How to Create a Fitting RPG Character, Pt. 2

Part Two: Creating the Character

Step One: Knowing your wishes and skills

So, the character. If you are a beginner role-player, this part may be slightly hard, if you have no experience of role-playing and you aren't sure about what stuff you like or what RPG related knowledge you have. But if you can define any factors, it helps! These issues were partially dealt when you chose (or will choose) your RPG community, but several issues have to be thought character-wise.

This step is simple: ask yourself what kind of character you want to play. Or, to be more accurate: What do you want to play? Thinking about the following factors may help:

• Do you want to play drama, comedy, action? Plotting and scheming? Or fighting and combat? Or maybe just normal life with all kind of funny events?
• Are you ready to allow your character to be in threat of being harmed or even killed?
• What kind of personalities you can act? Is it really difficult for you to make a character to harm another one? Are you comfortable with cussing?
• Do you want an easy character to play or do you want challenges?
• Do you have special knowledge about a field (like your hobby), something you want to use in the game?
• Or, are you ready to study issues to make your character more believable?
• How can you invoke events that engage people to interact with your character?
• Do you have already experience of writing, for example, drama, comedy, or action? Would you like to try new genres, or do you feel better to stick on old ones?

We will return back to them later. Stay tuned!

Last three steps will deal three different aspects of creating a functional character: easiness, interest and activity. They are not actually one-after-another steps, but they can be thought in the same time.

Step Two: Making an easy character

For beginners, a character serves you even better if you don't have to pay gigantic amount of attention to play them believably. When you have a character that is easy to play, you can play him/her without thinking too much and being able to learn basics of effective role-playing faster. Here are some tips for creating a character that is easy to play:

Trick #1: Basing the character on traits from yourself.

A lot used and still a functional trick. Extract some traits from yourself - like your personality traits, events in your history, quirks - and use them in your character. By using your own traits, it is easier for you to predict the behavior of the character and thus play him/her, as you know how your traits work.

However, there is a danger in this trick: I said, "basing on TRAITS from yourself", not, "basing on YOURSELF". In other words, don't make the character a replica of yourself.

Why?

There is a danger of importing yourself into a character rather than making him/her a totally different being. If you think your character as yourself - even subconsciously - it limits enormously your potential to use the character; you may be unable to put your character into unappealing situations, because subconsciously you fear that it hurts you. You may take the character too personally, and be reluctant to use the character's all potential. Think the role-playing character as a hand puppet or a plushie to play with, not as part of you. Saves a lot nerves.

A good idea is to take a few most interesting traits from you and support those traits by adding other traits - like making a simplified and exaggerated version of yourself, with a certain area highlighted. This is a method I have created many of my characters: they are very different from each others, but they all took their bases from my quirks. Here are some examples:

• Me, NuttyNuti, The Base: I'm a quite talkative bookworm who dislikes making people feeling bad. I'm a kind of perfectionist but very impractical what comes to, for example, chores. I'm rather gullible; it's easy to pull my leg. On the other hand, I rarely have prejudices of people, and I'm not always able to think people as perfectly evil (that doesn't prevent me from startling and feeling insecure as an unfamiliar person approaches me). However, at times I tend to be very pessimist, as I feel I'm not good enough to do my responsibilities. I try to finish all my responsibilities and fulfill my promises. I have good head in math and physics, and at times I find it fun to use as confusing jargon as possible and scare all the people who don't work/study scientific things.
• Honush, a WoW character, The Kind Guy: Honush is a super kind but naïve young draenei. Due to his impressive height even in scale of draeneis, he is often estimated to be (mentally) older than he actually is, even if he is mentally very immature - he is just a teenager among draeneis. That often causes Honush to face responsibilities that are actually too hard for him and stress him a lot. Honush can't understand people looking for only their own good and is too willing to think just good about other creatures, and he gets very upset when facing a person who coldly pursues only his/her own interests. Honush is very impulsive to express his feelings, like sadness, joy or frustration, even if he doesn't get angry easily. As a quirk, he is unable to understand normal idioms like "kicking the bucket"; he always takes them literally and thus gets confused when those kind of idioms are used. "Kicking... the bucket? But here are no buckets around!" Honush shares my will to be kind towards people and silliness, but he differs by being far more impulsive than I am. And I can usually understand normal idioms. Mostly.
• Ume, a Bleach character, The Girl Scout: Ume is a young shinigami student that is obsessed to help people, no matter if they want it or not. She is hyper optimist and perfectionist, and she dislikes things being all around. She is very impatient, and as she had finished her previous chore, she skitters at her superior to ask, "What do I do next? Tellmetellmetellmeeee!!" Luckily, she is fine with small chores like sweeping and cleaning, resulting that the buildings of her Division (13th) are tidier than most of the other buildings as people tell her to sweep every time she asks for a task. Ume shares my perfectionism and disliking to leave things to just be, but I'm not as optimist as she is -- not talking about her insane diligence. xD
• Tamitna, a character in an original fantasy roleplaying game, The Scientist: Tamitna is a hermit scientist living in distant mountain area. Having a magical necklace that stops her aging, she is obsessed to find secrets of magic and laws of physics. She never smiles or tells jokes, and her way to approach issues is overly matter-in-fact. She speaks always with difficult expressions, including a lot scientific jargon. "What resulted that being to accelerate his linear, horizontal speed into that notable values?" However, Tamitna fears greatly death and fears getting involved into any combat situation. Tamitna shares my liking of science and logic, but barely any personality traits. Though, at times I find fun to find as complicated way to say things as possible.

See? They all are different, but they have the same base -- me.

Trick #2: Giving the character a clear personality.

Surprisingly, it isn't very functional to create a character whose personality is summed up by saying, "she is just a normal 15 years old girl". Why? Okay, first off, try to even define what is a normal 15 years old girl. Does a normal 15 years olf girl use make-up? Or do reading or shopping? Is she an active sport girl or a shy bookworm? Every person has a different opinion about what is normal: what is a normal teen girl for you may be different from another person's vision.

Instead, it's more effective to pin-point the character's personality with some words. Outline him/her. Again, here is SOME (!) basic factors:

• How SOCIAL is your character? Does he/she do better alone or in a group of other people? Hint: It might be a bit hard to find RPG if your character is hyper antisocial, if he/she keeps avoiding other people.
• How LEADING-ORIENTATED is he/she? Is he/she willing to take the position of a leader easily? Does he/she try to avoid it or is he/she hungering for it?
• How DOMINANT is he/she? Does he/she often find him-/herself trying to force people to do something? Or accepting too easily to do what the other people ask him/her to do?
• How POSITIVE/NEGATIVE is he/she? Does he/she think that there is happy or horrible surprises just behind the corner?
• How bad TEMPER has he/she? Is it easy to make him/her explode? Or, is talking in mocking way to him/her like talking to a rock wall?
• And so on.

I recommend reading tutorials from a dArtist named Sheeply, it goes more deeply to personality issues. Eventually, it's up to you what kind of guy/girl you create.

As you have some kind of rough vision about what kind of character you want to use, try to make thumb rules for playing the character. This is important especially if the character has a very different personality from you: it helps you to play the character according to his/her personality rather than by your usual habits.

When creating the thumb rules, concentrate on the traits that are different from your own personality or habits and that are most dominant or complex for the character. If possible, try to make that kind of rules that another person can play the character "right". On the other hand, try to keep the rules as simple and clear as possible, summarizing the most important issues effectively.

For example, I could create this kind of rules for Ume (the Bleach OC I mentioned earlier):

1. Ume can be outlined to be behave like an over-eager golden retriever or a stereotypical young girl scout: nice, fussing, goofy, polite, innocent, peppy.
2. She is EXTREMELY helpful. She rarely refuses to help people. If she refuses, it is usually because she has already promised to do something else, she really lacks time or she finds the task to help in immoral. It requires huge amount of tiredness or illness before she refuses to help due to her health condition. Ume isn't picky with the chores, if you give her a broom, she's perfectly happy. That's why people usually keep pouring on her all the possible odd jobs.
3. She is overly optimistic, and especially when there is miserable situations, she attempts to find good sides to extreme levels. ("Well, we lost that Hollow again, and our team leader is getting mad... but look how pretty flower is over there!") Things are REALLY badly if she stops that.
4. She is over-trusting and some childish. For example, if a thug comes to threaten her, it takes good amount of time before she realizes that she is in trouble, because "you can't judge people just by their faces!"
5. She is an impatient work addict: she hates doing nothing. Vacations are painful for her. Or even five minutes with doing nothing. That's why her superiors have habit to prepare odd jobs for her to avoid her tantrums -- she is unbearable when having one. Sometimes, her superiors may give totally witless jobs, like "Take my sandals and run thousand laps around the barracks to break them in."
6. She knows that she isn't a strong shinigami -- actually she has never been sent to the field yet -- but she has no desire to improve her fighting skills. Actually, she feels cold as thinking about slaying Hollows, beings that used to be humans...

When you have created the rules, OBEY THEM. ALWAYS WHEN POSSIBLE. When you can do it, you can play the character "In Character" or "IC", ie in the way that the character behaves according to his/her personality (the opposite is "OOC", "Out of Character"). If you can't follow your rules well enough, alter your character to have an "easier" personality.

On the other hand: Your character's personality doesn't have to be ready when you start to play him/her. Usually, characters' personalities evolve and become more accurate as you play with them and drive your characters into different situations. With this, I don't mean actual character development, but you getting better known about your kid.

Trick #3: Create an exaggerated character.

Partially related to the previous trick. It eases playing if you give the character a clear but exaggerated personality! Some examples could be EXTREMELY naive person, EXTREMELY tidy person or EXTREMELY bratty person. (However, remember to make him/her also feasible what comes to his/her background: for example, surgeons rarely freak out about seeing body liquids during the operation. Also, really serious RPGs may not be fine with overly goofy characters.)

How does exaggerating help?

When you play the exaggerated character, you can make him/her to act a certain personality trait (like being bratty) with full power instead of balancing things like "is he bratty enough but not too bratty now?" You don't have to balance, but you can go directly to the extreme!

(This is my secret trick with playing male characters while I'm a female myself: I create male characters whose flashy personalities rule his behavior that much that I don't have to stress "is he manly enough" side too much but just concentrate on their actual personality. Average nothing-special guys are really hard for me!)

Playing an exaggerated character might also be really educating, especially if you play a character whose traits are new to you. You also learn to take risks with the new traits, for example by forcing yourself to come up with as bratty behavior as possible even if you are most mature person your friends know!

Playing exaggerated character also helps you to learn better expressing emotions and other actions by RPG characters in general, and it also helps you learning to play more subtle characters better!

There's an interesting fact: People who are new with acting (or voice acting) often start (or are recommended to start) from acting exaggerated, clear characters, while the more mysterious and subtle characters are given to better actors. This is because it is easier to act well, for example, CLEAR, EXPLODING ANGER rather than subtle, quietly hinted anger. Subtle or even "emotionless" people HAVE emotions and reactions, too, but they express them in more refined manner than people with clear emotions and reactions. It requires some skill to act a character who just hints his/her feelings (so that audience can still notice them and they are not blurred into the blank!) rather than strongly emotional characters who just let everything out without any limitations.

Don't be surprised if your originally exaggerated character softens later: that's natural refining process, a result of you knowing your character better than earlier and you know where his/her extremeness actually reaches to, plus your own comfort boundaries.

Plus, if played well, exaggerated characters can be really amusing add to the RPG cast! At least I think that my best RPG characters have been those guys and girls who have took a certain trait up to eleven.

Trick #4: Use your already existing special skills and knowledge.

Do you have a hobby that fits the world where you are playing? For example, you are playing in a Lord of the Rings RPG and you do riding in your leisure time? Splendid! You can use your knowledge about riding to enhance your role-play! What about making your character to have a horse? Or even a whole stable? What if he/she was a horse breeder?

It always gives a nice tint if the player creates a character that uses knowledge he/she already has about a special area -- not only for the player him-/herself but also to the fellow players. It is always fun to have an expert among the players.

More example skills to utilize:

• Are you decent in drawing, painting or writing poems? So, what about making your character a professional artist/poet and illustrating your entries with his/her doodles/poems he/she does into his/her sketch book?
• Are you good with coming up with puns? Make your character to use lame punny humor!
• Do you do some kind of martial art, like taekwondo, karate, or judo? Do you know the basic routines of your area? Then, make your character to have his/her own martial art dojo and give lessons to other characters! It can be really enjoyable to have an authentic training session with proper warm-ups and technique corrections.
• And so on!

However, remember to prepare to get extra information for the area. For example, keeping horses was different stuff in Middle Ages than nowadays, and going to riding lessons once a week is totally different from having a very own stable! If you lack knowledge, fulfill the holes.

Trick #5: Think twice before giving him/her a repetitive habit or speech pattern.

Funny habits and speech patterns may bring out your character and make him/her stand out from the crowd, but here is a danger: You may get fed up or irritated with that when having to do it too many times.

I have tripped over this several times especially with speaking patterns: I also have currently two RPG characters who stutter (o-one li-like this and, uh, ummm, one, ugh, like this). It is rather annoying to add the stammering every time... Also, I have played a character with über-scientific speaking pattern (Tamitna) and a character who speaks really old-sounding language, and with them, it took quite an effort to think how they would say their lines... Plus the other players didn't always understand my characters' words. Of course funny speaking patterns are fun at times, but sometimes they can be really irritating to write.

Step Three: Making an interesting character

The next factor concentrates on making the character interesting to play. This section may be also good for those people who have already done some role-playing.

If your character is interesting and versatile -- interesting and versatile in good way -- it is easier for you to get other players to hang around with your character. However, making the character too interesting -- or, interesting in "cheap way" -- may repel the potential RPG comrades. Word "Mary Sue" might say enough. I hope this section helps in that balancing, too.

Trick #1: Don't get I stuck in the most usual character types.

According to my RPG forum experiences, most popular character type is a teenager or young adult who has no solid home but who travels around the world. Usually the character has tragic past and/or extremely poor or rich background and/or weird skills. Those characters often could fit as typical protagonists in shounen series.

It's not bad to create a character like this, however, but... often, there is already plenty of that kind of characters. So why not make the buffet more colorful and use other kinds of characters? Here are some common things to alter:

• Age. Not all RPG characters have to be teens or young adults! (Unless the rules say so.) Where are small children, or middle-aged people, or elderly people? An angry lady terrorizing neighborhood with her pink umbrella might offer lots of fun to play! War veterans could be also interesting.
• Race. For example, if you are playing in a fantasy RPG with different humanoid races, try to create a character that isn't that usual elf or human. I have always loved to make characters into short races and make them keeping complaining how all the furniture is too high for them.
• Occupations. Not all the characters have to be wandering adventurers, warriors or noble people. There can be also normal people, like bakers, tailors, pickpockets or lawyers. Actually, having a profession gives the character something sane to do: for example, tailors can interact with nobles and spread gossips.
• Past. What if there were a young woman being totally innocent what comes to talking about evil step-mothers, murdered parents and stolen pet gold fishes? It may cause interesting controversies when she faces characters with harsher backgrounds.
• Faction. If the RPG town is filled by goody-goody paladins, they can't stir much chaos by themselves. But throw in a thief, and the paladins get a reason to start a criminal hunt!

To sum up: look for minorities and bring them alive.

Trick #2: Give the character a drive.

Having a drive means that the character has a goal in his/her life or at least actions: he/she has something to aim to. It gives nicely action for the character and motives for starting threads.

Here are some rive examples used by my characters:

• Honush: Honush feels extremely guilty about being the last survivor from his family, mostly because his father and older brother sacrificed their lives to save the remaining family in Draenor and his mother being killed as Exodar crashed onto Azeroth. He wants to become stronger (both in his skills and mental strength) in order to be able to protect people that are precious for him. He constantly fights for his "right" to take responsibility and gain training in battle skills, as he is basically the junior one in his team and thus treated as the "kid of the gang".
• Ume: She is happy as long as she has something to do. And if she hasn't, she gets badly frustrated. And you don't want to meet her when she is badly frustrated.
• Tamitna: Having a goal to solve all the reasons behind the natural and magical phenomena, Tamitna spends enormous amounts of energy and money to run her experiments. Sometimes she may even hire bounty hunters to find persons with abnormal magical skills. In order to run her experiments, she also has to work to the nearby elven kingdom to gain funding.

I have also had an elven maiden looking for her disappeared groom after they were separated by the attack of robbers (that caused very interesting games), a young just-matured male anthro looking for a new pack, and a mad gnome trying to cause as much chaos as possible in the inn where he is working.

Drives can also change as you play the character longer time, it's perfectly fine! For example, the character may reach his/her goal and find another thing to pursue, or he/she may get interested in another issue more than his/her original goal. A drive can also be something else than an actual goal: it can be also the character's basic personality trait (like in Ume's case). Some people love playing bad-tempered and greedy characters, because their short temper and needs cause a lot conflicts with other characters and thus action. Or then they may love to play whiny or coward characters who are making the others characters' lives miserable.

Trick #3: Ask if the other players want you to play the NPCs relating to their characters.

NPC, "non-player character", means a character that can be controlled by any player and that are usually used as temporary supporting characters. For example, in a bar scene, it is usual to have NPC as the bar owner and other customers, and every player attending to the scene can control those characters, as they aren't owned by anyone. After the scene, the NPCs can be forgotten. Sometimes, however, NPCs may be permanent characters and vital part of the game (for example a bar owner hosting a bar being frequently featured in the game).

Often, alongside their actual role-playing characters, role-players also tend to create supporting NPC cast for their characters. These extra characters, working as NPCs, are often the role-playing character's family members, pets or colleagues in their job places. It is very usual that the players wish to have another player to play them, to make the NPC more alive.

See? There is a chance for you!

Browse already existing characters and the NPCs relating to them. If you find a character that interests you and the original creator of the character allows you to play the character, congratulations! Now you have a character that already has a relationship with an already existing character! This gives good chances for a game with the character to whom your character is related to.

If you can't find a NPC that you'd like to play, don't worry. Try to figure out if anyone of the already existing characters would like to have some supporting cast, like family members, lovers, servants, students, bosses and so on. But always ask the creator of the other character before you plan your character any further! Also, it can be fruity to actually ask if someone wants a NPC relative to be played.

Trick #4: Try character types you have not tried earlier.

As you have gained experience from RPG, it can be really fruitful to try characters that are very different from what you have played earlier. Different characters mean different reactions onto situation and thus different scenes to play. Poke a bit the boundaries of your comfort zone and deviate more or less from your favorite character types! You may find a new character type you enjoy to play.

For example, I mostly prefer to play kind, good-hearted and not-so brave "good" characters, but occasionally, I find it fun to play a harsh does-before-thinks teenager whose temper snaps more easily than uncooked spaghetti.

Trick #5: Character development!

Making the character to grow up in a certain area is a really interesting source of RPG. Give the character traits in which he/she needs to become better, for example grave prejudices against other people, cowardice, short temper or phobias. Then, make him/her to enter into situations where his/her weaknesses have major role, and slowly, according to his/her experiences, make him/her to turn into a person that is stronger in that area.

The most important thing is that you make your character to change steadily but SLOWLY! Too quick turn-arounds influenced by too weak reactions are unrealistic. For example, a dishonest character rarely turns a perfectly honest little angel at once. Instead, a big trouble enough caused by his/her dishonesty may plant into him/her a seed of respect of honesty, which, little by little, makes him/her to see dishonesty as a bad thing and give him/her strength to change. Also, the more slowly the character changes, the more you have time to play him/her!

Inspect real life. (From anime side btw, Puella Magi Madoka Magica has great examples of character development: main characters don't remain unchanged from the start of the series to the end of the series.)

Of course this can work to the other direction, too: a good character becoming worse. For example, a naive adventurer may become severely traumatic as witnessing a bloody and deadly fight first time, and an idealistic guard can become corrupted by noticing how much he can accomplish by twisting law. Anyway, character changes are often interesting to play!

Step Four: Making an active character

To ensure that you can have someone to play with you, it's wise to add to your character traits that ensure he/she has interaction around him/her. Again trying to offer tips:

Trick #1: Create a character that causes action.

If your character is just sitting in the bar sipping his beer and being silent, it's not so likely that any character around him comes up with any logical reason to approach the character and start a game. The old wisdom matters again: "If the dog doesn't come at you, go at the dog by yourself." So make the character to draw attention. This can also be fulfilled on the character sheet, too: active characters cause reactions more easily than passive ones. Tip time:

• Make a character to be prone to cause mess action. For example, if you make a character a world traveler who is really interested in everything he/she sees, it gives a good reason for him/her to keep pulling people's sleeves and asking, "Hi, can you tell what this thing is? And this, and this?" A passive world traveler is less prone to do so --> less interaction. Curious kids and hideously accident-prone people are also golden for gathering attention! Not talking about short-tempered people.
• Give the character a profession that allows him/her to interact with people. A travelling food merchant is a good example: is he/she enters into a crowded public place in a work day, other character may get interested in to buy him/her their lunches. Also, in combat orientated games, teachers in different arts might be good -- though remember to make sure that you are allowed to set up such professions in the local RPG community.
• Create a villain character (or opposing faction character). For example, criminals are good for causing excitement to a town RPG, when they kill, smuggle and steal lollipops -- and thus poke the other characters to do something to stop the crimes! However, game masters may dislike criminals that only cause unlimited amount of chaos and cannot be caught in any way --> constant headache to the players without having a chance to stop the criminal.

Trick #2: Arrange things with fellow players.

If you feel you have difficulties to start games, you can ask if your character could have some interaction or even relationship with another character. For example, you can ask if your character A can collide with the other person's character B, and as A and B have similar future plans, they could travel together. Or then you can ask if your character could become another character's apprentice or something like that.

See also Trick #3 in the previous section.

Trick #3: Be active by yourself.

As said, you can go to at the dog, too. Attend to already started games (= invitations by the other role-players!) if your character has a permission to do so! Also, try to start games that could interest people and that include something else than you character chilling in the corner of the bar.



The next part will be about putting your character onto the paper, or filling the character sheet. Stay tuned!