[Dischord]

Lesson Four: Creating Your Character

Now that you know some of the basics, you can move on to creating your character. This can be as simple, or as complex a process as you want. You can take time to write out an elaborate character history, really develop your character, or you can do a rush job, give them an appearance, basic ability descriptions and their name, and call them done.

And then you have option two, which is a lot more detailed. For the sake of simplicity, I'll use a very basic format of character sheet.

Name: First and last name, or just first name, depending on the type of role-play you're in. This can vary from game to game.

Race: What you are. This is also basic. Are you human? Are you an alien? Maybe, if you prefer it, you can put what nationality your character is here, if all character types in your particular role-play are human.

Age: How many years have you lived? Keep in mind that not everyone can be a specific age in a specific game, unless that's the genre it comes from (best example, Sailor Moon).

Appearance: This contains important details about your character. How tall they are or how short. Are they slender, or do they have a medium build? What type of hair do they have? Long, or short? What color? What color are their eyes? Do they have any special marks? Have they gotten tattoos during their life? Maybe they have a special, or strange birthmark that sets them apart from everyone else. Or maybe they're completely average. What do they usually wear? Is it a specific style of clothing, or do they have a lot of the same outfit? Maybe they have some piece of jewlery that they're always wearing that's special to them?

Abilities: Some role-plays will have this. Some role-plays won't. It depends. Everything from special skills that they've developed to supernatural powers can go here. If the role-play is non-magical, this may be where certain types of fighting styles, or even non-combat oriented skills will go, things like sewing, cooking, anything your character may be exceptionally good at. Not everyone is good at everything, however.

Personality: Some people include this, some people don't. I usually include it so that people have some basis to write down the personality of their characters. Is your character an absolute hard ass, or are they a nice person? Do they have some personality flaws? For instance, is your character shy? Maybe your character is very bold and extroverted. Are you an introverted nerd who doesn't talk much? All of that goes here.

History: This is probably the hardest part for everyone to work on. Most people want to leave this blank, and have it develop as their character does. While that isn't a bad option, some people want more detail than that, when they have you make a character sheet for their role-play. I like to do a sort of broad history with what happened with my own characters, covering a few major life events, and leaving the rest to be developed as the character does. Character histories should be updated often, especially if the role-play constantly adds different things to your character, such as new perspectives on certain things. Maybe those things could be noted here in your history. Either way, this becomes the very foundation of your character, from start to finish.

The above is just a basic guideline, most role-plays will have more, some will have less. Even if your role-play doesn't require this, it's good to keep a personal copy of a character sheet written down somewhere for personal reference. For example, say you have to take a hiatus, and come back, and can't remember basic things about your character. Instead of surfing all around the various posts you've made, you can just take a peek at your character sheet, and you have all of the details you want at your fingertips. A character sheet is a very thing to have. I've kept sheets from all of my characters over the years, and I have over 200+. It makes for an interesting read, especially looking at the characters I made before, and the characters that I've built in later years. It gives you perspective on how much you may or may not have changed.