Post by Kuma on Mar 28, 2015 20:49:35 GMT
Hello, my name is Iñigo Montoya, you killed my….no, wrong lines, sorry.
Hello, I’m Kuma, veteran player and one of the Admins for the forum, and I’m here today to talk to you about character creation. If you follow three simple rules, it will be extremely easy for you to follow the footsteps of previous players who already made great and influential characters.
First Rule: Pick a Theme and Concept
Every character has two elements particular to them, their Theme and their Concept.
The Concept
Let’s start with the concept, which is easier. The Concept is the sum of your character expressed in the shortest way possible. If you can’t express through a short concept then something is failing (we will talk more about that later)
For Example: Gen Shishioh
My character Gen is many things, but he could be sum up into the concept “Hot-Blooded Boxer”
Hot-Blooded gives us a broad description of his personality, impulsive, brash, quick tempered, emotional and more. While Boxer indicates his main “occupation” and evokes images of close combat fighting, rough exteriors, wounds and brawling.
Combining both ideas we can get a better view of the character, A brash boxer surely is an in-fighter, being impulsive means he works on instinct more than on logic, what could guide us to the conclusion that Gen isn’t very bright. With this we can get a more detailed idea about the character. It can also help us to pick a look for him, but that comes later.
The Theme
The theme of a character is trickier, but I will try to explain it as simply as possible. A character’s theme determines secondary elements of said characters; as well it can help us pick the character’s “goal”
Keeping Gen as an example, his theme would be “The Pursuit of Power” Gen wants to be the best on his field, that being boxing. Thus this gives us more insight on him. The character Theme here summed up to the Concept give an even tighter description.
A Hot-Blooded Boxer Pursuing Power, with this we can learn that Gen is searching for power but most likely he is doing it in a straightforward manner, as Hot-Blooded individuals don’t tend to be cowards or impassionate about their goals. So he trains, considering his “occupation” his boxer and his method of achieving his goal is straight-forward he surely trains a lot.
Second Rule: Less is better than more (Without reaching extremes)
When you make the bio you need to start small, overcrowding the character with powers, personality traits and background story adventures make him difficult to use or write with. A character with a basic story a limited yet well established power set and a simple personality is much easier to use and evolve than having a 2000 hundred years old immortal with thousand skills and multiple personality disorder.
This is double for new players, especially when it comes to powers and personality. Having a lot of powers doesn’t make a character interesting; it makes it cumbersome and difficult to put in real danger. Having a character with an overly complex personality makes it very difficult to write about him without accidentally going off character.
Having a shorter yet concise background story allows the character to have the bulk of their adventures in the forum, what’s the point having a character who on paper is veteran of a thousand wars and then he is beaten by easily beatable enemies, it makes the character look bad. Having a short back story is paramount to allow the character to bloom in-game.
Third Rule: Creativity is a must
Searching for pieces of characters and sticking them together with superglue is not making a character. I hate to put it so bluntly, but copy-pastes of wiki’s are to writing a character like mud to a white cloth. The character powers, personality and story need to be part of a whole, not pieces of interesting things the writer gets together.
If a character has the personality of Character A, the Powers of Character B and the Story of Character C, then is a mess. A character is a whole, having a Hot-blooded personality, with Ice powers but a story that says he was trained by Giant Moles is a no go, back to the drawing board. Or having a Magician Type character, with detached personality and aloof demeanor and tell in the story he was raised by a loving family and that he never had any difficulties on his life.
The three elements are pieces of the same puzzle, but if the pieces are all from different sets you may complete the jigsaw, but you won’t have a complete image. For this purpose you need to be creative and design the three elements to fit on each other, instead of simply picking them up from a pile and forcing them together.
Story
I think I said it before, but I will say it again, stories for characters backgrounds must be short, having an overly long character back-story with its own climax and several other events that could affect the world is quite useless. Why is that? Because the whole point of the forum is playing the character, what’s the point of the character if he already beat the evilest thing in the world, or he is already hero of a hundred worlds before reaching the threads?
Keep it short, keep it simple and keep it as an introduction. Imagine is the doorway to the Hidden World* you need to think how did your character enter to the reality that hides in the shadows of regular world instead of making a whole damn story about how he saved ten planets and was a godly alien flying through the cosmos in a unicorn that farts rainbows.
I’m not saying your character must be a blank slate, but he mustn’t be at the end of his journey. See the image besides this. Your character story is a car that enters this massive crossroad through one of the roads (Roads being possible origins, like Magical, Martial Artist, etc) the crossroad is the forum (The Vice Verse)
You need to enter, solve your story inside and then exit. Characters must have an end goal, something that drives them forward to accomplish stuff. A Goalless character doesn’t need anything, so why does he do stuff? Even lulz is a good motivation if you know how to write it.
How to write it? That is more a question that will be solved in the personality segment.
Personality
Characters must have a simple yet compelling personality. “But” is the word that no Personality segment must have. Like he is Humble “but” Arrogant, or he is a berserkering warrior “but” he is a pacifist. You can do contrasts, any character without them is boring, but making the whole personality about those contrasts makes a confusing character.
Another common misconception is that making a simple personality typecasts forever a character, making him always the same. If you develop the character he will change and suit your needs, but you can’t make him grow if the foundations are twisted and built in mud. You need a simple yet sturdy base if you want to build anything for your character.
Then we come to another issue I tend to notice a lot in bios. Making a mentally ill character is typecasting him in a role, just what people tend to think simple personality do. The more complex and twisted the personality is the harder is for it to change. Thus making it impossible to leave a really conflictive character does other stuff apart from being ill.
I’m not saying you can’t do mentally ill characters, but when you do them is better to develop the reason for their illness out in the open, during the threads, or the other option is taking said mental ailment and using it as a comedy tool.
Comedy is another issue people try to avoid; many make cool character that cannot fail in anything they do. Failing isn’t painful, but a possibility to learn, for both the player and the character, as both grow upon discovering new possibilities and variants. Comedy tends to be untouched as most characters either try all the time to be the straight man or the deadpan snarker instead of being the object of the pranks or comedy. Don’t fear the slapstick.
Another important thing to remember is making the personality synch with everything else, I know I said this many times, but the connections between the parts that make a character are extremely important, as said connections are what make the character that, instead of being a Frankenstein monster made of scavenged concepts.
Finally the last thing is as always to be creative, I said it before and I’ll keep hammering it, stealing personality from characters only hurts your character as he will be incomplete and incoherent. Making a personality based upon the concept, theme and story is paramount.
I’m sure you wanted to reach this part, you are already thinking what kind of cool shit your character will do, but for a moments let’s talk about the core element of any good RPG and why it is so tightly linked to the powers and skills of a character, shall we?
RPG’s core is “Struggle” your character needs to face odds that can challenge them, so they can learn and make an effort to win. This isn’t just a personal preference is a fact of the game itself, if your character doesn’t struggles then you are doing it wrong and you should be ashamed….well not like that, but you need to rethink him or her.
Struggling is not losing some times and winning others, is showing an effort or withstanding adversity with the character, not just plowing through the stories as if you were playing Dynasty Warriors on Easy mode with a fully leveled Lu Bu. There are videogames (Such as Dynasty Warriors) that are for that and if you are looking that experience I deeply recommend you buy it.
Well, I think I made my point, but why does this point relate to the Powers of the character? Easy, having a shitload of powers or being too powerful diminishes the chances of struggle and without struggle; the salt of the game, your character cannot really develop as anybody will tell you that we learn more out of our mistakes than our successes.
The first thing you need to think is: How does the powers of my character relate to my character concept and theme? Using Gen once again as an example, he is a Boxer, so I developed a power and fighting style that fitted him. I tried to create something new, but I did use elements from different series and things I liked.
He is southpaw boxer with a style reminiscent of Sendou Takeshi from Haijime No Ippo, yet he isn’t exactly like him and he doesn’t have the same moves, but the feel of it is what I tried to emulate. His “Fighting Spirit” Energy has some elements of Ki and Nen, but altered to fit my needs, being an emotional boosted spiritual energy.
The “Winning Combination” Concept is a greatly altered version of the Full Course from Toriko, but instead of making of food is a catalogue of knuckle sandwiches. His currently developing Gainen powers are linked to my taste for Tokusatsu shows and the new techniques he has learnt have different sources of inspiration.
Inspiration being the keyword here, as you don’t have or should copy a power, but you should know said power and think how to alter it into being useful for your character. Just copy-pasting powers into a story won’t make a good character, you could be a good writer, but even the best chef in the world can do squat if he doesn’t have good raw materials to work with.
So basically the three rules for picking your powers are:
1. Creativity is important
2. Inspiration and Homage>Rip-off and Copy-paste
3. Linking powers to concept is the way to go.
When it comes to power level for characters I tend to think it like this. A Hero must be initially five times weaker than his villain. So the character can fight against the “Villain”. When it comes to base level attributes I think the best is for a starting “Fighter Type”
Speed: Peak-Mach 1
Strength Peak-5 tons
Durability: Peak-Building Level
Of course this can be altered; some can be way lower and other way higher. I only made a list of the physical attributes as mental attributes (unless mental powers are involved) are more in the side of story and personality than powers.
Yet a good piece of advice, playing a character way smarter than you can be hard, as you need to make him sound and act smart. But playing a character that is dumber than you is equally challenging as you need to ignore common sense and it can get frustrating when you write, trying to do something and knowing your character can’t know about it while you do. (You want to grab him from his or her jacket and shook him.
When it comes to unique powers is a bit more complicated. My high-school literature teacher always said “There is nothing new under the sun” meaning that you will never make something 100% unique and new, as a living breathing creature that lives in this world you will experience other forms of media and that media will alter your perception and your ideas, thus inspiring different creative outlooks.
Let’s do a new example. We have a Spy character, he is an “Independent Spy escaping his past” (Concept and Theme) from this we could say he is somebody of certain age (over 25 at least) as he needs to have a past, but he could be younger if he was a child soldier or something like that. Independent could tell us things like being a freelance, that he works for money or that he has his own code of ethics. But we don’t care about that right now.
We need to think powers for this character. His profession can give us basic stats and skills, like being faster than stronger or sturdier, able to sneak and hide, have some degree of acrobatics and even hacking. But if we wanted to give him powers, what could we use? His Concept and Theme, of course, so if we think it we can find proper powers for him. Shall we?
Independent: Works alone, doesn’t depend of people, is self sufficient (or tries to be)
Spy: Stealth, Assassination, Infiltration and Sabotage. Is secretive and tends to be stoic.
Escaping his Past: Fleeing, avoiding, hiding, forgetting and time.
Split your Concept and Theme and assign traits or actions related to them see what you can think out those words of phrases.
For example he could be a teleporter, as he tries to flee from something, or phase through walls. He could turn into a virtual conscience as nobody would search for a human being inside a computer, like Astral Travelling but with technology.
He is Independent so he could have a power that reflects that, like having some sort of life-support (Like Cybernetic Implants) or genetic alterations. Animal splicing could grant some sort of Totem-like relation, like bats, rats, snakes or any nocturnal animal that could give the character benefits on his line of work. Or you could make a tangential connection and give him something like Electric Eels that could help him infiltrate and commit sabotage with electric shocks.
The Concept and Theme also help finding a source for those powers. Spy suggests Technology and Skill, but you could have a Mystical Spy, like a Wizard trained in illusions and other useful magic that serves as a freelance agent, or maybe a genetic mutation as I mentioned before that could prove to be useful (In the end it could also be considered tech based if the genetic alteration was a scientific experiment). Ninja’s are another possibility, opening the Ki/Martial Arts origin for the character.
About Combat, this is more of regular play than character building, but sometimes the problems in combat have a root in the character. Something very important in a purely narrative RPG game is to sell. What is selling? Taking damage, accepting that your character wasn’t able to avoid an attack and he receives the impact of it. This is quite important, as is mostly an honor system that oversees the exchanges of combat between player.
Some powers arent easy to sell, either selling taking the damage, or selling them being blocked. Those powers (Like Memory Manipulation, Soul Manipulation or flat out Mind Control) are more suited for narrative encounters than combat encounters and must be used with just measure or the character can be denominated “Broken” meaning that he is too powerful to be faced on a proper fight. My advice is that you leave those powers to either NPC for narrative purposes or forget about them all together.
Picking a look may seem easy, but it can get pretty hectic…if you do it right. First let’s give some parameters.
1. The fame of the character image you picked is proportional to the typecasting you will subject too. As the character fame will eclipse your character’s
2. Picking a look can be used as the root of the character or an after-thought, it depends on the individual, and while maybe the image sparks the creativity for others is better to search an image that suits the character.
3. No look is eternal, you can change it if you find something you like more, always trying not to make a change too brutal and if you do give a proper justification.
Picking a look for the character can be the seed from where everything sprouts or the finishing touch to a character. My first character in the forum, Batsu, surged from an image I found while browsing Deviantart while Aestus Aquilus, my second heroic character was first thought and I looked for an image afterwards (what in all honesty proved to be a pain in the ass as there aren’t many medieval looking lancers that use fire)
If you choose to make a character based on a look I recommend images that aren’t fanart, but images that are original characters. You can pick the details of the character from the image itself, like making a character that wear an medieval armor behave in a knightly fashion, and picking even smaller details, like the color of his armor or cloak to determine traits of his personality. If you pick a look to use as inspiration you better use the whole thing.
To pick a look after making a character is for the best to make a character simple enough to have multiple choices, and then you can edit or modify some stuff to fit the image a bit more…
Well I think that’s covering all the basics, please leave any questions in this thread and I’ll reply them and add them to this post.
Hello, I’m Kuma, veteran player and one of the Admins for the forum, and I’m here today to talk to you about character creation. If you follow three simple rules, it will be extremely easy for you to follow the footsteps of previous players who already made great and influential characters.
Building the Basics
First Rule: Pick a Theme and Concept
Every character has two elements particular to them, their Theme and their Concept.
The Concept
Let’s start with the concept, which is easier. The Concept is the sum of your character expressed in the shortest way possible. If you can’t express through a short concept then something is failing (we will talk more about that later)
For Example: Gen Shishioh
My character Gen is many things, but he could be sum up into the concept “Hot-Blooded Boxer”
Hot-Blooded gives us a broad description of his personality, impulsive, brash, quick tempered, emotional and more. While Boxer indicates his main “occupation” and evokes images of close combat fighting, rough exteriors, wounds and brawling.
Combining both ideas we can get a better view of the character, A brash boxer surely is an in-fighter, being impulsive means he works on instinct more than on logic, what could guide us to the conclusion that Gen isn’t very bright. With this we can get a more detailed idea about the character. It can also help us to pick a look for him, but that comes later.
The Theme
The theme of a character is trickier, but I will try to explain it as simply as possible. A character’s theme determines secondary elements of said characters; as well it can help us pick the character’s “goal”
Keeping Gen as an example, his theme would be “The Pursuit of Power” Gen wants to be the best on his field, that being boxing. Thus this gives us more insight on him. The character Theme here summed up to the Concept give an even tighter description.
A Hot-Blooded Boxer Pursuing Power, with this we can learn that Gen is searching for power but most likely he is doing it in a straightforward manner, as Hot-Blooded individuals don’t tend to be cowards or impassionate about their goals. So he trains, considering his “occupation” his boxer and his method of achieving his goal is straight-forward he surely trains a lot.
Second Rule: Less is better than more (Without reaching extremes)
When you make the bio you need to start small, overcrowding the character with powers, personality traits and background story adventures make him difficult to use or write with. A character with a basic story a limited yet well established power set and a simple personality is much easier to use and evolve than having a 2000 hundred years old immortal with thousand skills and multiple personality disorder.
This is double for new players, especially when it comes to powers and personality. Having a lot of powers doesn’t make a character interesting; it makes it cumbersome and difficult to put in real danger. Having a character with an overly complex personality makes it very difficult to write about him without accidentally going off character.
Having a shorter yet concise background story allows the character to have the bulk of their adventures in the forum, what’s the point having a character who on paper is veteran of a thousand wars and then he is beaten by easily beatable enemies, it makes the character look bad. Having a short back story is paramount to allow the character to bloom in-game.
Third Rule: Creativity is a must
Searching for pieces of characters and sticking them together with superglue is not making a character. I hate to put it so bluntly, but copy-pastes of wiki’s are to writing a character like mud to a white cloth. The character powers, personality and story need to be part of a whole, not pieces of interesting things the writer gets together.
If a character has the personality of Character A, the Powers of Character B and the Story of Character C, then is a mess. A character is a whole, having a Hot-blooded personality, with Ice powers but a story that says he was trained by Giant Moles is a no go, back to the drawing board. Or having a Magician Type character, with detached personality and aloof demeanor and tell in the story he was raised by a loving family and that he never had any difficulties on his life.
The three elements are pieces of the same puzzle, but if the pieces are all from different sets you may complete the jigsaw, but you won’t have a complete image. For this purpose you need to be creative and design the three elements to fit on each other, instead of simply picking them up from a pile and forcing them together.
Story
I think I said it before, but I will say it again, stories for characters backgrounds must be short, having an overly long character back-story with its own climax and several other events that could affect the world is quite useless. Why is that? Because the whole point of the forum is playing the character, what’s the point of the character if he already beat the evilest thing in the world, or he is already hero of a hundred worlds before reaching the threads?
Keep it short, keep it simple and keep it as an introduction. Imagine is the doorway to the Hidden World* you need to think how did your character enter to the reality that hides in the shadows of regular world instead of making a whole damn story about how he saved ten planets and was a godly alien flying through the cosmos in a unicorn that farts rainbows.
I’m not saying your character must be a blank slate, but he mustn’t be at the end of his journey. See the image besides this. Your character story is a car that enters this massive crossroad through one of the roads (Roads being possible origins, like Magical, Martial Artist, etc) the crossroad is the forum (The Vice Verse)
You need to enter, solve your story inside and then exit. Characters must have an end goal, something that drives them forward to accomplish stuff. A Goalless character doesn’t need anything, so why does he do stuff? Even lulz is a good motivation if you know how to write it.
How to write it? That is more a question that will be solved in the personality segment.
Personality
Characters must have a simple yet compelling personality. “But” is the word that no Personality segment must have. Like he is Humble “but” Arrogant, or he is a berserkering warrior “but” he is a pacifist. You can do contrasts, any character without them is boring, but making the whole personality about those contrasts makes a confusing character.
Another common misconception is that making a simple personality typecasts forever a character, making him always the same. If you develop the character he will change and suit your needs, but you can’t make him grow if the foundations are twisted and built in mud. You need a simple yet sturdy base if you want to build anything for your character.
Then we come to another issue I tend to notice a lot in bios. Making a mentally ill character is typecasting him in a role, just what people tend to think simple personality do. The more complex and twisted the personality is the harder is for it to change. Thus making it impossible to leave a really conflictive character does other stuff apart from being ill.
I’m not saying you can’t do mentally ill characters, but when you do them is better to develop the reason for their illness out in the open, during the threads, or the other option is taking said mental ailment and using it as a comedy tool.
Comedy is another issue people try to avoid; many make cool character that cannot fail in anything they do. Failing isn’t painful, but a possibility to learn, for both the player and the character, as both grow upon discovering new possibilities and variants. Comedy tends to be untouched as most characters either try all the time to be the straight man or the deadpan snarker instead of being the object of the pranks or comedy. Don’t fear the slapstick.
Another important thing to remember is making the personality synch with everything else, I know I said this many times, but the connections between the parts that make a character are extremely important, as said connections are what make the character that, instead of being a Frankenstein monster made of scavenged concepts.
Finally the last thing is as always to be creative, I said it before and I’ll keep hammering it, stealing personality from characters only hurts your character as he will be incomplete and incoherent. Making a personality based upon the concept, theme and story is paramount.
Powers and Combat
I’m sure you wanted to reach this part, you are already thinking what kind of cool shit your character will do, but for a moments let’s talk about the core element of any good RPG and why it is so tightly linked to the powers and skills of a character, shall we?
RPG’s core is “Struggle” your character needs to face odds that can challenge them, so they can learn and make an effort to win. This isn’t just a personal preference is a fact of the game itself, if your character doesn’t struggles then you are doing it wrong and you should be ashamed….well not like that, but you need to rethink him or her.
Struggling is not losing some times and winning others, is showing an effort or withstanding adversity with the character, not just plowing through the stories as if you were playing Dynasty Warriors on Easy mode with a fully leveled Lu Bu. There are videogames (Such as Dynasty Warriors) that are for that and if you are looking that experience I deeply recommend you buy it.
Well, I think I made my point, but why does this point relate to the Powers of the character? Easy, having a shitload of powers or being too powerful diminishes the chances of struggle and without struggle; the salt of the game, your character cannot really develop as anybody will tell you that we learn more out of our mistakes than our successes.
The first thing you need to think is: How does the powers of my character relate to my character concept and theme? Using Gen once again as an example, he is a Boxer, so I developed a power and fighting style that fitted him. I tried to create something new, but I did use elements from different series and things I liked.
He is southpaw boxer with a style reminiscent of Sendou Takeshi from Haijime No Ippo, yet he isn’t exactly like him and he doesn’t have the same moves, but the feel of it is what I tried to emulate. His “Fighting Spirit” Energy has some elements of Ki and Nen, but altered to fit my needs, being an emotional boosted spiritual energy.
The “Winning Combination” Concept is a greatly altered version of the Full Course from Toriko, but instead of making of food is a catalogue of knuckle sandwiches. His currently developing Gainen powers are linked to my taste for Tokusatsu shows and the new techniques he has learnt have different sources of inspiration.
Inspiration being the keyword here, as you don’t have or should copy a power, but you should know said power and think how to alter it into being useful for your character. Just copy-pasting powers into a story won’t make a good character, you could be a good writer, but even the best chef in the world can do squat if he doesn’t have good raw materials to work with.
So basically the three rules for picking your powers are:
1. Creativity is important
2. Inspiration and Homage>Rip-off and Copy-paste
3. Linking powers to concept is the way to go.
When it comes to power level for characters I tend to think it like this. A Hero must be initially five times weaker than his villain. So the character can fight against the “Villain”. When it comes to base level attributes I think the best is for a starting “Fighter Type”
Speed: Peak-Mach 1
Strength Peak-5 tons
Durability: Peak-Building Level
Of course this can be altered; some can be way lower and other way higher. I only made a list of the physical attributes as mental attributes (unless mental powers are involved) are more in the side of story and personality than powers.
Yet a good piece of advice, playing a character way smarter than you can be hard, as you need to make him sound and act smart. But playing a character that is dumber than you is equally challenging as you need to ignore common sense and it can get frustrating when you write, trying to do something and knowing your character can’t know about it while you do. (You want to grab him from his or her jacket and shook him.
When it comes to unique powers is a bit more complicated. My high-school literature teacher always said “There is nothing new under the sun” meaning that you will never make something 100% unique and new, as a living breathing creature that lives in this world you will experience other forms of media and that media will alter your perception and your ideas, thus inspiring different creative outlooks.
Let’s do a new example. We have a Spy character, he is an “Independent Spy escaping his past” (Concept and Theme) from this we could say he is somebody of certain age (over 25 at least) as he needs to have a past, but he could be younger if he was a child soldier or something like that. Independent could tell us things like being a freelance, that he works for money or that he has his own code of ethics. But we don’t care about that right now.
We need to think powers for this character. His profession can give us basic stats and skills, like being faster than stronger or sturdier, able to sneak and hide, have some degree of acrobatics and even hacking. But if we wanted to give him powers, what could we use? His Concept and Theme, of course, so if we think it we can find proper powers for him. Shall we?
Independent: Works alone, doesn’t depend of people, is self sufficient (or tries to be)
Spy: Stealth, Assassination, Infiltration and Sabotage. Is secretive and tends to be stoic.
Escaping his Past: Fleeing, avoiding, hiding, forgetting and time.
Split your Concept and Theme and assign traits or actions related to them see what you can think out those words of phrases.
For example he could be a teleporter, as he tries to flee from something, or phase through walls. He could turn into a virtual conscience as nobody would search for a human being inside a computer, like Astral Travelling but with technology.
He is Independent so he could have a power that reflects that, like having some sort of life-support (Like Cybernetic Implants) or genetic alterations. Animal splicing could grant some sort of Totem-like relation, like bats, rats, snakes or any nocturnal animal that could give the character benefits on his line of work. Or you could make a tangential connection and give him something like Electric Eels that could help him infiltrate and commit sabotage with electric shocks.
The Concept and Theme also help finding a source for those powers. Spy suggests Technology and Skill, but you could have a Mystical Spy, like a Wizard trained in illusions and other useful magic that serves as a freelance agent, or maybe a genetic mutation as I mentioned before that could prove to be useful (In the end it could also be considered tech based if the genetic alteration was a scientific experiment). Ninja’s are another possibility, opening the Ki/Martial Arts origin for the character.
About Combat, this is more of regular play than character building, but sometimes the problems in combat have a root in the character. Something very important in a purely narrative RPG game is to sell. What is selling? Taking damage, accepting that your character wasn’t able to avoid an attack and he receives the impact of it. This is quite important, as is mostly an honor system that oversees the exchanges of combat between player.
Some powers arent easy to sell, either selling taking the damage, or selling them being blocked. Those powers (Like Memory Manipulation, Soul Manipulation or flat out Mind Control) are more suited for narrative encounters than combat encounters and must be used with just measure or the character can be denominated “Broken” meaning that he is too powerful to be faced on a proper fight. My advice is that you leave those powers to either NPC for narrative purposes or forget about them all together.
Picking a Look
Picking a look may seem easy, but it can get pretty hectic…if you do it right. First let’s give some parameters.
1. The fame of the character image you picked is proportional to the typecasting you will subject too. As the character fame will eclipse your character’s
2. Picking a look can be used as the root of the character or an after-thought, it depends on the individual, and while maybe the image sparks the creativity for others is better to search an image that suits the character.
3. No look is eternal, you can change it if you find something you like more, always trying not to make a change too brutal and if you do give a proper justification.
Picking a look for the character can be the seed from where everything sprouts or the finishing touch to a character. My first character in the forum, Batsu, surged from an image I found while browsing Deviantart while Aestus Aquilus, my second heroic character was first thought and I looked for an image afterwards (what in all honesty proved to be a pain in the ass as there aren’t many medieval looking lancers that use fire)
If you choose to make a character based on a look I recommend images that aren’t fanart, but images that are original characters. You can pick the details of the character from the image itself, like making a character that wear an medieval armor behave in a knightly fashion, and picking even smaller details, like the color of his armor or cloak to determine traits of his personality. If you pick a look to use as inspiration you better use the whole thing.
To pick a look after making a character is for the best to make a character simple enough to have multiple choices, and then you can edit or modify some stuff to fit the image a bit more…
Well I think that’s covering all the basics, please leave any questions in this thread and I’ll reply them and add them to this post.