tutorial An Overly Long Post Talking About Building a Character's Persona (TM)

[McSpazz]

Hello again, roleplayers! In this post, I'm going to break down how to go about building a character's persona. Before I go any further, however, you might be wondering why I am doing this separately from the subject of lore, flaws, and power levels. While the latter two were done separately for the sake of how long they would make the write-up, keeping it separate from the subject of lore was very, very intentional. In short, I always suggest that people design characters divorced from the lore first so that they can stand on their own. Why? Let's get into that.

 

1. What is this even about? And what about lore?

What do I even mean by "building a character's persona"? Well, the goal here is to help you get inspired to make a character! Unlike my suggestions in lore, however, the goal here isn't to make a character background. Instead, the goal is to make a character's essence. What makes a character who they are. What skills do they have, what are their interests, how do they react to things, and so on.

 

But why do this before talking about their history? Isn't a person made up of everything that has ever happened to them? Yes, this is true, but the reason I suggest doing this is two fold. First, it allows you to more easily work a character into any setting you want. Think of this as building a template that just requires you to retool small aspects to fit it in. That's not to say you can't make a character who could only work in one setting or another, but even if that is your intent, doing this can help you avoid falling into another trap that is my second reason for doing this.

 

A character should be the result of everything that has happened to them, not the entirety. Characters that are little more than description of events can be very difficult to build into an interesting character. For example, let's say you started with a character who escaped Galaxy City and then came up with aspects of the character after the fact. It would be very easy to come up with character traits that resulted from the disaster without considering what character traits came before the disaster. In other words, instead of considering how the disaster changed the character into what they are now, you end up with the event almost being like the point they began to exist.

 

This is my own personal style, however. If you don't want to start coming up with a character before figuring out both their own history and how they fit into the world, you can refer to my post on lore for more context and then come back here. While this will be dipping some into building a character's history, it wont be the absolute focus.

 

2. Personality: Nature versus Demeanor

Coming up with a character's personality isn't necessarily hard. It becomes more of a question of how you want them to interact with others at its core. Do you want them to be abrasive? Cunning? Friendly and approachable? From there, you just need to expand from there and figure out how they might react to certain situations. However, this isn't where you should stop.

 

It is said that we all have different faces we put on at different times. One face for when you're in public, one for in private. While it might be easy to imagine someone acting the same way no matter what setting they are in, remember that it's not hard for someone to unconsciously act differently if there's a minor change. Just the addition of cameras can make someone behave totally differently. What I am saying is that, more often than not, people have a way they see the world internally and another way they act externally.

 

For the keen eyed of you out there, yes, this concept was ripped out of World of Darkness. Because I rather like it. Let me have this.

But let's focus on the topic at hand. Let's say you have an evil character who is rotten to the core. Your nature is that of an absolute monster. You see the world as your plaything and as something to control. However, your demeanor, how you present yourself to the world, is that of a kindly Mr. Rogers. You speak softly as you shoot a man in the head for failing you. While someone meeting you for the first time might think you're a really swell guy, deep down, you're anything but.

 

On the other hand, maybe you are playing someone who is outwardly very nice but very broken inside. Much like the previous one, they outwardly act very kindly and are genuinely trying to do what's best. However, in private, they are struggling with trauma and seeking a means of fixing it.

 

The trick here, ultimately, is that you generally don't want a character that wears literally everything on their sleeve. Giving people something to learn or understand about your character that goes farther than skin deep can really drive up engagement and give you more to play with.

 

3. Hobbies and Secondary Skills

Your character should be capable of more than just punching faces if you aren't making the character exclusively around the idea that all they are really good at is punching in faces. That's why it's important to consider what your character is not only good at which could help with their profession, but also what they do in their free time.

 

Remember when I said we will be dipping a tiny bit into history and lore? This is where that can come into play.

 

Different settings have different expectations. While a hacker might make sense in City of Heroes, it would make far less sense in Neverwinter Nights. That being said, there are two approaches you can take here.

 

The first is that you figure out what a character does after you know what setting they're in. The second is to have a general vibe and then fill in that vibe once you've set yourself on a certain setting. By "vibe", I mean a general theme such as a craftsman, a gambler, a peacekeeper, etc.

 

However, as I said, you should always remember that people are generally good at something besides their primary profession. For example, while I myself am a software developer, I play video games in my off time. Do video games help me program? Not really, no, but it's still part of who I am as a person. Many people, both new and veterans, can fall into the trap of not considering what a character does when they aren't out fighting crime. Besides maybe hanging out in Pocket D, but that's rarely a hobby in of itself.

 

I encourage you to think outside of the box here. I'm reminded of Gibs from NCIS. He's a seasoned law enforcement officer, no nonsense, gruff, and, in his free time....he builds boats. By hand. No power tools. It's not what you might expect given his presentation, but it makes sense once introduced. Sometimes, having an unusual hobby can be a great hook.

 

4. Primary Powers and Abilities

So what about what your character does in combat? Well, it might not be hard to come up with an idea for what their powers might be, also consider how you want their abilities to make them look. For example, a grizzled soldier wielding dual pistols and performing full on gun kata is going to have a very different feel than a Southern Belle in a yellow summer dress doing the exact same thing. You should also be cautious as the way a character is portrayed could also conflict with their abilities as presented. You're going to need to find a way to make your true blue American hero appear just as lawful as he would be if you didn't also make him a necromancer who raises the dead.

 

One of the most important parts of this stage of character creation is, of course, discerning how powerful they are. This could be in the form of how physically strong they are, but could also be how skilled or intelligent they are. This has a lot of factors I won't be going over here, but you can read this write-up for a full rundown of what goes into it. However, what I don't go into there is how a character's power level impacts their presentation.

 

For example, if you want a character to be a street level mutant, you should take steps to ensure they don't start out with powers that could turn them into a one man army. Likewise, if you are more focused on a character that is super intelligent and isn't interested in fighting, you should consider how they would fight if you intent to bring them to a mission team ICly.

 

I want to really stress that making a character overly powerful, even if it's entirely kosher, can completely defeat the initial aim of the character. For example, if you make a character with the intention of them being a street level scrapper, you need to remember, in the back of your head, that giving them more power is going to pull them away from that initial concept. If you intend to keep them at a certain power level, you should take steps to ensure they don't stray too far from it. Likewise, if a character is supposed to be an underdog, making them too powerful will sort of defeat the purpose of making them an underdog. The little guy rising to power doesn't really make sense if they were always that powerful to begin with.

 

5. Motivations

What drives your character? Why are they doing what they're doing? Even if you don't have the deepest grasp of the lore, you can still get a vague idea of what they are seeking. Avenging a loved one, rediscovering lost memories, and trying to cure something are all fairly common tropes that serve as good examples.

 

You want something that is a long term goal. Something with an arc to it that isn't likely to end abruptly. One of the biggest mistakes people often make with new characters is giving them weak or short term motivations as what drives their core. This becomes an issue because once you start playing the character, if their core issue is easily resolvable, you might not have had enough interactions with others to build up a new core motivation to follow it up. This can make it difficult to continue playing a character simply because you find yourself not knowing what to do with them.

 

What's more, you should try and make your motivations not easy for other people to fix for you. For example, a deaf character trying to find a way of hearing again is fairly weak because even if they lack the means of doing so, it's pretty trivial for certain other characters to fix it be it with magic or technology. Hell, not only do we currently have the means of directly streaming sound to the brain in real life, we're getting pretty close to being able to do it with vision!

 

That's why any motivation you give your character should be other-people proofed to some extent. By that I mean that your character's motivations should have some aspect to them that makes it so other people can't just swoop in and fix it for you be it with their piles of money or expertise. For example, maybe your deaf character trying to find a treatment for their affliction has additional elements to them that makes currently available treatments non-workable. Maybe your character from another dimension who is trying to get home can't just ask Portal Corp to open the way up because of some weird aspect of your dimension that makes standard means of travel impossible.

 

If someone does try and fix your character, you have every right to OOCly tell them to stop and explain why. Just keep in mind that some things aren't going to be reasonable to claim shouldn't be an easy fix. For example, if your character has some body trait that makes getting clothes for them normally impossible, it's going to be a stretch to claim that another character with the means of custom making you clothing can't. Hell, it would be a stretch to say you couldn't get something from Icon even if it came at a hefty price. At some point, you have to roll with the punches and let stuff happen. That isn't to say you can't add caveats to the fix being applied, but not all problems are meant to last forever.

 

6. Not For the Sake of It!

I also mention this in my post on making headcanon, but I want to seriously elaborate here to better make my case: do not make a character for the sake of making a character. If you are inspired, great! If you have a concept you want to play with, awesome! But I always encourage people to start with a concept they seriously want to play with before trying to make a character.

 

It can be very tempting to make characters on a whim. This is especially true if a friend is like, "hey, I need someone to play my character's sibling! Wanna do it?" The mistake people make is that by making the sibling without a concept in mind, their concept is effectively "the sibling". The new powerset that was just released is a ton of fun, but making a new character with only the new powerset in mind is going to result in a lot of cut corners and weak motivations. Find something that inspires you before anything else. Remember: this character needs to exist for the long haul. Not just until a single concept wears out its welcome.

 

7. Exaggeration

On 3/7/2022 at 12:22 AM, Driven Snow said:

Exaggeration gives characters life.

 

 

People who come from a visual character design background may already understand where I’m going with this, but it’s a principle as true in writing as it is in graphic art. We remember the extremes. We notice things which stand out. Without points of exaggeration, any shape is a muddy blob.

 

Exaggeration doesn’t mean turning everything up to eleven. Like overuse of anything, a character for whom every aspect is exaggerated loops back around to that muddy shape again – no one knows what parts are supposed to be important and they don’t remember the parts you want them to. Proper exaggeration is a choice to focus in on an aspect or two and blow them larger than life. You pick one to three elements of your character's personality and make them shine bright enough that others see them from orbit.

 

Classic examples of exaggeration are physical ones like extreme height, some prominent feature of the face, or always ending up covered in four layers of mud no matter what situation they’re in. How does this physical exaggeration relate to the concept of a character’s personality? It's something that is always true, and informs how they move through the world on a daily basis. If a character is five feet tall, you can call back to that shortness for everything from not being noticed because they’re below the average eyeline, to constant irritation at being underestimated or belittled, to even their mundane struggles like needing help to reach the top shelf. Physical exaggeration can both lean into a character’s given personality traits (this character is prone to rage, therefore they will be a huge green monster) or deliberately contrast them for dramatic or humorous effect (this character is huge and imposing, but kind and soft as a kitten).

 

Okay, but what about those exaggerated personality traits? Well, this one’s a little trickier because it relies on solid and confident writing, but also because it’s so variable. There’s as many ways to depict ‘exaggerated intelligence’ as there are writers. Specificity is always good, though. "Highly logical" reads differently than just "Smart". A logical character might express all their concerns in terms of the most pragmatic choice. Their speech direct and clipped rather than flowery. This character always wears practical clothing, their room is sparse and organised, and they stand at attention even in casual conversation. They don’t drink alcohol because it clouds their judgement and impedes decision making. When other people describe them, they should think of them as always acting 'logical'.

 

You want to exaggerate it further for comedy? Even when this "logical" character is injured or thrown off a cliff, they always have that same stoic expression, stock-still pose, and a near-emotionless response of ‘this situation is not ideal.’ You could play it all up for drama too, if you leaned into their struggle to deeply connect with others, perhaps living a tragic private life full of failed relationships and unfulfilling corporate ladder-climbing as they often appraise others purely by their practical value. This kind of thing could be informed by backstory, but it could just as easily be an element of who they are when everything else is taken away. And it makes even subtle development even more noticeable by contrast.

 

A lot of people second guess exaggerated traits and smooth them over out of embarrassment or concern that they might be too extreme, and so the personality ends up feeling flat. I often find that I have a strong idea of a character in my head, but once they start interacting with other people I unconsciously pull my punches to avoid being too ‘out there’. Sometimes this is smart and respectful - you don't want to do something disruptive or annoying, and exaggeration shouldn't be an excuse to indulge poor behaviour - but often it’s a kind of anxiety.

 

The thing is, good exaggeration relies on allowing yourself to be vulnerable once in a while. To look silly, to have a known character trait exploited or challenged, or to cause problems for oneself, and sometimes be a little unsubtle. Pointed exaggeration, by some strange paradox, adds depth of character.

 

In brief, the purpose of exaggeration is to create a kind of mnemonic outline of your character. It is how one constructs the tip of the iceberg that people will remember and be able to use as a basis for all future understanding of whatever depths they might experience. The intention is to create a character who one can basically understand and enjoy after a single, brief encounter.

 

This is part of a series of tutorials regarding roleplay! You can find the full list of tutorials here!

Edited March 8, 2022 by McSpazz
Added the excellent write-up Driven Snow gave in the comments

[McSpazz]

I feel like this one is missing something in terms of content. If you have any subjects around building a character's persona or personality that you think I should have touched on but didn't, please post them below! 🙂

[Driven Snow]

Some good food for thought. And if you'll permit this accidental essay...

 

 

Exaggeration gives characters life.

 

People who come from a visual character design background may already understand where I’m going with this, but it’s a principle as true in writing as it is in graphic art. We remember the extremes. We notice things which stand out. Without points of exaggeration, any shape is a muddy blob.

 

Exaggeration doesn’t mean turning everything up to eleven. Like overuse of anything, a character for whom every aspect is exaggerated loops back around to that muddy shape again – no one knows what parts are supposed to be important and they don’t remember the parts you want them to. Proper exaggeration is a choice to focus in on an aspect or two and blow them larger than life. You pick one to three elements of your character's personality and make them shine bright enough that others see them from orbit.

 

Classic examples of exaggeration are physical ones like extreme height, some prominent feature of the face, or always ending up covered in four layers of mud no matter what situation they’re in. How does this physical exaggeration relate to the concept of a character’s personality? It's something that is always true, and informs how they move through the world on a daily basis. If a character is five feet tall, you can call back to that shortness for everything from not being noticed because they’re below the average eyeline, to constant irritation at being underestimated or belittled, to even their mundane struggles like needing help to reach the top shelf. Physical exaggeration can both lean into a character’s given personality traits (this character is prone to rage, therefore they will be a huge green monster) or deliberately contrast them for dramatic or humorous effect (this character is huge and imposing, but kind and soft as a kitten).

 

Okay, but what about those exaggerated personality traits? Well, this one’s a little trickier because it relies on solid and confident writing, but also because it’s so variable. There’s as many ways to depict ‘exaggerated intelligence’ as there are writers. Specificity is always good, though. "Highly logical" reads differently than just "Smart". A logical character might express all their concerns in terms of the most pragmatic choice. Their speech direct and clipped rather than flowery. This character always wears practical clothing, their room is sparse and organised, and they stand at attention even in casual conversation. They don’t drink alcohol because it clouds their judgement and impedes decision making. When other people describe them, they should think of them as always acting 'logical'.

 

You want to exaggerate it further for comedy? Even when this "logical" character is injured or thrown off a cliff, they always have that same stoic expression, stock-still pose, and a near-emotionless response of ‘this situation is not ideal.’ You could play it all up for drama too, if you leaned into their struggle to deeply connect with others, perhaps living a tragic private life full of failed relationships and unfulfilling corporate ladder-climbing as they often appraise others purely by their practical value. This kind of thing could be informed by backstory, but it could just as easily be an element of who they are when everything else is taken away. And it makes even subtle development even more noticeable by contrast.

 

A lot of people second guess exaggerated traits and smooth them over out of embarrassment or concern that they might be too extreme, and so the personality ends up feeling flat. I often find that I have a strong idea of a character in my head, but once they start interacting with other people I unconsciously pull my punches to avoid being too ‘out there’. Sometimes this is smart and respectful - you don't want to do something disruptive or annoying, and exaggeration shouldn't be an excuse to indulge poor behaviour - but often it’s a kind of anxiety.

 

The thing is, good exaggeration relies on allowing yourself to be vulnerable once in a while. To look silly, to have a known character trait exploited or challenged, or to cause problems for oneself, and sometimes be a little unsubtle. Pointed exaggeration, by some strange paradox, adds depth of character.

 

In brief, the purpose of exaggeration is to create a kind of mnemonic outline of your character. It is how one constructs the tip of the iceberg that people will remember and be able to use as a basis for all future understanding of whatever depths they might experience. The intention is to create a character who one can basically understand and enjoy after a single, brief encounter.

Edited March 7, 2022 by Driven Snow