Every time I go to my local Barnes & Noble, I see these titles in the roleplaying games area of the Science Fiction & Fantasy section of the store, and I finally picked up three of them as part of my Easter gift to myself (our family does Easter baskets for the kids every year, and Mom & Dad pick the stuff they want for their own baskets ).

Overall, I thought this was a pretty solid book. On the plus side, it covers a lot of different genres (and even has a generic one if you're looking for something more nuanced or more generic than the genres specifically mentioned in this book). I like the fact that a lot of thought was put into how to build characters for certain types of stories, but also acknowledged and addressed the fact that it would be of pretty limited usefulness if the book only told you how to create characters for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and "x-punk" narratives.

On the negative side, a lot of the book's space was taken up with "fill in the blanks" type activities, which is a pet peeve of mine, especially in the digital age. At no point will I ever treat these kinds of books like one-time use where I write in them and then can't use them again... but expecting someone to photocopy pages out of the book to use them over and over again feels a little 90s era for a book published in 2022. Why not save the space and provide a link to a website where you can download and print-out the forms yourself?

By and large, this is a great resource for thinking through how to go about character building, whether it's for RPG characters or for characters in a story. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who wants help thinking through how to create characters with more depth, especially in the genres of fantasy, science fiction, horror, and their various specialities and subgenres.

Interested in buying this? Support Writing.Com by making your purchase of The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide: Expanded Genres Edition: Prompts and Activities to Create Compelling Characters for Horror, Sci-Fi, X-Punk, and More (Ultimate Role Playing Game Series)   from Amazon.Com!

Created Apr 27, 2025 at 3:02pm • Submit your own review...