I've written before about the joy of building RPG characters and the pleasure of a nice and easy pre-generated character. There's another way I interact with character building though, and it sort of sits between those two extremes. Sometimes I build a character based on a specific miniature in my collection, and the constraints of having to "fit" the character to the miniature is surprisingly liberating.
It seems to be pretty common in the world of tabletop RPGs for a player to build a character, and then go shopping for a miniature to represent that character on the battle mat. Usually, at least in my experience, close enough is good enough. You build a monk for an upcoming game, so you go to over to Wizkids or Reaper and search "monk" and then buy one of the 2 or 3 results. It doesn't matter what the miniature is wearing, or what weapon it has, or whether it's anything close to what you see in your mind's eye. The point is, it's a monk token, and it's sufficiently different from the paladin and wizard token your fellow players are likely to have, so you'll be able to tell them all apart.
I think many of us probably have been there, because it's highly pragmatic and sensible. Your imagination is limitless, and there are a limited number of miniature sculpts. Everybody around the table understands this, and knows not to take the miniature as a literal representation of the character you've imagined into being for the game.
For wargames, however, I obviously have a lot of miniatures in my army already. When I'm preparing for a wargame that leans into roleplay (I guess we call them a "narrative" wargame), then it only makes sense for one of those miniatures to become my character. Instead of building my character and then finding a suitable miniature, I find a suitable miniature and then build a character to suit.
For my narrative wargames, and sometimes for an RPG, I start my character creation process with a miniature. It may be a new miniature I just purchased and am in the middle of painting, or it might be a miniature that's already had a character assigned to it. It doesn't really matter to me, as long as I like the miniature and can come up with a suitable character for it.
In this context, the character build process is a hybrid of character design and adventure design. Sure, I'm coming up with a name and maybe I'm customising stats (it depends on the rules), but more than that I'm also considering the campaign that I'm about to embark upon. Why is this character in this army? What the army's goal? What's the character's personal goal? What's the state of the world around the character? What do the miniature's assigned stats say about the character?
All of these questions serve as creative prompts. Of course, a prompt influences the character building process. More than that, the miniature itself influences the character build. If I want to build a hobbit thief or a grey wizard but all I've got is an Aragorn miniature, then I'm just out of luck.
My choices are necessarily restricted, because I'm choosing to build for an existing sculpt. And the surprising thing is, sometimes that's a relief. Sometimes it's actually nice to know that I don't have to choose between 6 different ancestries and 12 different classes. When I go shopping to equip my character, I don't have to decide between a greatsword and a spear, because I can see what the miniature is equipped with. As restrictive as that may seem to a hardened RPG character builder, it can also be a real, and almost addictive, guilty pleasure.
Here's my workflow for building characters for miniatures. It's nothing fancy, and I guess that's the point.
The rule system doesn't really matter, it's the basically the same no matter what game I'm playing.
Sometimes this process happens while I'm building and painting the miniature, which feels appropriate but statistically it's not the most common scenario. After all, you only build and paint a miniature once, but that miniature can serve as a bunch of different characters. I can't even count how many Techno-archaeologists characters I've built, but I have just the one Techno-archaeologist miniature.
Other times, the character build happens while preparing for the campaign. If I'm doing an army list or a campaign roster, then I might start thinking about my character while I add up points, or sort through boxes of miniatures. As I'm setting up a battlefield for an imminent game, I might think about it then.
Still other times, I might sit down and formally create the character's backstory, and maybe roll stats (if the system or a house rule requires it).
And sometimes it doesn't happen in advance at all, but the character emerges as I play. I've definitely started a campaign with no character, but fall in love with a miniature for the role it's filling within the game, and then build a character for that miniature.
It's all valid, and it's very restrictive, and it's very, very satisfying.
What I didn't expect, after I discovered my ability to flip the character creation process on its head, was the sense of satisfaction I'd get when a miniature literally is its character. When I've created a character for a miniature, that plastic figure isn't just an abstract representation of the character. This isn't a player token that gets near enough to my character to pass as my character.
This literally is the character.
Everything on the miniature has a story. Every piece of equipment has a reason for being there, the uniform colours have meaning, the pose has significance. Everything being conveyed by the sculpt and paint of a miniature has been factored into my character build, so there's no uncanny valley to bridge (um, aside from the fact that it's a 28mm tall plastic toy). I don't have to ignore that the representation of my character is holding an handaxe even though it says in my character design that he uses a scimitar he captured from an enemy. I don't have to pretend that he's bigger or smaller, more armoured or less armoured, older or younger. The miniature is the character, and that's been surprisingly endearing to me. Maybe it's the difference between holding the character exclusively in my mind, and being able to reach out and touch the character in the physical world. Or maybe it just feels symmetrical that the physical design and the character design are a perfect match.
Whatever the reason, I enjoy extruding characters from miniatures. It's a relaxing and simple way to invent an in-game avatar, while also having a physical avatar on the tabletop.