What You Should Do: Good Character Development

[ZeroKirbyX]

Good Characters

Wait - What?
I have explained bad characters to you in the 'What not to Do' thread, but that is not what this thread is about. It is about the search for good characters, and this point on will express what is 'good', and not as much of the bad things.

Good characters help enhance everything in a Role Play. The setting flourishes under a good character's footsteps, the plot thickens around a good character's actions, and the Role Players tend to Role Play better with a good character.

This good is not referring to the good-evil scale, but a well-developed character that has balance. What is balance, you ask?


Balance

What is Balance?
Balance is the trait of a character that equals out strengths and weaknesses. This is the fundamental part of a character.

All characters have their own strengths and weaknesses. But how much of them is extremely important.

Let's start of with the strengths of a character. This is what your character can do well, and any good skills he/she has. These skills should be a good size; they can't be too big. Imagine if there was a currency with your strengths. A good strength costs $5. A super strength costs $15, and a godly strength costs about $50. You do not have any money, but you can have a tab in the Strengths and Weaknesses Shop. You decide to buy an amount for your tab. Note that it is hard to get off a high tab. Naturally, you want a good amount of strengths without going too far into debt. So purchase skills for around $10-20. This is a good place to start off a character.

But right now you have a character with all these strengths and no flaws. What kind of good character is that? A bad one. To get you out of debt, the store manager decides that if you take some weaknesses, he can take away money from your tab. A good weakness is $5, a strong weakness is $15, and a godly weakness is $50. What to buy? Your goal is to get $0-5 on your tab, so you should have about as many weaknesses that are as big and noticeable as your strengths.

Do not get the godly weaknesses or strengths. These can make Min-Maxers, as seen in the Anti-Munch quote. You should stay within a budget.

The strengths and weaknesses should compliment each other and flow together well, like good upper body strength and bad lower body strength. They are conceivable together.

While Role Playing, your character should maintain this balance. They should not do anything in the Anti-Munch Quote box, no matter what. Keep that balance, and you have a major trait in a good character.



Tipping the Scales: When and Where To Use Balance
Editorial submitted by omgtehsuiso

Part One: Balance of Self

As detailed by Roka, balance is terribly important in your character. However, being realistic about what you use to keep the scales even is equally paramount. For example: a pirate RP I joined awhile back had a system of points you'd allot in three categories. These were Ship Skills, Knowledge, and Fighting Skills. One point would mean little knowledge/experience with the subject and five was mastery. I developed a sharpshooter character, who will be referred to
here on in as Rae. Rae, of course, was an expert with rifles and strictly that. Most characters in the RP had maxed out their Dodge stat, but I decided to keep Rae relatively low in that area. Sharpshooters are, after all, kept far from the actual close-range fighting. Yes, this meant whenever someone was too close to him, he'd get hit, and it happened often. But it wasn't an annoyance at all. It was just another weakness.

In other words, weaknesses should match the strength their counterbalancing. A burly axeman shouldn't also be able to dodge like a quicker fighter would. Also, said quicker fighters shouldn't be as strong as a burly man. They can get more hits in, but normally, they'd be quick swipes, not huge blows. We're not talking disappearing and running across the room in an instant to deliver a lethal uppercut to the jaw. This would be something like your typical assassin, not Kenshin's Soujiro Seta. Watch the lightning-quick assassin cliche, though. When caught in combat, it would be odd to see an assassin actually fight. They rely on sudden, easy kills to get what they want done. The whole point is to make sure your weaknesses are realistic with your strengths. Being unable to drive a car should not compensate for being a master at shooting guns.

Part Two: RP-wide Balance

Often, larger roleplays will need several people to watch over the general roleplaying group. In the pirate RP mentioned above, we had three moderators, myself included. Of course, godmoding and the like were not common, as it was a literary roleplay. It happened, though. Members with low dodge rates would be able to dodge bullets, something impossible to do in reality, especially against someone trained to use rifles well. It was a great annoyance, and the RP slowly died because of it. A few members started going on a lengthy spiel about ghosts and spirits, something the creators never intended to happen. If you're going to roleplay in an organized manner, let the creators take the reins sometimes. It IS their plot and world, after all.

If you have an idea that you think might be controversial, ask the creators/moderators first. If you see someone else doing something that might affect the plot in an odd way, then yet again, let the creators know as well as the roleplayer. It can't hurt, and it'll help them roleplay better. Of course, they might get mad at you for it, but don't let it get to you. As it happens, most roleplayers are very prideful towards their characters. Make sure you're not harsh, though. Constructive criticism is the best type. Two positives for every negative and all that rot.

Part Three: Accepting Weakness and Death

We love our characters, but sometimes, others will be able to capitalize on their weaknesses and defeat them. Battles happen often in any roleplay, and are the main driving force behind them. Whether you're trying to stop the world from ending or just topple the wicked corporation, you'll be fighting a lot. Understand that your characters CAN be defeated, and even killed. Surviving every attempt on your life and coming out unscathed is virtually impossible, unless you're some superhero. And even then, Superman was weakened by Kryptonite.

Be careful with using weaknesses of other characters to your advantage. Your character won't be able to scan their brain and find every little flaw they have. It takes many battles and long analyses of their fighting style and habits to even begin to understand what can defeat them. The same goes for your opponents. If they magically know how weak you are against a certain form of attack, protest. Remember, this isn't Dragon Ball Z. You can't find out power levels. An exception goes to Dragon Ball Z roleplays. <3

Now to the fun part: Death. Yes. The end of life. Oh noes. It happens to everyone at any time. Did you read that last sentence? Someone died while you were. Now, we always see young, sprightly teens in roleplays, preferably 15 or 16. Why? It's easier for them to live, apparently, even if you're stronger when you're 30 and apparently wiser when you're 40. And besides, Cloud was cool. A bullet can still kill your hormonal friend. Did you know that a gunshot to the leg can kill someone, even without the blood loss? The shock does it. You don't need to score a hit in the head or the chest to take someone out. It's not really that hard. And even if they DON'T die, wounds like that take a long time to heal, and can still get infected over time. We don't have bodies made of kevlar. (Also, your shoulder applies to the leg rule, too. It seems to be the most common place to take a bullet.) If you're playing a character in the medieval days, a wound would normally be fatal. There was no real defense against disease then. They'd "let the
bad blood," but that never really helped, and made the infection spread to other areas. (Believe me on that one. I studied medieval medicine for a novel I'm working on.) Wounds from bullets developed just after the age of steel often took pieces of clothing with them, and made the wound fester quicker. Stuff happens. Poor Johnny can die.

Does this mean he has to die in vain? Of course not. He can go out nobly or just sort of die a slow and painful death. It doesn't matter. Almost any death will coax the characters to get moving. Remember, everyone loves revenge. How many characters have you seen with entire families/groups of friends who were completely wiped out by villainous people? It's in movies, books, TV shows, everywhere. Kill Bill, The Punisher, all that fun stuff. The motivation is always revenge, though the characters pretend it isn't.

If a character around you dies, the sudden reaction doesn't HAVE to be vengeance. Anger is one of the steps in grief, but it doesn't suddenly stop there. Besides, we've all seen revenge before. But it IS one of the great motivators in roleplays, and it works. Don't let deaths go unnoticed, but don't make them so absurdly important that your character angsts over poor Johnny every minute of their life, even if she was his lover. As Penden mentioned in "Keeping It Real," the
five stages of grief end on a positive note. Darth Vader's "NOOOOOOOooooooo" ruined the ending, mind you.



[BKeeping it Real: The Psychology of all Races[/B]
Editorial submitted by Penden


While it is important to study the aspects of any race you wish to create your characters from, even humans, there are certain psychological things that apply to all or most races. This is what makes a person read a book about hobbits, like the Lord of the Rings, and feel sympathetic with that character. You may love the idea of the race but some part of you still thinks of that character as just a person, not an elf, human or hobbit.

Now, the only people we know in real life are human beings. Animals don't exactly count because they can't speak to us, and any way if I included them in this rant it would have to be much longer! As for humans, though, they are what we use to compare most characters we read or create to, to see if they are realistic.

The first thing that a character needs to be is consistent. Even when people do unpredicatable things, their behavior over time is fairly consistent. If a character does something that the reader feels does not match up with either their past actions OR their beliefs, then your character is being inconsistent. Remember that the best predictor of a real person's actions are their previous actions, not their beliefs, and that actions can actually change a person's beliefs. This happens so that the person does not feel that their beliefs are inconsistent with their actions! However, if your character has the will power or the motivation, they can change their beliefs and then their behavior.

If a person changes their behavior, they are not being inconsistent but merely switching to a new set of consistencies. Pulling off a change in behavoir with your character and making it believable is hard. Your character needs a good reason to change their behavior. Most good reasons are internal, like guilt, but a character can also meet up with extreme outside circumstances that make them change superficially, like if the police are after them.

The next thing a character needs to be is 3D. This means that they need to feel and act like a complete person would, with conflicting emotions and a sense of past, present or future. A character who does not have a sense of these does not have a sense of consequences, and will do something stupid like pick a fight with some one ten times bigger than them for no reason at all. A person without conflicting emotions will become too predictable. This does not mean that your character cannot supress conflicting emotions very well in some cases, just as long as they don't do it all the time! Conflicting emotions come from relationships with other characters, past actions, and a feeling of guilt when a past action or feeling does not match up with their beliefs. This is why I mention them together, because they are related. For instance, a person who is afraid of dogs has probably had a dog scare or bite them in the past. But if they are an adult they are also well aware that lots of other people are not scared of dogs and that some dogs are nicer than the one that bit them. Therefore, they still feel fear but they believe that they should not, and may even feel affection towards a neighbor's pet even though they would never go near them.

You can put a heck of a lot of work into a character's past and personality to help cover these two main things. Just remember that a beautiful character sheet doesn't make your character a great character if you don't know how to play them! Pay attention to the likes and dislikes you give them and try to show as much as possible through action, because that is how the other players and their characters are going to get the best look at your character.

Over doing it--

As a final note to all you drama nuts out there, human beings are also very resiliant emotionally. It's true that there are plenty of people who aren't, but at the same time a person who is simply afraid of dogs can usually live their life very well despite it. Most people bounce back from failure and disappointment, even something very drastic like the death of a friend! If every one went around killing themselves over every little thing that hurt them in their lives, you would never hear their stories! Humans are usually survivors.

Note that the five stages of grief end on a more positive note:

* Denial (this isn't happening to me!)
* Anger (why is this happening to me?)
* Bargaining (I promise I'll be a better person if...)
* Depression (I don't care anymore)
* Acceptance (I'm ready for whatever comes)



Some Things to Keep in Mind

1) When a character has amnesia, explain what that character has forgotten in the Biography. Just because that character forgot, doesn't mean that the DM/GM should.

2) Try not to use trench coats. They have recently been terribly abused by n00bs, which makes you seem like one.

3) If you can, let their hair be a natural color. That does not mean that Bob can be born with blue hair, or Sally naturally has green hair.

4) Think about your characters hard. They should act and be as if they were real and be as realistic as possible.

5) Japanese names are overdone for non-Japanese characters.

6) Japanese weapons are over-done (like a Katana), except for when that is the only type of weapon available.

7) If you want an awesome character, try giving them a weapon not commonly used, like a Mace, Flail, Spear, Pick, or Chains.

You character does not have to be 'cool' in the dark, looming, always controlled way. Make your own cool, for goodness sakes.

9) In a magical world, opposite elements (light and dark, fire and water, etc.) coexisting should bring a conflict within the character.

10) BE UNIQUE!

[Midnight9795]

*sticks*

[X_marks_the_ed]

*Approves of it's quality.*

[Meiscool-2]

I actually read this, and it sounds pretty good. Though I probally won't join any RPs, I'll keep this in mind should I choose to.