On Creating Characters

When I was a teen, I used to spend a lot of time in my bedroom, door closed, playing games so that I could escape the attention of my parents. I didn’t want to watch TV (at least, not their choices) and I certainly didn’t want another lecture on how inadequate I was as a son, brother, and student. I’d go to my room and, especially once I was at secondary school, I’d spend many an evening creating characters.

I have notebooks filled with old character ideas. I found one featuring Star Frontiers characters some months back and it was fascinating to peruse. I remember designing character sheets too – drawing them out by hand with a ruler and pencil, then filling them out. This was, of course, before photocopiers were widely available in the UK and I could afford to design a sheet and get a bunch of copies.