RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Oli! · **08-16-2015, 03:35 PM**

Oliwat was a copy-over of my Asura from Guild Wars 2, even though he eventually ended up evolving into his own separate character through different experiences. I threw in the bit about him being an explorer to explain why I didn't know jack about the game starting out.

The character he came from was an off-the-wall Engineer designed to be a foil for the high amounts of tragedy that people tend to play.

Ada was created because I wanted a calmer character, and because I wanted to explore the idea of personal discovery, as opposed to geographical discovery.

Roe Dad · **08-16-2015, 03:36 PM**

Fortune Cookie. It was oddly specific.....
Just kidding I just looked up names on a generator and picked the ones I liked.

Sounsyy · **08-16-2015, 04:18 PM**

XIV 1.0 had a very different setting thematically. The story was darker, more hopeless, very gritty. None of this chosen one, special powers stuff. Adventurers were discriminated against not championed. Stuff you turned in for quests never seemed to be good enough. Some quests you even failed, or ended up helping bad people. The good guys didn't always win. And it was this kind of setting that I really wanted my character to reflect thematically as well.

I was immediately drawn to 1.0's Ala Mhigan storyline - how a group of people who had had their home taken from them and were displaced to the far reaches of the realm only to be discriminated against everywhere they tried to settle. But after 15 years had never stopped fighting for their home, even though their culture was quickly washing away and forgotten. How there were Ala Mhigans who had endured years of torture and subjugation just to keep feeding inside intelligence to the Eorzeans who had all but abandoned them.

So that's the kind of story I set out to tell with Sounsyy. A gritty character who still tries to carry on the culture and ideals of her people even though every situation she faces is met with defeat. Sometimes the good guys don't win. But I didn't want her to just be a symbol, I wanted her to be a person. So how does a person cope, and not only cope, but succeed in living a normal life after everything XIV has thrown at her?

Virella · **08-16-2015, 04:31 PM**

After playing FFXIV for a while, I got interested in the Ishgardian lot. From how xenophobic, religious, and outright dickish they were, to how loyal they could be to outsiders when befriending them, I simply loved them. And on top of that, elves? Sign me up.

As well I wanted to on the side of the more evil type of characters for a change, and with a loyal Ishgardian that was easy enough. Not questioning leadership, easily being fed lies by the Church, irrational, prideful, and would throw anyone into the abyss if they did something with dragons? Yeah. I wanted to be the average Ishgardian dick you see in your questline. The one who calls you an unbeliever, the one who would go scream heresy in your face, the one who would push you off cliffs in to please some goddess, the one who backstabs you in the name of the nation.

I didn't want to be the Haurchefant, the Aymeric ect. No, I wanted to be your average Ishgardian elezen asshole NPC you meet in the questlines. And god I love being evil, narrow-minded, over religious, hypocritical in roleplay, because they are the very things I despise in real life.

And I love magic. So she had to be a magic user!

Rosamund · **08-16-2015, 05:25 PM**

I've never really played a rogue or a thief before, so I thought I'd give one a go.

Ardam Blackstone · **08-16-2015, 06:04 PM**

I went with something that would at least somewhat make my character as unaware of the world state as I am (being new and all). I chose Hyur. Highlander because it best resembles me physically over Midlander. A few weeks later I met Sin via this board who really helped me flesh out what I like to think is a pretty badass backstory.

Ala Mhigan loses his home when he's just a kid, becomes a refugee. Stops an altercation between his father and a man he owed money to, goes overboard and kills said man (whose money was aligned with Syndicate), ends up a prisoner/ asset in the pits for 15 years. From Ala Mhigan to refugee to prisoner; just feels more sensible when I RP and people bring up stuff I haven't heard of OOC (like famous RP events, summer faire, etc) and so have to incorporate that ignorance IC.

Mercurias · **08-16-2015, 10:19 PM**

I started with a simple concept, and then I fleshed things out from there as I believed made sense to the character.

Soren Walker, for example, is a playful airship pilot.

That's all. That's what I started with.

From there on, I filled him in piecemeal using several different things likeÂ the questionnaires in this linkÂ to probe and consider what made Soren into a character.

Then I test drove him several nights in random RP.Â

And once I thought I knew who he was, I brought him into circulation.

Ciel · **08-16-2015, 10:34 PM**

I've always been partial to Elf-like characters, so my two primary characters are Elezen.Â That's the easy part.

Ciel has existed in some form or another over the past 15+ years of my RP history, off and online.Â She has always been several degrees different from some of her previous incarnations.Â So far, I like the current one the best.

Character creation on the whole is a fluid process.Â You can try to create a character from a mold, using ideas you have in your head, but what you think works at the beginning might end up not fitting so well. Don't be afraid to change your ideas. This is how characters evolve and grow and become their own entities over time.

Glace is a very different case as far as his history and development.Â He didn't exist prior to this past year, and he honestly started with a single string of dialogue which popped into my head while I was half asleep.Â The following day, I went to work trying to figure out what sort of character would say those words.Â At first, the intention was to make a character which was wholly insane, but that idea eventually got pushed aside and the character was sculpted into something quite a bit more terrifying, while still capable of displaying some humanity when it counts.

Spethah · **08-16-2015, 10:34 PM**

Septha was just "I wanna cause explosions.". Nothing more or less. I actually made up the story as I went along to be honest, which I do regret a loooot.

Ira on the other hand was me wanting to play a character that ran the theme of "struggling to obtain freedom" and a type of character that wins small but it always results as a loss overall when you look at the broader picture. I didn't want to make his story dark however, but just enough to express that he's struggled his entire life and despite it all he continues to fight with pride in himself. I made him a stigma of Ala Mhigo, someone who was branded a fugitive despite the crimes were committed by his grandfathers. He lost his right of a surname, lost his right of freedom and struggled as essentially a slave until the invasion. Get dragged to Eorzea and the same thing happens, he struggles to gain the freedom he deserves. He was in the Pits, he gets out and is thrown into other gladitorial games instead. He earns rudis, is approached to join a criminal organisation as a brute force. He declines, they place a bounty on his head and he's thrown back into the games once more. Now he's earned rudis a second time after almost a decade and now he's struggling to get his freedom once again. It's not a dark story, but it's not 100% rainbows and sunshine either.

Kai Motokawa · **08-17-2015, 03:31 AM**

Reading all these responses is absolutely amazing! Also quite inspiring! I'm so interested in everyone's characters just based on how everyone decided to make them! Here's hoping I get the chance to RP with some of you in the future! â™¥

Yssen · **08-17-2015, 06:23 AM**

In a word? Masks. Mystery was the base concept, but that was further refined into the concept of masks, both physical and metaphorical. Details came up all wrapped up in that base concept. Yssen slips from one mask to another both as a defensive mechanism, and for the sheer giddy glee of tricking people.Â

His back story further expanded and explained the base concept. Why does he keep stuff hidden? What is he running from? Why does he feel the need to use deception keep people at a distance? Who (if anyone) does he take a mask off for, and in what measures? It all sort of fell into place, and not only influenced IC things but OOC things as well. His wiki is only what could possibly be generally known, and for that measure is absolutely inaccurate in places by design. I made the decision to keep the entire truth of Yssen to myself, only letting bits and bobs of it be released as seemed natural. I make sure that it is a super big deal to know any piece of the whole and actual truth. To memory, only one character existing knows everything. Masks masks masks. Secrets secrets secrets.

As far as visual design, I picked Elezen because I played and RPed a Hume in XI and wanted to do something different. Duskwight was chosen because I did not like the short ears on the Wildwoods in 1.0. There was no ear slider thing back then. I then adapted what we knew of Duskies at the time and rolled it round with the concept. Absolutely natural to be on the defensive around most people when faced with a lot of discrimination and prejudice. Everything fit rather nicely, if I do say so myself. Yar.

Dis · **08-17-2015, 07:18 AM**

This is going to be kind of long, so I'm going to put them under cuts, to save space. I have a few characters I play, but the three who are most fleshed out right now as Glioca, Dark, and Liviana. I've played Glio and Livi the most, with Dark just sort of sitting in a corner somewhere until I can get my head all the way around the lore for what she is - a Roe who was possessed by a Voidsent - and make sure I'm 100% in boundaries with her. Glio, I'll always try and stretch the lore with her, because I love her as a concept too much to give her up. Anyway, more on the concepts below.

Show Content

GliocaGlioca started out as a character for me a long time ago.Â I originally pulled her concept from another game I played when I was first starting out in MMO's.Â She was a goddess who was defined in the non-player game lore with one sentence about her.Â I loved the idea, but I wanted to give her life and depth and story.Â So I jerked her out of her setting, trashed the world she'd been on (in a literal sense in her AU), and ended up transplanting her into a number of settings since then.Â I've run her in other MMO's, in forum based Final Fantasy RPs, she's been in several D&D campaigns as both a normal player character and very powerful NPC.Â I've had her since roughly late 2000ish, and she's been a blast to develop.Â The last five years or so of play have really shaped her, though.

ICly, she's a little weird, because I have two versions of her I run.Â In private, and with friends who are okay with that kind of thing, she's a very powerful entity who basically got into the world through the Void, and a trip in the Lifestream.Â I originally had this set up as her main idea, but after seeing the walk people reacted negatively to the concept of any kind of world-traveling character, I shelved this back in a corner as something to play only in private, and to keep as character notes to add to her several notebooks long history.

Instead, the Glioca presented to the public is the second one, which I crafted after I'd been playing the game for about six months (most of that spent in PvE content).Â I usually play her as an elven or fae type race, going with human only if the models of the first two races are so bad I can't stand them.Â That gave me the springboard of making her an Elezen.Â Most of what I'd read from Elezen directed me to them being from the Shroud.Â Gridania, Elezen.Â

I wanted her backstory to be sufficiently gloomy (she's always had a rough past, in every incarnation), and the FF world is pretty war-torn, so one part of her backstory, her father's death, was easily explained.Â For her mother, I gave her something that would give her a motivation into Conjury, as she was always a healer: her mother died of a wasting sickness.Â

Once I had these springboards, I filled in tidbits of her history as she developed, leaving some 'several year' gaps so I could fill in things as lore became more known, and as she developed naturally through RP, giving the character a chance to tell me her own story, as opposed to me just writing the story for her. Â I know that sounds a little odd, but that was the general idea of her.

Show Content

LadyRochester · **08-17-2015, 07:30 AM**

Where to start? The concept of my character was introduced when I was creating a story long, long ago. I love mages and all kinds of magic RP and fiction, so I wanted a character that was magic-centric. My Â basic idea was: Powerful sorceress with a crippling weakness.

When it comes to her wealthy background, I wanted my character to come from a privileged position so it would make sense that she received the best education her family could afford,however, no matter how great her talent, no matter how great her tutorship, she would still be unable to cast magic or show herself off because it could make her kill herself (Not necessarily others.)

And no, by "kill herself" I don't mean "summon a mini cataclysm." I mean, in the best sense of the term, slowly deteriorate her health until she no longer can cast magic without fearing for her life. She hasn't reached that point yet, but the fact this character is so obsessed with magic, seeing it as her main motivation to live, makes the whole story painfully ironic.

Gegenji · **08-17-2015, 08:35 AM**

I think I mentioned this in some thread way back in the day, but Chachan came into existence as a character due to Gogon, and a bit vice versa.

More clearly, Gogon existed first when I made him on a non-RP server (Zalera) to hang out with my little sister when the Recruit-a-Friend mechanic first went live. His name was Tmesis Oan then, because I knew nothing of naming conventions, and I went Lalafell Arcanist because the idea of a book-caster grabbed me - and Carbuncle is one of my favorite summons - and I've had a fondness for the wee races ever since I watched a Gnome Warrior tank Onyxia. Plus, the little blurb said Dunesfolk Lalafell were academic by nature, so having one being a magic math nerd seemed appropriate.

When I found out about the RPC and Balmung and all that, I decided I wanted to sneak a character onto it. I decided I wanted the character to be the younger brother of Tmesis, so that locked his race and gender. I had also stumbled across the naming conventions thread on the FFXIV forums by this point if I remember correctly, so I had already been musing on a "proper" Lalafellan name for him.

I was leveling everything on him, so what sort of name would work for someone who could "do everything"? Flitting through the name randomizer, either Gogonji popped up on its own... or something close like Gogoshogu or something did. Gogo the Mimic - that'd work. So I had the AA in the AAC-BBC Dunesfolk naming pattern. Just needed the rest.

The Doman stuff had just dropped around this point, and I got it into my head that I would like to play a Doman Lalafell. And then during all this musing, the Genji armor came to mind and it all just... fell into place. Gogonji Gegenji. The "black sheep" elder brother of a smithing family that was interested more in combat strategy rather than combat equipment. I didn't have the firmest grasp on Lalafell family names, so I figured the little brother would be a Gegenji too - and the musical naming pattern brought its own solution: Go-Go Dancing and the Cha-Cha.

Chachanji Gegenji.

So I had myself the youngest child of a smithing family that had come to Eorzea. What would he be like? Well, I was (and still am, to a degree) worried that people might not want to play with me. So I tried making him open, friendly, and cheerful. To try and get as many RP opportunities as possible. I came up with the idea that he wanted to use the equipment he learned how to make to help people himself, and it all sort of flowed from there.

He entered the world, interacted with a lot of interesting people, and become the timid little hero wannabe smith that he is now. Gogon was brought over from Zalera to serve as a villain for a big moment event for the little guy (and I was growing lonely on Zalera...), and people were kinda interested in him too, so he ended up staying as a character instead of being written off or Fantasia'd into something else. His character by this point had been a spin on the fact that I had been more or less doing everything alone or in PuGs on Zalera while Chachan had all these nice, friendly folks to play with. And developing him as a villain resulted into delving even further into the hows and whys - including on how I "powered him up" to serve as an appropriately difficult "Final Boss" of the event. Which I then stripped him of and turned that loss into a developmental moment.

Comparatively, Judge was a much simpler idea. I like to buck trends every now and then - if everyone's playing sexy and toned superheros or criminals (Champions Online and APB, respectively), I throw out a hefty character like Lard Almighty or Chris "Chrisco" Colander. And the tiny-tank idea was alive and well with little Paladin Chachan. In FFXIV, I noticed that most characters were in their teens and early twenties, with a few outliers on the thirties. I felt a great need for a grandpa.

The Au Ra were being hyped at this point, and were still being toted as possibly descended from dragons. So, I decided that I'd want to go with a DnD-style Elder Red Dragon type of character - old and powerful. But what to have him do? Well, I'd always been amused by the FFTA Judges and wanted to play something along those lines for laughs. And since I was also kind of developing this character to help Warren out at the Grindstone, the Law angle fit even better. So Judge Jredthys came together - with his Discworld Death-style speech and horribly outdated black-and-white view on everything.

And I've been having fun with all three.

Sylentmana · **08-17-2015, 09:16 AM**

My characters are often based on characters I've made from other video games and D&D. I also take some inspiration from other anime and video game characters. I also add a little bit of myself or my friends into the mix. All this acts as a sort of base from which to start. Then I allow the character to sort of develop on her own as I go along. Sometimes she stays the same and sometimes she becomes something completely different. I guess you could say, that's my character alchemy. Laugh

« Next Oldest \| Next Newest »
Pages (3): « Previous 1 2 3 Next »

How did you come up with your character?

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes