Creating a Great Heroic (or Other) Persona by Gary Gygax Premise: You have just decided to run a campaign, and you need details of how best to have your experienced players get solid Heroic Personas... or you have an established campaign and potential new participants interested in playing in it. You think that they would be captivated by roleplaying, but hesitate to involve them. Why? Why else but because of the time required for them to develop Heroic Personas. The time is lengthy because this is roleplaying, your campaign is complex, and the other players' Heroic Personas are well- developed. Then again, you just might want a persona from which to springboard a potent FP or HPG or even an EP or MPG. How can such dilemmas be solved? By the following method for creating especially strong, interesting, and detailed HPs either for immediate use by interested players or as pre-developed Heroic (or other sorts of) Personas "waiting in the wings" to be picked up by newcomers and/or for your use as Other Personas. As I said, the "stand-ins" needn't be idle all the time either, simply doing nothing until a might-be player comes along. You can employ them as active OPs in the campaign, giving them minor roles as needed from time to time. That keeps them current with action, and will add a few bits to these personas too. ************* Most details omitted from this excerpt... ************* You now have one or more ready-to-insert HP/OPs for the campaign, and your efforts in creating these personas should not go to waste. If these are JM- created personas, don't let them lie dormant until a player happens along. Use them in play regularly so as to develop them, but make sure their roles aren't major, and don't strengthen them much more than as they began, unless you decide that the a persona is to become one of the campaign's main ones, or even an HPG. (In such a case the persona is pretty well beyond the bounds of player use and reserved exclusively to the Journey Master.) When prospective participants do show up, find out what sort of a roles they might enjoy playing, and then give them the appropriate HP profiles. Be sure the history is on top, so they can read about who they are. Then include the newcomer and HP in play. There will be plenty of time to learn the technical details on the profile sheets as action progresses. If your background story is right, though, the newcomer will be playing the HP in the proper manner just from the bit gained by reading. What better and more exciting way to get into the game?