Forums » RP Discussion » Character Foundation, what's yours?

So, what do you base your characters on? I mean, yeah, we do our best to be original but authors often take foundations from something. Sometimes it's something or someone we've experienced in real life--even in fantasy, it's nice to call on elements that people can connect with. Sometimes, it's TV or movies--not my favorite, but some people do it. Sometimes it's mythology, or a table-top setting, or something I'm just entirely forgetting to list.

What do you, most often, use as a foundation for your character construction?

Myself, I use two things: A custom designed statistic system from my own world setting; other than that? Mythology. I study mythology cross-culturally and the etymological and anthropological evolution of certain ideas and individuals across multiple cultures over time, and like to adapt and render them into modernized ideas--reminding that the idea of gods isn't some figment of the past, but even a potential of the present.

You guys?";

All of my characters are historically accurate (I cringe at characters that go against the grain of the society in their time period. Jesus christ people, doesn't take any or much effort to research at all even just the basics), and draw from the relevant culture's mythology if they are not entirely human. I use a system of magic that combines Zhi's with my own. All of them come from my world, save for Hramn, who comes from a futuristic nameless one where it was destroyed in a magical apocalypse.

I've taken inspiration from a lot of places, from films to songs.

My character haku has been taken out of a mix of the polynesian islands and a small part of native heritage. Basically, he's a mess of everything in that small island chain. I took bits and pieces of each culture, somewhat and threw them all togeether. There is SOME realizm to his personality in some aspects. I tend to prefer playing humans in a sense. I have a hard time trying to play dragons, or furres. I keep forgetting about tails and furs nd the likes but yes, I like the aspect of some historical background for some.

It depends on the character I'm making. Usually if its magical I tend to draw on RPG stuff and go darker type of arts like necromancy or such, as I'm a medic in the army my necromancer idea tends to be also more medical based in studying. For Warrior types, i tend to draw on things like Ancient Rome and the Arena and i like medieval time period as well alot. Like my bard bar character is based on medieval traveling bards, though with a rogue side to him.

But i tend to draw from books i may like, or rpg video games and such, or plain fantasy and sci-fi.

Uhm... Well, my foundation for most characters is realism and balance.

They have to make sense somehow, so everything they do and are is usually based on something that exists or something that is covered by known lore and mythology. Most of it is inspiration though, as I tend to warp the ideas so I don't have to be overly accurate and people don't bug me about "It can't happen like that, you have to..." Blah blah.

Balance in strength and weakness is also a core foundation for my character concepts. For every 1-2 skills, there need to be 1-2 flaws. If they are very strong, they must have a major weakness. Dette for example thrives in heat, but cold environments, cold water or beverages are uncomfortable to severely harmful or even deadly. She possesses the ability to manipulate air, but only if she is in a calm state of mind, which is difficult due to her short temper and easy provocation.

If my characters aren't balanced like that, I can't play them. It doesn't matter what mythology or realistic setting they're from, so balance is my core foundation!

I completely agree. there has to be a balance. It is unlikely that someone can be all powerful without having ONE or TWO major drawbacks! Maybe that is why I usually play a human, or something that has ONE powerful thing, but has many drawbacks that can be overcome. but yes Completely concur

Like Iokua, I can't really play dragons or furres. There's only one or two Furcadia characters I have that are like that; one is completely feral, the other is a squirrel-child. Even then, I hardly play them.

But I just realized something. I'm such a terrible person. I have no foundation for my characters. You guys talk about mythology, or some sort of culture and stuff. And I...don't have any of that. xD Almost all the stuff about my characters is made up. Totally. Nothing comes directly to mind when I think about a foundation for my characters. Something strikes my fancy, I flesh it out, throw together a vague past and RP them.

I'm so terrible.

I base my characters on all kinds of things, but naturally all of them are situated on common sense. Most of them are just one aspect of my personality that I've taken and developed separately--it's really fun, and it makes them easier for me to play, even if most of them are nothing at all like me as a whole.

When I make a character, I usually start with a very loose concept, often inspired by something I've read or seen or heard about, or just by something I thought I'd like to try out--'Time wizard', for example, or 'dragon with a clock for a face'. It's hardly a character, and certainly not an entire foundation, but it's an idea! I then take that idea and build on it slowly, drawing from my own experiences, taking inspiration from fiction or fictional settings and certainly from real ones, and generally spinning up a person out of all those things that make a person feel real. My first priority, after picking a loose concept, is always personality, and I think that's the most important thing about creating a character.

I suppose that, in that regard, I don't really have a real, single foundation, because each character is really different, and while all of them have very specific flavors that I play up as much as I can, they're created out of inspiration from so many different sources that they kind of come out as something unique. Balancing them comes second to that, simply because I find that characters I make that way present themselves with enough flaws to even out whatever strengths they have, often because the concepts I start with have incredible drawbacks. I think drawbacks are my favorite bit of character creation--they are probably the one thing about a character that gives them that realistic feeling. No matter how many super amazing or heavily fantasy-based powers they might have, a flaw like being a genuinely unpleasant person or being self-conscious about a stutter or having a poor self-image or getting pimples a lot is just so.... well, real!

I find that amusing oh gods if I were to take a part of my personality into a char.. oh wait I DO LOL anyone who's seen Haku ICLY in action and then have talked to me OOCly (I know vensyn and a few others know this) have seen haku completely enraged one moment and then ever so compassionate and caring the next. I'm a HUGE snuggler, and i love being hung all over. I find it amusing I made a character that it like.. addicted to touch, but HATES it at the same time. I'm teh huggiest person ever IRL. lol but I understand this concept well too.

I'm sort of like Wizard. I'll make and design a character with a bit of me into them around a concept I think I'd like to play. Far too many times have I made characters that I just end up not liking because of their concepts.

I design the body before I get to the personality. What makes me stop playing characters is normally what they are, not who they are. Most of the time I am content with the personality. As for foundations, everything is my foundation. I'll find a mythological concept I like and build a character from that (Njördálfr) or a Fandom I enjoy (Pokemon), or a class or species I'd like to play (Paladins, Dragons).

... and then you look up and I've got a character like Lauren Bassnium, one of the dreaded Angel/Demon/Human hybrids that makes people spit on the floor and hiss like angry kitties. But I appreciate making flawed, balanced characters-- I didn't design and redesign that character to be all powerful when I wised up about how to roleplay. She's what she is because that's what she'd been originally, but I've reworked her over the years to not be some all-powerful demi-god. She's not a strong, wise psychic. She can't do any of the typical "angelic" or "demonic" abilities, but instead suffers sickness around full-bloods of either species. She's quick, like a cheetah, but her constitution isn't very good and her strength stinks. She's dabbled in a number of weapons over the years, but isn't very good at any of them.

... so there you go. I rewrote this post 'bout 3 times and am still not satisfied with it. Ah well.

I'm sort of a mix between Wizard and Sanne. I think of a vague idea I like and roll with it. Then I make sure it has strengths and weaknesses. For my most worked on character (Quatre Bornes), he actually started out as just "Guy with grey hair and a tail" and the other stuff came so much later. Now I'm in the process of reworking him... Again (He actually started out as somewhat of a comedian. Now he's taken a 180 degree spin and become sort of dark hero).

I can make a character out of anything if I want. But I like playing one or two characters consistently because I'm more interested in development and becoming attached to them as 'people' rather than anything else. I most frequently do freeform, so I generally make up characters as a go along rather than sit and think about a character sheet. Once I've been through a few freeform RPs and played with what I like or didn't like, I'll make a bio (for my own reference) later on.

Generally though, after I have a general idea of what I want, I work on visuals first. I will draw them or make them in some sort of simulator (Right now I tend to use Gaia Online avatars more often than anything else). Then I'll customize them after that. Once I have what I want them to look like fleshed out, I work on their personality, past, etc. And from there, it can be based on anything. Whatever I have a fascination with at the time.

Back to the Quatre Bornes character, I was researching names that started with "Q" because I really wanted a character who's nickname could be "Q". 'quatre bornes' came up as a tourist attraction/large city on an island named Mauritus, off the coast of Africa.
Almost immediately after that, everything came together-- Quatre Bornes was the place Q's mom and dad met, they named him after that, now Q's french/african, let's move on from here.

It's like a puzzle where there's a scavenger hunt to find the pieces.

Let's see.

My first character Orph (later William Tazan) was a mary sue I'm very sure. Orphaned uncanonal rat in a Redwall universe. But I played him for two years and always loved to torment him. That is why he has only one eye and once broke his arm.

Will: "Jumping off the cliff seemed like a good idea at the time!"

His girlfriend/wife I also played broke both her legs in that fall and had to be in a wheeled chair for months of real life time. Amy was a blind less good rat and was made to be Will's wife and quickly developed into a character that spoke her mind very loudly and wasn't very nice over all - she did get nicer but never stopped being opinonated. She was left at the Abbey(cannon place) for a few months for plot reasons and ended up in a war and became a healer which insured she wouldn't get killed. Right beofore I stopped playing the rat they'd just had a baby girl (played by someone else).

The rats are not on this site since I'd stopped playing them before I joined here.

As for the character on here:

Kikuto is based off real spotted hyenas with various real myths and myth I made up myself mixed together. Start as a Furcadia charcter that I couldn't pick if I wanted them to be male or female so after a few do overs I made them into a herm and unlike some I try to play Kikuto as both male and female rather than male with girl parts or female with guy parts.

Victor is named after the real Victor of Aveyron and was thought up when I was crossing the street at the four way crosswalk near my house. Victor likes crosswalks and will walk in squares around them for hours at all hours of the day or night. He's possibly slightly autistic or just strange hard to say for sure. He denies being either. He like Kikuto is a hermit and lives in the hills living off rabbits and from time to time he goes into town to buy things he can't get from nature.

Shad has been in my head for ages now and hasn't been RPed much at all yet. Year ago I played Neopets before it changed so much and I quit the game. While on the game I had several 'pets' that I made up stories for in my head. Shad was not one of the 'pets' but was related to them. The universe he belongs to is a mix of different things and I don't recall where most of it came from. The main bits related to Shad are that he is mute and has been trained very well to defend himself/kill people - though for whatever reason he never killed people and I never came up with a good reason for him to be trained to kill people other than because his mom was trained that way and trained him the same way - even though there was no reason to. Being young at the time this training never had a negative influence on Shad (having family and an almost normal life otherwise may have helped too). He started out as a side character to another character not on here who's story is in my head and isn't really suited for RPing as his story pretty set in stone. I am weird.

Dandelion aka Dandy is based off all the old fairy stories I read as a teen in study hall after finishing my homework. These stories included 'The brownie of the glen' and that one egg shell one about changelings. Before I settled on that for him he was a rubbery toon gremlin(loony tunes kind) thing that had a strange fixation on erasers(which I twisted from a very not PG fanfic about cartoon characters).


Isabel Draca started out as my fursona/persona and still is but she somehow got cloned or something and became her own charater for RPing and since has became unsuitable for this site. She's a very not PG reptile. I used a white and yellow snake for my avatar on one site since cows are hard to draw or I would have been a cow. After time I changed Isabel into a blue lizard and since then I tried RPing with her and for many reasons I had to split the RPing Isabel from the name I use online since the RPing character is not much like the real me while the blue lizard of the same name is my stand in for me when I draw stuff a lot. I said I was weird didn't I?

Spats is loosely based off an OC from a fanfic of mine(sad I know) and is just a random lab rat loosly based off cartoons and rats of NIMH(movie version).

There you go. Question answered.

Verry simple
they start as a blank sheet of paper
and slowly but surely the paper gets filed in by the things he/she has learned from his/her family or friends
for example
Raven started blank
I added; -likes Rave music and His regular clothings

Joe vulpo added; - brothership, friendship

Experience added; -kindness, respect towards others

Isica added; - defensive powers (demonical magic)
..........

each character Raven meets, the more complex he becomes
I think it's a start only though


For Ariza it's a bit different
I play her because of a lack of inspiration to continue my story,...
writers block v.v

I can't say that I have a system for making new characters. I tend to find myself thinking about maybe one aspect in particular that I like, or even one power, or even a scar. Then, if the idea doesn't let go, I'll start building what I hope is a complete character around that, oftentimes losing my original focus into something new.
Other times, I'm not ashamed to say, I will completely rip off of something else, then turn it into something different.
I will also play different "versions" of a character. An RP my wife and I play together started as her wanting to play with one of my other characters, and he evolved into his own unique construct that was more complete than the original idea.
I'll admit, sometimes building my characters on sand and fog backfires on me, sometimes badly. Especially if I really wanted it to work. But I like to think I've gotten better, and hopefully my foray back into public RPing will work well for me this time