Character Concepts for a Quickplay Game

Here are some fast (but interesting) character concepts that you can use to quickly bring together a new group of players, particularly folks new to the game. Let everyone pick their own names and decide their relationships, etc, but provide them with all the mechanical decisions (Race, class, background) ahead of time.

The group concept is a group of bandits/mercenaries left together at the end of a long war. Some of these were inspired by characters in the movie Kundo: Age of the Rampant.

Warrior Monk
Race: Human
Background: Soldier
Class: Monk
Alignment: Neutral Good

You served as a chaplain in the army, fighting alongside your fellow soldiers and tending to their wounds and funerals during pauses in the fighting. Because of your lifestyle, you are more rough around the edges than the typical monk, but still respect your superiors in your order.

Outcast Noble
Race: Human
Background: Noble
Class: Fighter
Alignment: Lawful Good

Your father was an aristocrat, and your mother was a village girl who died in childbirth. Your father remarried for money and prestige, and you were eventually replaced by a new noble-born heir and sent off to seek your fortune in the world. You have studied war and combat since you were tall enough to hold a sword, and naturally expect others to follow your lead.

Camp Follower
Race: Half-orc
Background: Urchin
Class: Rogue
Alignment: Chaotic good

You grew up an orphan, raised in the baggage train of an army or mercenary company, following along as it moved between garrisoned towns, frontier villages, and restless cities. You lived on what you could beg or steal, sneaking into besieged towns to find secrets to sell to the commanders and robbing the corpses of the dead. Your manners appall civilized people, and you are probably more used to running from or undermining authority than obeying it, but you grew up in an egalitarian society of orphans and beggars where the older children made sure that the younger ones got to eat.

Scout
Race: Half-elf
Background: Outsider
Class: Ranger
Alignment: Neutral Good

You grew up in the wilderness, maybe living in an isolated cabin or living in tents as you migrated between pastures and hunting grounds. From the time you could walk you were at home in the wilderness, able to live off the land as easily as most people would live in a hotel. You were hired by an army to serve as a scout, seeking out enemy camps and ambushes and finding paths through the wilderness.  You speak few unnecessary words and think civilized life is soft and boring, but you are curious about the world and enjoy meeting new people and seeing new places.

Chronicler
Race: Elf
Background: Scholar
Class: Bard
Alignment: Chaotic Good

Most who know you know of you only as an entertainer, singing songs around the campfires at night in exchange for coins and drink. The soldiers and their companions enjoy your songs, but regard you as strange and alien, unsure why one of the mythical Fair Folk has joined their number. In fact, you are far more than a mere minstrel- the full Elven name for your vocation is something like 'witness to the strife of the short-lived races'- and you regard it as something of a sacred duty to witness and record the short, passionate lives of mortal armies in story and song. Your long life grants you a unique perspective on the struggles of your companions- others regard you as cold and strange, but in truth you are stirred deeply by the struggles of those around you, a fact that emerges primarily through your music.

Changeling Messiah
Race: Gnome
Background: Folk Hero
Class: Sorcerer
Alignment: Chaotic Good

You Human parents found you hidden in a concealed nook in an abandoned village- you had clearly been placed there for your protection, but the village had been abandoned for days by the time your parents found you. Thinking at first that you were just an unusually small child, it soon became apparent that you were something very different. The people in your remote village regarded you at first with fear and mistrust, but then began to think that they had been favored by the gods when your magical powers began to develop. A cult developed in the village centered around you- you were pampered and catered to to the best of their meager ability- but once you had outlived your aging parents, you grew restless and left to seek your origins, much to the dismay of your worshipers. You are brash and used to being treated as a god, but ignorant about the ways of the wider world. You fell in with a group of mercenaries or bandits when they found you amusing and noticed that people you don't like tend to burst into flames. They treat you as a kind of mascot, trying to keep you away from the real fighting but letting you act out symbolic victories like burning the enemies banners or making enemies swear their parole oaths to you.