(08-26-2014, 12:55 PM)Aya Wrote: Make him a Friendly Drunk! Gets an ale or two and all of a sudden wants to meet everyone! ^_^Oh, I like this idea!Â
(A little tongue-in-cheek, but if he does like to drink, alcohol can be terrific for removing social inhibitions he might normally display!)
In my opinion, giving him some characteristics that deviate from your first impression can work wonders for this. Having him be a friendly drunk, for instance. Or maybe he's this big, burly, badass Sea Wolf who secretly wants to be a poet and will jump into any conversation involving poetry. That sort of thing.
If you go someplace like the Quicksand and watch characters, you'll see a lot of this in some of the more memorable characters. Aya's this ditzy blonde bombshell, but she's *not*, really. Verad is a sly merchant, but he only sells junk. Kage is a Nunh, but he's very unsure of himself. That sort of thing.
Another possibility is to think in terms of strengths and weaknesses. Giving a character a weakness can be extremely valuable for RP, because (at the very least) you're giving your character a reason to seek other people out. Askier is this very sly, confident secret agent type of guy, but he's got obligations and connections that lead to problems he can't solve himself, so he has to seek out help. In the case of C'kayah, he's a womanizer who is easily manipulated by beautiful women. This isn't a standard sort of weakness, but it's a great hook for RP: It basically allows for me to make choices for him that distinctly aren't in his best interest, which leads to problems that must be (surprise!) solved through RP.
A good way to think about RP is to think in terms of "how can I help someone else have good RP?". What can you do with your character that enables other people to be the heroes of their stories? Or at the very least, what can you do with them that leads to other people remembering your character? There are a lot of people who play small time merchants, but people remember Verad ("Genuine fake fool's gold? What the hell is that?").
