Contributor: JJ
Submission/Title: Character Design/Development
I like hearing about the processes through which other people come up with their characters. Not stats, so much, as the concept for the character itself, mostly because I've seen a great number of different ways that people approach character building, and I'm hoping a few other people might be willing to share how they do it. I'll stick with PC characters, because the process of creating NPCs is an entirely different beast.
For me, I find that I tend to pick a couple of base concepts that I need/want to start with for OOG reasons, and build from that, coming up for IG reasons why the OOG things I want to happen have happened, and how my character got to where she is now, and that aside from 'I will be a healer' 'I want to hit things', tend to leave statting for the end of the process.
Omi, a human healer, was the first character I'd come up with for any game whatsoever. I didn't really know how to do this larp thing; I was familiar with roleplaying, but only playing characters that had been given to me, I had pretty mediocre costuming (and was terrified at the idea of trying to paint anything on my face), and I certainly didn't know anything about the game world. The OOG concept for her was pretty much "I'm not sure I understand this, so I'm not even going to try to pretend that I do". So she became an ignorant farmgirl who'd been dragged into adventuring by a combination of coincidence and bad/good luck, with no sense of fashion and a fair amount of curiosity about nearly everything. I ended up filling in some minor details (like, oh, what country she was from) years later, but by then, she was pretty well established, personality-wise.
Fathom was my first attempt at making a character that was part of an established group. OOG concept was pretty much 'try new things'. I'd been larping for a while at that point, and wanted to do a bunch of things I'd seen from the plot side but never gotten to do myself. I'd never been part of an established team before (my first team that Omi was part of literally met each other on the road a few days before we hit game); I really wanted to play someone who got to fight with a weapon; I wanted to try playing a non-human and I got excited to explore religion in the game, since the first game I played doesn't do religion. So I ended up with an Adelith (water-aligned race) priest of the god of the oceans who ran around with a mercenary company hitting things with a polearm. Working all of that into one character history was a bit challenging, but fun, and I did have fun with all the new stuff.
Mary, a human doctor/pirate, was created entirely in response to a request from some friends that I come play a healer for their pirate crew, because there were too many of them and only one healer, and because they were having a ton of fun with the game. Somewhat amusingly, the OOG concept for her was 'Not Omi!'. I was worried that me playing an OSG ('one sword guy') healer would end up with me automatically reprising Omi, so a lot of Mary was designed to guide me away from accidentally acting like Omi. Omi was pretty goodly, Mary ended up a half-step away from sociopath. Omi had a good childhood and a big family, Mary was an orphan with a traumatic past, and a chip the size of a ship on her shoulder. Omi nearly always used her sword for defense only, Mary ran around the battlefield (somewhat stupidly) chasing things with her sword. It was fun, but definitely a challenge. One other thing that I think probably strongly influenced the design of that character was the knowledge that it was a short-term game, so I was free to try some things that I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull off/enjoy (like giving her a damaged voice that I continually had to remind myself of), because I knew I wouldn't have to keep it up very long.
How about other people?
Simple to follow, and honest. Please leave comments below.
To see a developed character history, read Zephyr or Terra!
