Everyone at the table benefits from richly characterized characters. The player who describes their character in detail is the player who has the greatest potential to develop story moments into powerful narrative. This also inspires other players to develop their characters as well. And at the same time, posing character development questions to your players not only pushes them to get specific with their characterization, but also creates an atmosphere of fun as the players try to one-up each other with facts about their characters. All it takes is starting each session with a fact about each character.
This idea comes from the fantastic D&D podcast Dungeons & Daddies. Each episode of their podcast begins with each player (and the DM) offering what they call "Dad Facts." Each of the party's characters--all dads--get the game started by sharing a specific piece of information about them. Oftentimes, these facts are funny; sometimes, they are meaningful; other times still, they are both. The folks who make the show have discussed on multiple occasions how helpful these "Dad Facts" are. They say that beginning the game by thinking in detail about their characters helps them get into the game. It also gets their creative juices flowing--they have to get in touch with the part of their brain that creates narrative details before the game has even begun. And for listeners, "Dad Facts" can be one of the most entertaining parts of the show. So why not adapt this idea to your game?
Implementing this idea is simple. When your group sits down to play, explain that before you start the game proper, you'll be asking for each player to share a detail about their player. (Details on good things to share below.) It's a good idea to start this exercise for the first time with your strongest roleplayer so that the other players can get a sense of what a good answer looks like. If a player shares something that is vague, ask them a more specific question to have them clarify in a more precise fashion. Your goal is to unveil something that is either surprising (people would not have guessed this fact about the character) or so fitting that it's entertaining (people could have guessed it, but it's more extreme than imagined). Oftentimes, players will piggy-back on each others' facts, and you'll end up with everyone in the party's position on some minor issue. This works great. The more the facts bring the party together, the better.
Let's talk about what makes a good fact to share. Specificity is key. We don't want a player to say something like, "I like killing monsters" or "I fight using spells." This is pretty obvious and doesn't make the character seem more unique. More specific versions of these would be "I enjoy killing gnolls" or "My favorite spell is Magic Missile." But these are still not very specific or unique. A better version of these would be "I was once mugged by a group of gnolls and now I don't trust them" or "I once used Magic Missile to knock a priest's hat off his head." These would work as good beginner facts--they tell us something about the character and are specific enough to be interesting.
But these facts don't need to relate to the game in such direct ways. A strong fact to share is simply choosing what a favorite is for the character. Favorite food and drinks, favorite books and plays, favorite memories with friends and family, favorite physical objects (clothing, items, trinkets), and what things in our modern world (films, shows, video games, trends) would be the character's favorite if they lived here and not in a fantasy world--these are all good options. But just picking a favorite is not enough. Your player should describe why that thing is their favorite. A short anecdote about the character's connection to these favorites is the best way to handle these types of character facts.
On that note, the best kind of character fact is normally a micro-story. Pick an idea/topic and think about how your character would feel about it. Then reverse-engineer a short story about that character and how they interacted with that idea/topic. For example, you have a cleric with guilt problems and a twisted sense of justice; choosing an idea/topic, I come up with "how does this character respond to miscarriages of justice?" So in the end, I tell a short story about how my cleric once saw someone get away with assaulting an old woman in the neighborhood; in response, he tracked the guilty party down in the middle of the night and administered a worse beating than the old woman got. This works well enough, but I can shine it up a little more. I can add that my cleric was found out for his attack on the guilty party, and the church the cleric worked for transferred him to a smaller town where he could cause less trouble. Now, everyone at the table has a clearer sense of who my cleric is--and I probably do too, even as the character's creator.
It's important to note that even though some of these character facts are more colorful, specific, and interesting than others. And that's okay! It's not a competition. The players should feel when making these facts that they are collaborating on a joint portrait of the party as individual people, not that they have to outdo each other's efforts to characterize their characters. Once you've all shared a character fact, you can roll right into the game, secure in the knowledge that everyone is thinking in-character and creatively.
For the GM of the game, you have a few options. In Dungeons & Daddies, the DM shares a fact about his real-life self, all of which are humorous. When in comparison to the players' facts, these funny anecdotes seem larger-than-life and suit the tone of the show. But I would suggest an alternative for most games: the GM should pick an NPC who has been particularly at the center of the campaign or session for a while, or someone who is about to become more notable in the story, and share a fact about them. This way, the GM can characterize NPCs (like most GMs want to but hesitate to do for sake of the progress of the campaign) at their discretion and without spending in-game time delivering information about that NPC. You might also as GM have your facts be about the gameworld, as though it is a character itself. Again, this provides an opportunity to fill in worldbuilding details in a way that doesn't slow the game.
So, to review: by asking your players to deliver one fact about their character per session, you can get your players thinking in-game, set them into creativity mode, consistently develop characters over time, start sessions with a bit of in-game fun, and inspire some laughter or pondering in the rest of the group. For such a simple commitment (just one fact), the results are remarkable. I highly recommend adding this small idea to your campaign, as it will not only improve the game, but also bring the players closer together.
That's all for now. Coming soon: a one-shot based on the movie The Warriors, a profile on literature in my homebrew setting, and rules for commanding and sustaining armies. Until next time, happy gaming!
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