What do all your characters have in common?

[Itsyagirl]

We all have an array of weird, wacky and wonderful characters with all sorts of backstories and personalities. Yet, at least personally, I find that there are certain things that keep cropping up across all of my toons. I guess they're my own preferences and biases in action. I think it's an interesting thing to reflect on so I thought I'd share some random ideas.

 

One thing I noticed is that I never play rich characters. Maybe it's just because of my own life circumstances, but the idea just doesn't really interest me; I think characters are much more intriguing when they face real world struggles, and being financially privileged simply removes a lot of that. Not to say you can't have an intriguing wealthy character, but I just don't do it by default for some reason.

 

How about you?

[ArchVileTerror]

All of my characters appear to be bipedal humanoids.

But that's not exactly by choice . . . I have a few that would decidedly NOT be if only the game allowed for it.

[Nerva]

Most of my characters, even if they look human, aren't.  I enjoy alien mindsets and figuring out how their psychology would work.

 

Tiltowait's a good example of this.  He's an Animus Arcana (specifically a Tiltowait spell - AKA "Ka-Blam!" or "Nuke 'em 'til they glow" from the Wizardry series) given human(-ish) form.  He lives to magically explode things.  He loves explosions in general.  There's nothing more fun to him than indiscriminate and total destruction over as wide an area as possible.  But he's also got friends (the few good folks in Night Ward), family (other Animus Arcana) and stuff, and he's found out that when those things blow up, it makes him feel bad.

 

Then he realized that when he blows up those things belonging to other people, he also feels bad.  He's a spell of wholesale mass destruction, but he's got a conscience.  So he's now in a constant dilemma of reconciling his primal desire to violently reduce things to their component atoms with the fact that if he does so without regard to what things he's exploding, he's going to harm people who don't deserve it.  The solution, was to take up superheroing.  This puts him in an environment where lots of things need to be exploded to some degree or another on a regular, and so long as he does it right, he doesn't need to feel guilty about it.

 

The problem is that, like most Animus, Tiltowait is very young.  In fact, since he's not a first-generation Animus, he's younger than most.  He has the body and intellect of an adult, but the personality and emotional maturity of an excitable hyperactive ten-year-old.  He's relentlessly cheery, hard to perturb for long, wears his emotions on his sleeve, and is (sometimes literally) trembling with enthusiasm for blasting things with tremendous amounts of energy.  Sometimes this enthusiasm gets the better of him and he gets carried away, but when gets carried away, things go boom, and this is the source of most his personal conflict.  He's desperately trying to learn self-control when it absolutely does not come naturally to him - a Tiltowait spell exists for the purpose of wanton destruction, and he's trying to tone that down to conscientious destruction at a minimum.  He understands right and wrong on a basic level, but the subtleties of it sometimes escape him.

 

Then there's the body to consider.  Tiltowait's unusual for an Animus in that he's not an enchanted object or a coalesced mass of magical energy, he's somehow either inhabiting or has generated (he keeps the specifics a secret for what he believes are good reasons) a humanlike body.  It's something that, again, he's not used to.  He hasn't quite mastered body language, and things we take for granted are new and novel experiences for him.  Like caring for your hair and teeth, being hungry, cold, or hot, even things like itching or just breathing.  He's mostly adjusted by this point, with the help of his extended family in Night Ward, but there's times where he just doesn't seem to get some things that would come naturally to a human.  Thankfully, since he's posing as a superhero, a little weirdness is expected by most people.

 

He's also a bit monomaniacal at times with regard to destruction, explosions in particular.  It's fair to say it's his raison d'etre.  He intently studies everything he can about destruction and explosions.  Destructive magic, bombs and the creation and defusal thereof, fireworks handling, firestarting, nuclear physics, military and weapon history... he's got an Internet search history that might worry the FBI, but for him it's mostly recreational.  Some of it does come in handy though; for instance he's recognized as a bomb defusal expert, a skill he's cultivated because he hates seeing explosives misused.  If Oranbega has a public enemy list, he's also fairly high up it for the same reason.  Seeing destructive magic misused infuriates Tiltowait like few things can.  After all, those spells might be cousins of his one day!  Hellions, Skulls, Arachnos Mu Mystics, the Banished Pantheon, the Carnival of Shadows, the Carnivals of War and Vengeance, and the Talons of Vengeance tick him off for the same reason.  Tiltowait keeps his language fairly clean, but if you want to see him cuss enough to scare a sailor or descend into incomprehensible angrish, just show him any of the above toting around a bomb.  Then find cover and plug your ears. 

 

I love exploring odd or outright alien mindsets like this.

[Chrono-Bot]

The same shoes. *grumbles and goes into the costume creator to change ANOTHER COSTUME*

[Prodiguy]

I find myself playing intelligent characters almost exclusively. I'm not really sure what it is, but I just have trouble investing in a character who can't think their way out of a situation. Not to say all my characters are intelligent in the same way, but I just find clever heroes and dastardly cunning villains more interesting.

[Itsyagirl]

25 minutes ago, Prodiguy said:

I find myself playing intelligent characters almost exclusively. I'm not really sure what it is, but I just have trouble investing in a character who can't think their way out of a situation. Not to say all my characters are intelligent in the same way, but I just find clever heroes and dastardly cunning villains more interesting.

 

My solution to this issue is to be dumb as a brick irl.

[Grey-Ghost]

I also tend to play characters that are more working class and have jobs, which provides a bit of a disconnect between the whole wealth = influence thing, because I have tons of influence for my characters (not hitting cap or anything, but a good chunk because I play a lot and haven't maxxed out a lot of alts). The other thing my characters have in common is, although I love my own storylines, I tend to enjoy playing support in other people's until it's time for me to shine. (Often I just get caught up in other's creative narratives and forget about mine for a bit until I figure out which way I want my story to go). So often my characters serve as helpers. Oh and puns. My characters, like me, love puns.

Edited December 20, 2021 by Grey-Ghost

[A Cat]

Generally they're light hearted or "joke" characters. I think I just have a hard time getting into someone too different than my irl character (sorry for the pun). I overall don't really go for things that are too grim dark in general, so I guess it makes sense that I also don't do so in the game. 

[UltraAlt]

All my characters are created and played by me.

I can't seem to break that habit.

[AmeliaHealYa]

I've always tried to avoid using role-playing games to work out my real-life issues, but they always manage to leak through anyway.

 

Before I came out as trans, my characters tended to be full of angst, self-loathing, and alienation from friends and family. They were frequently disfigured or deformed in some way, or at least saw themselves that way. They were usually atoning for some great crime and their powers often revolved around some sort of body horror. In hindsight it was so hilariously obvious.

 

In contrast to the scarred brooding tormented but erudite paladins and fighter/mages and grim avengers of the night that used to fill my stable, my last few PCs have been hot messy bimbos charming enough to sell wool to a shepherd whose powers usually involve summoning someone or something else to do the actual work for them. It's been a lot of fun.

[Itsyagirl]

1 hour ago, AmeliaHealYa said:

I've always tried to avoid using role-playing games to work out my real-life issues, but they always manage to leak through anyway.

 

Before I came out as trans, my characters tended to be full of angst, self-loathing, and alienation from friends and family. They were frequently disfigured or deformed in some way, or at least saw themselves that way. They were usually atoning for some great crime and their powers often revolved around some sort of body horror. In hindsight it was so hilariously obvious.

 

In contrast to the scarred brooding tormented but erudite paladins and fighter/mages and grim avengers of the night that used to fill my stable, my last few PCs have been hot messy bimbos charming enough to sell wool to a shepherd whose powers usually involve summoning someone or something else to do the actual work for them. It's been a lot of fun.

 

Hey, I totally get it. I'm queer myself and I constantly use my characters to live out my fantasies (protecting queer kids, having a social life, shooting rainbows out of my hands... you know, usual stuff). I think it's kind of a natural part of roleplaying that our own experiences end up influencing the roles we play.

 

Either way, I'm really happy to hear you're living your best life now 🥰

[Coyotedancer]

Magic as an Origin.

 

Rather they're Oranbegans, mythical beasts, Rularuu "bird things" or mystically-touched mortals of one sort or another, they all have Magic somewhere in their design. With some it's obvious (The Aegis of Serenity is a living spell, Ironhorse is an animate suit of armor, and Carwyn is Tuatha-) and with others it's less so (Kai and Ajda just look like everyday average college students-), but... yeah. Mystical sorts all the way down. Even Olympia (Code Merlin), the time-traveling Technomancer. 

[chase]

Most of my young adult heroes or villains have gone through some sort of process in the juvenile justice system / youth services / foster program.   Although I never experienced that, my first post-college job was with troubled kids in placement and I got to see many of the challenges, drawbacks, and benefits those programs can have on people passing through them.  Maybe I like imagining the kids would persevere through the challenges I witnessed. 

Most of my characters are ALSO young adult.   I'm well out of that age range, myself, but I just recall all the uncertainty and sudden ambiguity and self-discovery  you're faced with as you start out on your own and imagine adding the challenges of hero-dom paralelling that so well.

A majority of my older heroes are military veterans- probably also due to my own veteran status.  I've witnessed many friends' challenges coming back from war, along with my own transition, and -again- I just find it such interesting ground to explore (and, sometimes, TBH, it's a chance to explore alternative outcomes.  

None of my characters are wealthy, and many are barely scraping by.   

Very few of my villains are actually stereotypically villainus.  They're usually rather decent people with one bad character flaw or one bad choice that put them on the darker path.   Sometimes that one flaw will continue to prevent them from ever being redeemed and sometimes their past leaves them feeling incapable of redemption.    

[Placta]

They're all women, mostly in their mid-to-late 20s. Also all heroes, regardless of their origins (and currently ignore the Arachnos logo by Val's name on the character select; she was a double-agent and blew her cover but I've yet to play that out).

 

I also gave most of my characters last names by searching for "Irish last names" and giving them one from whatever list I opened. In the beginning I wasn't careful and so some characters have Scottish or even (egh) English names. (Rachel's (probably) French but adopted her present name when she came to America.) The three exceptions: I named Dani Connelly after Jennifer Connelly; Nelle Connelly is Dani's Praetorian counterpart and had to have the same name; and Anastasia Romanov is named after... well, that Anastasia (I figured in the Rogue Isles she would follow Western customs and just take her father's name as is).

 

(For first names, I would guess if you throw out some of the weirder ones (Anastasia, Guinevere) and look at when the rest peaked in popularity, you would get a very good idea of how old I am. I'm glad I was never partial to the name Karen so I didn't use it for any of my characters in the before times.)

[TheOtherTed]

4 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

All my characters are created and played by me.

I can't seem to break that habit.

...where's the "I hear ya" emoji?

[TheOtherTed]

Sorry to double post, but actually I'm not sorry.  Sorry for lying about that.

 

For the most part my characters have no pretenses about being heroic or villanous.  They just are what they are, and feel no need to up- or downplay their actions.  Sort of like this guy up until the 8:15 mark.  Most of them could also cross the line to "the other side" depending on the circumstances, and more than a few have gone rogue or vigilante (but only one has ever crossed over fully).

 

Other than that, there's no real uniting factor.  Except maybe for the shoe thing mentioned by Chrono-Bot.  Boy, that really grinds my gears.

[Greycat]

Honestly... I don't think they have anything in common. Some are younger, some are old. Some are in shape, some aren't. Mix of genders and origins. Some are ready to lend a hand, others would break it first.  Can't even say all are human, or alive.

[Chrono-Bot]

I've come back to this topic more seriously and I'm gonna say that my characters tend to be at the bottom of their fields/area of work and never at the top but still there to make friends and connections as they work their way through the world. Less Tony Starks, more Squirrel Girls.

 

So I've got middle-range prestige gang members, a living time machine drone who is doing the bidding of her builders, etc, etc. Even the highest ranking one, Lykossia, is basically middle manager level for the circle of thorns.

 

But they're pretty much all team players! They'll never be the head honchos but they don't really want to be either.

 

I keep being put in positions of power in my life and I think I'm living out my dream of just being left to amble along without much real responsibility beyond what they take onto themselves through my characters.

 

Also most of them are women but I'm not sure why the reason for that beyond I think my concepts are more interesting with women characters than men.

[Crystal Dragon]

15 hours ago, Itsyagirl said:

We all have an array of weird, wacky and wonderful characters with all sorts of backstories and personalities. Yet, at least personally, I find that there are certain things that keep cropping up across all of my toons. I guess they're my own preferences and biases in action. I think it's an interesting thing to reflect on so I thought I'd share some random ideas.

 

One thing I noticed is that I never play rich characters. Maybe it's just because of my own life circumstances, but the idea just doesn't really interest me; I think characters are much more intriguing when they face real world struggles, and being financially privileged simply removes a lot of that. Not to say you can't have an intriguing wealthy character, but I just don't do it by default for some reason.

 

How about you?

A lot of the commonality with my character roster generally stops within the lines of believable separation of self and persona. Not everyone is able to disassociate as naturally as I can, given it's a mental condition I live with, but a lot of players find commonality in the method of my writing, my problem solving, and at times, social connection by shoulder brush between character alts. 

 

But the commonality ends there. The only character out of my list that's anything like myself in personality type, or attitude, it's Crys, to the core. She embodies me as a personality at least in fraction, though heavily warped in the sense that she's not human, yet she wishes she was.

[jkwak]

not all of them but most of my characters are somewhat alien to Primal Earth 21st century culture, all for very different reasons,

the ones that come from a different reality are the most fun for me, they can show in depth knowledge of things only a selected view people know about on Primal Earth and the next moment dont know something that is common knowledge on Primal Earth just because there home reality is so different

[TigerEmperor]

If I had to say, one thing that all my characters have in common would be that they're... Struggling. Struggling to relate/connect with others properly, dealing with new concepts [or timeframes/worlds], past injuries, coming to terms with who they are... Things like that. Including and especially trying to fit back in with society in some way, even though they know that society wasn't really built for people like them.

 

Raphael Firestar? Painfully shy [though jacked] nerd before being taken over by an evil priest and, after breaking free, having to reintegrate with lawful society and show that he didn't change, it was the ghost controlling him that made him do all those bad things. Although with more confidence to some degree or another. Still can't quite... Talk to the girl of his dreams outside of a professional context but he wants to. Just communicating with others is tricky enough without saying something that someone will inevitably misunderstand or take the wrong way.

 

Ra-Akhnaten? Ancient Egyptian priest trying to understand this modern world, even though he has his host's memories and understandings to call on. Everything's changed over several thousand years, ya know? Just like Rome wasn't built in a day, he has to try and figure it out and adapt. Even if it means revealing you don't understand the function or mechanics of, say, a rubber duck or how to use a VCR/DVD player without help.

 

Raphael Firebane (Praetoria)? Having to deal with having seen his parents killed and being personally wounded by the Resistance and barely escaping with his life. Having to slowly unpack bits and pieces of the trauma and associated complexes, guilt, grief, regrets, etc. is a lot. Especially when you're just trying to help keep a nation together under the one person who seems capable of leading it, from your point of view.

 

Carmilla de Borgia? Again, having to relate to others and accept her new vampiric self as part of the Carnival of Blood. Including that it means the constant temptation to do to others what was done to her. She'll do correctly by the women she turns, even though it comes across as just trying to wash away her own guilt over satisfying her new basic needs, but it isn't easy with the desire to do more. To take more. To dominate and satisfy other primal needs with her converts. Same as with Firestar, if she went hero side again, she'd have to prove she was good, truly and genuinely reformed, victim of her circumstances trying to move beyond them, etc. And having to find new ways to relate and connect.

 

But other than that and the angsty, 90s hero/antihero style backstory, not sure. As a person on the Autism Spectrum, I can guarantee that communicating, letting go of things that happened to you, and trying to understand new things are even more difficult than usual. Not to mention having to learn to be okay with the problems that come with being who you are. You can limit their influence to agree... But they're still there and aren't going away. Ever. And that's okay. Just makes you more interesting.

[White Cobra]

Most of my active RP characters have in common that they are street level or “slightly above” street level in terms of abilities and weaknesses and in terms of the plots, problems, and adversaries that they face.

They also tend to face a lot of adversity and defeat. In my experience, the most memorable and rewarding RP moments often come from situations where things don’t go quite as planned and where the character has to deal with some form of defeat or other setback.

My most active characters have some relation to the Lady Cobra/Rei Mizuni story “universe” from back on Live, so there is a noticeable overweight of characters from, or somehow related to, Thailand, Hong Kong/China, Japan, and certain surrounding countries.

I also have multiple in-game versions of some of my main characters. This is mainly to enable Rei and Emily to indulge in their “fashion victim” whims and change between a range of different costume versions and civilian outfits.

I tend not to attach too much IC importance to in-game powers and mechanics, so for instance Lady Cobra does not have incarnate powers IC, but of course she uses them happily “OOC” when on teams/missions. The Willpower secondary is thematically perfect for her as she is not supposed to have defensive superpowers as such other than extensive training and maybe a slightly enhanced physique, but for variation I have felt it could be justified within her concept to have e.g. Regen (the original back from Live) and SR secondary versions of her as well.

For primaries, the original version from Live was MA, but now it is STJ. But she also has MA-, and certain other primary powerset versions that I felt would make sense for a martial arts character. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not in any way meant to represent any IC “metagaming” abilities, but just that her training may also have given her some limited experience of fighting also with a staff or other weaponry.

Finally, my characters are predominantly female and of heroic/vigilante moral alignment. I have a few male “plot monkey” villains that can also be very fun to play from time to time.

[Sabrehawk]

Almost all of them are the same person. I create multiple versions of Sabrehawk, a refuge from Praetoria turned Arachnos assassin for hire, each version representing a different martial art that she has mastered. One character is her Primal counterpart. And a few characters who are minions and henchmen of Sabrehawk. But ninety percent of my characters are just Sabrehawk with a sword, or Sabrehawk using Karate and so forth.

[lemming]

On 12/18/2021 at 11:03 AM, Sabrehawk said:

Almost all of them are the same person. I create multiple versions of Sabrehawk, a refuge from Praetoria turned Arachnos assassin for hire, each version representing a different martial art that she has mastered. One character is her Primal counterpart. And a few characters who are minions and henchmen of Sabrehawk. But ninety percent of my characters are just Sabrehawk with a sword, or Sabrehawk using Karate and so forth.

I have a couple characters that also have their Praetorian counterparts running around.

A lot of my characters that have a history have redemption arcs.  I also have a bunch of characters that are modified forms of PnP RPG chars (Champions)

 

In my head canon, there's a shattered timeline to explain away the ability of so many chars to have done the same missions.  (Some chars are aware, others, not so much)

[TwoDee]

All of my characters are necessarily very verbose, because I naturally have a heavily-overelaborate, purple prose style that inevitably cross-pollinates into dialogue.  When I'm writing in a curated way - original fiction or fanworks, etc - I do several passes to cut down, and cut down, and cut down again to convey terseness and efficient speech, but in a naturalistic format such as real-time roleplay, I'm always going to default towards an excess of qualifiers and descriptive terms.

Because I don't want to treat roleplay like my job and do an editing pass in real-time every time I type up a quip in mission RP, I tend to just parse the characters' loquaciousness through different filters that handwave why they are that way, be it HardLight being a politician who can't speak straightforwardly, Capitoline being an android with a full encyclopedia in his head, or Douglas Win having extremely high standards and needing to constantly complain at-length about things that don't measure up to them.