Good Character Ideas

[Roland_Deschain]

Well, this may be common sense, but here are ten good ideas for building a believable character, hero, villain, or NPC.

1: Make everyone look different. No, contrary to RPG belief, not all women and men in a given town look exactly alike. This one should be obvious. Moving on....

2: Don't overuse cliches. Not as obvious as the last one, but making characters cliche is acceptable only in some circumstances. Too much cliche makes a game or character predictable, and no one wants to play a game where they can guess the plotline before it happens.

3: Use human emotions. Real people aren't cold and emotionless all the time. We get angry, happy, sad, remorseful, etc. So, why shouldn't characters? Even if your character is usually distant, he or she will be pushed far enough one day to flip out and reveal his temper.

4: Use appearance as a guideline. Usually, a person dressed in all black, wearing spiked bracelets, chained pants and a nose-ring isn't going to walk right up to you and say "Want to be friends?" Maybe they will, sure, but usually people dress how they want the world to see them. I've never seen a sad person wear bright, vibrant colors and a shirt that says "I love my life," or a happy person dressed in all black keeping his head down. Well, except my friend Chinatown, but he's not necessarily "normal..."

5: No one is perfect. You heard this every day of your life growing up, I'm saying it again. However, I'm pointing more to character flaws. The most good-hearted, kind, gentle person could be greedy, selfish to a degree, or something like that. There is no one that is not flawed in some way. A fun-loving person could also be a bit lazy, a workholic could be too strict, and so forth. Character flaws make for interesting characters.

6: Avoid black and white. No one is pure good or pure evil (not including George Bush....), no matter what Kingdom Hearts and its ilk want you to think. Everyone has a bit of both in them. Use shades of gray whenever possible.

7: Motivation. Everyone has a reason to be doing what they are doing. Why is Jonny the Kick-boxer a kick-boxer? Why does the hero want to kill the villain? Why is the villain being "evil?"

8: Dialogue. Even for NPC's you don't really want to flesh out, just giving them an accent or different way of wording someone, even a short catchphrase, e.g. "Eh?" can make them far more interesting and real that just making everyone talk the exact same way.

9: Importance. This is aimed more at story-important characters. Don't put them there just to have them. What part do they play? How are they connected to the story? If they're killed off, what significance does their death bring?

10: Personality. All of the above points really lead to this one. Everyone is unique. Yes, what they told you in grade school was true. Write characters so their personalities conflict at times. Make everyone an individual, not some sort of hive-minded collectivist society.

Short-ish, but I hope it helps a little bit. Like I said above, most of these should be common sense, and yet I see so many flat and boring characters in a lot of RPG maker games I see/play on this site.

[CoolZidane]

Originally posted by Roland_Deschain
3: Use human emotions. Real people aren't cold and emotionless all the time. We get angry, happy, sad, remorseful, etc. So, why shouldn't characters? Even if your character is usually distant, he or she will be pushed far enough one day to flip out and reveal his temper.

If anything, a distant character is more likely to flip out and reveal their temper because they've been bottling up their anger until it finally comes out at whatever moment.

[Phayre]

Encroaching on my territory, hmmmmm?
I agree with most of your points, but I think more emphasis needs to be put on things that don't wuite fit, like the happy people in black et cetera. This kind of contradiction is common. I don't know a single "goth" who actually acts miserable around people. In fact, they're often disturbingly happy-seeming. All good characters are multileveled.

[DragonBlaze]

Some of this stuff is pretty obvious, but its a lot of stuff people miss. So pretty good tutorial

[Roland_Deschain]

Originally posted by Phayre
Encroaching on my territory, hmmmmm?

No..... <.< >.>
I actually have no memory of writing this tutorial. Either I was on pain meads or my cousin hacked my account again.

[Moosetroop11]

0_o Honestly? You don't remember writing it?

Well either way It's not detailed enough ^^ You can't just say "Make the characters non-cliche'" and have that as a point XD What is cliche'? What traps should people look out for?

[Roland_Deschain]

Not at all. My cousin hacked my account so it's good that I don't remember, tho.