Revelations from the Book of Shemp

In previous blog posts I’ve talked about creating and collecting personality shemps (as opposed to stat-block shemps) for on-the-fly non-player characters. As I’ve been playing more and more one-shots and demo games, I’ve realized that I could be using my personality shemps for pre-generated characters I’m handed to play.  I may not know the system or the setting very well, and I may not know what sorts of abilities they’ll have, but if I have some stock roleplaying hooks and motivations that I can affix to pregens, people might be amazed at how quickly I get into character and how well I roleplay.

Look at it as having a stable of veteran character actors at your beck and call. The character sheet you get handed at a convention game or a demo is a “call sheet”, giving a rough idea of what the character’s role is. You get to be the casting director and cast the part, from your personality shemps. Who best fits this role? Then you get to be the actor.

I’m also looking at this as a set of “Eternal Champions” in my own personal universe. That gruff guy might be a dwarf in one game, a space marine in another, a bodyguard in a modern expionage game, but I’m playing it as the same guy, just changing the names and the abilities to fit the setting. In my head, they’re the same character, or the character actor playing essentially the same character in every movie. I can carry continuity over one personality shemp’s background to the next; if the dwarf get hacked across the face with a broadsword, the space marine gets a scar that pains him. If the space marine fails to save his buddy, it gets worked into the backstory of the bodyguard. Not that one-shot characters will have the chance to play to that amount of detail, but it gives me, as a roleplayer, something to work with. It also allows me to fiddle with the sort of character development I only get to play with in longer campaigns.

Another thing I’m going to do with my personality shemps is create a list of names for each one. If I decide stock shemp #5 fits the bill, I’ve got a list of “real”, fantasy, and science fiction-sounding names to pick from for the character. No time wasted thinking up a character name! I’m thinking of a sort of “shemp sheet”, with a picture of my “actor” that can be tweaked to fit race and setting, personality tips, and some space to write what game and context I used that personality in.

It should come as no surprise that after I finish the Worldbuilding 101 book I want to work on a book of shemps, providing players and gamemasters with a resource for on-the-fly characters.