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My early role playing characters embarrass me. At the time, they were fun to play, but they were so one dimensional that a monkey could have role played with them. My perfect example of the stereotypical character was Thunk the Barbarian. Thunk was a fighter with high strength and constitution, and low intelligence and wisdom. He spoke in broken English, carried a gnarled wooden club, and tried to solve every problem by bashing it over the head, always with the battle cry, "Thunk Smash!"

Stock characters like that can be useful as generic NPCs, but they don't make great player characters. If you want to have more fun playing, improve your role playing ability, give yourself more options, and entertain the whole group, you need to develop interesting, creative, multi-dimensional characters. And in case anyone is confused, multi-dimensional does not mean that they originate from the elemental plane of fire.

There are several important things to keep in mind when creating and developing your character. To show you the process I follow, I'll make up an example character, Chartala the Half-Elf Priest/Mage. I use the AD&D system since I'm most familiar with it, but the same theory applies to almost any role playing game.

The most obvious starting point is that a character's statistics should be reflected in the way you role play her. For Chartala I rolled Strength 8, Dexterity 11, Intelligence 16, Wisdom 14, Constitution 8 and Charisma 15. I'll go through the statistics and make up a story about the character based on the scores.

Chartala is not very strong. This is because she has always been afraid of confrontation and getting into arguments. She spends most of her time alone reading or walking through the woods. Not a lot of physical exercise for her.

She is quite smart, and fairly wise, the reading and contemplation play a big part in that, as does her need to think her way out of difficult situations to avoid conflict. She's not all that healthy, so I'm going to say that she has hay fever and is somewhat frail. She also has an aversion to blood and gets very nervous in high pressure situations, which gives her a tendency to get light headed.

Still, she has a natural shy charm that comes from her sincerity and her desire to keep everyone happy. This, and her experience with diplomacy from time spent around her mother reflect her high charisma. I already have a pretty good start to my character by just looking at the statistics and coming up with a story that makes them all work together.

Another thing to keep in mind is the character's history (you do make up a history for all your characters, don't you?). This plays a role in the character's day to day actions, and also gives us a direction for character growth. An easy way to start a history is to ask a series of questions about the character. In a difficult or dangerous situation, how would the character react? Is she honest, trustworthy? Is she self-centered or concerned with others? Would she break the law to help someone in need?

These types of questions go hand in hand with alignment, but flesh it out more in terms of situations that your character might actually encounter. You don't have to answer all of them, and you can think of other similar questions too. The point is to get a feel for how your character interacts with the world.

Chartala was raised in a small Elvin village, her mother was a diplomat who had a tryst with a charming human mage many years ago. The father is now long dead, and Chartala was never allowed to meet him. Because of this, she has a strange fear and fascination with humans, who she rarely comes into contact with. She had a very sheltered life, and is quite naive. She is overly trusting and always strives to make people happy and comfortable. She has a weak grasp of right and wrong, law and crime, but focuses instead on how people feel.

Now we're starting to get a pretty well fleshed out character, and we haven't even discussed the class. Most people focus on this first, and that is what tends to make for one dimensional characters. At this point we can think about class, while keeping in mind our other traits. This way we develop a person first, and then they find a job, just like in real life.

Chartala became a mage because it appealed to her need for privacy and her desire to avoid physical confrontation. Because of this, she concentrates on spells like charms and illusions. She became a priest to fill her need to help others. She uses healing spells whenever possible because she hates to see people suffer and she doesn't want to be around anyone who is bleeding. She uses a quarter staff in battle, but only when absolutely necessary and she always tries to push her attackers away or disable them instead of doing much real damage.

At this point our character is starting to come to life. If you want to go into greater detail, you can talk about skills and abilities and fit those into the personality and history. You can also make a more complex history including past events that were particularly important, teachers, family and friends.

The final thing that I like to do at this point is to add something different or unique to make the character more interesting. This gives me a good point to role play with, and makes the character stand out. I usually look for something that is difficult for the character, and offers a place for them to grow and change through the course of their life.

For Chartala I'll say that she's a strict vegetarian, which stems from her fear of livestock. When she was young, she wandered into a pasture and was kicked by a wild horse. She nearly died from the wound, and her mother worried horribly about her for weeks.

This lead to a life long fear of any horses, cows, goats, or similar animals. She will always try to stay as far away from livestock as possible. She refuses to eat meat because she feels that somehow the animals will know that she has eaten one of their kind and be even more angry with her. She also can't stand the sight of blood, so she sticks with non-bleeding foods.

She tolerates other people eating meat, but she tries to convince them not too, and will stand nervously away from them while they eat, always anticipating that angry cows are just about to attack. This should provide some wonderful role playing opportunities, and also gives the character a distinct personality.

If you follow this basic process, you won't have to worry about making Thunk the Barbarian, or Gandorf the wise old Mage, or any other stereotypical, one dimensional character. Game Masters designing major NPCs can also follow a simplified version of the same process to make interesting recurring characters who have a real motivation behind their actions besides simply killing anyone who comes into their dungeon.

Unless you're only playing for the hack and slash, the main point is to have fun with your character and to enjoy the game experience with your friends. The more interesting your character, the more she will be involved in the game, which means more entertainment for everyone.