A few years ago, I was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons. While initially I was skeptical that this would be for me, especially since I’m very bad at acting and always felt awkward about it, I’ve grown to enjoy it very much. I think I evolved a lot through the characters that I have created, and with each new character, I learned a lot and became better and better at this. I’ve played quite a few characters over the years, some of which I have grown very attached to. Time to reminisce! Here, I’m presenting my evolution through my characters.

Jaz aka Alana Stormwind – Human Rogue (Level 7)

My first character was a rogue for the DnD 5e one shot What happened to Evy Ashwood?. Since this was both my first real character, and just a one shot, I did not put a huge amount of effort into this character’s backstory. She was a 16 year old girl from a noble background, who ran away from home and was trying to find her mother (who her father says is dead). A vision brought her to Icewind Dale. Playing this rogue was pretty fun, especially that one time when I rolled a 1 on trying to sneak somewhere…

Arisanna Evenwood – Human Ranger (Level 1-6)

My first proper campaign was Lost Mine of Phandelver, a popular introductory campaign for DnD 5e that doesn’t last too long (I think it was between 8 and 10 sessions). In this campaign, I played a Human Ranger in her twenties1 with a background in the military, who was dishonorably discharged and was now roaming the world as a mercenary. Spellcasting was definitely overwhelming at first, but I think a ranger was a good class to learn the ropes of it. My ranger also had a small silver dragon called Lumi as a summon, from the subclass Drakewarden. She was pretty fun, but with this character, I was still very much getting the hang of roleplaying.

Ne’ri – Kesh Sentinel (Esper Genesis) (Level 1-3)

Esper Genesis is a sci-fi adaptation of DnD 5e, with all classes re-themed, and with sci-fi races. My character Ne’ri was practically a cyborg. He was a Kesh, an ancient race searching for their lost planet. While he was already like 60 years old, that’s still very young for his race, comparable to a late teenager or early twenties human. His class was Sentinel, which is functionally very close to a Paladin, but feels thematically very different. They have a tendency to augment themselves, turning themselves into cyborgs. Hence, he was more machine than man. Ne’ri was also a bomb builder, and loved to blow things up, despite being a very silent and pragmatic person. His favorite word was “indeed”. I played him for roughly 10 sessions or so in a series of interconnected one shots.

Eleni – Centaur Wizard (Level 1-6)

“Hello, I’m Eleni, what is your name?” is how this absolute nerd of a centaur would greet anyone she met. I played her from level 1 to level 6 in the epic Greek mythology inspired campaign Odyssey of the Dragonlords, and she was an absolutely pleasure to play for that year and a half. Eleni’s family suffered from being cursed for generations, and she set out to study how to remove curses, when due to an unfortunate accident she was expelled from the Academy for accidentally setting the library on fire. Then, however, at age 21, she was summoned by the Oracle, who announced to her that she was a Hero of the Prophecy, and it was up to her (and her party members) to save this world from doom. She was awesome to play, and chucking around insane fireballs was definitely a great part of that, just as much as being a total nerd and going bonkers over books, mosaics or other interesting stuff we came across in our adventures. Also, I’m a freaking horse centaur!

Princess Aurelia – Half-Elf Bard (Level 3)

This literal Disney princess was based on Cinderella, Snow White and similar princesses, and created for a one shot set in a homebrew fairy tale world for DnD 5e. She loves to sing, play her accordion, and surround herself with small critters, even though she hates anything dirty or out of order. Her favorite critter is a blue jay called Jay. I used a homebrew subclass for this character called “College of Beasts”, which can be found in the Ultimate Adventurer’s Handbook. While definitely great fun to play, Princess Aurelia is an absolutely useless character in combat because her strongest skill is pretty much Vicious Mockery and insulting things with all the brutality of a teenager. I played her again in another one shot, and she’s a great character for silly one shots if I will ever need one again in the future.

Helga – Human Paladin (started at Level 1, currently Level 2)

My latest character is this very old Human Paladin. Usually Paladin is one of the least appealing classes to me thematically, however, this campaign is inspired by Norse mythology. So a religious fanatic devoted to a Norse-style god, whose life goal is to die gloriously in battle and feast in Valhalla? That sounds pretty awesome! I was going for something out of my comfort zone with this character, and being a reckless frontliner is usually not something I play. That’s why I built this character around this idea for the epic 5e campaign Raiders of the Serpent Sea. Helga is a fierce, extremely strong old woman who definitely doesn’t have time for this shit and just rushes head-first into dangerous situations (ouch).

And these are my DnD/Esper characters up until now! They were all really fun to develop and play, and with each new character I learned a lot on how to create an interesting character with a rich personal history – which also makes it way easier to roleplay the character. Helga’s backstory actually continues to evolve as I play, and will probably continue to grow throughout the story.

I’ve played a few one shots in other systems as well, but those were usually pre-made characters. One notable mention here is Mörk Borg, where I played 3 different characters within one session, because characters there die very easily, making for absolutely hilarious situations.

For now I’m pretty happy with developing Helga, and I’m curious where her path will lead her. But there are still lots of other DnD classes I want to try out in the future, as well as completely new systems. So maybe one day, there’ll be a part two of this post 🙂