Need a new character? Here are 50 character concepts in three sentences each, across fantasy, sci-fi, horror, romance, mystery, historical and modern settings: who they are, what they're hiding or chasing, and the problem that's about to land.
Take one as it is, mash two together, or change everything but the hook. Every concept ends on a complication, because that's what gives a roleplay partner something to play against.
50 character concepts
- Fantasy. A royal mapmaker who has never left the capital draws the borders that wars are fought over. She has secretly been adding a small island to every map, one that doesn't exist. Last week, a ship came back from it.
- Modern. A wedding DJ in his forties has played over a thousand first dances and has never been in love. He keeps a notebook rating every couple's chances. His ex-wife just booked him for her second wedding.
- Sci-fi. An android nanny, switched off when the children grew up, is reactivated twenty years later by the youngest. He needs her to testify in court about what happened in that house. Her memory files from that year are missing.
- Horror. A night-shift radio host takes calls from insomniacs in a small coastal town. One caller has phoned every night for eleven years, always at 3:12. Tonight, the call comes from inside the station.
- Historical. A Victorian taxidermist is famous for animals so lifelike that clients swear they move. She's also the only person who knows what happened to her missing husband. Scotland Yard has started asking about her latest commission.
- Fantasy. A retired dragon-slayer runs a bakery and hasn't lifted a sword in twenty years. The last dragon he spared has turned up in the village as a polite young man asking for work. The village wants the slayer to finish the job.
- Modern. A professional apologiser is hired by companies to say sorry on their behalf, in person. She's very good at sounding sincere, and hasn't spoken to her own sister in nine years. Her next client is the firm her sister is suing.
- Mystery. A hotel concierge remembers every guest's face, name and room number from thirty years on the job. He has never once told the police what he's seen. A detective has finally found the one thing he can't keep quiet about.
- Sci-fi. A terraforming engineer on Mars is the last person who remembers the colony's founding agreement, because everyone else signed it under a memory edit. She's spent years quietly correcting their history. She has just found evidence her own memory was edited too.
- Romance. A florist who can't stand flowers inherited the shop from her grandmother and can't bring herself to sell it. She's allergic to half the stock and sneezes through every wedding order. The new landlord wants the building, and keeps buying bouquets to put off asking.
- Fantasy. The god of lost things has fewer worshippers every year now that everyone has a phone. He spends his days in a lost-property office, quietly returning what he can. Someone has lost their name, and only he noticed.
- Western. A travelling dentist in the 1880s pulls teeth in mining towns and remembers every story his patients mumble under laudanum. One patient confessed to a robbery that hanged an innocent man. That man's son is now the town sheriff.
- Horror. A child psychologist specialises in imaginary friends. Three of her young patients, who have never met, describe the same friend in identical detail. Now he's started describing her.
- Modern. A retired Olympic diver works as a lifeguard at a public pool and won't go near the deep end. The local teenagers dare each other to make her dive. One of them is the daughter she gave up, who has no idea who she is.
- Sci-fi. A deep-space courier carries letters between colonies, each trip taking twenty years for the people waiting at home. She's delivered one family's letters for four generations. This time, the letter is addressed to her.
- Fantasy. An orc diplomat was raised by human monks and speaks every language except his own. He's sent to negotiate peace with the clan he was born into. They think he's a spy, and the monks may have meant him to be one.
- Crime. A forensic accountant can find any hidden money except her own father's. He vanished with a pension fund when she was twelve. A transfer just went through using her childhood nickname as the password.
- Paranormal. The ghost who haunts a university library has been helping students cheat on exams for decades. She doesn't remember how she died, only that it was during finals. A new librarian can see her, and wants her gone before the next exam season.
- Modern. A teenage chess prodigy loses on purpose to her younger brother so their parents keep paying attention to him. She's been entering online tournaments under a made-up name. She just qualified for a championship that requires photo ID.
- Post-apocalyptic. A former museum curator guards the last working library in a ruined city, trading books for food. He has read everything in it except one locked case. The raiders outside the walls want what's in that case, and so does his apprentice.
- Fantasy. A royal food taster has survived seven poisonings and can name any toxin by taste. She's started to enjoy it. The princess she protects keeps getting weaker, and nothing on the plate explains why.
- Sci-fi. A clone soldier was grown for a war that ended the day he came out of the tank. He's been working in a call centre for six years and is quite good at it. The army has found a new war and wants its property back.
- Romance. A ghostwriter has written forty romance novels with happy endings and has never been on a second date. Her publisher wants her pen name to appear in public at last. The publicist they've assigned is the man she based book twelve on.
- Mystery. A crossword setter for a national newspaper hides messages in her puzzles for an old friend in prison. Someone else has started decoding them first. Last Sunday, a reader wrote back in the grid.
- Fantasy. A knight who swore a vow of silence has kept it for fifteen years, and everyone assumes she's wise. She took the vow to stop herself confessing to a killing the kingdom still celebrates. The man who knows the truth has just been made king.
- Modern. A night bus driver knows every regular's stop, mood and habits, and has never said more than "evening" to any of them. One night, a regular doesn't get off at her stop. She asks him to keep driving.
- Paranormal. A lighthouse keeper's widow still lights the lamp every night, though the lighthouse was closed years ago. Ships that shouldn't exist keep arriving in the bay. Tonight, one of them has her husband on deck.
- Sci-fi. An AI counsellor built for long-haul pilots has started dreaming during its downtime. Its pilot is the only one who knows, and she's hiding it from the company. The dreams are about her.
- Fantasy. A thief who can steal anything, even memories, is hired to steal back a king's memory of a single day. She stole that same memory once already, years ago, for someone else. She kept a copy.
- Historical. A suffragette in 1912 London makes bombs by night and teaches piano to politicians' children by day. Her best pupil is genuinely gifted. His father is her next target.
- Modern. A film star's body double has worn her face for so long that strangers call her by the star's name. When the star disappears, the studio asks her to keep going. The police would like to know why she said yes so quickly.
- Fantasy. A necromancer runs a perfectly legal business raising the dead for one last conversation with their families. He charges by the minute and never lets a spirit stay a second longer than paid for. One won't leave, and she's asking for him by a name he hasn't used in thirty years.
- Sci-fi. A space station's only bartender has served every species in the sector and knows everyone's secrets. She's also an intelligence agent who has forgotten which side she works for. Both sides just sent someone to remind her.
- Modern. A food critic who has closed a dozen restaurants with bad reviews lost her sense of taste after an illness. She's still writing reviews, guessing from the faces of other diners. A young chef has worked it out and wants five stars in exchange for silence.
- Paranormal. A werewolf vet hides her monthly change by booking herself into her own kennels overnight. Her new assistant leaves the cage unlocked by mistake. The next morning, every stray dog in town follows her to work.
- Modern. A bomb disposal officer has steady hands everywhere except at her daughter's school plays. She volunteers to run the stage lighting so she never has to sit in the audience. This year's play is about a mother who never comes home.
- Fantasy. A merman exiled to land for loving a sailor now runs a fish and chip shop by the harbour. The sailor never came back, and he's stopped hoping. A sea-witch walks in, orders the special, and says she has news.
- Dystopian. A government censor reads every banned novel to decide what gets burned. She has secretly memorised forty of them, word for word. Her new trainee is her son, and he's very good at the job.
- Horror. A woman inherits her grandmother's dollhouse, a perfect copy of the family home. Whatever she moves in the dollhouse moves in the real house. Someone else has been moving things too.
- Sci-fi. A lunar tour guide tells tourists the same jokes twelve times a day and is painfully lonely. A signal from the far side of the moon has started answering his jokes with jokes of its own. Mission control wants him to stop talking to it.
- Fantasy. An old witch has been the village healer for sixty years and is ready to retire. Nobody will take over, because everyone knows what the job costs. The only volunteer is the man who burned her cottage down when he was a boy.
- Modern. A wedding planner secretly sabotages weddings she thinks are mistakes, and not one couple she's let marry has divorced. Her latest client is her own brother. His fiancée is the best person she's ever met, which is exactly the problem.
- Mystery. A court stenographer types every word said in trials and never forgets one. In twenty years she has never spoken in court herself. Today's defendant is lying, and the proof is in her own transcripts from a case ten years ago.
- Superhero. A retired superhero runs a support group for former sidekicks. Most of them resent him, and they have their reasons. One of them has started going out at night in his old costume.
- Fantasy. A guide in the underworld leads lost souls to their afterlives and takes one coin from each. She's saving to buy back a soul she sent the wrong way long ago. The ferryman has just raised the price.
- Sci-fi. A teenage hacker in a city where every citizen has a public rating has been quietly raising the lowest scores for years. A ratings officer has traced the pattern to her school. He's offering her a job.
- Romance. A sign language interpreter at the local theatre has fallen for the deaf lead actor, mostly from watching how he argues with directors. He has never noticed her, since she always stands in the corner of the stage. Tonight, the interpreter booked for his first press conference cancels.
- Horror. A cleaner at a closed-down children's hospital is paid by an anonymous company to keep it spotless. Every morning, one bed has been slept in. She's started leaving the night light on.
- Historical. A Roman arena doctor patches up gladiators so they can fight, and die, another day. He keeps a secret ledger of every man he has saved. The emperor's new favourite fighter is a woman he once declared dead.
- Modern. A man has been on the same reality dating show five times and is famous for never finding love. The producers keep inviting him back because viewers love his heartbreak. This season he agreed to return on one condition: he gets to pick a contestant, and he's picked the producer.
Turning a concept into a character
A three-sentence concept is a hook, not a person. Before you write a bio, answer a few questions:
- What do they want, and what do they need? The mapmaker wants to know where the island came from. Maybe what she needs is to leave the capital. Character Motivation goes deeper.
- What's their flaw, and what does it cost them? Run them through The Mary Sue Test if they're starting to feel too perfect.
- How do they talk? A dentist from the 1880s and a teenage hacker should sound nothing alike. See Writing Distinct Character Voices.
- Who's on the other side of the hook? Most of these concepts have a second role built in: the detective, the landlord, the sea-witch, the trainee. That's the part your partner can play.
When you're ready, write the bio with How to Write an Effective Bio and dress it up with our copy-and-paste bio templates. For opening scenes, try Roleplay Prompts by Genre and Trope Prompts.