Building a Character: Physical Descriptors

My hope with these next three parts is to go over the specifics of a character sheet. There are three areas or so that are expected to be more intensive, from what I've encountered. First I'll work through physical descriptors, often simply referred to as the appearance section, then I'll tackle personalities and finally backgrounds. Unlike the other two, physical descriptors are much more straight-forward and more difficult to really mess up on, but that doesn't mean there's no line between a good and a bad one. Most of what I'll be going over ought to, like pretty much everything I've said, not be too groundbreaking or perhaps just a nice reminder. It's very important, though, that the work never be finished. There are always improvements that can be made to your work, and it's a scary place when you think, or act like you think, that you're doing the best work you can be.

The main underlying point of this process must be quality over quantity. Simply because you can write an entire page describing their armor down to the color of rust on the hinges doesn't mean you should. There are a lot of roleplayers and communities of roleplayers that will think you've not put enough effort into something because you don't get super descriptive, but usually there are some excellent ways to get a lot of good content without diving into superfluous detail. Your character description really should give the reader a deeper understanding of the character, and if you hide that amidst a lot of fluff then they may have missed an important point you intended them to see.

Like I mentioned in the previous section, your character sheet should be an attempt to build up your archetypal image. I had an English professor once who challenged his students to describe their soul in a single word. It's pretty hard, so maybe we'll expand this to a sentence. A great example of this is the first sentence of nearly any Wikipedia article. Here's an example, "Role-playing refers to the changing of one's behavior to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role." Or how about this one, "Arnold Daniel Palmer (born September 10, 1929) is an American professional golfer, who is generally regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of men's professional golf." The rest of both of those articles go on to support these first sentences and describe them in more detail. We need to cover the general basics of the topic without the need to get horribly specific, just like an article. The difference, though, is that we are trying to both portray information and provide an opinion on it at the same time.

I'm going to go into some more examples, just to be clear. Let's say we've chosen the archetype of a male hunter; let's call him James Strong. James Strong is a laconic hunter who feels more comfortable speaking through his body than his words. We know his name, profession, attitude, and a key piece to his personality now. This is not the ending depth or the detail we'll invest into the character, but it's our base we can always refer to. Everything we do should support this image we've crafted in that one sentence, because that is the soul of the character. If things go further and you decide that isn't the character you want to create, you don't need to scrap your progress, but make sure you understand that your goals have shifted before you accidently create a very disjointed person! The ultimate goal is to craft a believable person, yeah?

Okay, so general examples aside let's get back on track. Build up your character to the point where you have your own image and now convey it to your reader in the form of an appearance section. As I said before, give detail when necessary, don't give it when it's not. While having a long scar across your eye, or facial scars in general, is a favorite among many, you may be better off not having it at all unless it's tied in closely with your character's background and consequently their personality as a result. The eye is a sensitive region that is linked very closely with a person's identifying features as a whole, so a lasting mark to the area should be a pretty big deal, right? If you just shrug it off (like your character might) and say that it doesn't affect them in the long run, then I'm tempted to think you're just trying to make them more badass, or worse, increase their sex appeal. It's both cliché and a crutch, and there are a lot of things that can support a character's image more firmly and drastically than offhand referencing of specific scar locations.

If you must be scarred, refer to his or her body being scarred as a whole; it doesn't showcase your talent, creativity, or knack for building characters to understand which places can be caught in the crossfire of combat. Better yet, simply say their body is rugged, coarse, or beaten up. These things broadcast a much better insight into your character and fortify what you're trying to build as a whole, whereas scarring causes some difficulties. It seems like a lot of characters are scarred, but despite the use of the word they're only scarred on the outside. How much more effective, then, to say beaten up? Even your strongman character can be beaten up on the inside. Scarred might not be the best word, because it would imply he's haunted from a specific, lasting wound. Being beaten up suggest the reality of it just looms over him like a lifetime of injuries. I'm getting a little too specific for my liking, and that's just because I'm bad at explaining things, but I hope this is intelligible at least.

Anyway, you're trying to convey a character to your reader, not impress them with how cool the character is, or how well thought-out of a writer you are; if you are, then reconsider who you're roleplaying with. Use language that will be memorable and give your reader a good image to start off of. Like cartooning, shape is a big deal; this is why Neville Longbottom was such an easy character to understand and cooperate with while reading, and it made his eventual actions all the more impactful. Between being described as the round-faced boy and having a last name like "Longbottom", the reader could very, very easily understand the type of character they were dealing with. He wasn't an evil character, but perhaps his mind wasn't that sharp, just like his face? Take a cartooning class or watch a Disney move, it's really awesome to see what they do! Thick necks, sharp eyes, sinewy frames, slender fingers, cramped toes, hunched postures - it goes on and on. Once again, return to your other aspects of the character. Maybe they were beaten as a child, and they actually did earn a nasty scar across an eye that way? Now that is a scar, both on the outside and on the inside. The amount of depth that type of thing adds to a character is just incredible, especially if our comparison is just: "Got a scar in a sword fight before I was a master."

Try and write something that captivates your reader, I guess. I've done my share of critiquing character sheets for approval, and I cannot tell you how many I've simply skimmed over as they started telling me specifically how their brown, leather belt is frayed in sixteen different areas with all sorts of pouches that don't add anything to the character. Be relevant to your character and take quality over quantity. Regardless of what archetype you're using or which style you're taking, it should all be part of the same thing in the end.

Building a Character: The Process

Building a character is probably one of the most universal aspects of roleplaying, regardless of where or how you're doing it. This process is very important for participating roleplayers, whether it's your character or someone else's, and being able to have a strong character is essential. Now, while in my last entry I talked a bit about different types of roleplay and different standards accordingly, for this I am going to focus on a more serious expression of roleplay. That is to say, my attempt will be to create a real person. Cut out your science fiction and fantasy for a moment while you create your character - those factors may prompt you toward a certain type of character or specific attributes of him or her, but in the end things should really make sense on a very base level. They should have causes and effects amidst your character; your reader should be able to look at your character and say, "I could believe a person like this would actually exist for these reasons." It's something that people should always be getting better at, of course, and I'm far from the best at it, but there are definitely some things that you grasp at least a little better over time. In general, I would say that the act of building up a character has three parts.

Firstly, you must conceptualize the character. Create him or her in your own mind first, starting usually with a basic idea or inspiration for them. It's always subject to change, but choosing a larger archetype for your absolute base often makes the process much easier and, well, real. Is your character built around vengeance? Childhood trauma? A career? Religion? War? You are, in a sense, choosing their very identity. Now, some of these work better than others, and some are simply harder, but it is still where everything has to start. Grow this base idea into something specific, then, and eventually work your way to something that's unique. They don't need to be a special snowflake to be unique, but they should be their very own person.

Second is the conveying of the idea. This aspect takes on many, many different forms in different styles of roleplay, and can be anywhere from a sentence or two in description to a full character sheet or profile page. Since this is really, primarily for me, I will be focusing mostly on a Character Sheet style, as that's what I've spent the most time dealing with and am actively working on improving. I'll go more into detail on this in further parts as I focus on individual aspects of the character and its creation, but, in short, a Character Sheet needs to be primarily both a general image and a reference. It is not the most important aspect of your character, and you may find that as you get to roleplaying them more and more, the character actually plays out a little different than you would have thought or hoped. A Character Sheet is a good way to firstly define the character, but secondly to restrict yourself while roleplaying them; a little more on this in a minute.

Anyway, remember that your character sheet is not the book of their life. You can't write how they would act in every circumstance of life, but you can give your reader a good impression of the character. It's not super important to tell everyone the intricacies of the tassels on your belt; emphasizing that it's expensive or well crafted does the reader more good than a three page long description about it. You are trying to convey a large amount of information in a short amount of space (I've done the monster character sheets before. 20 pages really doesn't do anyone any good). Don't add things that don't define the character! Maybe they have a gold pendant, but if it has no personal value and no practical use for them, then don't make a big deal about it. Maybe don't even include it. Maybe they got pretty sick when they were a kid and were stuck in bed for two months. That might seem like a big deal to your character, but if he got over it eventually, is healthy now, and suffers no long term scars from it, then you probably don't need to write for hours about how dramatic it was. If it's not going to add to that final image of your character you are trying to make, then just do without it. I'll go into more specifics about certain aspects in later parts.

Thirdly, though, and lastly I think, is the actual roleplay of the character. This is still part of the building process, since they will almost always act slightly different than you had originally intended. Character building is part of this, and I'll cover that in a later part. As I said before, the Character Sheet provides an excellent boundary for yourself in deciding what the character is or is not capable of doing. If you've emphasized a character as being cold or uncaring, then not only should you roleplay as not saving that child who is being attacked, but you should also roleplay their thought process as they criticize the child for perhaps being too weak or idly wondering if they'll even survive. Since you've already dictated the personality of your character in the sheet, then you should adhere to it in your roleplay; not doing so should be a very big deal for your character. It is your job to keep yourself as honest to your Character Sheet as possible; it's simply not fair for those around you to expect one thing based off your Character Sheet and to receive something totally different in roleplay simply because of your own personal whims. Your character should act as your character WOULD act, not even how you would like them to act.

If you're writing fictional characters then there must always be this core idea supporting the process, because when the writer intervenes with his own ideas, morals, and so on, the character falls apart. If you've created a loner character, then interacting with other people is probably flat out difficult for them. It should be uncomfortable and unwanted by the character and only done very grudgingly. While the loner is an archetype that is actively used in roleplay, I'm of the opinion that it's one of the absolute hardest to pull off effectively. Roleplaying is about interacting with other people and their characters, and if your character hates doing that then you have a very complicated situation. It's very tempting to concede more active relationships with other characters to make the roleplay go more smoothly. You need to be prepared to follow through with what your character would do, even if that means pissing people off or even putting yourself in danger. A really awesome example of this is the web comic titled 1/0. It actively breaks the fourth wall and shows the characters trying to antagonize the writer or cause trouble for him. (Link) Another great example is ventriloquism where the puppet argues with the puppeteer. The writer is always in charge, but they're being true to the character.

This went a little longer than I had wanted it to, and hopefully I didn't accidentally use up all my material for the next few parts, but this seems like a pretty good place to leave it. Character building is a pretty daunting task that we're never going to get perfect, so be careful and work your way through it slowly.

Roleplaying is Fun

What is the purpose of roleplay, anyway? This seems like the most obvious thing to address first, I guess. It seems like a pretty basic question, but I've never really thought about it, much less tried to answer it, until now, so I'm going to give it a shot.

The purpose of roleplay is, primarily, to have fun. I've seen it become a chore for people, something they do because they've been doing it for so long, and if that is the stage you've reached then it's time to stop. This is a really, really simple question that isn't asked often enough. When you're playing a game, reading a book (for pleasure), playing a sport, or roleplaying, and you find yourself frustrated with it, you have to ask yourself: am I having fun, still? If the answer is No, then it may very well be time to stop. Stopping isn't always what you need, but considering it is a good place to start.

Well, if the purpose is to have fun, then I guess it would be prudent to understand why or why not it's fun. Roleplaying is a free domain for you and those who you bring along with you. Unlike standard fiction, roleplaying allows you to enter a universe alongside another human being. A friend of mine used to say that people who were under the age of 12 or so weren't actually roleplaying; at that age it was just called pretend. While that's true, isn't it really, still, roleplay? From the little girl playing dress-up or house to the boy who's outside waving sticks around and fighting the invisible bad guys, this is the first encounter most everyone has with roleplay. When they hit that age of 8-12, then they tend to either go further from it, or further toward it. People have their own interests, but for almost everything, at one point in time, there was that spark of creativity that was truly enjoyable. To be able to create a world and immerse yourself into it, be a different person for a few hours in a world of your own making, where there were no consequences or reward.

As much as I disliked the film Inception for the fact that it was intellectual candy for so many people, it did provide one of the rawest examples of this idea. The ability to create worlds with your mind, to raise castles from the dust, and to fully surpass the limits of one reality with your own new one has always been a source of great excitement for those with even a trickle of creative tendencies (more or less everyone, in my opinion). Whether it's movies like Tron or the Matrix, or anime like .hack, or even games from Minecraft to Battlefield, where one can change the world at a touch, this idea that we can create another reality sub-rooted in our current one is dazzling to say the least.

Roleplaying is our attempt to go further. How many times, when playing a game, did you wonder what was behind that door that was only an image in game? Why that building was on fire in the background? With television shows or anime, how many times did you wonder what a character's history was like when no one told you? What would have happened if Y had taken place instead of X? We have summoned roleplay as our medium to descend further. Much of roleplay is done through characters we use to interface with these artificial worlds, and truly immersive roleplay creates a genuine excitement that writing fiction cannot, because we long to know the next step of the journey.

This is why roleplay works as entertainment for many - there is another link besides just yourself. There's a variable we're not in control of, directly, and that's another person. Whether it's a chatroom roleplay, in a game, or on a forum, there is another person present providing a true randomness that even games cannot compete with. We can expect and anticipate, but when push comes to shove, if the roleplay is done properly then we are not completely in control. In a game you interface with an engine and sometimes other players bound to that engine. In a visual novel you interface with options you are given, and you see the effects of your choices on the world you've touched. In roleplay, you are purely synergizing with another person, creating either the most dull or most unique sense of enjoyment in the fields of creativity. You can plan, you can direct, but when it comes down to it you are still only one part of two or more.

Here you hit a problem, though. Why is it fun, sometimes, and why is it painful other times? People talk a lot about "Bad RP" and "Good RP" as they go about doing it, but what they seem to be getting at is what is enjoyable and what isn't. For many, if a roleplay cannot have proper grammar and a certain set of rules, then it won't be fun. I've had fun roleplaying with single lines of text in first person shooters, butchering words and creating poor, convoluted, thoughtless stories with other people. Silly, god-moding roleplay in a chat room is still roleplay, even if its nonsensical and it doesn't agree with a set of rules most people are used to. Remember, the purpose of roleplay is to have fun, so do it! Some people like the challenge of creating deep characters and intriguing plotlines - other people would rather pretend to blow things up by writing it out or recreate Pokémon battles they saw in a show in the same way. People seem to get really caught up in rating roleplay that they miss the point - it's still about having fun. It's not about everyone adhering to the same style or rules, and it's not about everyone progressing in tastes the way you have. It's about writing something and enjoying it while you do it.

Now, I've just made a pretty big blanket statement, and I'm going to go back and make some clarifications. Rules can be very important. When the difference in taste is small or simple, then a set of guidelines to say what is permissible and what is not in a certain place (server, forum, chat room, etc.) can help keep the flow much stronger. After all, you're relying on other people to make your roleplay work in the end. Clarify you would not like god-moding. Clarify you would like to adhere (or not adhere) to the canon/lore of the topic at hand. If someone disagrees with these things, especially the larger ones, both parties are obligated towards an action. The person rejecting the rules should understand that it's not the place for them to roleplay, and should search for a more suitable location, and the person in charge of the rules should understand that people have different tastes. It can, of course, get nasty and complicated, but this is still a really strong base to grow off of. Find places that suit you and work with them. If they stop working for you, move on.

There is, I think, one other thing that should also be disclaimed. Roleplay CAN be unhealthy. This is crossing into the realm of personal lives and such, which is weird territory, so I'll hopefully talk about this in its own post. However, it should be of note, at least, that roleplay can be un-enjoyable for either you or the person you're roleplaying with because it's unhealthy. The best roleplay will come when it's healthy, and that means sacrificing things to get it. I'll go into this another time, but roleplay should not be a substitute for your own, crappy life. Escapism is a nasty hole to get into, and it will detract from the RP for you and everyone else.

Anyway, roleplay is fun. It can be used as a method to get better at writing or other things, but primarily it comes back to being a means of enjoyment. Be elitist in your communities if you want, because you have things to uphold. In terms of roleplay in general, though? Have fun.

Introduction

Hmm, where to start.

This is something I've wanted to do for a while, now, and while I may or may not refer others to it, my intentions are primarily for myself. I don't particularly expect others to read or follow, nor do I expect to write for infinity. There are a lot of things I've learned about roleplay, and a lot of things I'm still figuring out, and I feel sort of obligated to either think further on or to simply acknowledge them. It's been a number of years since I've started, but I guess the only thing I've really learned from seniority as a roleplayer is how little seniority actually counts for. I've seen plenty of fresh roleplayers destroy "veteran" RPers, and naturally the other way around. Like anything you learn more as time goes on, but the person at hand is still much more important than you might think, in the end. I've still got loads to learn, so I guess I'll try teaching myself a little bit.

So here goes, I guess. My hope is that by writing things down I'll be able to learn more about them myself as I'm forced to think about it. I have a list of possible topics that I think are worthwhile, and I probably won't get to all of them because I combine or destroy them, or I just lose interest. I hope whoever reads this can get something out of it, even if that's just me.

If we're done with my most useless topic I've got on my list, then let's get to the important stuff, eh?