Great Character

Mike Krahulik is the artist for the popular webcomic Penny Arcade.

Jim Darkmagic, Dungeons & Dragons 5E

This character sheet is from the Acquisitions Inc. live adventure at Pax 2014, with characters drawn from the Table Titans webcomic. You can watch a recording of the event here.

Morgan Webb is a producer, writer, television host and gaming critic.

Môrgæn, Dungeons & Dragons 5E

This character sheet is from the Acquisitions Inc. live adventure at Pax 2014, with characters drawn from the Table Titans webcomic. You can watch a recording of the event here.

Jerry Holkins writes the popular webcomic Penny Arcade.

Ominifis Hereward Dran, Dungeons & Dragons 5E

This character sheet is from the Acquisitions Inc. live adventure at Pax 2014, with characters drawn from the Table Titans webcomic. You can watch a recording of the event here.

Editor-in-Chief at Paizo Inc. and Co-Creator of the Pathfinder RPG, F. Wesley Schneider has written numerous adventures, articles, and stories for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, Dungeons & Dragons, and other games. His current projects and creepy tastes are most frequently indulged on his Twitter account @FWesSchneider.

Styrian Kindler, Pathfinder

Styrian Kindler came to Sandpoint tracking a legend, determined to document the source of numerous tales and disappearances attributed to the same elusive terror: the Sandpoint Devil. He found what he came for, but ultimately the Devil would be the least of his worries. Along with the barbarian Ostog the Unslain, the unscrupulous wizard Velmarius, poison-magnet Kirin the Heretic, and others, he’s travelled across and beneath the world of Golarion as one of the main characters in the Paizo office’s longest-running Pathfinder RPG game. The campaign began in 2009 just prior to the release of the new Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and has served as a place for playtesting and personal indulgences, from refining rules for Mythic Adventures to venturing into Gary Gygax’s killer dungeon, Necropolis. Styrian—who somehow picked up a bowl-cut along the way—has since been stated up in Pathfinder Chronicles: NPC Guide, illustrated by Pathfinder Comics artist Andrew Huetra, and turned into a metal mini by Reaper Miniatures. Despite his glory hound companions’ demands to add their exploits “to the saga,” Styrian hasn’t lost his investigatory drive, chronicling (and illustrating) many of Golarion’s mysteries in his volumes-long journal.

Ash Law has worked on numerous projects for Pelgrane Press’ 13th Age RPG.

Princess Erika, 13th Age

This is my 3rd level wizard (statted up for our current 13th Age RPG campaign), the beautiful yet slightly creepy Princess Erika.

As a game designer I get to play around with playtest stuff in my home group. You can get the math exactly on-paper right but always need to really get into the guts of a thing in real play situations to spot the ideas that need more work. This character has a lot of stuff from a playtest of the 13th Age version of Kobold Press’ ENnie award winning Deep Magic–as such its a testbed of ideas, to see what works and how. Most of my home group’s games feature some element of playtest: either an adventure in beta-test, or new class design, or new monster design; the character sheet is long because it has a lot of the spells written in (it is 16 pages in full).

I’m unusual among gamers, in that I create a new custom sheet for each character. I use fancy tokens rather than mark sheets (its a load of fun to flick metal coins off a pile as your HP drops). I take notes on index cards and am usually too busy during play to doodle on the character sheets themselves.

As to the story behind this character… She started off as Prince Erik until he met a group of monks who decided to manufacture the fulfilment of a prophecy and needed to fix one minor detail. After many adventures and two game systems (levels 1-25 of D&D 4e, and levels 1-3 of 13th Age) she’s again being played and is paradoxically now on the run from her future self, the evil Queen Erika.

Wade Rockett is a Tacoma-based writer, editor, communications strategist and amiable nerd. He’s been writer and editor on several RPG products, and currently does PR for Kobold Press, Pelgrane Press, and other companies.

Captain Coat, Champions

Captain Coat was my first character for Champions: The Superhero Role Playing Game–the go-to game for me and my friends in high school and college. Captain Coat’s name and costume design came about when a friend teased me about the shiny, black-and-yellow Porsche racing jacket I unfortunately insisted on wearing during my sophomore and junior years (pictured above). His concept was simple: I wanted to play as Superman. And this desire was key to how I saw myself: as an only child whose parents had divorced, I felt personally responsible for pretty much everyone and everything in my life. I shared Superman’s frustration and self-hatred at being unable to make the world work the way it was supposed to. (“All my power, and I couldn’t save him.” I hear you, Clark.) As Captain Coat, I could save the day–but not always. And, as Captain Coat, I learned ways to accept that.