This has been a highly requested series from my patrons: a closer look at the player characters in my Dragon Heist campaign and how I (or, more accurately, we) integrated them into the game. I’ve resisted writing it, however, because I wasn’t entirely sure how to make it high-value.

The key thing is that I already wrote a couple posts about creating characters for long-term campaigns — Running the Campaign: Designing Character Backgrounds. The short summary is:

1. Establish the campaign concept.
2. Have the players pitch their character concepts.
3. Collaborate on a public integration, with the GM using their expertise in the setting to take generic archetypes of the character concept (e.g., northern barbarian) and make them specific (e.g., a member of the Tribe of the Red Elk).
4. Have the GM do a private integration of the character, tying them into the larger structure of the campaign (e.g., Is there a major villain? Make it the long-lost brother of one of the PCs).
5. Bring the party together. At least 95 times out of 100, you’ll want to explain why the PCs are all going to generally hang out and do things together — specifically, the usually crazy things the campaign concept is predicated on — before you start your first session. 4 times out of the remaining 5, you’ll probably want to have things pre-arranged so that they all fall in together within the first few scenes.

There are other ways to handle character creation, but this was essentially the same procedure I’d followed for Dragon Heist. It didn’t feel like there was really new territory to explore.

I’ve had a number of recent conversations, however, suggesting that people would like to see more practical examples of what some of this theoretical material actually looks like in actual play. So that’s our primary goal here.

I’d also commissioned some really fantastic art depicting the characters from @BroadfootLenny, so if nothing else you’ll be able to “ooooh” and “aaahh” over some pretty pictures!

THE BASELINE

Let’s start by establishing a baseline understanding of how character creation (and the campaign in general) were set up. You might want to start by reading through those two earlier posts for a more detailed discussion of the general procedure, but it’s probably not strictly necessary.

GAME SESSIONS: We should briefly discuss how we were actually playing the campaign because it has an impact on how character creation played out.

As I’ve discussed previously, we mostly played Dragon Heist in weekend intensives: We would play four hours on Friday night, then 10-12 hours on Saturday, and then another 8-10 hours on Sunday.

We also went from talking about doing this to actually doing it very quickly. This meant that, for our first weekend, we would be creating characters Friday night and then starting the campaign the next day at 10 AM.

This was unusual for me: For a dedicated campaign like this, I’m usually chatting about characters and swapping e-mails weeks ahead of time. There’s often a Session 0 with one or two weeks before we actually start play, allowing further development and refinement of the characters before we get going. In this case, all of this was truncated and there would be very little time (particularly very little awake time) between creating our characters and launching into a long-term campaign with them.

CAMPAIGN CONCEPT: My pitch for the campaign was pretty straightforward: “Would you like to play the new Dragon Heist campaign from Wizards of the Coast? I’ve been remixing it for my website.”

Although brief, this carried with it some key information:

• We were playing D&D 5^th (Just saying “D&D”, as I’ve noted in those previous essays, carries a lot of weight when it comes to campaign concept, in a way that isn’t necessarily true for other RPGs.)
• The campaign would in some way involve a “heist.”

To this, if I recall correctly, I basically added only one additional piece of information:

• The campaign will be taking place in Waterdeep, which is located in the Forgotten Realms.

I had maps of Waterdeep and Faerûn hung on the walls of our game room for handy reference. For players who were not familiar with the source material, I also briefly introduced them to the various sourcebooks we’d be using, including:

• Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
• 3^rd Edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
• 1^st Edition Forgotten Realms boxed set
• 2^nd Edition Forgotten Realms: City System boxed set

This meant literally holding them up and saying, “These exist, feel free to flip through them if you’re looking for inspiration.” We also identified the people at the table who were familiar with the Realms and could serve as sources of expertise. Besides myself, this was Chris and Peter, both of whom were probably more well-versed in Realms lore than I was.

We also talked about our group’s familiarity with D&D, which ranged considerably. Some of us had been playing since the ‘80s. Another had played virtually no D&D whatsoever, but had just started playing in another 5^th Edition campaign a couple months earlier. Another had played one session of 2^nd Edition in 1997, one session of 3^rd Edition in 2003, and a dozen or so sessions of my OD&D open table. Personally my own experience with 5^th Edition was limited — I’d played a couple of sessions in a heavily homebrewed game and hadn’t run it at all yet.

BRINGING THE PARTY TOGETHER: The last thing I said before starting character creation was that:

• The first scene of the campaign would be the five of them walking through the doors of the Yawning Portal to meet a contact who was offering them a job.
• In creating their characters, they needed to figure out how they had ended up there.

Dragon Heist Remix – Addendum: First Impressions discusses how I handled the opening scene of the campaign in more detail, but I basically knew that this moment at the door of the Yawning Portal would bookend character creation: By immediately establishing what I needed them from them, I knew aiming at that specific moment would be hanging in the back of their brains throughout the entire process, ready to opportunistically shape any and all decisions along the way.

Then, at the end, we would return to this beat. I would show them the “Friendly Faces” handout from p. 223 of Dragon Heist and ask them to pick the picture of the NPC they were coming to meet. I knew that combining why they were walking through that door looking for a job together with who they were meeting on the other side of the door to get the job from would provide a final act of creative closure that would shape and personalize the opening of the campaign.

(Spoilers: It did.)

I think the big thing to note here is how simple this all was. I’ve talked about it at length, but it boils down:

• Four or five sentences pitching the campaign concept.
• A one sentence improv prompt for them to build their group dynamic around.
• And, later, pointing at a picture and asking a simple question.

It can be more complicated than that, but it doesn’t need to be.

In any case, that’s basically the whole set up. So now we’re going to look at the specific character backgrounds that we worked up and discuss how the procedure got us to that point.

EDANA

(Created by Sarah Holmberg)

Her father died (at least that is the story her mother told her) when she was still an infant. Her mother fell in with the Shadow Thieves as a way to make best use of her skills to support her young family. When things went south,  Edana was sent to stay with family friends while her mother worked on making plans for them to leave safely and secretly, but her mother never came back. She was told that her mother died, though she still hears rumors that make her suspect her mother is alive.

It’s part of the reason Edana tries to stay connected to, but not part of, the underworld in Waterdeep. Keeping enough distance to not make herself a target when the inevitable drumming out occurs again, but close enough to hear about her mother’s return. Though by this point, she doesn’t expect it to happen, it’s more out of habit and making best use of the skills that she picks up the occasional job from her underworld connections.

When she’s flush, she creates new personas and lives for years as them, spending her time reading, creating art, carousing,  practicing her card tricks and forgery skills. When she’s skint, she sheds those personas and returns to her true self, takes what work she can and builds up enough funds to start a new life for a while.

DESCRIPTION: Edana is a high elf with golden skin and golden hair. High, delicate cheekbones, with usually a faintly amused expression on her face. Her everyday look is hair braided back in two braids around the crown of her head, with hair loose in back. When she’s staying at the tavern she wears deceptively simple looking dresses that in blues and greens that have a lot of detail work in them. When leaving the tavern she wears breaches and a belted tunic. Her cloak has a lot of secret pockets in it.

She’s also very skilled in disguising herself. She can style her hair to cover her ears, apply makeup to make her skin look merely tanned instead of golden. She’s quick to adjust her clothing to either blend in or stand out, as needed. Even when she’s at her most broke she retains one set of very fine clothes.

WHAT EDANA KNOWS – THE ZHENTARIM:

• Zhentarim are a shadow organization of thieves, spies, assassins, and wizards that trades mercenaries and goods (including weapons) for profit.
• Their original base of power was among the Zhent people in the Moonsea region, primarily a place called Zhentil Keep.
• Long sought to gain political influence in Waterdeep, but the strength of the city’s Masked Lords, nobility, and professional guilds makes that difficult.
• In the late 14^th century (about 100 years ago), the founder of the Zhentarim (Manshoon) was killed and Zhentil Keep was razed. Zhentarim power was shattered, with the organization breaking down into many internecine factions.
• Recently the local Zhentarim in Waterdeep were rallied around a mercenary group known as the Doom Raiders. They’d been rising in power. Recently, however, there’s been a schism in the Zhentarim: A second locus of power seems to have risen within the group and is peeling support off from the Doom Raiders. You aren’t sure exactly who this second locus belongs to, but you do know that:
  • They keep an interrogation house in Brindul Alley in the Trade Ward. It was most recently being run by a woman named Avareen Windrivver.
  • Members of the new faction have taken up residence at Yellowspire, a tower in the Castle Ward.
• This schism is not widely known, because the Zhentarim are simultaneously fighting a gang war with the Xanathar Crime League.

WHAT EDANA KNOWS – THE XANATHAR CRIME LEAGUE:

• Xanathar is a beholder. He’s hundreds of years old and has held court over the Waterdhavian underworld for centuries.
• The location of his headquarters is a closely kept secret, but definitely lies somewhere under Waterdeep. Possibly in the vicinity of the underground city of Skullport.

CREATING EDANA

Sarah’s core concept was an elf with criminal connections who had been coasting for a long time. She was already playing a very young elf in another campaign, and here she really wanted to lean into elven longevity. A central image was the endless carousel of identities; each picked up, enjoyed, and then casually discarded.

In play, I think she discovered that the “safety” of Edana’s serial identities was less about comfort and more about fear. This became very interesting to explore as the events of the campaign kept pushing her to put down meaningful roots.

PUBLIC INTEGRATION: The main thing here was pulling the lore of the Shadow Thieves. Connecting the disappearance of Edana’s mother to the height of the Shadow Thieves’ power in Waterdeep (centuries earlier) helped cement just how long Edana had been coasting through her disposable identities.

PRIVATE INTEGRATION: Usually the GM’s private integration is, well, private… at least for a time. In this case, though, I immediately handed Sarah these short cheat sheets of what Edana knew about the Zhentarim and Xanathar’s gang. I framed this as being what she knew about the local criminal scene in Waterdeep, but obviously I knew both of these organizations would be featuring in the campaign. Breaking down exactly what she knew accomplished two things:

First, it let me think very carefully about what information the PCs would just know and what information would need to be discovered through play.

Second, when these topics inevitably came up during play, having the info sheet meant that Sarah could just act as an expert, using the knowledge that Edana had to brief in the other PCs. Instead of asking me what her character knew and then having the information come from the GM, she could just confidently roleplay through the moment.

It also meant that, for example, I could drop some off-hand reference to “Brindul Alley,” and then the player — just like the character — could go, “Wait a minute! I know what that means!” Which is infinitely better than me dropping an off-hand reference to “Brindul Alley” and then calling for an Intelligence check to continue telling them information. (Similar to the Matryoshka search technique.)

MAKING THE PARTY: Edana’s background obviously positioned her as a fixer, and very early on the group decided that she was probably the one who was connecting them with the contact at the Yawning Portal.

In principle, this was pretty straightforward, although it became considerably more convoluted as the other PCs became involved.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: One last thing I’ll note here is how important I think it is for players to think about the physical description of their characters. I think it’s collectively essential for the whole group (and me!) to be able to picture what’s happening in the game world. I also think that the mental construct of a character’s physicality is essential for capturing the psychological gesture of the character. (If you want to delve into that, check out On the Technique of Acting by Michael Chekhov.)

The advice I’ll give for this is often very similar to that found in the Universal NPC Roleplaying Template.

Go to Part 2: Pashar