Forums » RP Discussion » Can you ever have too many characters?

To some small extent, always! By definition, a game is a task we voluntarily do with unnecessary handicaps. It stops being fun for all the other players if one person no longer agrees to play by those rules. Imagine a game of golf, where the obvious thing to do to complete the "task" is to pick the ball up in your hand and walk it over to the hole. But who wants to play with that guy? The game vanishes.

It is supposed to be fun and relaxing, but it also includes a few basic responsibilities to the other players, including not breaking character, not suddenly acquiring new skills without explanation when things aren't going your characters' way, and courteously considering other players' fun while in pursuit of your own. Which is where some cases where making a new character might be an issue show up, such as in situations where one or more characters (and thus players) becomes dependent on your character showing up to be able to play themselves. Like a tabletop group that can only play if all the members of the group bother to show up every week, or two freeform characters that have become a permanent team.

I'm not saying that people should feel obligated to keep playing something that isn't fun for them, of course. Just that an argument could be made for needing to first find a way to exit gracefully, or perhaps not join a second game if it's going to prevent you from making the first, where all your friends will be stuck waiting for you.

But we generally see these "responsibilities" as so minor and so obvious, we only think about them when someone else is breaking them.

I just thought it was an interesting perspective.

I saw someone mention character hopping once. When you have multiple characters of different genres and time periods and gender and whatnot, people thing it's difficult to keep them all straight.
Maybe it is. But for me, I have no problem doing multiple RPs at one time.

I'm notorious on Furcadia in the places I'm at for having at least 4 Furcadia RPs going at one time. More often than not, I have a modern-scifi (X-Men type) RP, two medieval RPs, and possibly another modern-scifi RP. I have no problems juggling my characters. I've had situations where one character is as happy as a clam and the other is having a complete and utter breakdown, and I have no problem RPing them in a satisfying way.

I know many people who have a hard time doing more than one or two RPs at a time, but honestly I get bored if I don't have at least two going. At this very moment, I'm in two RPs and about to start a third. xD I guess I was just born an RP multitasker xD

Before I took a hiatus from active roleplaying, I was generally in six to ten roleplays at any given time, and with more than one character in most of them. My mind boggles at the thought of having only a handful of characters to play with, personally- while it is possible to have too many characters, how man is too many varies widely from person to person.

By Merlin's saggy left buttock, that is a lot. Normally I'll only have two alts max on at a time, and usually only because one is in a storyline, and one is possibly in a potential long-term. Or maybe one for roleplaying, and one to have in a more crowded area for rp-hunting/ooc purposes.

Is it bad to draw up tons of characters for fun and keep them around because the design is nice but never really intend to use them for RP?

nope, character creation is an awesome way to get your creativity flowing... besides, you never know when some odd character you have kicking around could be userful.

xD Well. I have two sides of a coin for that question. Because firstly, I have that story that so many other people I know have. It's the one that you started when you were a lot younger, and it was really cool, and as you got older, it's still really cool, and maybe you want to make it into a book or something. So- for me- in that sense, I'm never going to really RP these characters; they are for my 'book' or other personal imagination. Hence, I have a whole universe, and there's never technically enough people since I have to make even Gary the fishmonger. But the problem with that is that sometimes I have whole backgrounds and stories and social webs constructed for characters that... ultimately... don't even have names- or only a few have names.

On the other side, the 'creative gene'(as it's been called- lol), will not always let me just live in my own little universe. And so maybe it spits out a character that doesn't fit, and that I can't/wont/don't want to make up a setting for. These characters- for me- are generally the ones that get turned into RP characters. Because I need someone else to help develop them. Yeah, there are those that I've never played, or have yet to play (the difference being intent), but for the most part, I find that I have to be careful not to create 'too many' because then I just end up sitting on a half-developed character that I'm no longer interested in because the person(s) I was RPing with have disappeared. Ultimately I'll usually end up with two active stories going- and beyond that things seem to get shaky for me. xD;

I do this, only, I sell them for money as premade designs I get to vent my creativity, someone gets a design they like, I get money. Profit.

I've lost count of my characters. I think two or three weeks ago I made five new alts in about a day or so. It was crazy. But I do play them, not as much as I should though. I don't know, when an idea for a new character strikes me I often find that I can't help myself. xD