10 Easy Roleplaying Traits for your TTRPG Characters!

My current character is hilariously afraid of sea urchins cuz he read about them but never went to the ocean so in his mind they are big because in the book the size was never mentioned, it led to some funny moments with our sea elf druid xD

Thanks dudes!

There are several other archetypes I can think of beyond Mercenary, Do-Right, and Vengeance.
Adventurer - they do it simply because they can. They like a challenge.
The "Belle" - "There must be more than this provincial life." They just want out, to see the world. Similar to the adventurer. But more about the experiences rather than the challenges.
The Seeker - they have a specific goal they are trying to find/achieve. Maybe they're looking for someone, or a certain item. Maybe they want a place they belong. Maybe they've been infected with an Ilithid tadpole.
The Scholar - they are collecting knowledge, performing research.
Haunted - they are running from something. Maybe it's a crime they did. Or that someone is trying to do to them. Maybe there's a tragedy they can't face. Maybe there is a responsibility or expectation on them they don't want to face.
Charged - someone with authority has given them a task.

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Superstitions: “It’s bad luck to estimate the size of a room before casting fireball.”

Another potentially fun archetype you could play as, and that works well depending on how you do it, is the amnesiac that's recovering their memories and finding out who are they were, who they are, and what they can remember or what they forgot.

The idea I've been wanting to try for a long time is a monk who, as part of a secret order of assassins, after killing his targets, when reporting to his superiors, he would have his memory modified so that he can't remember his target's names or faces. So he genuinely doesn't remember who he's killed. The RP potential I see here is the consequences he has to deal with following all those murders, and him trying to redeem himself and recover his memories, while trying not to kill unless its absolutely necessary.

That sort of story can be a lot of fun for both the rest of the party and the DM too. DM can use it in a lot ways in terms of narrative and NPCs, and it can be interesting to see how the rest of the party reacts to the recovered memories, and whether they accept who the amnesiac is vs who they were before losing their memories.

Thoughts? :)

Listening to these traits reminds me of the old commedia dell'arte archetypes

Do you guys sell the Drakken Force T-shirts?

my favorite character I've ever played was a Quoth the Raven. Reanimated skeleton bard whose bones were coated in silver, but he was so old that even he didn't remember his backstory & how that happened. So every time someone asked him what his deal was, he would weave a tall tale. while creating the character, I prepared 12 different stories explaining how a skeleton came to be coated in silver - one of them true, but only i and the DM knew which.

When you were talking about the Quoth the Raven section, I immediately thought of the Seventy Maxims of Maximally Effective Mercenaries. "#30: A little trust goes a long way. The less you use, the further you'll go."

Gurnee Hallock from Dune is the best quoth the raven character ever.

Leroy Jenkins!!!

Some DMs seem to shoot themselves in the foot with 'Brave fools'.

You may have a player character who is a brave fool and so follows the plot hooks and sets off the encounters.

But some DMs seem to smash the party or player character for this. Which is thematic as you guys explain, they then learn their lesson.

But then the party and player character become more cautious, which is fine, but then DMs get frustrated when the party stop biting 🤷‍♂️

I'm playing a shadow monk rogue who used to be a shy/awkward/scared little bookworm who returns to his hometown years later, now a trained deadly assassin...and immediately reverts back to his old behavior the minute he runs into anyone who used to know him. He will never be taken seriously no matter how many bodies he leaves in his wake😂

I played D&d for a while now and I love role-playing, I thought that I wouldn't find much in this video, but It has been a blast! Thank you Dungeon Dudes, you never disappoint me! 💪

Even as a veteran player this video is amazingly useful. I always think that characters that are multilayer enrich the story. By the way, I enjoyed classifying my players characters in different categories 😂

I once had a monk character that I said came from a monastery where they were forbidden from killing. They could fight just fine, but only knock opponents unconscious. This ended up working out because one of the other characters was an edgy, murder happy ninja, so they would go and finish off all the enemies I knocked out.

Hi guys, I recently got into DnD end of last year, and I have been really enjoying the dungeon dudes' content. I started watching their Drakenheim campaign and have questions to the characters' stat blocks, is there a video where they discuss it, or where could I ask? I am just not sure how the chars have such high stats, lvl 3.

My Quoth-The-Raven thing with my bard was casting Dissonant Whispers by saying horrible song brainworms in a menacing voice, things like, "Don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart.." or "1-877-Kars4Kids" and doing 3d6 psychic damage.

Great Video!

Motto of the Brave Fool: "What's the worst that could happen?"

This is super good, lots of people are not comfortable doing roleplay but you can just explain how you want them to without specifics even. I've had times where I drop a voice and just say then they do this this way and I want this kind of effect. Because I feel I can't present what it is I want with out being goofy or something.

I play Pathfinder 2e with Ronald, "The Rules Lawyer". I played a character that was schizophrenic. He was socially awkward but had a high charisma. He had spirits always whispering to him just out side of his peripheral vision, which he often shushed or otherwise interacted with, oftentimes, mid sentence. He was very fun to play. However, he was killed by a demon creature (along with two other PCs). RIP Finnur Rendsen.

Great content with great advice as always .

I once played a goblin monk who quoted William Blake all the time.^^ which is hilarious in a high pitched creaky goblin voice XD

One of my favorite one shot characters I made was a dimwit. Hard to maintain, because you don't want it to impede the party. My trick was to make them right, but for the wrong reasons. That way we all have a chuckle but we keep up our momentum.

In terms of your pacifist - I don't really agree about the statement that a true pacifist cannot be around people who are killing - example, the Quakers and pacifists of the first world war ambulance corps... it's very hard! But I think it's possible given severe enough crises in the world.

I have one that is different from the list, The Benevolent Lunatic. I had Green Dragonborn Warlock named Iskatosh. He made his pact with an Great Old One but the transfer of arcane knowledge broke his sanity. He stopped using pronouns, kind of like Warlock from X-Men. "Iskatosh will help Rune-Dwarf-Friend to find secret passage!" Honestly he sounded a lot like Petri from Land Before Time. Iskatosh had two goals, save his adopted Tiefling father from a deadly curse and somehow regain some, if not all, of his sanity. He has a twin brother, Ghomlash, who was very much the caregiver-tank. He was always trying to protect Iskatosh from his more senseless and impulsive decisions. Iskatosh believed he witnessed his own death and his brother was not with him, so he was convinced that as long as the twins we together, he wouldn't die. This made him similar to both the Overconfident and the Naive types while having a very different motivation for why he's charging in where caution is probably called for. He's one of my all-time favorites and I love him.

Y'all tqlked about the sleezeball salesman and didnt mention your good pal, trusty Patches

Drafted pacifists were field medics. The unwilling adventurer trope on a pure healer support character

Monty is the most wholesome person to EVER say "file off the serial number"

Idk about you. But I’d trust BJ Mel with my life. He always shoots straight.

10/10 this is so helpful! Thank you for the help building my character!

Things to add to a wonderful video. It's not important to have these archetypes and tropes chosen and fleshed out fully at the beginning. If you're bowman always seems to roll 1's when firing on flying wyverns, develop the superstition then - or better yet, let the other players play it up - "No, Bearn, you better switch to your sword for this encounter..." If he was already a By-The-Book type, all these coincidences start making him a Phobic/Superstitious type. One of the joys of early RPG games was the narrative that was developed strictly organically through the gameplay. That can lost in today's age of more developed narrative tools that have evolved over the years. Other examples of organically embracing more than one archetype over time: The Mother Hen becomes a Sleazeball Salesman by getting his party (and other NPCs) to do what he wants and makes them think it was their own idea. With archetypes, the ones we don't choose for ourselves we frequently find in others - particularly those we are close to. You guys frequently talk about the 'one bond' rule you develop during session zero. That can be expressed as "the Fighter sees the Ranger in the Sage role, who teaches him the balance of Nature and not Death is what important."

I played a wizard once who hated fire. He refused to learn or use a single fire based spell other than Prestidigitation for lighting candles and campfires. It was a fun quirk.

D6s short of a fireball is beautiful.

The Brave Fool is the one that always pushes the Big Red Button. Another nickname for the Insatiable Greed is The Magpie. For "By the Book" - one roleplaying opportunity is coming across a situation that isn't covered in the book! For the caregiver - there's an excellent essay out there on the interwebs about how Tuvok, the cold emotionless full-blooded Vulcan by-the-book Commanding Officer was actually Voyager's Ship's Counselor to everyone in the ensemble cast at one point or another. For all of Janeway's Compassionate Leadership, the Mother Role was Tuvok's.

I'm also currently playing a child-like Artificer with genius-level intelligence, and he's very much the Socially Awkward Extrovert (who dumped Charisma) who winds up being the party face half the time because, like a child, he loves to talk to people about what he's thinking, regardless of whether they care or it makes sense

This is a great resource, and one I would love to see more of. I don’t know if you would want to do top five archetypes for different genres or something like that, but this is one of my favorite videos you all have done on something other than mechanics

I played a reprogrammed/reconstructed Modron (using War forged stats) fighter that spent a couple millennia in a box, so I just gave him disadvantage on History (which went great with the Intelligence Dump Stat) and Persuasion checks, as he wasn't there to witness or learn any of the history and was unfamiliar with modern uses of language. It was fun but got kind of hard to roleplay

I have a list of scenarios I decide how my character would react in them and try to stick to those personality traits.
Such as: your party has just had a meal at a tavern, do you: pay for everyone, pay only for yourself, or do you try to weasel your way out of paying anything. And then thranslate that to other situations.

It's fun to play a character who is "crazy" for lack of a better word. Not one who is unpredictable, but one who has a few irrational beliefs, quirks or out of the ordinary activities. The favorite character I've ever played was an Aberrant Mind Sorcerer who calls himself "King of the Bees" because of an encounter with a beehive the first time I played him. Of course this means that all of his magic is Bee themed whenever possible. Dissonant Whispers = Bees, Major Image = 20 foot Bee, Summon Aberration = Aberrant Bee

My favorite character I've built is Tek, a warforged open hand monk. Very peaceful and protective of nature and untrusting of society

We had a not-too-bright Fighter who, after making a kill, would summon up much gravitas and say a quote he thought was a James Bond-style quip, but would actually make no sense. Like after impaling a bugbear on his sword deep in a mine he’d turn and face the party and say… “we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

Where are their shirts from?

In my game I am playing a magical slacker. I don't do anything by hand that I can do with magic. That has been good for a lot of fun at the table so far. Another character is working and studying hard to learn magic and it just comes effortlessly to me and make for a fun dynamic.