Roleplayer's shower thoughts
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As defined by Reddit, where this idea is totally stolen from: In simplest terms, a shower thought is a miniature epiphany that makes the mundane more interesting.
Sometimes, I will be walking my pup or daydreaming and I'll go: "Oh. My. God. That is why my character does thing X!" and suddenly, a random quirk that my character does is brought into a deeper and sharper focus. Making my character more complete in my mind.
We're a creative bunch, I can't be alone in this. Character, plot, theme...we all have those moments. Those little epiphanies. Have you had any lately?
Am I the baddie?
Yes. Always yes. -
Building a Tzimisce, and designing someone who was supposed to move on from mortal concepts of beauty and sexuality and deviancy and going 'Wait, Path of Cathari... and perfection of form in a sensual manner'. And that's how I got my new LARP Tzimisce.
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@goldfish I think it was an interview on Wizard magazine (yes, that long ago) by Ed Brubaker for a then upcoming Batman run that's stayed with me for a long time. He said that one of the writing tricks he uses for characters is to know a menial couple of things about them no one else does, and which don't need to be ever brought up. It's just a way to get into their head.
Whenever I've done it over the years I must say it works. I'm talking about stuff like... grooming habits, what the PC does on his 'true' downtime (i.e. not during bar scenes); does he donate to charity? How does he pick clothes, and where from? What do his interactions with his neighbors look like when he takes the garbage out?
It's weird but it works.
- He who takes offense when not intended is a fool. He who takes offense when intended is a greater fool.
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@arkandel I do that. Simple shit, like favourite colour and the like.
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I used to have a list (short, about 15-20 items) that I knew about every character I made, including favorite color, favorite type of music, do they do the dishes after eating or do they let them pile up, etc. You can extrapolate a lot from little things, too, so it makes a good cheat sheet when you don't know how your character might react to something--
--just check the sheet and see if something similar (even if much more mundane or menial) is on there and extrapolate to figure out a likely reaction!
"Excuse the hell out of you. He's a bag of dicks. I'm a carefully curated box of cocks." -- to @GirlCalledBlu upon being misrepresented.
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@coin I kind of stumbled into some secondary tricks first on HM/TR and then on Kushiel's Debut.
The former forced people to justify their XP expenditures which was a chore until I realized I liked it... and that it helped. Sure, my PC improved his Life from 2 to 3 but 'how'? Did he spend time at the hospital experimenting on patients? Maybe on lab rats? Did he do it to his neighbor's cats to change their fur color and see how they react? The more I got to it the better it was - and the more fun.
Then on KD you could make a little extra by summarizing what you did last week, which again... I could have done as a chore (or avoided it) but after it turned out was actually helping me contextualize what I was doing, even if it wasn't intentional. So for example maybe I met that Countess at a bistro because we were both looking for a scene, and we chatted about an upcoming duel because there're no sports on TV in Kushiel-land, but I could place that talk retroactively into a context that made sense - my guy was trying to up the stakes and make sure the duel's expected result was more meaningful, hoping to humiliate the loser of what was meant to be a friendly event.
Tricks!
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I feel a little crazy at times but I am coming to realize that it's just that creative stuff flowing.
Like the reason one of my characters always calls people by their whole name, by default (Frederick as opposed to Fred, for example) is because he was bred and groomed to be utterly formal and polite by his father. The father who was grooming him to take over the family business and fortune. He grew up to be a grungy sort of ex-con but damn it, this person's name is Rebecca, not Becky.
I interview my characters in the quiet moments. They talk to me, they tell me about themselves. If something doesn't fit, it gets corrected. If something is just amazing, it gets written down.
Quirks, menials, boring bits can get tossed into RP at times. One PC has a maid that comes in once a week. So in a scene set at home, I look at the day and decide if she's come over and what state is his home in. He's mentioned the maid once to an NPC but it's just a piece of fluff that winds up rippling through roleplay.
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@arkandel said in Roleplayer's shower thoughts:
@goldfish I think it was an interview on Wizard magazine (yes, that long ago) by Ed Brubaker for a then upcoming Batman run that's stayed with me for a long time. He said that one of the writing tricks he uses for characters is to know a menial couple of things about them no one else does, and which don't need to be ever brought up. It's just a way to get into their head.
This is an acting trick as well, and it DOES work. Once when I was trying to integrate into a rp community where I knew literally no one, I made my character be writing a travel guide and do interviews with people she met. I would help them flesh out those little things about their characters that don't always occur, like favorite colors, comfort food, habits, stuff just like that.
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@goldfish
I have a character that does something similar, while he will use others preferred nicknames for himself he always uses his full name and expects others to do so as well.
He always when introducing himself always uses first, middle, and last names, because that is a proper introduction. -
idk if it counts but a conversation about underwear for like She-Hulk style characters led to a conversation about the market for super-people clothes led to "there would definitely be shops aimed at superheroines" "yeah but basically nobody would ever be dumb enough to make a char out of that other than me and I'm def not gonna do that"
which led to me making a character out of that
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My shower thought: I enjoy talking about RP I’ve had than RPing.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
@thenomain Hey, you're on my boat!
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I had a shower thought about RP recently. I came to the realization in the shower that I just don't... enjoy RPing like I used to. When I play high-stakes games I don't feel the energy to get super involved, and when I play super chill games I feel like it's just too boring for me.
There is no middle ground. So my shower thought was.... keep trying games in a futile attempt to relive my glory days of actually enjoying MU*s like a dumbass and learn nothing whatsoever from this epiphany.
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@prototart said in Roleplayer's shower thoughts:
idk if it counts but a conversation about underwear for like She-Hulk style characters led to a conversation about the market for super-people clothes led to "there would definitely be shops aimed at superheroines" "yeah but basically nobody would ever be dumb enough to make a char out of that other than me and I'm def not gonna do that"
which led to me making a character out of that
...and clearly this person has not heard of Edna Mode, who is one of the most amazingly awesome characters in a movie in more or less forever. NO CAPES!
(I would totally do this, too.)
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@surreality said in Roleplayer's shower thoughts:
@prototart said in Roleplayer's shower thoughts:
idk if it counts but a conversation about underwear for like She-Hulk style characters led to a conversation about the market for super-people clothes led to "there would definitely be shops aimed at superheroines" "yeah but basically nobody would ever be dumb enough to make a char out of that other than me and I'm def not gonna do that"
which led to me making a character out of that
...and clearly this person has not heard of Edna Mode, who is one of the most amazingly awesome characters in a movie in more or less forever. NO CAPES!
(I would totally do this, too.)
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My shower thoughts actually happen in the shower. Just thought I would put that out there.
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All my characters lead lonely existences before play. One was a homeless drifter. One was a work from home guy. Another was just a drunk that pushed people away. Hell, the celebrity one was surrounded by yes men but he was oh so lonely.
They all end up having the same goal underneath it all. Resolve the loneliness. Reach out. The successful characters manage to do that.
I don't know why I keep following this pattern.
Am I the baddie?
Yes. Always yes. -
@goldfish I think I could guess.
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@goldfish Perhaps because it's a great excuse to care about what other characters are doing and to engage with them? I mean, there could be some deeper psychological reason, but I don't know you from Adam or Eve or Steve, so I'll stick with "great excuse to RP with people."
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All of my MU* shower thoughts are about game design. I don't really think about my characters outside of when I am playing then.
