Four Humors, Four Suits, and Forty Cards; A New Way to Quickly Generate Random Character Traits.

Forty Character Traits, Arranged According to the Four Temperaments

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A quick trait generator the sake of easily generating character traits for quick character generation, whenever you need to figure out how the new hirelings or your new set of 0-level characters going to the grind will act. I recommend for quick character generation to draw three cards from a playing-card deck to generate the traits the character will have. If the traits contradict each other, then either contrive a reason why they act hypocritically, or discard one of the contradicting cards and draw anew.

The same may be done in the case that you feel the results are redundant.

The suits and ranks for both French-style and Italian-style(in this case Neapolitan) playing cards are listed here. The "face" cards in the 52 card deck are ignored, if you want a rule for use of the "joker" card, then treat it as any trait you desire the character to have that isn't present on the table below.

If you do not have access to playing cards, then you can roll using a 1d4 and 1d10, the d4 representing the suits, and the d10 the ranks, re-rolling repeated traits whenever they come up.

If you're generating traits for a Dungeon Crawl Classics style level 0 meat-grinder rather than for an individual character, then I recommend putting previously drawn cards in the discard pile so that the same cards are not drawn repeatedly.

Humor/Suit	Melancholic (Bastoni/Clubs)	Phlegmatic (Coppe/Cups/Hearts)	Sanguine (Denari/Coins/Diamonds)	Choleric (Spade(s)/Swords)
Asso/Ace	Stubborn	Submissive	Melodramatic	A sore loser
2	Brooding	Indecisive	Attention-seeking	Stands up for what he believes
3	Pessimist	Takes the path of least resistance	Vain	Confrontational
4	Holds grudges	Terrified of failure	Restless	Condescending
5	Argumentative	Dislikes surprises	Indiscriminate	Aggressive
6	Idealistic	Puts the needs of others before his own	A show-off	A braggart
7	Tenacious	Hates to offend	Needs validation	Sadistic
8/Fante/Footman	Patient	Trusting	Amicable	Steadfast
9/Cavallo/Horseman	Direct, to the point	Reliable	Quick to forgive	Confident
10/Re/King	Perfectionistic	Empathetic	Positive, even in dire straits	Decisive