[Adventures] in Character Development

[Adventure 247]

We may spend more time creating Dungeons and Dragons characters than actually playing Dungeons and Dragons. Our entire family plays, and several of our children DM.

We usually create a character and a backup character for each campaign. 

The first campaign I participated in, my character was Sovabagoly "Hoot Hoot" Songbarrel, a gnome bard (barred) owl. Who wasn't an owl per se, but would have been if she could have, and for some reason had an affinity for silverware.

At the moment we're playing the "Evil Campaign" and my character is Hamahiru, a socially awkward gargoyle with a phigeon (magical phoenix pigeon) in a nest on their head. Hamahiru seems to have a talent for accidentally scaring people, staring, and not speaking. They enjoy being a water fountain and terrorizing small children who bother their friend Stabby Child, who often curls up on their head amidst their horns. My backup character for that campaign is a fallen aasimar who is quite the opposite of Hamahiru in many ways. 

And we're preparing for a culinary-based campaign in which my character, Nicolai Bellsnickel, an amnesiac wizard/cleric human dressed in furs wields a crozier, randomly produces gifts for people from his bag of holding, and specializes in desserts, especially cookies. 

I have various other characters partially made, have lost more handwritten character sheets than I've remembered to transfer to online character sheets (like my character that is obsessed with mushrooms and randomly eats the ones she finds along her path, with varied, random results and who has truly wild magic - each spell a literal roll of the dice) and I have plenty of ideas for more.

My children spend hours a day researching, writing, rolling dice, asking the DM questions, and everything else that goes into character development.