Forums » RP Discussion » Different versions of characters

Hey guys, I'm wondering if you play multiple versions of a character you created, only fit to different settings?

I've done this a few times, and wound up with pretty much a new character entirely as they grew into the new setting and situation and backstory.

When you're considering making a new version of a character, do you make a brand new character sheet for them, or do you put their alternate info on a different page of their current character sheet?

The majority of my medieval fantasy characters have an urban fantasy equivalent (I don't have profiles for all of them yet, that will take time), which have their own character sheet, because the transition between medieval and modern adds a lot of dynamics that could change them on fundamental levels.

A couple examples for comparison:

• Dolysene Actec (medieval fantasy, original world) | Alyssa Davin (urban fantasy, real world)
• Hecerion Velarauthon (medieval fantasy, original world) | Vikenti Kuznetzov (urban fantasy, real world)

I love doing AUs, in general, so this is a lot of fun for me, and I get to see how my characters would fare in different contexts.

For most of my OC's I've been putting an AU page on their sheets to add any AU versions of the character.

But yes, I do have a few AU versions of OC's, mainly Jackie.

I have my character's AU info on a page of its own, per setting. So I'll have my pages be "Main Bio" / "AU Bio - (Name of setting 1)" / "AU Bio - (Name of setting 2)" / etc. That way they're nicely separated, but still together for that character, keeping it more organised for myself.

Cool! I suppose it could also depend how 'separate' the new character is from the old. My character Laedo was originally a clone of a much older character, but as I started writing for him to fit the setting, I quickly found out that the background I'd given him and the stuff he needed to do made him so different that I don't think I could link him back to the original again.

On the other hand, I'm still barely sure of the non-AU info for some of my characters and I'm already trying to split them off into different possible settings. Pfft, I envy all of you who have nice, finished profiles. I'm almost always a big pile of WIPs when it comes to RP.

In the RP site I was using before, people didn't have a character list and it made making new characters for every single piece of RP created much more flexible and easier. That's why when I went up here, it also bothered and left me confused at first. Which was also why my characters now are very vanilla. I deliberately left them like that so I could easily mold them for new stories.

But everyone I met had been consistent in that they always told me they'd change or edit something in their own characters just to fit our story anyway, so I need not worry about "other details" they have built for their profiles. I'm beginning to give my characters much more detailed and specific backstories now. Not just because "everyone's doing it so I should too" but more of like because they're actually easier to roleplay with if they have a lot of materials I could work with.

For me, it depends on the character whether I have an AU or no, but with each and every AU, there's a whole web and world attached. For instance, my character Vincent, I can write when 47, and usually with that he is a father of a 14 year old boy named Rin, and he's married an ex-con named Gabriel. But in a different universe he's with a co-worker of his in the mafia named Derik, never having gone back to America and living on the coast of Italy. Essentially, I treat it like I find most people do, wherein if my character is in a relationship with someone's character, and someone elses, it's all seperate so there's no cheating and all that OOC drama that goes with.

I cannot play AU versions of my characters. I've tried many times and it always turned into being a completely new character. I can play them at different ages, always younger so it can be incorporated into the current story if needed! My main character is Autumn and playing AU got so hard for her that I ended up making two new characters from it and completely changing her universe to make it an open dimension.

Interesting, I've never been in an RP space that didn't at least have some character application section or in-character responses to prompts, unless you count IM's, which can be chaos anyhow.

I'm glad your experience so far has been positive wrt having details to bounce off of others, or vice versa! I admit I enjoy exploring other people's worlds or allowing my own setting to act like a bit of a character for other players to wander in (hence the idea of AUing a character instead of making a brand new setting from scratch, sometimes!) so it's neat that that's working out. Anyways, giving characters more depth is like warming up for a race--you get into their heads and figure out how they'd react to curveballs, which is really satisfying!

Oh, absolutely! You have to catch me on a very early part of the AU process not to have lots of ideas already filling out their history and circumstances.

Yeah, even RPing poly shenanigans is difficult; nobody seems to want to play against characters in open relationships involving more than one player. It's like the worst place where OOC =/= IC because not only are you managing potentially volatile threads between your character and their romantic interests, you're also managing your OOC time and energy in posting twice as much as you might otherwise, which other players can very quickly get jealous of. It's a mire.

Anyways, the way you do it is a good excuse to develop your character concurrently in different threads. Inevitably they get into really different situations in these AU'd timelines, which gives you more chances to develop them.

That's kind of what I'm talking about! By the time my character is fleshed out enough to fit into a new world, it seems like it might be worth it to create them as a new character altogether. RP also takes a certain degree of sharing settings, or trusting the other player not to get burned out if they've volunteered to handle the NPC or background trappings. I find that having an open world allows me to wipe my hands of being fully responsible, which is nice, but I admit I have a lot of fun throwing things at a world I've made at players to see how their characters react. Drama! Horror! Challenge! Controlling a world whether open or not can be as addictive as bringing a pre-built character into a new setting.

Pretty much all of my characters are like 'well, just alter one thing or two/or just throw them in another place and we're done'
They can be changed and shifted pretty easily as technically they're just 'everyday people' and there is nothing magnificently significant about them. They're not the 'painfully obviously sticking out spot the main character' type, nor is there like, this huge entity or thing, lore, item etc. that'd be tying them somewhere

So my biggest example is probably Toffi, because he's like my 'go-to-guy' with all things. I know him the best and RP him the most. Also the most adaptable of the bunch
He has his own canon version, of the story I'm making, but he's also in The Galaxy Wide where he has reached like a 1.2 version of himself, even if still lacking many development things and hasn't gotten to be too useful yet. But the main point there is that it's a Sci-fi RP and I don't know one thing about sci-fi, so I'm all "??? okay, let me work this out, somehow"
But it works {there's also a diseased body that seems to look like Toffi in that RP. An AU within an AU??? *GASP* IfOnlyICouldContinueThatPlot....}
Another version of him is a version I RP in Furcadia. I'm still kinda new to the place, but he has gotten a couple years to develop and so far the story has given him a whole separate lore and a way to go that I'm working in a new separate profile for him. This version has become more mature, confident and a tad older too. But it's still Toffi, he has just grown and developed further than in other places


So yeah x2