AFK Bio

[DoctorDitko]

OK, I'll come clean: For the first week or so back in ish 2 or 3, I thought folks who said that were taking a moment to update their character's biography.

 

Now, too many years later, it seems no one is. I wish folks would take a literal minute or two to make a biography! It seems, from my informal poll, that about 90% of toons -- even ones with amazing concepts and great costumes -- have <crickets> instead of a bio!

 

I make it a point to praise any decent bio I see. Even a generic "Bitten by a radioactive superhero" is a winner in my book!

Once any of my alts hits the inf cap, I intend to hold a big Bio Contest under Atlas, costumes optional.

 

In the interim, is there any other way to encourage the 90% to spend a few moments to throw us a backstory?

 

Or am I just a prose-loving curmudgeon and I should get with the nonverbal now?

[Doomguide2005]

     You go right ahead be curmudgeonly.

In my defense I only really have a strong thoroughly thought out backstory in my head for some of my alts.  Others I've literally created just to see what X paired with Y is like and maybe a back story will be thought of much later.  And everything in between those two extremes.  And then I actually have to write it out ... and gaming time is far more precious these days between jobs and an 3 yr bundle of energy. 🥰   I'll try to do better.

Edited May 30, 2021 by Doomguide2005
Typos

[DoctorDitko]

Wow, that might be a part of it. The first chance to make a bio happens during creation, some bits unchangeable for the life of the character. I can see how that could be irrelevant as you experiment, then forgotten when the alt turns out to be a keeper.

 

Maybe an extrinsic reward, like a badge, would remind folks to think about it later?

 

PS: Grats on the bundle of energy! They can share it or drain it, well worth it either way!

Edited May 30, 2021 by DoctorDitko

[Tahliah]

38 minutes ago, DoctorDitko said:

Once any of my alts hits the inf cap, I intend to hold a big Bio Contest under Atlas, costumes optional.

Heh, this made me laugh like a 12-year-old.  Naked bio breaks in AP.  Snicker.

 

As to your point about biographies, I have a severe case of altitis, and I usually become enamored of some punny name or concept or read on the forums that everyone HATES "x" powerset (so of course I have to roll one or three), and etc., so I don't bother with background too much.

 

I do have a biography on a couple of toons, but I've never once got an "atta girl" for them, so I guess they must be awful.  I'm probably not particularly gifted in this area, so I don't take the silence personally.  Also, I was never very comic bookish or really that into RP, so I think that I just see my toons differently than a lot of biography-gifted players do.  I don't care why my ice/ice/ice blaster is able to do what she does or why she likes to wear purple.  I am more interested in how she works, what she does, how she does it . . . and just zooming around on my rocket board.  :P

 

 

[DoctorDitko]

Partial to the flying carpet myself, but I gotcha.

I'm certainly not trying to say anyone should feel bad for not writing a bio, I just wondered how to encourage the practice.

 

For the characters for whom you have written a bio (trouper's axiom: NO reviews is not the same as BAD reviews!) what was it that made you write 'em?

 

Personally, I love brevity. I remember exactly one bio that wasn't one of mine, from a character I teamed with on Live:

"Not a millionaire. Definitely not Batman."

 

 

[KauaiJim]

13 minutes ago, Tahliah said:

Heh, this made me laugh like a 12-year-old.  Naked bio breaks in AP.  Snicker.

 

Well good golly once you pointed out the duality of the meaning of the term 'bio' that certainly does bring out my inner 12 year old also (who am I kidding - my inner 12 year old is always right there just below the surface!  Ha!).

 

OP to answer your question, I have to be inspired with an idea before I write one.  Like a songwriter or author I guess.  Only a few of my rather large stable of toons have bios currently.  It is my intention to eventually fill out bios for all of them... eventually.  

 

I have a rather formidable amount of things to do - and it's even such a large scale project that I use spreadsheets to track this.  I just spent nearly an entire day cleaning up my character select and putting everyone in an order that makes sense for me (I edited the playerslot.txt to put them all in order and give them exact locations in the character selection list - then copied the same playerslot file over to my laptop to make it uniform).  I even put a temporary halt on new toons until earlier today when I finally caved and added a DB/Inv Brute to my stable after reading this post:  Dual Blades - Invulnerability - Brute or Tank? - General Discussion - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com)  .  My to-do list is HUGE and never ending, and in my mind that's a good thing.

 

So, give me another year or so.  In the meantime here are some I have already to satiate you somewhat and to show you that they are important to me (I even have a 'Backstory" column in my spreadsheet)...

 

 

 

 

[DoctorDitko]

Nice! Very nice! Love the "Condiment King" vibe on some of them.

Genuine laughs, thanks!

 

Also, seriously! How did I not know of the awesome power of playerslot.txt!

Thanks 1.0x10^6 for that one! I doubt I'll be as organized as you are, but that might well simplify things when I use my work computer to do some auctioning check my messages test connectivity!

[Hexquisite]

I always write my bios in the first person, in the character's voice, and it can take me a while to find that. For example, my Magical Girl-turned-to-crime...

 

 

 

[Greycat]

3 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

In the interim, is there any other way to encourage the 90% to spend a few moments to throw us a backstory?

 

Or am I just a prose-loving curmudgeon and I should get with the nonverbal now?

 

Honestly... I doubt most would bother with a backstory.  I'm on Everlasting, so I should see more, but most people (in general) seem to be "nope, just want to burn things with fire" or some such, versus having a *character.*

 

And I'll be honest, with mine, most of the backstories are in my head. I might get a little blurb for name/age/something important, but between my hatred for the editor, annoyance with its limits and... well, the backstories just not *fitting* in some (or still being hashed out,) well...

 

For instance, one of my "mains," Ishku, has a story about her name. (She misheard the first time her eventually-adopted brother said "'s cool" and... Ishku kind of became her thing. Then her.)   And a whole other-world (literally) of backstory. And a fairly lengthy story of why she's *here* and not where she came from. And her interactions with her new family. And everything she's done since.  I haven't even written all this up on FBSA, much less tried to squeeze relevant bits in 1000 characters.  Some, sure, I can do that. Others, I need to write a novel for.

 

[Hexquisite]

8 minutes ago, Greycat said:

For instance, one of my "mains," Ishku, has a story about her name. (She misheard the first time her eventually-adopted brother said "'s cool" and... Ishku kind of became her thing. Then her.)   And a whole other-world (literally) of backstory. And a fairly lengthy story of why she's *here* and not where she came from. And her interactions with her new family. And everything she's done since.  I haven't even written all this up on FBSA, much less tried to squeeze relevant bits in 1000 characters.  Some, sure, I can do that. Others, I need to write a novel for.

 

This is the reason I don't bother with an actual biography, and instead write a short monologue as the character, touching on who they are and sometimes how they became what they are or how their powers work. I feel, for RP, it works better to give a sense of the personality, rather than the history of the character. Backstory can be given through RP.

[Tahliah]

3 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

Partial to the flying carpet myself, but I gotcha.

I'm certainly not trying to say anyone should feel bad for not writing a bio, I just wondered how to encourage the practice.

 

For the characters for whom you have written a bio (trouper's axiom: NO reviews is not the same as BAD reviews!) what was it that made you write 'em?

 

Personally, I love brevity. I remember exactly one bio that wasn't one of mine, from a character I teamed with on Live:

"Not a millionaire. Definitely not Batman."

 

 

I'm not sure what might encourage me to write more bios.  An influx of cash might help, but even then, I never win contests, so I would probably not enter one if one existed.

 

Your question about what made me write the bios I did write might get us closer to an answer, though.  On my plant/emp troller, I chose the name Trapper Jayne.  Well, of course, I needed to explain how Trapper John's daughter (he didn't know existed) ended up with plant powers and how Hot Lips (my flytrap) aided in her discovery of her true parentage and eventual ability to use her trapper skills combined with her advanced medical knowledge to fight evil.

 

So in this case, I guess I loved the name/theme and then thought of how Trapper Jayne might have happened.

 

The other one of my toons who has a bio is a my beast/nature MM.  She went through a few incarnations, but all, oddly, had a bio.  She ended up as Peace Pack, a wolf-human hybrid who was the result of horrible experiments that tried to rewrite her wolf DNA to make her a human.  It failed, she was half-wolf, half-human.  She plotted her escape, and she planned to take every single animal used for dastardly and cruel experiments with her.  And she did; she ended up with her Peace Pack, a motley assortment of lab experiments who wanted only to be loved, to bring joy and love and, above all, peace to Paragon City.  

 

So in this case, I just wanted to have an excuse for my toon to have a wolf head and use beast run (almost) exclusively.  Not sure why that mattered, but since I usually run humanoids, I think I felt compelled to explain what this freaky furry wolf girl was doing running around in a mini skirt surrounded by wild beasties.  😛

 

If brevity is the soul of wit, I am clearly bereft.  Or witless.  Heh.

Edited May 30, 2021 by Tahliah
typos, clarity

[Sir Myshkin]

Every time one of these pops up I never remember to share one bio that exists solely because of the community. I had a long-standing character concept that lacked a backstory, but rolled it on Homecoming just to play it through. In the process of leveling up I crowdsourced the character's backstory through the teammates I played with (all PUG's). Other the constructing it into a coherent format, the content of this Biography is that of our Community Mind:

 

 

The simplicity of the character was, per the name, an Orbital Lancer, a long range weapon capable of firing from space and targeting a pinpoint location on Earth, but that "weapon" being an actual individual. One further detail I couldn't fit that I thought was really cool that folks came up with is that the energy he generates in his body is being pulled out through the gauntlets and powers the gun. I just personally like glowy effects! I later added the flicker/sparkly radiation dust-like particle effect around his head to coincide with that leaking power concept they came up with.

[Tahliah]

The thread in which @DoctorDitko realizes that moar biographies are not necessarily a good thing.   :P  

 

I love a good bio, and always shoot off a positive message when I see one (ditto great costumes), but unless we are all lounging around waiting for an unpopular TF to fill, I don't look at other players' bios . . .  unless a team is taking forever to fill.  Even then, I am more interested in AT, power selections, bonuses, and etc.  than I am in the biography.  So if the team is really taking a long time to fill, I will read the bio out of desperation/boredom to kill a couple secs. until the team fills.  After that, I start disco dancing, so beware!

 

I think that the people who are clever and fabulous at writing bios are already doing that.  The rest of us just dash one out for random reasons that have nothing to do with how we play the game.  Ultimately, my MMs and trolls without a backstory/biography do just as well as those who have one. 

[huang3721]

I have a hunch why 90% of characters you met have no bio. In my experience, writing is not easy. Once I wrote a few sentences, but they don't properly tell a story about my toon. So, I wrote more and ended up with an incoherent bio. Writing also takes time. I need a few days to make the backstory look right. I'd rather spend my time doing some missions. 

 

For example, I need days to make her backstory, and I don't feel that I've got it right.

 

5 hours ago, DoctorDitko said:

Maybe an extrinsic reward, like a badge, would remind folks to think about it later?

I am not sure about the badge. People may write a word salad or copy-paste someone else's to get the badge.

 

A contest may encourage people to write, but there is a caveat. If the reward is too few or the bar is too high, it may discourage people from investing their time writing a backstory. Still, it's a good idea, and I hope you can find a way to do it.

 

[Placta]

I don't roll a character until I have something I can put in the description. Sometimes the results can surprise me: I knew I wanted a succubus-turned-hero character but had trouble coming up with how that happened until the "her mother was an unwitting human who fought back and raised the little demon as a good Catholic" angle hit me.

 

I'm currently wanting to expand my short blurbs into longer/more in-depth looks at my characters, but every time I try to start I stall out. I'll figure it out.

[Lunchmoney]

Rather than writing a bio I had a whole movie made for my character, John Spartan. 

Edited May 30, 2021 by Lunchmoney

[KauaiJim]

23 minutes ago, Lunchmoney said:

Rather than writing a bio I had a whole movie made for my character, John Spartan. 

You also have fan websites. I’m jealous!  Lol

 

https://hero.fandom.com/wiki/John_Spartan

[MrAxe]

Only just made my main's bio after 2 years lol. Had the same concept since live but only just got around to writing it. Its not all that good. Just really explains what a British hero is doing in Paragon City. I did make it far less dramatically written though. One or two of my old bio's make me cringe now.

[Hardboiled Hero]

I mean.. you can't just Look at a person and know their "history", so for me it's kinda a RP thing.  If you want to know Sheena of the Wild's backstory.. and why she carries around a goblin in her backpack..  well.. ask!

 

  I have at least simple stories for most of the characters I make.  Some, Like Sheena and Laser Lass, I leave blank on purpose because the character's history is not meant to be well known to others..  Royal Princess Ketevan on the other hand is relatively high profile, so I wrote something for everybody to see.  My heroic Arachnos soldier, Wargame, has a history that is knowable and I felt it necessary to write something to explain why he's working with the heroes (In part so that I don't forget).

 

  Then there's the issue that no one on a random team is going to read a long backstory unless the team is taking a 5 minute break or something.  This means that you have to keep the backstory short and sweet.. even if the character's history isn't.  Wargame doesn't have a simple history.  It's easy enough to say he's working with heroes because he fell in love with a hero, but his journey is both more and less complicated then that.  Even with a well detailed story in mind, it can be very difficult to figure out what parts of the story should be written.

 

  and of course, with over 45 characters at the moment, there are some that I made because I thought they'd be mechanically fun, and I just don't know what their background should be.

[Yomo Kimyata]

Oddly enough, one of mine with a background (although the background is a lot deeper in my mind than it is on paper).

 

[DoctorDitko]

See, that's brilliant! Brief, but it gives the character life!

(I hope it didn't hurt too much!)

 

 

[KauaiJim]

I looked up "Curmudgeon" since the word has popped up a few times and was surprised to see this definition:

 

curmudgeon

 noun

cur·mud·geon | \ (ˌ)kər-ˈmə-jən  \

Definition of curmudgeon

1: KauaiJim 

2: a crusty, ill-tempered, and usually old man

3: archaic : MISER

[Coyotedancer]

15 hours ago, Hexquisite said:

 

This is the reason I don't bother with an actual biography, and instead write a short monologue as the character, touching on who they are and sometimes how they became what they are or how their powers work. I feel, for RP, it works better to give a sense of the personality, rather than the history of the character. Backstory can be given through RP.

 

I tend to do that too for a lot of my gang. They'll have a bit of dialogue rather than a proper history, sometimes with a short OOC note afterwards but not always.

 

Void's Thorn... the far-future/Nova Primeva-era "Avatar of the Void" final form of my main, Kaikara... has this to say, for instance:

 

====================================

 

 "Who am I?

 

You're asking the wrong question.

You don't want to know who I am.

You want to know who I was...

 

Did you know me?

Maybe.

But the Void has a way of changing things...

Remaking things...

... And the one who comes back from walking that path is never exactly the same as the one who started on the journey."

 

{( There's something strange about this one... Her armor is obviously Oranbegan, she speaks with a light but distinctly Etoilean accent and though she appears nowhere in MAGI's records or the Midnighter's archives, she still seems to know this city and its mystics remarkably well. )}

 

** For anyone who's met Kaikara, either as a young Etoilean rogue or in her heroic "White Thorn" guise, Void's Thorn may seem hauntingly familiar. **  

 

====================================

 

It was meant to really play up the whole "Still-Kai-but-somehow-very-much-NOT-Kai" idea of how eventually becoming a living extension of the Dark might change a person. You'd have to talk to her more to really get the entire picture, but as an intro it gets the basic point across.

 

It can take time to really solidify what I want to say about a particular member of the gang, though, and often that means starting out with no bio, or a bare minimum one until I can really get a grip on who the character is and what they're really about. So... yeah. Even someone who typically does the bios thing may go through a period of NOT having one. 

 

 

Edited May 30, 2021 by Coyotedancer

[Luminara]

19 hours ago, Tahliah said:

Heh, this made me laugh like a 12-year-old.  Naked bio breaks in AP.

 

That reminds me... many of the statues in Paragon City have little telltale signs, like the soles of some statues being black and textured, exactly like the soles of our characters' boots, and zipper/seam lines on the boots, that indicate they're actually character models run through the costume editor, resized and locked into one pose.  When I realized this, something else occurred to me.

 

Galaxy Girl has been holding it for almost two decades.

 

I don't stand under statues any more.

[Heraclea]

I can't think of any of my characters that has an entirely blank bio, though some simply explain the literary, historical, or mythological allusions they contain,  On the other hand I tend to find tragic and dramatic bios a bit much, and as a consequence of that taste I have a running contest with myself to pack as much backstory into as few words as possible. 

I still consider Whiskey Woman's bio to be my all time masterpiece in the genre.

Spoiler