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Caleb's Quick and Dirty Character Guide
By: Caleb Norwill Date: May 19, 2015, 8:13 pm
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Caleb's Quick and Dirty Character Guide
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So you want to make a new character for role play, or maybe you
have an old one that you want to add some depth to. I've been
RPing on WoW for almost five years now, and I think some people
could benefit from the experience that I've had. Admittedly,
this isn't a definitive guide by any means. RP varies and as far
as I'm concerned there's no definitive rules. These are merely
some tips and tricks that I've found helped me with my WoW RP
experience ; and a lot of them were learned through terrible
mistakes. Nonetheless, this guide will discuss my RP philosophy
for characters, as well as some miscellaneous tricks. I will
begin by describing the four essential components that I have
for making characters; Background, Flaws, Qualities, and
Ideology. From there, it will degenerate into miscellaneous
tips. Take from this what you can — or ignore it entirely! I may
not be right about anything!
Background
I think of characters as the culmination of chain reactions.
Thus, it's important to know where your character came from, and
how that shapes the person they are today- even if what they are
inverts that. A good starting point is family.
Family in WoW RP I've noticed, tends to suffer heavily from
what I've termed Most Orphan syndrome; a disproportionate amount
of characters are orphaned at a young age, and an even larger
majority are single children. In a war torn world, I can see how
Most Orphan syndrome would be a popular backstory, and even make
some sense. Nonetheless, it closes more doors than it opens to
have an entirely dead or not present family. I generally like to
have at least one parent or one sibling alive to connect the
character back to their roots- for better or for worse. Not to
say that there is anything wrong with being an orphan. Which
brings me to my next point.
How did your family or lack there of influence your character?
There are hundreds of academic papers published for free on the
internet that discuss the effects of living without a present
father or mother figure - and there are also ones that discuss
early separation. All of these are a worthwhile read if you're
interested in playing a character who has no family, or is
missing parts of one. Even if your character is fortunate (or
unfortunate) enough to have both parents or siblings - one has
to consider what their relationship with those parents were, and
how it shaped the person they are now.
For example:
Ardhal Cathoir grew up with two parents and was the youngest
brother. Being from a noble family, his eldest brother was given
priority, the second one was treated similarly in the off chance
the heir, Aergyl, died, and the third brother, Aerwynn, was
given to the church. Ardhal thus grew out of being passed over
in favor of his brothers and thus his relationship with his
parents was strained. This has resulted in Ardhal trusting
people too quickly, and being too eager to please anybody who
shows him the faintest amount of praise; as a result of a gap
that started in early childhood.
As for how complicated your family tree should be and how
concerned you might want to be concerned with, I I've heard
treat a good indication of depth was whether you knew all of the
nuclear family's names, and what your character's mother's
maiden name was. I stand by that suggestion. Obviously it may
alter depending on the culture that your character comes out of
but the idea still stands.
Some other points about background:
What did your character's family do for a living? Growing up
with privilege can greatly change a character.
Pay attention to starting zones. They exist to guide you, and
give you context to your character. There are generally good
summaries on WoWiki.
What did your character want to be when they grew up? How does
that feed into who they are now?
If child abuse is part of your backstory PLEASE READ SCHOLARLY
ARTICLES about the effects that can have upon a person later in
life. That goes for any abusive situation - not doing so can
result in a character who is incredibly insulting to a community
of survivors.
Did your character have a family dog or cat? Something weirder?
Flaws, Qualities, and Ideology
This is a little more complicated than he background section
above. I have divided it into three parts for your connivence:
Flaws, Qualities, and Ideology. All of these aspects work
together in order to create your character's personality. As I
was saying above, think of your character's as a chain reaction.
Something gave them these flaws and qualities, which can
contribute to their ideology- and chances are, it's in their
background.
Flaws
Every great character has great flaws, and the best flaws are
the planned ones . When you are designing a character it's
important to consider how their flaws are going to show in their
behavior and interactions with other characters. Flaws are
intentional, and premeditated, which is why things like" my
character is too friendly and thus annoys this character" are
not flaws. Flaws are something that are universal to the
character no matter who they are interacting with. I like to
think of a character's flaws as the basis for a lot of how a
character behaves.
How do you chose a flaw for your character? Consider your
characters backstory. Maybe your character who came from a
broken home is fiercely independent and refuses to ask for help
even when they clearly need it, because they've been on their
own for so long. Or, conversely- a character who had their every
need attended to and was doted on by loving parents may not have
any idea how to function in the real world, and thus are pretty
helpless at normal tasks like "how to cook" or "how to handle
money". These are very specific, backstory driven flaws.
However, there are flaws that are much more general that have
been categorized as "sins"; pride, greed, lust. The main thing
to understand about a flaw is that it always works to the
characters' deficit. True, the characters described above may be
independent or privileged: but their flaw should outweigh that.
The Greek idea of a character flaw is called "hamartia", which
derives from the Greek word for "to err". In Greek tragedy,
hamartia is commonly understood to refer to the protagonist’s
error or flaw that leads to a chain of plot actions culminating
in a reversal from their good fortune to bad.What qualifies as
the flaw can include an error resulting from ignorance, an error
of judgement, a flaw in character, or sin. I think the useful
take away from this is that flaws lead to plot, and that flaws
create plot, and more importantly the flaw is almost always
there from the moment it first manifests onward. In RP terms,
other characters should generally have some idea of your flaw,
and players OOCly should be able to see the chain of events that
result from the flaw if they RP with you on a relatively
frequent basis.
"Abrasive" Characters and Neurodivergent Characters:
Being abrasive is by all means, a totally acceptable flaw for
your character : but I wouldn't recommend it as the primary flaw
of your character. The reason is; abrasive characters, at a
certain point, generally become terrible RP partners. Obviously
this is very subjective, but when a character is ICLy dismissive
or rude to another character, it leads to that character not
wanting to be around the abrasive one. Which, leads to an
unpleasant OOC situation where you are unable to find RP because
your character has alienated other characters ICly. Generally,
with modifications to their character, an abrasive character can
be saved, but remember what I said at the beginning of this
guide: RP is a chain of events -- don't assume all characters
will forgive and forget.
Mental illness is a very serious situation and not should be
used to excuse your characters actions, or be used as a flaw
without incredible care. If you are a neurotypical person (i.e
“not mentally ill”) I would exercise incredible caution about
playing a character with mental illness. That said, I can’t stop
you. I would, however, request you PLEASE READ SCHOLARLY
ARTICLES so you do not promote harmful stereotypes.
Qualities
I will spend a lot less time talking about qualities because
they're ultimately a lot easier to add to a character, and
execute successfully. Qualities are the good aspects of your
character. They're either a skill, or a personality trait that
make them better. They sometimes parallel flaws (like in the
examples above while talking about privilege and helplessness),
but not always. As a general rule, make a list of your
character's qualities before hand, and don't alter it unless
something happens in RP that causes you to gain or lose a
quality. For instance, a character that started speaking no
other languages than their own, but then was taught a new
language over the course of a year of RP. As well, these
qualities generally can be found in your characters’ backstory,
just as flaws have. Generally, qualities are logical. A
character raised next to a port probably feels right at home
around water, a character raised by paladins likely was trained
with a hammer from a young age. The possibilities are endless!
I recommend making a 4x4 squared chart. One side is going to be
your character's qualities, and the other will be flaws, divided
by mental and physical characteristics. In general, for each
quality, try to have a flaw as well. Having more flaws than
qualities is not a bad thing-- just remember, your character
needs to function in a combative environment (at least for this
guild).
In conclusion, flaws and qualities are a game of give and take.
You need to create a harmonious, plausible balance, between a
character’s qualities and flaws. Flaws and qualities can heavily
impact the next part of a character’s personality: Ideology.
Ideology
Louis Pierre Althusser, an incredibly insightful sociologist and
philospher, describes “ideology” as "the imaginary relation to
the real conditions of existence." What that means is that
ideology is the conscious and unconscious beliefs that a person
holds about society, themselves, and everyone around them, due
to their personal experience. In terms of RP, that means a
character’s ideology stems directly from their backstory, their
flaws, and their qualities combined. As well, it means that a
character’s ideology can utterly change after enough time and
experience. A character from a privileged background is
inevitably going to have a different world view than one that
came from a situation of privilege.
As well, think about how religion factors into your characters’
life. Ideology is more than religion, of course, but religion
can help inform deep seated personal beliefs that your character
might have. If not a religious upbringing, think about a
cultural one. A dwarf raised entirely by dwarfs, with no context
of anything outside of dwarfs, who had a happy life until coming
to human society might feel nostalgia for his dwarves roots, and
view humans as corrupt. This also highlights another important
point — ideology is not set in stone. No matter how stubborn
your character is, ideology slowly changed over a long enough
period of time.
Personality
By combining ideology, qualities, and flaws, one gets a
character’s personality to go along with their backstory.
Ultimately, I can’t dictate how you incorporate your character’s
ideology, qualities, flaws, and backstory into their
personality. That’s not my job - that’s your job. But, I can
offer a few, totally biased, pointers in a nice list.
Avoid making characters who are too shy to talk to others. It
ends up in very stale RP for you, my friend. Unless you don’t
want to have your character actively involved in things -
there’s nothing wrong with a sideline character, ultimately, but
if you enjoy an active role (like I do), I’d recommend a
different perspective.
My point about abrasive characters still stands.
Avoid characters that are outright miserable all the time. Funny
personal story here: I once had a guild leader tell me he
couldn’t RP with my character because he was too depressing.
Although I still think he was in the wrong, it’s worth
considering.
Personality doesn’t change abruptly. If you’re looking to adjust
your characters’ demeanor, think through how difficult it is to
change your own habits. Think heavily about what would
necessitate a dramatic change.
Other Stuff:
You can tell I’m running out of steam with these titles.
Honestly, though, I think that the principle of establishing
backstory, flaws, qualities, and ideology to create personality
works pretty well to create a character. I only have a few
other, miscellaneous things to say.
Keep notes. Either an IC or OOC log of events. This helps you
keep track of your character’s interactions, and keeps your
character consistent. Keeping a public IC log, such as diary
entires or journals, can be beneficial as well, because it
allows other players to have a greater awareness of your
character, and lead to new plots.
If handling murky RP territory involving real world, sensitive
topics you’re unfamiliar with, you guessed it, PLEASE READ
SCHOLARLY ARTICLES. I can’t emphasize this enough.
That said, if you are confused on some aspect of WoW lore, ask
either your guild mates or consider reading through WoWiki!
WoWiki has great articles for almost every part of the lore that
you could possibly care about.
IC is not greater than OOC. Somebody’s OOC comfort is more
important that your IC interaction; talk to your RP partner
before handling difficult subjects. Cease the interaction if
they are uncomfortable OOC.
Not everybody is going to like your character ICly. They might
not even like your character OOCly. And that’s okay. As long as
there isn’t animosity between the OOC people behind the screens,
it’s perfectly understandable for their to be IC conflict
between characters, or even OOC dislike for a character’s
actions or personality. Let it go. It’s difficult to do, but it
will be much less stressful for you (believe me) the moment you
let it go.
Your own fun is important. You can ignore all this guide (except
for the PLEASE READ SCHOLARLY ARTICLES part. Don’t ignore those)
if you’re having fun with your characters. I can’t force you to
have fun in my way - that would be really… really… awful.
Recommended add-ons: MyRoleplay, TotalRoleplay, Gryphonheart
Items (It allows you to make stuff!), Elephant (so you can keep
logs of conversations!), and Tongues (only if your character
speaks a non-standard language: i.e a human who speaks
Thalassian.)
This has been a very biased look at my RP, character
development, process. I hope somebody find it helpful!
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