Character questionnaires aren’t new tech by any means; even before they started to be ingrained into character creation and session zero procedures, lists of key questions have been used extensively in TTRPGs to give players a starting point from where they could figure out who they wanted their character to be outside of mechanical determinants. In recent years, though, the character questionnaire has developed into a procedure all its own, with some interesting tech for making the process more specific to both TTRPGs in general and the given TTRPG a questionnaire was packaged with. One character questionnaire I’ve used recently, the persona generation questionnaire from the DIE RPG, is both powerful enough and generalizable enough that I want to break down what it does in an attempt to make writing a character questionnaire for your own session zero easier.

There are two technical changes to the character questionnaire which move it from a tool used by fiction writers since time immemorial to an RPG-specific tool. One is rather obvious, has been attempted by many, and in my opinion is difficult to pull off effectively: writing a questionnaire where the answers inform mechanical decisions. A prime example of this which we’ve discussed before is Legend of the Five Rings’ ‘Twenty Questions’, which serves as the complete character creation method for the game. Although I broadly had a good experience with L5R and its character creation, I find that Twenty Questions doesn’t give as much actionable information about a character as it could. One reason the method works well in L5R in particular is that the system (with rings instead of attributes) as well as the setting is unique and idiosyncratic, so framing the mechanics in a questionnaire also serves as onboarding. Beyond whether or not I think game designers employ this well, it’s also never going to be an easy addition to a game for a GM to cook up before their next campaign, just given how baked into the system it must be.

The other technical change, if one could call it that, is the use of questionnaires in session zero. What makes this important is that the group has a stake in the individual responses, and in most cases is also invited to riff off the given answers. There can be mechanical links here; in Masks, which questions are asked depend on which playbooks are being used, and that gives each player a different sort of contribution depending on which playbook they take. The most important thing, though, is that because these character questions are being answered in full view of the group, you end up getting a more cohesive group and end up being able to define group-level details that wouldn’t come up (or wouldn’t agree) if everyone was off rolling characters on their own.

The importance of group character creation is highlighted in the DIE RPG persona generation questionnaire. Some of the questions are directed at the group, to be sure, but even the more character-specific questions have an impact on everyone else there. Beyond that, the ‘big questions’ have the ability to drive the entire plot of the game.

In order to use the DIE RPG persona generation questionnaire to inform other character questionnaires, we’re going to start by breaking down the structure of the questionnaire, what it’s asking, and what the purpose of those questions are. Then we’re going to look at how best to formulate questions that would serve the same purpose in a different game. The result will likely not produce the gutpunch that persona generation does in the DIE RPG, but it is going to give you more information about the characters in your campaign and how they connect to your world.

The structure of the DIE Persona Generation questionnaire

Incredibly, DIE’s Persona Generation questionnaire fits on only two pages. There are six sections, roughly divided into three types of questions: Group Questions, Character Questions, and Conflict Questions. In the case of DIE specifically, the Conflict Questions are directed at individual characters.

Section 1: Group Questions about Setting

In this section, players are asked to detail and embellish the setting and their role in it after the GM has introduced the core concept. For example, ‘you used to play TTRPGs together at school’ is the core concept which the GM presents, but then ‘what kind of school’ and ‘where at school did you play’ are presented to the players to answer. This is fairly generalizable to any setting or genre, but the overall structure here is instructive: Bring in a defined setting and group concept, and then allow the players to embellish or frame that. The questions can also be used for establishment, “tell me about the army brigade you all served in” is a very different question than “how did the party meet?”

Section 2: Character Questions about Background

These are the Writing 101 questions, probing each player to think about who their character is, what they like, what they look like. It’s worth noting here that the DIE questions, about high school stereotypes and reputations, are much more evocative than ‘hair color’ or ‘style of dress’ but still will lead players to think of answers to those other questions. This is possibly the broadest section but is also the section which is already covered best across other games and genres.

Section 3: Conflict Questions: Establishing Big Question

In the DIE RPG, much of the game is modeled around characters ‘core lacks’, the things they do not have but they need (or think they need). In persona generation, getting the players to establish at least one central core lack is done by asking a two part question. The first part is ‘what was most important to you in high school?’, and the second part is ‘how did you lose the thing that was most important to you?’ The same framing isn’t necessarily going to be applicable to all campaigns, but the niftiest ‘trick’ used in DIE specifically is the deterministic setup forcing players to write characters who have lost something important.

Section 4: Group Questions about Group Dynamics

These questions are intended to get players thinking about how the party interacts as a group. They do this well by being indirect; instead of asking what the group fights about, the game asks who was the smartest and who was the prettiest, and leaves the silence after the question as the space for players to imagine (and maybe even fall into roleplaying) the conflicts and resentments that came along with those questions. Same with ‘favorite/least favorite person in the group’, which is a phenomenal question to steal for basically any game.

Section 5: Conflict Questions: Resolving Big Question

The resolution of the ‘big questions’ is separated from their establishment as a way to give the implications of the big question time to breathe, as well as create space for players to answer the first part honestly and not try to weasel out. In DIE especially, resolving the ‘big question’ implies a pretty comprehensive answer about the life the character leads as a result of the loss that is described in the answer to the resolving question. This both means that these sections need a fair amount of time despite having one question each, and also that this section flows easily into the next section.

Section 6: Character Questions about the Present Situation

While in the DIE RPG there’s some delineation between adolescence and adulthood, what’s important about this section is framing where the character is as they head into the situation at the start of the game. This is a combination of simple establishment which is applicable to pretty much any game, as well as some leading questions which are meant to make you (and the GM) think pretty specifically about what you’re leaving behind once you enter DIE.

Writing effective character questions

The structure of the Persona Generation questionnaire creates what I like to call a ‘zoom and pan’ effect. First we go from broad to very narrow (from setting to single characters’ core lacks) and then we pan over (through time, really) from the high school days and group dynamics all the way up to the present day, immediately before game start. Most games aren’t going to assume a huge amount of background between party members, the DIE RPG premise of being friends all through high school is almost on the opposite end of the spectrum to ‘you all meet in a tavern’. Still, we can use some of the same ‘zoom and pan’ ideas to start broad and old (the setting) and move steadily towards narrow and new (how the group is currently getting on when they’re introduced to the inciting incident).

Setting: The most important thing you as the GM need to establish when asking setting questions is what you aren’t going to ask. Before session zero you need to know what parts of the setting are firm and non-negotiable, and what parts you’re going to offer to the players to detail out. Remember that once you offer something to the players to do with as they please, you cannot take it back. As you’re still holding the keys to the setting at a high level, there don’t need to be many questions in this section…there can be, of course, but even in PbtA games and others where players are expected to contribute more to the setting, you’ll find that there will usually be a clear-cut establishing framework which is then built off of. What you’re looking for, really, is a general feel for what the characters think of their surroundings and how they’re tied to the initial setting. This will be very different from the questions in Persona Generation, and there may be more relevant questions in the next section, especially if you’re doing more traditional setting design and prep.

Characters: This can be as long or as short as you want, and as soft or as hard as you want. Hard questions are the ones that tie characters into the premise of the game. Is the starting location of the game home for you? Who do you know in the starting location besides the party? What did you do for a living before now? These are hard questions because they should point to either the starting scenario or choices made on the character sheet. Soft questions are background; questions that may not have a mechanical effect but still help develop the character. Favorite hobby? Favorite food? Relationship with your parents (That one may look like a trap to seasoned gamers of a certain generation)? You can be broad, here: Remember that in Persona Generation one entire question is ‘name your favorites’ with only simple guidance as to what those favorites should be.

Group: This is where we move into territory that many games, especially traditional games, don’t necessarily cover. The questions in Persona Generation are well suited to high schoolers, but for an adventuring party there’s no real guarantee you’ve been travelling together long enough to have a ‘favorite’ or ‘least favorite’. Bonds questions from a number of PbtA games tend to fill at least some of this section well, same with History Questions from Apocalypse World specifically. The key here is to start thinking about how the group operates and what relationships (be those friendships, rivalries, frenemies, crushes, what have you) are starting to either evolve or be foreshadowed. The best bit of tech here from the DIE RPG are the superlative questions: Asking who is ‘the smartest’ or ‘the most impulsive’ or ‘the most outgoing’ invites players to offer their perception of both the group as a whole as well as another player’s character, and then discussion can help either reinforce or realign those perceptions. Even without agreement, superlatives force players to consider how all of the characters come together as a group rather than just assuming they ‘met in a tavern’ and going from there.

Conflict: I tend to operate under Torchbearer assumptions when it comes to a lot of adventuring parties, be they in fantasy or sci-fi settings. Adventurers operate at the fringes of society, and each character’s decision to become an adventurer stemmed from an internal conflict where either the choice to abandon your old life and become an adventurer made the most sense, or the choice to become an adventurer was less of a choice and more the only option. In every case, the character’s motivation has to be their own. Even in a setting with a single monolithic evil that’s terrorizing the land, there is ‘something’ that separates adventurers from everyone else, and that something needs to be identified.

It’s worth noting here that replicating the core ‘tech’ of the DIE RPG conflict question is tough. Hell, being unable to replicate the conflict question is one of the reasons even DIE RPG scenarios can be quite inconsistent. That said, the core idea is sound: each character has something important to them that they lost. It’s not always going to be easy to get something like that together, especially once you leave the high school/teenage melodrama genre where characters are expected to have that singular, all-consuming drive. Still, there are things you can do. To the point above, there’s a great question that sits in parallel with asking why a character became an adventurer: If your character didn’t become an adventurer, what would they be doing instead? While DIE frames the ‘core lack’ quite differently because of its conceit, all interesting characters need some sort of internal conflict to drive them into narratively interesting situations.

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Each campaign is going to have different needs out of the character questionnaire. A traditional game will have fairly little in the way of setting questions, whereas for a more broad-based PbtA game like Apocalypse World or The Veil, setting questions will ground everything. Character and group questions are both part of the most broadly applicable core, but what you’ll ask and how well your players will be prepared to answer will both depend on genre, premise, and mechanics. And while conflict questions have the most potential to add extra depth and drama to your game, they’re also going to be the hardest ones to both formulate and answer. All that said, coming up with a character questionnaire is not only going to help give your players with character development, it will help you figure out what’s going to be most important at the start of your campaign. While some questions will always help inform your writing down the road, figuring out what questions you want answered is one way to figure out how to get everyone on the same page in a session zero. In the DIE RPG, the questionnaire establishes the bulk of character creation, at least until the Paragons are assigned. In other games, I think that’s good practice, to a point. Do a session zero with a questionnaire before anyone starts fiddling with mechanical character creation, especially if it isn’t a system that’s already intermingled with these sorts of questions. Even if doing so doesn’t cause any of your players to depart from their chosen character concepts, it’ll likely get them thinking about elements of their character that aren’t in the book, but may very well be key at the table.

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