Character Creation

[Music]

Anyone have any particular thoughts on the subject of character creation? Does it take a particularly long time for you to do? Or do you not understand why some people take more than a few minutes to write up their character? What about pictures?


My thoughts: I have a little ritual that I must do whenever creating a new character. After I have a vague idea of what the character is supposed to be like, it's of the utmost importance that I find the perfect picture first. Then I write out a description. After that comes the history, and I base his or her personality and powers off of this. If anything is out of order, the character is not complete.

What about you?

[PanzerJedi]

I, for one, tend to not use pictures. I'm not against it or anything, and I'll us them when there required, but I have a hard time finding pictures to match the kind of character I want to play. I just kind of feel that pictures limit my creativity in certain aspects because then I'm building the character to the picture instead of building the character I want. I'm also not as fond of using realistic pictures primarily because of my OCD. The people in the pictures are real people and I don't know that they'd want their face to be associated with my character. I also think you can be a lot more creative and descriptive with a written description. But overall I'm fine with people using pictures, it's just not my prefered thing. I will say that the thing that annoys me the most is when someone posts a picture for their character and then starts listing off the things that are different between your character's appearance and the picture's. I don't mind when people had extra details about how the character looks, especially if it's just a head shot, put if you're going to use a picture then use it.

As far as character creation, I like to take my time on it. I'll create one fast if I need to to join, but I prefer to take a day or two to flesh the character out in my mind. Figure out their history, personality, social life, quirks and skills, and things like that. Then when I post my character I already know them, instead of having to get to know them as I play.

One question that I have is what are peoples opinions on self-insertion and using yourself as a character. While I agree that it's good to try and play and view thing as a different person, I also like to have somethings that are familiar so I can play the character better. A fair number of my characters, especially in rps, share certain traits the same as or similar to myself. Ussually it's interests and certain personality traits or quirks. Again I feel that this help me personally to stay true to my characters. And while I've never done it, I think it could be fun to play yourself in a roleplay. You can then put yourself into situations that you normally wouldn't be in, try to figure out how you'd react, and just have fun. I also think it could have a very theraputic effect as well.

Anyways, just thought I'd share my thoughts on the subject. Please excuse the ramblings =)

[Avey]

For me I tend to find pictures first and decide whether I want to go for or against their look in terms of personality if that makes sense. Then I decide who I want them to be in my head and just write it out. :) I basically once I have a picture have a vague Idea already who I want them to be. It usually takes me about a day or so to write them out, then I will come back to it and add things or subtract things that I dislike. It usually takes me more time to think out a personality and a character history without making the character cliche.
I do tend to make my character closely match the picture that I have chosen. I agree with LDSJediMaster that if you are to use a picture, the character should at least LOOK like the picture. :)

A fair number of my characters, especially in rps, share certain traits the same as or similar to myself.

I do this myself as well, when I do I find the characters more personal. :)

[Ylanne]

I do the opposite.

First, I have a vague idea of the character's position or role - i.e. A student at Davenport University, the Director of Central Intelligence, a terrorist-affiliated computer hacker.

Then, the all important name. Usually, I just come up with one that is nationality/religion/time period appropriate, almost always without looking up the name meaning - regardless of whether I know it or not - and it's slapped on. Examples that I've done this with are Jahan Iskander-Dannaoui, Kwang Bin Yim, Ayasha Ziedins, Tahira Ali, Cameron Fields, Natalie Schultz, and Fatin Farah.

Next, I write out a physical description, which also typically encompasses a description of the character's mannerisms, affect (vibe), and manner of dress. This is intended to be confined to 1 - 2 paragraphs, without purple prose or cliches. Sometimes I succeed; sometimes not so much.

The comes the ever important biography. Certain details are often omitted, and certain lies often planted in their place, though the full 'true' biography is also known to me. Similarly, if I am creating a character, I think about their personality, though these details are never shared in narrative form with other roleplayers - sometimes, I will quote what other characters have said about the one in question, but otherwise, will include nothing in this field.

Then, and only then, I will seek out a photo reference. I can usually find something good enough on DeviantArt or Flickr, and will attribute back to the original piece and photographer/artist. Sometimes, I find nothing. Or forget to search altogether.

But that is how I create a character.

[Ivanol]

Here is the process through which most of my characters are created:

1) I realize the piece could use a certain type of character, or I start with one trait: are they a genius, a jerk, unnaturally stern. Often times people I see and hear about every day will inspire me.

2) I take into account the type of setting this character will be in, and from there choose their role. I start to develop the characters personality/individual traits in correspondence of what would be interesting, unique or exciting traits for someone in their position to have. Sometimes, my settings will be based around characters, in which case I would already have determined most of their personality already.

3) The character has his priorities straightened out by now, as well as his fears and weaknesses. I make sure the character will be able to interact in one way or another with the other characters (how he is viewed, popularity, etc.)

4) I refine the characters looks, usually having some part of their personality enunciated by their clothes or features. Names are chosen on the same idea.

5) I make sure to leave a part of the characters personality unstable or undecided so that I can have them realistically adapt or change over the course of the story.

6) I draw them. A lot.

Certainly I have forgotten to include something, but I think this is a good enough idea.

[Music]

Hmm. Interesting. I tend to find that the more similar my characters are to me, the flatter they become, because I make them too similar and forget about the nuances of my personality that make me human and not a paper doll. Odd... most of my characters are guys these days. Which would definitely qualify as 'different' from me, haha.

It takes me roughly four hours to properly create a character. Unfortunately for my sleeping habits, this must happen all-at-once, meaning I've pulled all-nighters to finish characters. Luckily, quite a bit of this is spent mentally characterizing him/her and finding a picture (or at least browsing, to figure out what he/she DOESN'T look like).

I just realized how non-descriptive my first post was compared to everyone else's. So I'm going to elaborate.

1. I see a roleplay with an interesting storyline and desire to join. Fortunately, I've got myself a control button that prevents me from joining every single RP I see: I have to think of the perfect character. If I can't, then I'm out. This is why I creep on a lot of different RPs at once...

2. Once I figure out what basic kind of character to create (like Ivanol said), I go picture searching. I said why a minute ago. This is also part of my RP selection process; if I can't find a picture, no go. It should be noted that I'm not looking as much for basic appearance as I am for general demeanor. For example, if I'm supposed to create a rather solid high school guy, and I find a picture of a guy who looks like he might be a good leader, bamm, you've got a StuCo president right there. Or, if I need a priestess, and the one I find looks sad or meek, then that influences her personality and history.

3. Next I write a vague sort of personality, just to get a vague idea of how he might react to certain things.

4. Before I finish fleshing out the personality, though, I write the history. After all, isn't it the character's past which shapes his personality?

5. Then, I cover personality, which normally is relatively easy after the history is finished. Sometimes I have trouble expressing my character's personality in words, and I end up writing significantly less than the amount of detail I actually have.

6. Finally, I get around to the nuances, such as equipment, likes, and fears. Unless a fear or weapon is an important part of the character's past, I wait until the end for such a minor detail.



Another question. What parts of character sheets are absolutely pointless / necessary? And should any sections be added to your average character sheet, even if it's just for personal use?

[Kestrel]

I gather for ideas while reading. No matter how awesome an RP might eye, if it doesn't instantly spark a character in my head; I will not join.

What it tends to start out as is a role. Or something I caught myself doing is forming interest when someone introduces different kinds of special abilities. For some reason I absolutely adore forging supernatural skills, especially if they're combat-related.

Basically then it becomes chaos and the utmost worst way to build a character, ever. But it works for me. I think of certain elements I want in and start connecting them as well as making up excuses for them why they are there and why they are connected. For some reason I can make it sound plausible, just don't ask me how. It is a big 'add 1, add 2, add 3, remove 2, add 4' kind of thing. It is how my head works, the insides are outright chaotic but for some reason the output has to be nice and orderly; so I make it so.

As for looks, I tend to imagine how the character would dress, then fill out the blanks randomly depending on whatever the hell I feel like. That or draw the character, which is essentially the exact same process.

[LawOfTheLand]

I have the damnedest time looking for pictures when required. I'm all for using words to paint a picture when I can, as then you can convey exactly what you mean instead of having to look for something "close enough." When I do look for a picture, oftentimes it's easy to find a character with the figure/build I want, but the clothing is all wrong. In that case, I say they're gearing up for a costume party or something, such as my character for Music's Darkness Rising.

Generally, I start with the concept: To the mind-set of a veteran fighter like myself, this usually boils down to "How do I want to beat the living hell out of those that oppose me?" Depending on the answer, I then start building appropriate character traits, with a few personal touches depending on what happens to him/her either in the background or over the course of a story. For example, Tobias Malari used to love good food, strong drink and beautiful women in no particular order, but after a recent beating he took, he's been forced to re-examine his priorities and start returning to the typical introspective martial artist archetype.

Anyway, the process goes as follows for me: Concept, description, powers, background. That's about it.

[Tigeress]

I myself always tend to make my characters backwards. Starting off from their history. You'll notice a lot of times that my history section of a character lacks any names. I hardly go into detail through that process with personality, as the character did things, but history rarely tells us why they did.

I try to find great contradictions to my characters as well, making them uniquely and wonderfully flawed. For example, in a fantasy story im in I created "Ame" a little doll. However despite his size and seemingly lack of importance, the character is something of a philosophical leader. This is often counter acted by his physical nature (one scene I had planned was that a child would pick him up and walk away with him). It is a combination of traits that leads to a mixture of emotions, making the character round. The more flaws, the better :)

I find that those two things often leads me to the more "Unique" characters, as i try to do things no one else has. However, a downside of this is usually my characters don't fit the standard of the roleplay Im joining. I think I sometimes get so caught up on focusing on making the character stand out from the universe they are in, when I really should make them flat or uninteresting, which would be more realistic. I follow the rules, but often make something that is questionable to a GM >.<

[Lovely VonSchultz]

I started out with a picture and built my character around that picture. But for some reason, here lately, my characters have been building themselves in my head and scratching their way out. I've been really lucky, however, to not have a solid idea on what they look like. So once I've got their personality and history all ready to go, I go a-searching for a proper picture. And most of the time, I find one that's perfect. It does take me a VERY long time because I am very picky.

I'm under the firm belief that one must have a picture for their character. It is nice to know what face you are looking at when you write.

[CyraEm]

I like to create a lot of characters, spending a few hours on each, to see what I like best. Mostly because then I can avoid the dead end characters. For example, the one I've got working in the multiverse right now, Rosanna, is an asetic witch with marginal abilities and a deep, profound religious guilt, which was interesting to write, but doesn't leave me much room to work with. At least not to start.

One value I hold to in characters, long before joining this site even, is that I always have sort of ugly characters. They're plain, chubby, hunched and sour. Because I get so tired of reading descriptions of characters who are "thin, waifish, with hair like ebony fire, and eyes that pierce the soul and are the lust of everyone around her" or "a giant, rippling mass of muscles, with a thick, defined jaw and a macho scowl". It gets so boring being in a world where everyone is so beautiful they command the attention of the room. I like being ugly. Although it's hard to find pictures for ugly characters.

[CrashMe]

I usually find that despite all my efforts to create a character it's ultimately going to happen without my help. First, I like to think about different aspects of a person's personality and blow it up i.e. lucky, genius, rude, or clumsy. I created one that was a parody of a subculture. It always starts out as a joke or something to play with creatively. Then I look for a picture to help anchor it and begin writing. Once I'm writing though, the character kind of takes a life on its own and suddenly becomes a person. It's weird because I've had many characters that started out as funny parodies and wind up being these dramatic entities. And sometimes vice versa. But I agree with CyraEm, I can't stand beautiful, perfect Mary Sues and "Gary Stus". While I don't always want to play an ugly character, I do think that characters should be deeper than their brooding eyes and fragile beauty. Not everything calls for Bella and Edward.

[megbutt]

I tend to use a previous character's basic personality or make up a character that resembles someone close to me, like my sister, my roommate or my boyfriend. I rarely make characters that are like myself. I even have a character based off of my cat.

Coming up with a character description, personality and history thus takes me no time at all, but pictures present a problem for me. I like to draw my characters so I can portray them as accurately as possible, and many times I won't have my tablet on hand or it'll take me quite some time to draw the character. I hate using other pictures, because they rarely look anything like what I want.

[Acolypto]

My process seems to be unusual.

1) I take into account the setting, universe, time and possible scenarios
2) I take into account what role I want that character to play. If this is a fantasy setting I usually begin to make my character based off something I have seen in a video game and mould him to whatever I want. For example: When I play Sword and Magic games I will often use the basic fighter character and then mould the hell out of him to meet whatever I want. I use backdrops like Warhammer, Final Fantasy, Warcraft and the like to kind of feel my characters out, at least as far as the looks go
3) I roleplay to become another person, so my characters personalities are very often incredibly unlike myself. Physically they tend to be at least similar, because I'm tall and somewhat athletically built. Never do I use pictures or anything unless I've drawn it because I am never ever happy with how other people see my characters. If it's not absolutely perfect I can't deal with it.
3a) This often means I spend HOURS writing one character biography.
4) Unlike people who work very hard to avoid being cliche, I start off very very cliche and reverse engineer the stereotypes to fit my own characters and what I believe their backgrounds should be. Unfortunately I seem to have developed my own "stereotypes", even though they're not something that really anyone else would use, I end up recycling my own characters over and over again.
5) Backgrounds are a huge stumbling block, because in my novels my characters are always the last of a race, born special in some way shape or form, and in most roleplays that's not something that's always allowed because it would be considered "god moding".
6) My little process. It works, but it's warped. Who knows?

[Star Eagle]

Personally I've never created a character based on a picture I've found... I personally feel that'd hinder me, and tie the character down too much, a lot of what the character ends up as is defined in the RP istelf, however that doesn't mean I won't go into a lot of effort to create a character.

Step Number 1) Decide what kind of character I want, this includes a class (Sniper, warrior, mage, spy etc depending on the genre) gender, rough personality traits and a rough idea of what I want them to look like (physique and perhaps clothing style)

Step Number 2) Create a plausible history, but leave it open enough for development through the RP, if the history is too in depth then you're limited to what you can flash back to, but if it's too shallow you won't get a feel for the character, it's very important to find a happy medium here.

Step Number 3) Choose a name. The Name has to be relevant, whether that's the name's meaning or what it sounds like or a connotation it has.

Step Number 4) Create a rough "sketch" a paragraph outlining what they look like so that other players can describe him or her.

Step Number 5) Play the character... this is where the character develops most in my opinion, other people's reactions to the character shape how you see them... and they can help you make your character better.

I also sketch my characters a bit, just to get a rough idea in my head. Something else I always do, should my character have a specialisation or some kind of unique skill/item/quality or even some kind of defect I will make sure I've researched it as deeply as possible so I know exactly how it works so I can write it believably.

Here's an example of my favourite and most successful character so far.

Step 1) When discussing what we wanted from our RP we came up with a handful of characters we needed (Summoner, Guardian, Mage and Ranger) I chose the guardian... and then decided I wanted a large armoured bloke... angry and violent.

Step 2) Together we worked out how the characters were linked, my character had been in the City Watch and had been responsible for the Mage's long stint in the dungeons to protect him from the bigotted masses, he also had brought the summoner into the city and left her with her adoptive mother. Thus he had to be older than the other two. He also needed power, so he was a Captain in the Watch, why would he go out of his way to protect the Mage, but still be an angry man at heart... he used to be a crusading individual, he's ended up bitter and jaded, annoyed at the corruption of the world around him. Why has not got any power to change things? He's a bastard son of a noble, and thus has no real power, but has been raised amongst the privileged, so he feels hard done by. Etcetera until I had a descent history which linked into the other character's histories. But I left it open enough to play with as we journeyed along.

Step 3) I wanted him to be a large man in armour, but not a knight... it's a medieval fantasy RP... so I researched names of Knights of King Arthur, choosing one which had the right connotations and has been used for noble warriors in the past... Tor... it fits as it's short and sharp, but it's also a celtic word for mountain.

Step 4) This is where the research came in, I researched the different types of armour and what protected what, he needed a suite of plate, and so I researched what pieces this came in, and what they all did, their weaknesses and strengths. I also gave a rough description of him, outlining his large frame, his muscular build, the fact that he has cropped short hair and a square chin... and that he's quite intimidating. Nothing too deep to allow the other players to show me how they see him. At this point I see him as rugby player size, 6'2"/3" and board shouldered.

Step 5) As we played the RP's opening scenes it became obvious to me that the other players saw Tor as a giant amongst men, he seemed to grow post by post till he was more like a professional strong man than a rugby player. Also he grew more sarcastic and cruel towards the summoner who it turned out was a murderous whore sent on the quest as a punishment. However as the RP continued he grew more attached to the other characters, and has rescently received a rather nasty injury, meaning he is having some serious self doubt issues, he was a big strong man... now he finds it a trouble to walk, so he can't protect everyone and so feels weak and pathetic.

And that's how I went from "Hmmm... I need a guardian character... sword and shield... oh and plate mail, definitely plate mail." to the current character of Tor.

[MrAlfredFJones]

I just think "hmmm i should have a character who (insert something here)"

Ex:i should have a character who has an eyeball fetish.

then i draw them based on the one thing i pick about them :)