Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Suggestion-Borrow character feature(rejected)

I had this idea. For an rp,if someone say doesn't have a character for a certain rp,could there be a borrow option? I have had too many rp partners that didn't have a character for a particular rp. Maybe the person borrowing would have to get permission from the person that owns that specific character?

I dunno,I thought it would be interesting.

I don't think most people would be comfortable with lending out their characters. Of course I can't speak for everyone, but characters are often very personal to their creators, and so giving out permission for others to use them doesn't seem like something many people would do. I mean hey, maybe I'm wrong and it's just a me thing, I dunno... But also, I'd think that if the only thing stopping someone from joining an RP was the lack of a character, they could just.. make a new character.
Anyway, those are just my thoughts and I'm not trying to shoot down your balloons or anything like that.

There are resources available for generating characters! A lot of them are mostly meant to provide NPCs for various tabletop systems, but there should still be some out there that could be helpful for some quick inspiration/data points to build up a new character from. There's also places like DriveThruRPG which, amongst just so much else, features pregen characters (again, mostly meant for NPC use, but still). Most have a price tag, but it's frequently not all that much, and there are also free and Pay What You Want options available.

Maybe you could try directing folks lacking a character to things like these?

There is also an option to make up a character and not make a profile for them.

I'm really easy going about making up characters to fit my partner's needs and those characters exist only for that specific plot with that person. So when I do that, I just use this placeholder profile.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you're suggesting that members of the community be willing to let other people roleplay as their OCs when the other doesn't have a character appropriate for a certain plot, yes?

I...don't think that'd go over well with most. I personally wouldn't appreciate someone asking to roleplay as one of my original characters. I may be willing to extend that privilege to some of my close friends, people who I trust to handle my creations with care and not play them in a way they with which they know I'd be uncomfortable. But people I just met? Please don't.

If the characters you're suggesting your partner(s) borrow are yours, and you're okay with that, it's no big deal. I just don't see this idea being accepted and implemented in any site-wide system, official or otherwise.

If your partner doesn't have the OC they'd need for the plot the two of you want, and they're strapped for ideas, I personally recommend taking a note from Zelphyr (Hi Zelphyr!) and using a random character generator. They can make a great jumping-off point for new OCs.

Here are a few noteworthy sites I found by searching "character generator" on my browser:

This one's good if you're struggling with appearance, being a generator that makes design prompts for artists.

This one's just a straight-up character profile generator. Has a decent variety of profiles with varying levels of depth. It looks like you can fill in some of the blanks yourself if you already have specific traits in mind.

This one generates some interesting nuanced character traits like personal opinions on race, gender, religion, etc. in addition to fears, quirks, and motivations.

This one looks built more or less as a base for writing stories, and includes things like a character's narrative role and their own plot hook.

I hope this helps you and your partners in the future. Best of luck in all of your roleplaying endeavors!

Sometimes I've seen people make a basically blank character sheet when entering an rp they don't have a suitable character for and simply building the character and adding to the profile as the rp progresses. It gives the advantage of adapting a character to how one wants the story to progress as well as the secondary enjoyment of developing a character simultaneously with a role-play. If a character generator as suggested isn't something a partner wants to do, this would be another option.

Honestly I'd never lend any of my characters out to pretty much anyone, nor would I be comfortable borrowing one. Even my original races are closed and while I'm open to certain people perhaps making their own character belonging to my race, it requires a lot of work before I'm willing to permit it. Only one Voldarian that doesn't belong to me exists, to put it into perspective

Thank you for all the opinions,I guess I thought it would be a good idea,but after reading some of your opinions,it is starting to sound like more of a stupid idea.

Nah, it wasn't a stupid idea, and there are contexts where it could really be a good one. Heck, my prior post should prove that, since part of it was about looking into pregen characters! Functionally, I think that's really what you were trying to suggest.

I've even had times when I sort of wish I had some easy way to lend out or give away characters I made that I felt were neat, but that I wasn't really the right person to play them or otherwise had trouble making use of them, or just was really curious how someone else would play them. Even so... I have trouble seeing it as a feature that would really be worth the time and effort to develop here, in this context, especially without a great deal of thought put into how to avoid people feeling harassed by requests to borrow their characters.

Even when an idea may not work out, I also think it's good to leave the title and info in place. It's possible that it could still stir up an idea fir something useful. At the very least, it can reduce the chance of someone repeating the same thing (since again, it's not a stupid idea, thia just might not be the right context for it).

As an aside to this, a friend who had introduced me to RPR was leaving the site early last year and asked this question about character page transferring. I think ‘borrowing’ a character would run into the same issues as this.

I don't allow transferring or borrowing of characters because of identity issues -- say I become friends with player A, via their Character B. In a RP with character B, I do some ((ooc posts)) ranting about what a bad day I had and the issues I am having with a romantic partner.

Two weeks later, Player A transfers Character B to Player C. Player C now has access to all of the RPs and messages that were sent to Character B, including personal information I meant only for player A to read.

Players need to be able to trust that who they are talking to is who they are talking to, and will not later become someone different.

We could MAYBE solve this by causing Character B to be removed from all groups and inbox conversations at the moment it is transferred or borrowed, but this would mean

1) If I didn't notice that Character B had been transferred, I could still initiate new personal conversations with them without knowing I was no longer talking to Player A
2) When the character was transferred back, you'd have lost access to all the RPs and groups you had with it previously, which is Not Optimal if your intention is to just lend the character.

I realize a certain amount of character trading, selling or lending is popular among some people, and that's perfectly fine if what you're doing is sending someone the artwork and backstory so they can post it on their own profile. But at the moment it becomes officially supported through character transfers or allowing people to log into each other's accounts, we run into identity issues that can negatively impact the health of the community. That's always been my thinking on this sort of thing.