How To Make Interesting Characters - HOLY SHIZZ AN UPDATE

[A Forgotten Legend]

A way to counter Roland's Tutorial.

lol.

I like Grapesodaville (Firefox is giving me that it should be spelled : Brazzaville).  and Root Beer City.  They would go great in a comedy.

Thanks, this helped me with my Anna and Braeden characters' future.

Since they are the ones who are the happy-go-lucky ones.  I think.  I haven't gotten too far into their past yet.  Well, Braeden's anyway.

[Phayre]

Holy CRAP, more tutorial. It's probably not what I said I'd do, but feh. I was thinking about this the other day.

How To Make Interesting Characters Part I-have-no-idea: Using Effective Visual Cues

So I've spoken about how it's not just prettyboys in black who angst. Well, despite this shocking fact, visual cues are very important to a good character. Their appearance, even in sprite form, is the first thing your player will see, unless you carefully throw in some foreshadowing. More on that some other time.

Now, I'm not much of a spriter or an artist, so I'm not gonna go into the technicalities of utilizing my advice. I'm only going into basics, not face shape and all since this is mostly for spriting purposes. However, there are definitely some tips that can help you visualize a character whose appearance fits JUST RIGHTEH!

First, think about the personality and background you've figured out. And not just your archetype. Think really hard. How neat is your character? How much money does he make? Is he happy and optimistic? Shy and lonely? Think about what you associate with those traits.

For example, Lorenzo Morris is the heir to an insanely wealthy businessman. He's a bit of a rebel. He enjoys the company of t3h lAdiEz. What do I think of? Well-dressed and fashionable, with a mildly unconventional haircut, wearing mostly black to be "hip".

But that is so dull, isn't it? Try playing with preconceived notions. What is Lorenzo's rebellious side showed in the way he dyed his hair bright purple and grew it down to his knees? Or what if he dressed like a hobo so no one would think of him as a rich boy? Little twists like this can add an element of interest to a character right away. the key is to have the appearance fitting enough that the player gets a suggestion of personality, but there is enough inconsistency to surprise and interest them.

A more interesting example than Lorenzo: Melinda Snow has always lived in a poor household. She is quiet and reserved, and has very little confidence. She barely has enough money to put food on the table for her 4 children and ailing husband, but when she's around town she wears seemingly extravagant clothing to hide her shame so no one thinks to pity her. Her hair is mousy brown, just the right shade for shrinking into herself when she needs to.

Another important element is color. The same rules with inconsistency apply. You can also play with double meanings in the symbolism for color. Some common associations:

Black: darkness, mourning, evil, mystery
White: light, purity, innocence, blankness
Grey: monotony, ambiguousness, indecision, boredom, bleakness
Red: blood, lust, love, fire, anger, passion
Orange: vibrancy, vivacity, happiness
Yellow: optimism, honesty, friendliness, electrity
Green: wealth, life, vitality, positivity, nature
Blue: tranquility, air, water, sadness
Purple: elegance, royalty, nobility

You may have your own ideas about what you think of when you think of color as well. Try incorporating bits of surprises, using dark colors for a cheerful character or something, to add some unexpectedness.

Also, keep in mind that some things are highly overdone. You'll be hard pressed to find an RPG player who sees a silver-haired villain and doesn't go into One Winged Angel straight away. If you're going to use a visual archetype, try and shake it up a bit at least.

That's all for now... I think.

[Moosetroop11]

*Takes notes in order to win the contest*

[A Forgotten Legend]

lol

[Phayre]

Yes, do take notes. Notes are good.
Any suggestions for the next installment? I was gonna do heroes vs. heroines, but Zerlina's got that covered.

[Uberpwn_w00t]

Wow. I just read everything. Everything from page 1 to page 3. Everything. I have to say, this is great. Lots of useful information.

And I thought I knew everything about good character crafting/development. >.>

Actually, now that I think of it, I need to show this to a friend of mine, he´s into writing and literature, and I think he would find this enjoyable.

[Phayre]

Holy mother of something delicious. There is more. And yeah, I decided to cover heroines.


How To Make Interesting Characters - Don't Forget The Ladies

I've chosen this topic because I know a lot of you are fellows, and there's always a gender bias in writing. Face it-- we know our own gender better than we know the other. I know from experience-- it is very easy to make generalizations with characters, and female characters in RPGs are very frequently bland archetypes.

Everyone seems to think they know what's cliche and what is not when it comes to female characters. Of course, avoid the damsel in distress archetype! That's elementary school stuff!
Unfortunately the adamant refusal to give into this archetype has resulted in one equally awful: Rebellious Princess Chick.

Now, you don't have to be a princess to be an RPC. You can be any female, who just REFUSES to do "girly things", insists on doing everything like the boys (and doing it better), and even crossdressing to get into the No Girls Allowed clubs. You know the RPC very well. She's popped up in nearly every fantasy book written since the 1970s, because OMG SHE IS SO PROGRESSIVE.
No. She is flat, tired, boring, and predictable. Do not stick the RPC in your story and expect her to be loved.

Just like all of your other characters, your heroine needs legitimate motivation. At the same time, men and women do not think or act in the same fashion. You can't write a guy, stick boobs on it, and call it a heroine. No, that is ineffective. Females, more than males, tend to be relegated to simple archetypes with little variation. We have the dreaded RPC, the Damsel-in-Distress, the Strong-Willed Quiet Chick, Spunky Annoying Chick, Mystical Magic Chick, Badass Angry Chick, No-Purpose-Other-Than-Gravity-Defying-Chest-Chick. . . think hard, you know you've seen them.

The tendency is strong in both classical literature and modern pieces to associate women with magic, nature, and the occult, stemming from various mythologies-- think Mother Nature, Artemis, Hecate, the medieval notions of witches. While this is fascinating-- it is overplayed. These show up in games as super-powered mage girls, survivors of ancient races, mysteriously gorgeous cyborgs, reincarnations of goddesses, chosen maidens with magic amulets. Think hard-- there aren't many male characters given these roles, are there? And when you think of the females who are, aren't they often interchangeable?

In order to really create an interesting female character, challenge yourself to think of her beyond other female characters you know of. Don't make her with Arwen or Samus or Zelda or Yuna in mind. Work from the ground up, keeping your setting in mind. It's fine if she does end up fitting an archetype mentioned, but never force your character into that. Experiment playing with gender roles. Try a matriarchal society (that isn't in a magic temple or elf village). Navigate the ideas of warrior women around inevitable things like childbirth and motherhood.

But most of all, don't work to "resist" other archetypes. Again-- start from the ground up. Making a character just to play off a well-known cliche is fun, but gets boring very quickly, as demonstrated by our good friend the RPC.

[Zerlina]

Nice! I'm glad you wrote this because there are so many male game makers, film makers, and authors, that female characters often get shafted or else earnestly miswritten.

I also had a tutorial up a while ago that's related to this in case anyone's interested on reading more on female characters. Combine your knowledge and you can't lose! http://www.charas-project.net/forum/index.php?topic=23202.msg251002#msg251002 (keep in mind this was written in high school)

[SaiKar]

I've spent a disproporitionate amount of my RPG storywriting trying to make interesting female characters and I'm not sure how fair this is.

I think you can "get away with" giving the girls stranger backstories than you can guys because making a strong female character makes her cool but making a weaker male character makes him pathetic. You can't have a guy with a magical amulet, not because the magical amulet is an inherently bad plot device (it's a bit overplayed, but that lends to it being a good, if overused, plot device) because guys are supposed to rely on their own strength, not fancy jewelry. It's a similar problem with making male spellcasters - there's a really fine line between doing it right and just making them seem wimpy. But with female characters, the sky is the limit. People will accept weaker female characters because genes are against them on that one and they'll accept stronger female characters because it's (even in progressive today's RPG age) still fairly refreshing.

Another big problem is that these RPGs are still battle engines with a storyline attached. Sooner or later you gotta take your chick into combat. If she's good with a sword, she kind of falls into your RPC, even if she has a perfectly good reason for being good with a sword. If she's a magic user, you'd call her a mystical magic chick. I mean, short of rewriting the entire concept of how RPGs do combat, it's going to be hard to avoid every chiche.

Which bring me to the other point - it's not like guys dodge these any better than girls in most storylines. I swear, if I see one more mercenary with a heart of gold (Locke, Cloud, Squall, Zidane easily come to mind from Final Fantasy but it's easily the most common main character) I'm gunna scream. Or a big, kinda dumb, slow but strong guy. Or a sassy guy. Or a womanizer. It's no better on the other end of the Y-chromosome.

But I think most of the problem I'm having right now is that this is about 95% "don't" and 5% "do", with the "do" being summed up with roughly "do something else." I realize the goal here is to avoid chiche stereotyped boring characters, but you didn't really tell people how to actually go about doing this. Your few suggestions seem to revolve around emphasizing the girliness with things like childbirth, which isn't really easy RPG material. "brb guys for 9 months, gotta have a baby. Don't let the world end while I'm gone!" To say nothing of actually bringing sexuality into the otherwise fairly sterile RPG environment - seems like a dangerous road.

You say "You can't write a guy, stick boobs on it, and call it a heroine." but, well, the alternative isn't very appealing either. People are people and a lot of people have the same motivations. I'd much rather see this approach to storywriting than people just assuming all girls have to be weak and boring and all guys gotta have a sword that's obviously compensating for something.

[zuhane]

My character's quite interesting

[Prpl_Mage]

I agree fully on both of you.

In fantasy novels girls tend to have one of two roles. 1 is the girly girl who needs saving and likes to weep. the other one is the warrior chick who tries her best to be as strong as any man, likes to make fun of the protagonist for being weak and is basically a rude guy but a girl.

But I can't say that I avoid all the problems there is. Most of the time my females are more responsible than the males. It mostly comes from how we raise women today but still.
Sometimes I make them moderly, but it's more like gransmotherly in the end though.
Sometimes they act like guys, and are just guys with long hair and boobs, why not? Girls don't need to be girly and neither do they have to act like Zell in FF8- christ.

And making them mothers just adds a kind of bad taste unless their kid is dead or captured. Why would she decide to travel the world with your party and try to save the world from evil by collecting the magical crystals? Doesn't she have kid back home who could use his/her strong-willed mother? And no, you don't bring your kid with you on the journey to save the world. That would be a foolish move.


Well, the way I see it. Both sides have their stereotypes, men should be cold and enigmatic OR hero'wy and goody good. Girls are either damsels or over-powerful anime characters.
It's only natural that the background of a character becomes one of your stereotypes of what a [gender] is. We want a healer with a troubled past, we make her female, since females usually live through troubled pasts. Or at least people feel sympaty for girls and claims guys with uncool troubled pasts to be wimps.
So yeah, a lot of this is affected by our own prejudices - and we don't want to create characters that players can't relate to.

[drenrin2120]

I think a mother with a kid back home would make an interesting character because she's controversial. The player would be asking all those questions, "She's got a kid to take care of, what is she doing?" Of course it would be up to the writer to give a damn good explanation.

And honestly, the only problem I have with this tutorial is when you say players should have to connect to the characters. Eh, I just don't agree with that. I think if the player doesn't like a character because they can't relate with the character: well maybe the player's just unimaginative or shallow. Characters that are hard to relate to that we would quickly regard as being a "bad idea for a character", such as the mother, could make for some of the more interesting characters and bring a story down fresh paths.

This is a great tut though, I read the whole thing and loved pretty much everything you had to say. Once again, years later, I feel I may have let my characters' personalities fall to the way-side. But they'd probably suck a lot worse now if I hadn't read this tut three years ago. (or however long it is)

Story and character development can be very exciting. Too many people take it for granted.

[Roland_Deschain]

I find myself compelled to respond to Purple.
As far as gender cliches go, I try to avoid them whenever possible. Examples, all female characters: One is a manipulative bitch who controls just about everything from behind the scenes. She pits everyone against each other and, oh yeah, she's the leader of the hero's faction.
Another is a knight, and not of the cliche amazon variety. She's a peasant who got sick of being bossed around, and so stole a sword, shield, and armor and decided to join the army. Her motivation is best described as "boredom."
The third and final is an assassin. She was "saved" at a very young age by her mentor, who she perceives as a god. She's loyal to the extreme, and apart from quoting scripture very often, has a big lack of personality. This is due entirely to zero social interaction for years and being put through intense training so she could be basically invincible.

See guys? It's easy to come up with unique ideas for characterization!

[A Forgotten Legend]

You've pointed out everything that is done, so what kind of things can be done to help it?  Specifics maybe?  Still an interesting read though.

[TheRebelMage]

Thanks muchly. *grin*
Any topics anybody wants covered? Characters for me to jab?

I need help in making a good villan. Care to help?