Thread with five example near-finished characters linked here.
I was just thinking about putting together some pre-made characters for pick-up-and-play situations. The situation is inspired by a vaguely remembered friend’s description of a Raymond E. Feist novel about fifteen or so years ago. I might throw together an emotional attribute or trait that deals with the character’s mystic bond with the saint of hanged men but maybe not. I dunno.
Splash of Color
There are five cities, five ducal seats all surrounding the holy city. The five cities were founded on the bones of the five great beasts: the griffon, dragon, rukh, lion, sphinx. Some ducal seats claim to be descendants of their beast, others claim the holy right of lordship because their ancestor vanquished their city’s beast.Which city are you all from and what is your duke’s relationship to the beast?
The Situation
You committed a crime in this city and would have been hanged until dead if you hadn’t made a deal with the duke. You swore fell oaths on the saint of hanged men’s rope. The world believes you are dead and as your oath dictates, you will do the duke’s bloody work with the fell saint looking over your shoulder.Look at your lifepaths, your skills and traits and decide what crime got you to the hanged man.
Githyanki Diaspora 
So badass! Burning Wheel character generation and the character sheet’s ability to generate instant story with only a few sentences are my biggest inspirations for RPG design right now.
There’s something fascinating about building your own mythology around partial recollections or descriptions. Someday I’d like to shadow Borges and Stanislaw Lem and create a series of gaming pseudepigrapha from which others can do the same without being sullied by an original source.
Somewhere I have a few magazine pages from an article detailing roleplaying history beginning with its roots in amateur fussball.
Burning up five bad-asses was really good fun.
You lost me in the second paragraph, Zak.
I must have been in a mood. I was commenting on your having invented something new from the vague recollections of your friend’s description of something. It’s like when you remember hearing about some movie followed by the disappointment when you see the thing and it’s nothing like you imagined. There’s something magical about the semi-created thing floating around in your head.
To restate, create non-existent gaming books and then write about them rather than write the books themselves. See Stanislaw Lem, Jorges Luis Borges, and (most famously) HP Lovecraft.