How do you construct your characters?
-
@macha said in How do you construct your characters?:
Sometimes I will be randomly watching a movie or a show, and something sparks, then builds from there into a concept, etc.
I do that with books. Sometimes it ruins the book a bit for me ("oh, no, that plot twist wouldn't work for a MUSH", as if it was the writer's duty to ensure it could).
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
-
@arkandel said in How do you construct your characters?:
"oh, no, that plot twist wouldn't work for a MUSH"
But really, what twists do work for a MUSH? I'm trying to think of one that I've encountered that turned out well or was interesting for the players rather than the staff running it having just a laugh. More often than not, it has months of planning and RP being thrown down the drain.
-
@sg said in How do you construct your characters?:
@arkandel said in How do you construct your characters?:
"oh, no, that plot twist wouldn't work for a MUSH"
But really, what twists do work for a MUSH? I'm trying to think of one that I've encountered that turned out well or was interesting for the players rather than the staff running it having just a laugh. More often than not, it has months of planning and RP being thrown down the drain.
From that point of view twists means something like... say there is a power that's very unique but also very important to theme, and it's limited to a specific character or tiny group of them. That won't work on a MUSH because who gets it?
Some authors are really meticulous about the way 'special abilities' work in their settings, and those can usually be turned into amazing MUSH settings. Sanderson's Mistborn for instance where the same set of rules works for everyone, and major characters are simply better at using whatever subset they possess than others. Robert Jordan, for all he kept introducing ever-more-powerful characters as he wrote new books also provided an excellent framework for the One Power. The Lightbringer series by Brent Weeks is the same way; just make sure PCs can't be polychromes and you are done.
But with other books that's not possible. If there are only a handful (or one) special character in the books then you could still base a game on that, but you might miss out on all the cool stuff. Similarly if the group itself is more numerous but their background isn't ("all characters must be members of the Assassins Guild trained there from birth") then you might be shoehorning everyone into a very uniform niche; it'd be fun for table-top, but you might not want every single character to be a cardboard copy of each other.
-
To everyone who finds themselves working from a picture or a 'played by' as a primary part of the process, was this something you started doing recently? Or did you also do that say, eight years ago before character wiki pages or 'played bys' were a common thing, just then not express it to the same degree?
I ask because to me it seems such an alien thing to have as a core part of making a character. At most I might glance around to see if there are any images that match the type of character I am making but even then I mostly fail to find a close match, shrug and continue with the written description.
-
@packrat Almost all the time figuring out a PB is the very last part of the character generation process for me... and where I find myself regretting the most I didn't factor it in earlier, since now all of a sudden no picture seems quite right for the look-and-feel I'm going for.
I used to think this was unimportant, but in this day and age (get off my lawn!) where people don't read descriptions but just take a quick glance at your wiki page that sort of thing does play a certain role. If the only initial visual impression someone will have of my PC is in that one glance then I want it to sink in before I can adjust and amend through poses.
-
Does anyone stop to think that, for many characters, there ARE no Pretty People Pictures on the twitscape that looks like their horror monstrosity? If this is the case, then these wiki-bound MUs won't mind a blank played-by image, right? After all! We require a DESC on the game!
-
@packrat said in How do you construct your characters?:
To everyone who finds themselves working from a picture or a 'played by' as a primary part of the process, was this something you started doing recently? Or did you also do that say, eight years ago before character wiki pages or 'played bys' were a common thing, just then not express it to the same degree?
I've been doing it for ages as a crutch for writing descs. Definitely pre-dated wikis. B5 MUSH (1997) was very FC-heavy, a lot of people had PBs from the TV show, and it was a natural leap to pick a PB for an OC too. For Martian Dreams (2001), players could optionally select a profile picture for their (staff-created) web page but not everyone did it. Battlestar:Pacifica (2006) was the first game I played with a player-editable wiki, and the first place I really saw PBs being widespread. It was also the first game I saw using RP log icons. Corbett created them for everybody, and people thought it was neat, so even folks who didn't initially have a PB jumped on the bandwagon. I think my +actors code was first done for that game.
-
Here's a question for y'all.
How does your process change if you're part of a 'group' application? Say you're going to T8S to be crewmates... what do you do differently?
How do you (or do you?) coordinate backgrounds? How much of your pre-existing relationships do you explicitly set down before you hit the grid? How much should you?
And for stats, do you try to compliment each other or just do justice to your individual character concept? Do you try to pick different niches or double dip? How important is it to not step on each other's specialties?
-
@packrat said in How do you construct your characters?:
To everyone who finds themselves working from a picture or a 'played by' as a primary part of the process, was this something you started doing recently? Or did you also do that say, eight years ago before character wiki pages or 'played bys' were a common thing, just then not express it to the same degree?
I've always looked up actor photos for desc inspiration, because I'm not an artist and can't draw worth a damn, and find most digital face mock-ups too uncanny valley for me to see them as a human in my brain. I used to maintain a Word doc for character building to keep track of storylines I wanted to pursue or skills I wanted to raise, and I'd plug some pictures in there as I found them online. I still do the same thing in a Gdoc and would continue to do so, wiki or no wiki.
-
@Packrat I've been looking at pictures earlier on lately just because it seems if you don't have one, you don't exist for the current medium of supposed RP'ers. It's like people can't read descriptions and get a mental picture anymore.
So now because of the prevalence of wiki's I've started looking for a picture /very/ early on, cuz, nothing sucks in char creation like having an awesome character and then not being able to find a pb that works.
-
@arkandel For a group app, I definitely want to make sure we have all of the basic roles for whatever group we're planning to make handled. Like, say if we're making a T8S crew for a small ship (although we're not doing that quite yet), I might make sure we had a captain, a gunner, a healer, a fighter, and that at least 1-2 of those people had strong Sailing too. Definitely those roles could overlap, but I would want to make sure that the basic things were covered. Likewise, for a Star Wars mercenary group app, I would want to make sure that there was a commander, a pilot (if we had a ship), 1-2 people who could handle ship guns if we had those, a healer, a techie, and a fighter or two. Again, those roles can overlap (commander/gunner, techie/fighter, healer/fighter, etc). I don't care if there are four /fighters, or two /techies, as long as we don't have more than one primary commander and one primary pilot.
For group app BGs, I usually want to at least know how each character met one another, and something about how that initial interaction went. Usually the relationships change and grow once we get on-screen, but I want at least the initial point to be settled to some degree.
-
My group app planning has a three stages:
-
Talk in OOC with the other players about how our characters relate and know each other. I try to keep this more toward the factual details than interpersonal dynamic, which again I try to detail in play.
-
Mention the characters in the app, and go in toward CG at the same time.
-
Make plans for what I'll do with the PC when the other players flake on me. If this doesn't happen, sacrifice an unblemished heifer in thanks.
-
-
@sg said in How do you construct your characters?:
@arkandel said in How do you construct your characters?:
"oh, no, that plot twist wouldn't work for a MUSH"
But really, what twists do work for a MUSH? I'm trying to think of one that I've encountered that turned out well or was interesting for the players rather than the staff running it having just a laugh. More often than not, it has months of planning and RP being thrown down the drain.
I feel I've had some cases that worked well. I don't think it is something I could do except for a game in running, but what I've tried to do is make a few main, visible overarching plots that everyone has access to, and then dozens of secret subplots. It has been extremely gratifying seeing player reactions to things I planned out a couple years ago as surprises. I think one of the keys is to just make the plots as internally consistent as possible. Sure, some will never go anywhere or be rendered irrelevant, but more than enough will work to be really worthwhile.
-
I suppose it depends. I had this idea of doing a kind of naga with a messiah complex concept so I looked into the game's lore and some history and such. The personality is always somewhat inherent in the concept itself. As are the flaws. I usually figure how I implement them mechanically last.
I usually got the backstory in mind already but I stat them first as it's easier for me, THEN I got back and change things as finishing touches if need be. Looks depend although I suppose most of the time at least the vaguest idea of looks like 'thin pakistani guy' or whatever, but then I get into the details like what they would wear and such later.
Sometimes I start with a lore thing and work from there though. Like an interesting combination of class/splat or what have you. Then I'd get into a basic concept or 'personality'.
It sounds very messy but I can't be the only one like this. I like to come up with vague concepts ahead of time and have a vague idea of what the sheet looks like ahead of time. Even if it's just for fun.
-
I've been trying to make a character recently.
The amount that I have to do my own finding of answers that are referenced on the website is wearing down my teeth.
People who make games, if you're using a wiki please remember that the web was designed to link information for easy reference. It's not an information dump, and if you want people to go to your wiki for information—especially if it's not available on the game—then it must be useful.
No, let me generalize that further: If you're not writing your files for easy reference, you're doing it wrong.
This is my personal #1 hurdle to starting a new game; just trying to figure out what the game is about.
Fix that, people. Thanks.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
This is honestly why I haven't worked on my own game yet.
I know I'm shit at structuring files well. I fully admit it. My own reference documents for my personal projects (novels & screenplays) are a total mess.
I know if I assembled a wiki for players, it'd make people cry. -
@thenomain
I am coming to you, sir, to critique and make recommendations if/when I get ready to open.You called this down on yourself.
-
@rook said in How do you construct your characters?:
@thenomain
I am coming to you, sir, to critique and make recommendations if/when I get ready to open.You called this down on yourself.
I don’t mind helping, but this is the kind of thing that should be done by multiple people trying to make a character without help from you or anyone else. They do have to treat the testing honestly at first; you can test against people deliberately trying to break or misinterpret the systems some other time, like from game open to game close.
Every published board game goes through this; the developer gets people who have never seen the game before in a room, gives them the rules and components, and sits back to watch and take notes. We don’t normally have the time or ability to cold test like this, especially after the game has opened, but if we’re fortunate we will get enough players so we can read the temperature in the room.
But yes, I can criticize. Boy howdy can I criticize. The hard part is using my power for good, not whining.
