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06-10-2016, 04:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-01-2022, 01:05 AM by Fearless Community.
Edit Reason: Checked Encoding
)
Hi! Welcome to my guide to making interesting characters for your roleplays. I'm not saying that this is the best guide ever, but I'm still hoping that this will help some of you looking to make your roleplays that extra bit special.
Before starting any roleplay, I always open up the same word document which consists of the following things:
-Name
-Description
-Traits x2
-Accent
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Those 4 things are what I like to call 'the four functions' for a good roleplay. Without one the rest will generally collapse and so it is vital to withhold each and every function in order to make your character interesting and memorable to players.
I will now go through how to come up with something for each section.
Name: Try and make your name something special, back when William Shakespeare was around he used to name his characters with a specific meaning attached to their name, a more recent one would be in the Star Wars universe, George Lucas (The creator of Star Wars) named Annakin Skywalker 'Annakin' because it's means 'warrior', which is a direct mirror of what that characters occupation is. So when you make your characters try and find a name with a meaning that resembles your character, most of the time you'll find weird and usual names but that is good! It just means that you're character will have more personality in them.
Description: You've got to think of how you can fit 48 characters into your description in game, now I usually find this very tricky and I like to waffle a lot, however most people like to put either this symbol | or this / in order to separate certain character traits. It is my belief that a characters description should not have any traits displayed within it, this is something for the players to find out, what should be in your description is the characters appearance and so instead of putting: Funny | Cruel | Split Personality, you should put: 180cm | Handsome | Well-Dressed. An exception to this is an accent, as sometimes when roleplaying not everyone will be able to recognize where your character is from and so by putting for instance 'British' in your description will help aid the players understanding of your character.
Traits: Coming up with traits is probably the easiest and most important decision you're going to make within your roleplay. Traits have appeared in games such as the sims, they are things that resemble your characters personality, so as stated earlier your traits could consist of being Funny or being Cruel. For instance, if you are being a desk secretary you could go with the cliche of being: Friendly and helpful, however the more interesting roleplays usually contain a character with traits that you wouldn't expect, so instead of being Friendly and Helpful you could go with the complete opposite and be Anti-Social and Dumb. This can just make your roleplays more memorable for other players. When coming up with your traits I tend to like to come up with ones that give your character a positive and a negative, this just prevents your character from being a typical 'Mary Sue' character (One that is full of cliches and is just your basic, usually overpowered character). There are many websites that contain character traits that can help you with the decision making process and so if you're struggling use those!
Accent: Having an accent in your roleplay prevents you using a boring, monotone voice, making it appear that you don't care or want to be in the roleplay. Experiment with different accents, if you aren't good at them, who cares! It's fun and will make people see you as a dedicated roleplayer. If you aren't using a microphone during your roleplay, you can still appear to have an accent, this could be backed up with your description or your /mes. For instance you could do a /me to make it say 'George Bentley speaks with a country twang, making it hard to understand.', you could also use apostrophes when you type so people read it in your accent, for instance you could type 'Aye jus' went to da market and bouwt som' owanges.' - This can sometimes make it hard to read but it also shows that you have a diverse character.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you for reading my guide to making an interesting character, I hope it helped you in someway but I have no doubt that most of you don't need this advice. Thanks again!
Before starting any roleplay, I always open up the same word document which consists of the following things:
-Name
-Description
-Traits x2
-Accent
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Those 4 things are what I like to call 'the four functions' for a good roleplay. Without one the rest will generally collapse and so it is vital to withhold each and every function in order to make your character interesting and memorable to players.
I will now go through how to come up with something for each section.
Name: Try and make your name something special, back when William Shakespeare was around he used to name his characters with a specific meaning attached to their name, a more recent one would be in the Star Wars universe, George Lucas (The creator of Star Wars) named Annakin Skywalker 'Annakin' because it's means 'warrior', which is a direct mirror of what that characters occupation is. So when you make your characters try and find a name with a meaning that resembles your character, most of the time you'll find weird and usual names but that is good! It just means that you're character will have more personality in them.
Description: You've got to think of how you can fit 48 characters into your description in game, now I usually find this very tricky and I like to waffle a lot, however most people like to put either this symbol | or this / in order to separate certain character traits. It is my belief that a characters description should not have any traits displayed within it, this is something for the players to find out, what should be in your description is the characters appearance and so instead of putting: Funny | Cruel | Split Personality, you should put: 180cm | Handsome | Well-Dressed. An exception to this is an accent, as sometimes when roleplaying not everyone will be able to recognize where your character is from and so by putting for instance 'British' in your description will help aid the players understanding of your character.
Traits: Coming up with traits is probably the easiest and most important decision you're going to make within your roleplay. Traits have appeared in games such as the sims, they are things that resemble your characters personality, so as stated earlier your traits could consist of being Funny or being Cruel. For instance, if you are being a desk secretary you could go with the cliche of being: Friendly and helpful, however the more interesting roleplays usually contain a character with traits that you wouldn't expect, so instead of being Friendly and Helpful you could go with the complete opposite and be Anti-Social and Dumb. This can just make your roleplays more memorable for other players. When coming up with your traits I tend to like to come up with ones that give your character a positive and a negative, this just prevents your character from being a typical 'Mary Sue' character (One that is full of cliches and is just your basic, usually overpowered character). There are many websites that contain character traits that can help you with the decision making process and so if you're struggling use those!
Accent: Having an accent in your roleplay prevents you using a boring, monotone voice, making it appear that you don't care or want to be in the roleplay. Experiment with different accents, if you aren't good at them, who cares! It's fun and will make people see you as a dedicated roleplayer. If you aren't using a microphone during your roleplay, you can still appear to have an accent, this could be backed up with your description or your /mes. For instance you could do a /me to make it say 'George Bentley speaks with a country twang, making it hard to understand.', you could also use apostrophes when you type so people read it in your accent, for instance you could type 'Aye jus' went to da market and bouwt som' owanges.' - This can sometimes make it hard to read but it also shows that you have a diverse character.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Thank you for reading my guide to making an interesting character, I hope it helped you in someway but I have no doubt that most of you don't need this advice. Thanks again!
![[Image: f2kzlKW.png]](https://i.imgur.com/f2kzlKW.png)