Characters for backstory

[Crossie]

I feel that just over 1,000 characters simply isn't enough to draft my lite novel character backstory!!!  I've got an idea and I need at least 10x the number of characters allotted! 

[0th Power]

I tend to write shorter bios and have only run into the limit when I was trying to tie multiple characters stories together.  That being said, I’d love it if the I’d screen didn’t go all wonky when typing the bio.  If they could fix that and add some space, I’d call that a win. 

[biostem]

It's an online game - provide a quick summary of your character and a URL where an interested reader can see more.

[Rudra]

Even writing short bios for my characters, I routinely run up against the limit and have to try to figure out how it got so big with so little information in it. Which often requires me to change my character's bio to get it to fit. Which is infuriating. Why should I have to make a bio that says:

 

My name is Name. Go to this site to learn about me.

 

The fact special characters take up more than one character space in bios makes the limit very easy to run into.

[srmalloy]

2 hours ago, Crossie said:

I feel that just over 1,000 characters simply isn't enough to draft my lite novel character backstory!!!  I've got an idea and I need at least 10x the number of characters allotted! 

Pfft. I started creating characters with foreign origins to make using names in other languages more justified after seeing someone say "для" in chat back on Live, and discovered that CoH supported Unicode. Each Unicode character is 16 bits wide, taking up two characters in the bio space, so putting "Институт эволюционной физиологии и биохимии им. И. М. Сеченова" (I. M. Sechenov Institute of Evolutionary Physiology and Biochemistry) in a bio, for example, eats a fair chunk of space. And I've got one character whose origin is as a 'failed' Soviet research program to create a robotic director for combat robots whose bio stretched to six and a half pages, with chunks of it in Russian, that couldn't begin to fit into the space the game gives; what's there is a grossly-abbreviated version of the first couple of paragraphs.

[biostem]

"Brevity is the soul of wit"

-Some famous dead guy

[0th Power]

21 minutes ago, biostem said:

"Brevity is the soul of wit"

-Some famous dead guy

I like this.  I’m going to use it, and I’m going to attribute the quote to you. 

[Greycat]

The editor (and whatever's going on behind the scenes with it) needs to be fixed first, I think, both for the hidden characters and the sudden "no, you can't type any more, but I'll keep it buffered, so if you click somewhere else it'll show up there" nonsense. It affects not just bio space but creating anything in AE.

 

See how that affects space usage with characters first, I'd think.

 

Frankly, I wouldn't mind a linkable CIT-like ("official" site) that you could link directly from the character...

[Rudra]

17 minutes ago, Greycat said:

The editor (and whatever's going on behind the scenes with it) needs to be fixed first, I think, both for the hidden characters and the sudden "no, you can't type any more, but I'll keep it buffered, so if you click somewhere else it'll show up there" nonsense. It affects not just bio space but creating anything in AE.

Yes please!!!!!!

[Clave Dark 5]

On 2/24/2023 at 5:27 PM, biostem said:

"Brevity is the soul of wit"

-Some famous dead guy

I agree with the dead guy.  Generally my bios don't run more than one can read in twenty seconds or so.  Tell me about the radioactive spider bite, you can skip Aunt May, Brock, Doctor Octopus, and being stuck under that rubble for half the issue.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I agree with the dead guy.  Generally my bios don't run more than one can read in twenty seconds or so.  Tell me about the radioactive spider bite, you can skip Aunt May, Brock, Doctor Octopus, and being stuck under that rubble for half the issue.

I'm Spider-Man. I was bitten by a radioactive spider.

 

...

Yep, a really good bio there.

[biostem]

7 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I'm Spider-Man. I was bitten by a radioactive spider.

 

...

Yep, a really good bio there.

You have to think of the in-game bio like the back of a trading card, rather than a graphic novel.  Heck, it's even under the "ID" section.  It's a character description, not a full-on biography.  Link to a site where interested parties can read the full work-up in their leisure...

[Rudra]

6 minutes ago, biostem said:

You have to think of the in-game bio like the back of a trading card, rather than a graphic novel.  Heck, it's even under the "ID" section.  It's a character description, not a full-on biography.  Link to a site where interested parties can read the full work-up in their leisure...

If the text editor wasn't so unreliable and if special characters (including carriage returns [Enter key]) didn't take 2+ character spaces, players would probably have a much easier time doing exactly that. Until that is fixed? Getting more space to make up for the editor's problems would be very helpful.

 

Just writing a short bio with a brief summary like what you would see on a trading card can still run up to and beyond the current character limit. Because of special characters like the "Enter" key. The fricking ENTER key. Or a quotation mark.

[Zect]

  

8 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I'm Spider-Man. I was bitten by a radioactive spider.

 

...

Yep, a really good bio there.

 

In All-Star Superman #1, Grant Morrison told the origin story of Superman in a mere 8 words: Doomed planet, desperate scientists, last hope, kindly couple.

 

(With my trademark arrogance, I would improve upon his work for a non-comic-reading audience by modifying it as: Doomed planet, desperate parents, last hope, new home.)

 

Even this pales in comparison to the story so formidable, it is both its own title and punchline - "For sale: baby shoes, never worn", at a devastating 6 words and attributed to Ernest Hemingway, though the evidence is weak and the true author likely unknown.

 

It takes a skilled writer to do so much with so little, which is why your attempt falls flat. And while I don't have any moral opposition to expanding the length of the bio field, part of me appreciates that it is relatively short. A little incentive to learn the art, so to speak.

 

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Zect said:

Doomed planet, desperate scientists, last hope, kindly couple

Which only works because people immediately recognize the character, so the eight words work. However, it says nothing about why he is a super. Why is he fighting crime? What is his motivation? Why does he have powers? Eight words that tell the reader nothing of relevance to the SUPER.

 

And you can't expect everyone to be a master writer or everyone to be able to read those eight words and understand anything about the not-famous around the world character the player made in the game.

 

Edit: Also: Last hope? For what? Kindly couple? What relevance are they to the character? So again, those eight words only work because people immediately know Superman, so reading those eight words and knowing they are about Superman tells them more than those eight words would mean for almost any other character.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Rudra
Edited to add another question. Also to add "the player made in the game". And to correct multiple instances of "six" to "eight".

[biostem]

51 minutes ago, Rudra said:

If the text editor wasn't so unreliable and if special characters (including carriage returns [Enter key]) didn't take 2+ character spaces, players would probably have a much easier time doing exactly that. Until that is fixed? Getting more space to make up for the editor's problems would be very helpful.

 

Just writing a short bio with a brief summary like what you would see on a trading card can still run up to and beyond the current character limit. Because of special characters like the "Enter" key. The fricking ENTER key. Or a quotation mark.

I got no beef with fixing the issues with the text editor, but my point still stands.

[huang3721]

3 hours ago, Rudra said:

However, it says nothing about why he is a super. Why is he fighting crime? What is his motivation? Why does he have powers?

 

These are samples from the main NPCs. IMO they are adequate. Please note their length.

 

Positron, 411 characters

Quote

Positron himself developed the battle suit that allows him to channel bolts of anti-matter into fierce attacks. He used his powers to help defeat the Rikti, but at a terrible cost. Due to injuries he sustained at that time, he lost full control of his powers. Recently, Positron lost his life when his armor was breached, but after being resurrected he found that he had full control over his powers once again.

 

Synapse, 542 characters

Quote

Synapse was just an average man, until Crey Industries got hold of him. The Crey scientists were testing a number of radical procedures for inducing super powers. Synapse was blasted with high doses of electricity for days. It amplified the electrical energy in his body, giving him the ability to harness it into super speed and electrical blasts. Synapse escaped Crey's clutches by shorting out the lab where he was kept prisoner. To this day, Crey executives deny any knowledge of the project in which Synapse was an unwilling participant.

 

Penelope Yin, 319 characters

Quote

 

Penelope Yin is one of the world's most powerful psychics. She was recruited onto the Freedom Phalanx after the events involving Darrin Wade, Statesman, and Sister Psyche. She is the youngest member of the Freedom Phalanx and intends to prove to everyone that despite her age, she has the ability to be an amazing hero.

 

 

 

 

 

Citadel, 680 characters

Quote

Fresh from an upgrade at DATA's Atlas Park offices, Paragon City's famous android hero has decided to change his name in honor of his new programming. With his enhanced defense systems and sensors, he will henceforth be known as Citadel. The very first android hero, Citadel took heavy damage in the initial Rikti onslaught, and was almost completely destroyed. Scientists at DATA created a second version of Citadel using the old model's original memory core and the remnants of a power suit, once worn by the hero Horatio. Despite his recently augmented data processing, Citadel still does not fully understand human ways. Nevertheless, he is a valiant defender of Paragon City.

 

Manticore, 592 characters

Quote

Manticore was raised in a huge mansion in the outskirts of Paragon City. The sole beneficiary of a huge trust fund, Manticore received training in all manner of mental and physical pursuits. When he turned 18, his true heritage was revealed to him. Manticore's father had once been a costumed vigilante in England, until he and his wife died at the hands of a German villain called Protean. Deeply affected by the story, Manticore took up his father's mantle. After the recent takeover, Manticore's eyes are firmly fastened on the Council. A coat of whitewash can't disguise his true enemies.

 

 

Numina, 892 characters

Quote

Numina was born Tammy Arcanus, daughter of Tommy Arcanus of the Midnight Squad. Tommy delved so deeply into the metaphysical that his very being was affected, and Tammy was born with magical powers. Early in her super-powered career, Tammy joined the Midnight Squad. In the 1960s, she and her team were sent into a series of caverns surrounding the Earth's molten core. It was there that the Red Threat, a Soviet villain, intended to destroy the world. To save the Earth, Tammy possessed the body of the Red Threat. She minimized the damage, but her body was destroyed. Her consciousness survived, trapped within the Red Threat until he was killed in prison during the Rikti Invasion. Tammy's astral form was at last free. She renamed herself Numina and threw herself into the war against the Rikti. In the war's aftermath, Numina uses her abilities to nurture the next generation of heroes.

 

[Zepp]

As someone who has run up against the 8,192 character limit for formulae in Excel, I understand the plight. That being said, being succinct is a valuable skill.

[Rudra]

8 hours ago, huang3721 said:

 

These are samples from the main NPCs. IMO they are adequate. Please note their length.

 

Positron, 411 characters

 

Synapse, 542 characters

 

Penelope Yin, 319 characters

 

Citadel, 680 characters

 

Manticore, 592 characters

 

 

Numina, 892 characters

 

Hmm... nope, no special characters in those bios. Anywhere. No foreign language characters either (since none of them are characters of foreign nationality). And looking at their length (without special characters or foreign languages), they have bios of 319 characters to 892 characters.

 

Mind. Blowing. (Especially the 892 character one. That one actually is surprising to me.) (Positron, Synapse, and Numina are the only bios in the list that I feel give enough information about the character without relying on the player knowing the game to understand. And before anyone goes to bite my head off for that comment, I would like to emphasize the "feel" part of the comment and that it is my personal opinion based on how much data is given to the reader. The others, except for Penny, are quickly back-filled by any amount of game play, so they are most definitely still good, but not what I would do for their bios. I'm a different writer than the person that wrote those bios.)

 

However, those are also very good examples of how easy it is to use up a lot of bio space with not much information. Note how Numina's bio isn't really giving any more information than the others, but her bio is more than twice as long as Positrons and more than 2.75x's as long as Penny's. And Penny's bio tells you almost nothing about her. Just she's a powerful psychic, some unknown event involving three people got her inducted to the group, she is the group's youngest member, and a hopeful statement for the future. Her bio is the same as the eight word bio given earlier. Where the player with their knowledge of the game and character understands what the bio is talking about.

 

8 hours ago, huang3721 said:

She was recruited onto the Freedom Phalanx after the events involving Darrin Wade, Statesman, and Sister Psyche.

That tells a player absolutely nothing about her. Why does it work? Because the player base knows about the death of Statesman and Sister Psyche events. And if they don't? They can quickly find out just from playing the game. Player characters don't have the luxury of a knowledge base other players can reference to know what they are talking about or have official content that runs them through the character's background. So their bios have to include quantifying statements in the bio for that to make sense or link the reader to an url to learn more. And personally? If the bio I'm reading isn't self-contained but instead refers you to an url to figure out what it is talking about? I stop bothering with reading that person's bio.

 

My own character bios run in length from a little over 350 characters to a little over 1000 characters (after I figure out how to chop the long ones down to still make sense). Unless I need to edit them for spelling errors, unclear grammar, a desire to clean up part of the bio, or for any other reason. In which case, depending on the bio I wrote, that 350 character bio is now closer to 370 and the 1000 or so character bio is now in the ball park of 1040 or so. (Edit: Just by opening the bio, not even doing any editing yet.) And I can't get the out of limit bio back down to its original posting no matter what I do because of how the editor works. (Again, this is entirely dependent upon the specific character's bio. The more carriage returns or other special characters I have, the more broken the bio is if I go back to try and edit it. I don't dare try any ASCII inputs.)

 

I don't know how hard it would be for the devs to fix the editor. And it seriously needs to be fixed. (Before launching a character, while doing the initial write-up of the bio, the editor said I had used over 1050 characters. A moment prior, it had said I was around 900. I deleted a single character, and it immediately dropped back down to around 900. I hit the "space" key? And it immediately shot back up to over 1050 characters. The problem? Was a part of the bio early on where the editor stopped posting what I was typing until I re-clicked in the bio field, scrolled down to where I had been typin gat the time, and tried typing it again only for the missing text to show up randomly somewhere. [Which I of course removed.] To fix this problem? I had to completely delete the bio to before the text stopped posting and start all over again. At which point, the weird character count jump stopped occuring.) I would think a far simpler fix would be to increase the available character count.

 

Fix the editor's problems? And there will likely be a much smaller demand for a character count increase. Or, you know, increase the character count to compensate for the problems. I don't care which. I can edit my bios down to the limit and still have them read more or less the same as my original intent. Until I have to go back in to fix absolutely anything in them. Fix the editor and the way it tracks characters or increase the character limit. I don't care which.

 

Edit: A good bio is a self-contained summary of the character that does not rely on the reader to share the same body of knowledge about the character's fictional world/universe, but still enable the reader to get a fundamental grasp of the character. Any reference points in the bio need to be either a commonly shared reference point as one could expect any random person to immediately understand or know about, be of sufficient type that the reader can infer ("Some planet I've never heard of? Got it, he's an honest to goodness from outer space alien from really far away."), or include sufficient definition that the reader can get at least a vague idea of what that reference point is about. It needs to only include critical reference points, leaving specific details not relevant to the character as a whole to a more detailed description that may be available from another source, whether a fictional world/universe shared body of knowledge, easily referencable data, or a link to the more detailed description. "Hi, I'm Spider-Man and I was bitten by a radioactive spider." is not a good bio. It is an introductory statement such as you could expect at a Heroes Anonymous meeting. " "Doomed planet, desperate scientists, last hope, kindly couple. " is not a good bio. It is a cursory statement of the first few moments of a character akin to "Farm born, kind parents."

Edited February 26, 2023 by Rudra
Edited to add missing "i" and remove duplicate ")".

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 2/24/2023 at 4:37 PM, Crossie said:

I feel that just over 1,000 characters simply isn't enough to draft my lite novel character backstory!!!  

 

I read this and instantly thought that the problem was not enough character slots on the server.  Damned altitis!

[Rudra]

50 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

I read this and instantly thought that the problem was not enough character slots on the server.  Damned altitis!

I initially thought the same thing too....

[huang3721]

Numina is the longest because her origin takes six sentences. Conversely, Yin only has one sentence to describe hers.

 

5 hours ago, Rudra said:

A good bio is a self-contained summary of the character that does not rely on the reader to share the same body of knowledge about the character's fictional world/universe, but still enable the reader to get a fundamental grasp of the character.

Maybe this is what you meant by "different writers"? Instead of summaries, they write short stories. These guys cram all available facts into their bios (self-contained). The problem with this mindset is that no limit will satisfy them. With 2k characters, they would put in more details and complain when they hit the limit. With 10k characters, they would probably describe each aspect of their toon with a short story. 

I don't think upping the limit will solve the OP's problem. 

[Rudra]

16 minutes ago, huang3721 said:

Numina is the longest because her origin takes six sentences. Conversely, Yin only has one sentence to describe hers.

 

Maybe this is what you meant by "different writers"? Instead of summaries, they write short stories. These guys cram all available facts into their bios (self-contained). The problem with this mindset is that no limit will satisfy them. With 2k characters, they would put in more details and complain when they hit the limit. With 10k characters, they would probably describe each aspect of their toon with a short story. 

I don't think upping the limit will solve the OP's problem. 

I can concede that. The higher the limit, the longer some bios are likely to become, creating requests for constantly higher limits. I get that. I can accept that as a strong reason to oppose the OP. I can change my stance in this thread to "Please, devs, for the love of all you hold precious, please, please, please fix the editor." Sure.

 

(Edit: Though for the sake of full disclosure, most of the bios I write for my characters that aren't poems are also short stories. A well-written short story, or perhaps blurb would be a better description, makes for a good summary too. You just have to focus on keeping the story to a summary of the character instead of getting into the weeds. That is what url links are for, the long version short story.)

Edited February 27, 2023 by Rudra

[kito]

I mean unlike the Npc bio in the game if people want to know more about your hero they can ask. Idk what server your on but I tend to skip over any bio longer then a paragraph. After that I can just rp to get to know you. 

[Crossie]

11 hours ago, kito said:

I mean unlike the Npc bio in the game if people want to know more about your hero they can ask. Idk what server your on but I tend to skip over any bio longer then a paragraph. After that I can just rp to get to know you. 

What if I have taken a vow of silence and there is a compelling reason to do so but simply can't share it with only 1,000 characters! It will literally break the game.