Archetype was born out of the need to overcome creative lock-up when writing stories or creating new characters for games. It provides the random stimulus you sometimes need to prime your imagination, collected from surveying the common themes of more than 1,000 memorable characters from movies, books and games.

The print and play version comes with 125 printable cards in 4 flavors, each representing one dimension of a character:

• Roles - A character’s outward-facing place in the world around them.

• Quirks - A notable physical trait that makes a character physically memorable.

• Motivations - The inward-facing hopes and dreams of a character.

• Goals - What the character is doing now.

Use them individually or all together to make a descriptive sentence about a new character that you can jump off from.