Character creation and recreation are some of the hardest parts of the game. Coming up with a concept, goals, and then creating stats for a character you haven't played yet can be fun, but it's also hard to know what you're going to enjoy playing a few months down the road. That's why I promote the idea of a two-step process of character creation and recreation.

Most role players are familiar with character creation, where you come up with a concept for what you want to play, and then create stats for them using whatever system you're playing in. It's pretty basic, but it can be tedious, and a lot of people have trouble coming up with concepts, figuring out how to reflect the concept in stats, or coming up with the hardest part, a name.

When I'm trying to come up with a concept for a character, I tend to spend a lot of time thinking about what I'm interested in. For vampire, this usually starts with what clan and covenant I'm interested in playing (and for me what will help balance out the game in terms of numbers). I recommend reading through the basic character groups (clans, covenants, classes, paths, or whatever) and seeing which one(s) intrigue you the most. Once you know what you want to play, then you should start thinking about concepts.

As a side note, this is just how I create characters. If you prefer to come up with a concept and then apply clan and covenant later, that's totally reasonable. The steps I'm recommending can be applied in any order.

Concepts are probably the most difficult part of character creation outside of coming up with a name. Concepts are kind of like the core ideas of who the character is, what they do, and why they matter. I've heard a lot of ideas for how you can come up with a concept, including writing a bunch of adjectives and nouns down on pieces of paper, throwing them in a hat and drawing two out until you get an interesting match. There are several variations on this idea, but the two-word concept is a solid way to start. Ideas like Mad Scholar, Elysium Raconteur, Tempting Harpy, or Paranoid Hacker are good places to start.

Of course, a concept may just hit you in the face and say "Play me!" When this doesn't happen, an alternative to the two-word concept is to look around you at various media. TV shows, movies, comic books, books, manga, anime, and even real life are all great places to pull ideas from. For example, I once wanted to play Spike from Buffy (who doesn't?). Of course, if I just walked around in a black trench coat, bad English accent, and acted tough, I wasn't going to be very interesting. So, I made him a Nosferatu (this was old World of Darkness) who liked to act like he was beautiful, but looked like he had had the shit beat out of him several times over. Sadly for him, he didn't have the Obfuscate necessary to make himself look as pretty as he liked to act. I also made him a former Anarch (again, old WoD) who had gotten fed up with the movement and wanted to change the system from the inside. He was English, and a brawler like Spike, but different enough that he was a lot of fun to play. His name was Duncan, and he staked the Prince. I loved him.

Once you have a concept, you need to make a character sheet for them. After the concept is solid, adding stats should be fairly easy, but is often frustrating. In our minds, we want our characters to meet the expectations of our concept. When I built Mason, I wanted him to be a bad ass, zealous, investigator. Unfortunately, there are never enough points or experience to purchase everything you want. The key therefore, is to figure out what the most important aspects of the character are and focus on those. Then flesh them out as much as you can, and build them up over time.

With Mason, I knew I wanted him to be smart and fairly bad ass, so I made him Mental primary and Physical secondary (I think it was pretty obvious he was Social tertiary). I followed that pattern for Attributes and Skills, focusing on Academics, Investigation, Firearms and Stealth since I knew I wanted him to be Mekhet. I then started fleshing out the rest of his points.

After I was done with Attributes and Skills, I moved on to Merits and tried to continue to flesh out the concept of Mason using the available merits. I gave him some clan and covenant status to reflect some respect, Fast Reflexes to reflect his speed, etc. Finally, I moved on to his Disciplines. These are fairly easy to start with, though it's difficult when you want them to have Obfuscate 3, but only have enough points/xp for Obfuscate 2. For any situation where you can't afford something you think your character would want/should have, building that into the character can provide you with goals, or at least help you know what you want to buy later.

Once you've got a character sheet, you're ready to establish goals for your character if you haven't already done so. As mentioned before, you might want to tie not being able to purchase something at character creation into the concept. For example, you know you want the character to have Auspex 2 out of clan, but you can only know up to level 1 at creation because it's a clan specific discipline. So, one of your goals might be for your character to find someone to teach them how to read auras. Their goal may be able to see who is trying to lie to them, or to see if anyone is a diablerist. Auspex 2 is just how they are trying to accomplish that goal. Either way, the lack of the discipline becomes part of the character.

Important Note: At some point in the creation process, find someone you trust, either in the game or someone outside the game and tell them about your character. Get feedback from them, and listen to ideas they have for making the concept even better. You obviously don't have to take the advice if you don't like it, but I find this process helps to A) keep you from coming up with something clich´e; and B) come up with ideas for the character you might not have thought of on your own. I find this invaluable, and the ST team is always willing to help you with this if you want us to.

I often find it helpful to have connections to existing PCs in the game. Consider making a post to the forums or talking to people to develop ally and/or antagonist relationships with other characters. This will give you reasons to be in the area, and built-in interactions with other characters. It can be a lot of fun to see an immediate glare appear on someone's face when a new character shows up. Alternatively, having a new character have an existing contact (or even a sire) can be helpful to new and experienced players. Work with others to see if anyone has a history in the city you're coming from or even further back in your past.

I've touched on goals in previous write-ups, but it's always a good idea to come up with some basic ones. Survival is a key one, obviously, but it's also good to have goals that get you out and interacting with others (or failing that, give you things to do during downtimes). If you aren't sure where to start, think about what you want your character to achieve and go from there. One good way to determine what you want your goals to be is to ask yourself some questions. What does your character want to do? What does your character need? How can they achieve that? What do they have that makes them valuable to others, or can be used to get what they want or need? Work from there until you have as many goals as you can come up with (more is almost always a good thing, though quality is important too). If you need help, the ST team is always willing to help.

For example, when I created Duncan, he had the goal of changing the Camarilla from the inside to value merit over generation. Soon after game started he developed the goal of hunting an outlaw named Hawk, and then later he developed the goal of working with Hawk to overthrow the Prince. This is an example of how a character can be recreated over the course of a game, and I will touch on that more next time.