Cormyr and the Dalelands

So the local community college does a summer program for the kids, and they came by our last faculty meeting pretty much begging us to sign up for classes they could offer; subject matter could be whatever we wanted. I jumped on it and applied to teach a class on D&D/Pathfinder. Not too worried about teaching the mechanics, but I'm a little hazier on ways I could actually get them to consider backstory and characterization, especially since I've discovered that I flesh my characters out far more as they are being played and letting me see little pieces falling into place. Anyone have any suggestions for how I could get the idea of goal-setting and fleshing out a personality across to a bunch of tweens?

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I actually just taught a class at our writers group on character development!

What I did:

1. Pick a name. Know that a name gives a sense of personality right off. "Mildred" gives you a vastly different image than "Katie" does.

2. 15 things. (See below)

3. Police Rap sheet. If your character would go missing, do you have enough details that the police could track them down? (Consider a list of things to ask, like eyes: shape/color/glasses/ect, clothing, where they might go, etc)

15 Things About Your Character:
5 Things Your Character Fears (in order from least afraid to most)
4 Things Your Character Loves Dearly (in order from least love to most)
3 Things Your Character Is Embarrassed About (in order from least embarrassing to most)
2 Things Your Character is Proud of (least proud of to most)
1 Thing They'd be Willing to Kill or Die for (state whether they'd kill or die for it)

Hope it helps!

I wrote this many years ago to help people here come up with ideas for characters.

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