What's the point of a bio?
Character bios are an important part of life in most roleplaying games. They help the DM get an idea of who your character is, and give them hooks and ideas to form together plots and little story lines that revolve around your PC. Maybe your PC was a son of a Waterdavian noble. Wouldn't it be great if he were to receive an invitation from a local landed family, getting him ringed into some plot due to his blood lines?
When should you write a bio?
Ideally by the time your character hits the Level 3 mark you should have a bio ready to fire off to your local DM. Some people do it much sooner, but I would advise not doing it any later than this point. Generally when making a PC, I find it helpful to jot down a list of bullet points about the PC - future goals, past history and personality. From there, it gets slowly fleshed out as I play and come to know my PC more and more. Others like to write large story-form bios before they even set foot in game; while some prefer to leap into game without anything written down and make the story up as they go. Generally however, once you hit that Level 3 point, DMs will start asking you for a bio, if you haven't already sent them one.
What should the bio include?
A handy place to start is your PCs background - what happened in their life before now? What defining moments occurred? Why did they choose the path of an Adventurer? These are just basic questions to consider.
Next, ask yourself what you want your character to achieve, both short run and long run. Maybe they want to build a shrine to their god, or re-establish their family honor?
If you are wanting a bit more of a guideline to writing character bios, do a quick google search and it will give you a whole list of useful links and templates. The one thing to remember, however, is that the more information you provide, the more chances the DM has of weaving it into her story.
Who do you send the Bio to, once it's done?
Best place to send it is to your regular DM, but really, any DM will do. Once you've sent it to one DM, all DMs have access to it, to save everyone time.
