HanShotFirst (2014-04-13 23:17:55)

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Once again, this isn't a guide on how to roleplay, because there's no "Right" way to do so. However, there are some mistakes you should avoid while roleplaying, but that's a different topic entirely.

This time, I'll be discussing how to make a decent character to roleplay, and why a well developed character is important in roleplaying. The reason for this guide is that I see rather barebone character profiles on some profile pages, and while they're good enough for chat roleplaying, you'll need a bit more than that in the forums because there's a lot of space here.

Why it matters

A well made character is incredibly important to any form of media. In videogames, it's boring if you're going along the riveting story as a faceless, emotionless character. (Note: Sometimes, this works. Sometimes it doesn't). It's boring watching Twilight movies, because while the plot is terrible, it was in no way Salvageable because the main cast was a bunch of bland, poorly developed characters. In comics, it's kinda boring reading the old Superman comics because he suffered from being a Mary Sue.

It isn't fun to watch/play uninteresting characters in other media, and in Roleplaying, it's unfun to play with poorly written characters. I want my characters to interact with other charcters, not cardboard cut-outs.

How to make a decent character

Seems hard, right? Well it actually isn't. See, the key to making a decent character is to go a little further than just their outward appearance. I know what they look like, which is nice, but that doesn't tell me who they are. So below, I'll work out each step into making a character, and use one of my own OCs for the examples.

1)What's in a name?
From a name alone, you can get your first impression of a character. Simple names like John or Steven give the impression that the character may be normal. However, names like Veles and Erebus (names I've used) may give the impression the character is probably a little extraordinary.

Sometimes, it's a bit hard to come up with a name on your own. But that's fine. There exist several million name generators on the internet, use them. Or better yet, read more books. You'll find names like Tybalt and Caius.

2) Age is but a number

However, it's a very important number, because it gives a scale on what the character can possibly know, especially on the actual history of the world he/she is in. For example, if a character is 16, they'll likely only know what they've been taught about the war that happened 200 years ago. If someone is 300 years old, they were actually there when it happened, so the knowledge would be noticeably different.

There's also a flip side to this. Someone who's 300 might not fully be able to understand how people operate those dang automobiles, while someone who's 16 has no problem at all driving. Also, don't go overboard. No need for your character to be older than time itself, or far too young to even talk properly.

Examples of my own include Atticus, who's over 6 million, Veles is 20, Leivy is 17, and Seymour is 100.

3)Questionable sense of fashion
The third thing to know about making a character is their choice of clothing. It should be setting appropriate, thus, it doesn't make sense for your female character to be wearing stilletos in a high fantasy setting. It just doesn't work. Let's look at examples of proper clothing.

(Erebus has Jet Black, medium length hair with red highlighting on the left side, and Icy blue eyes. On the weekends, he wears a Gothic black trench coat, a black dress shirt, with a few of the top buttons undone, black punk rave pants, and black strapped combat boots. Around his neck. He wears a chain with three Dog tags, and two crow feathers attached for decoration.)

Boom. See that? Fits perfectly considering that he's mostly in modern fantasy/normal settings. If he were in a high fantasy setting or sci-fi setting, he would probably need a whole new set of clothing.

4)Backstory is the best story

Truly, the most important thing to developing a good character is their backstory. A line or two will not suffice in the slightest. You need a least a decent sized paragraph or two.

For an example:

Born to wealthy parents in northern Russia, Vanya was destined for success, at least according to his father. In order to secure his son's future, his father had him home-schooled by the best tutor money could buy, and only allowed him to interact with other young boys he thought would be positive influences. Surely nothing could go wrong, right? Well, you're wrong. Even with all the money they burned through, the married couple could not maintain a stable relationship, and soon quickly began fighting non-stop, and bit by bit, it began chipping away at the illusion of peace that Vanya had established. No matter how hard he denied it, the fighting only escalated further and further, until it all came crashing down on his head that fateful night. Unable to sleep due to his parent's shouting, he thought that perhaps by pleading with them, they could make up and the fighting would stop. As he made his looked into his Father's study, he witnessed a gruesome scene; His father took one of the chairs, and in a rage, began beating his wife to death. Too frozen with fear, Vanya just silently stood there, choking up further and further until his mother's final breaths.

That is just an excerpt of Vanya's backstory, since it goes much further than that. However, from this excerpt, you know he didn't quite get a good start on life, and that he has some childhood trauma regarding that very incident. From this alone, you get a deeper insight into who Vanya is, and what happened to make him the person he is now.

This is the kind of depth you cannot achieve with one or two lines of text. Granted, you don't need to write a whole book about the character's backstory, but as a general rule of thumb, the more material there is to work with, the better a job you did in making your character.

5)Boring person is boring

Even of you followed all the general pointers here, you could still wind up with a bad character. Now, it's not for lack of trying,but because you tried too hard.

This character is known as a Mary Sue, who's basically the extreme end of the characterization spectrum ranging from this to Faceless, Nameless, NPC character.

I can't simply describe how not to make a mary sue, because there are several factors that play into it. However, there exists a Mary Sue Litmus test that, in essence, can score your character on how much of a mary sue they are.

Veles, one of my OCs, scores a 9 on this test.

Seymour, another, has the highest score of all my OCs at 20.

You want to keep your characters within the range of 1-21, as going higher than that adds more risk to your character being a Mary-Sue, which would make them boring.

And boring characters are boring. Just watch Twilight if you don't believe me.


6)I am not a Masochist

One common trap many people fall into is that they incorrectly use Schizophrenia or Multiple Personality disorder in their characters, without knowing what they actually are. Part of the fun in making characters with odd medical conditions (See: Atavism, Heterochromia), is that these things are real, but provide an element of uniqueness to a character.

However, it helps to actually research what Schizophrenia is before saying character has Schizophrenia, because they don't act like Schizophrenics are supposed to, and instead may have an entirely different disorder all together.

Vanya has Heterochromia.
Cypress has Osteoporosis.

Look it up before you slap it onto a character.

7)Don't interfere with my research

Books and the internet are your best friends when it comes to researching. Research is incredibly important in character making, due to the fact that you have to know what you're talking about before you have your character talk about.

I had to research guns, UN laws on mercenaries, Dog breeding, dog breeds, Norse mythology, the average lifespan of a human being, basic economics, some advanced economics, how to play Shogi, Iado, Necromancy, physics, metaphysics, and a bunch of other topics due to my characters.

This post has been edited one or more times, the last time was:
2014-04-14 06:40:55

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Hannahmeganh (2015-05-30 20:49:37)

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Uh huh...

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