I’ve been a fan of Stormer’s for years. I’ve loved his work with the All My Fantasy Children and Party of One podcasts, and his games on itchio. The timing of this book dropping on NetGalley at the same time that I’m getting started on a new campaign was too great to resist.

I found myself highlighting specific questions and keeping the pages open as I began drafting my new character, and it’s been such a delight, exploring and developing a character to play with.

With a variety of writing excepted, like journal entries, fill in the blank questionnaires, multiple choice questions, Stormer has created a magnificent reference tool for any looking to dig deeper into character building. And seeing the final result at the end in a couple pages introducing us to a new character developed using the methods was a fantastic way to bring everything together.

While this is marketed towards TTRPG games, I believe that this would also serve as a remarkable resource for creative writers looking to flesh out characters in stories.

Thanks to NetGalley and Adams Media for this arc!

Adams Media provided a galley for review.

As a gamer and a writer, I've come across several books like this one. And they tend to be similar in structure: several broad categories followed by questions in each area to be filled out from the character's perspective. Stormer, however, has done a bit more than others to make his guide stand out.

Although the title specifically includes "fantasy", the various exercises in this book are not all specifically tied that genre alone. In fact, I found that so many of these can apply to character creation of any kind very easily enough. The whole point of this book is to spark the creative engines, to get one to think about a variety of things when bringing to life an entity from practically nothing at all.

I can see myself revisiting this one as I work on my own creations in the future.