starvation, bleeding, mutants, and enemies as they struggle to survive in this harsh world. Again, it is another thing to track, and I’m sure there are players out there who feel its too much, but I’m enjoying it as I playtest.

What about you?

Do you want your characters to feel powerful and influential, or small, and fragile? Do you want them to acquire wealth and power, or struggle to gather food and supplies just to survive? Is basic survival important to the game or just an afterthought? Do characters have epic backstories or randomly-generated open-ended backgrounds? Do the characters chase gold and glory, or reputation and comfort? All good questions to ask as you determine the character creation in your own game.

What are some systems with great character creation? How about resources? What do the resources say about the system? What’s important and what isn’t?

Playing With Myself

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