Hydaelyn Role-Players
How did you come up with your character? - Printable Version

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RE: How did you come up with your character? - Rosekitten - 02-24-2014

I made my character back during the beta for 2.0. My sole purpose was to make a character I would use as my main and to rp with. I had a Free Company in mind (that didn't work out but maybe for the better) and read all the lore I could on 1.0 game and the current changed after the calamity.

More or less it seemed that there were going to be very few Duskweghs and given I am a huge fan of out cast lore I ran with it. I did make quite a few adjustments and tweaks before the game was live. Help of people reading over my back story and 100 questions and then some friends helping out with making my background story a little less boring then it was. 

I had a look in mind but that changed over time as well as I adjusted my character to be a female instead of a male while keeping everything true to her background story and easily explaining why the change or why some would have seen her as one or the other (though she stopped dressing as the other gender now).

The over all character was based off of a very old OC of mine. I reversed a lot of the things between them though, this character having a laxed temper and it's nearly impossible to get on her bad side or tick her off. Also I tried to pull from what I seemed to find a common theme for her Clan .. I didn't want her to be broody. She is a bit but presently she has a lot on her plate. Though once someone gets to know her or manages to get her into a conversation her real mood normally opens up fairly easily. 

Not quite to the chatter box stand point but she is willing to talk to new folk. Tries to avoid Lalafell due to her past history with them, but aside from that she has no quarrel with any of the other races or clans. I tried to make her a mix of a crafter but still able to defend herself, something that has proven harder to do then I thought. It is very difficult it seems to get a crafter into rp stories.. you would think it would be easy seeing as armor and weapons need repairs. 

I also threw myself a extra curve ball a little after the game launched and I fell in love with the Ishgard lore... Though IC she avoids that area for various reasons now..

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Clover - 02-24-2014

Clover is based on Miyazaki's world. Since I think that FFXIV is adorable, I wanted her to be a normal girl who would pay attention to the small details from everyday life. Someone who, despite her lack of special skills and her overall weakness, could still have a strong spirit.

K'mih is also based on FFXIV's adorable and innocent atmosphere. I found female miqo'tes' smile very youthful and cutely naive, so I wanted my miqo'te to have those traits.

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Aldotsk - 02-24-2014

Quote:Creation of Anelia Sadowyn
Anelia Sadowyn is originally based upon the similar paladin character that I've created from World of Warcraft known as Elslie Sturmwaldt. Elslie's background was a war orphan who lost her parents from the Burning Legion and Scourge during Third War, and hoped to vow to avenge her family as she grew up to be full fledged paladin. While Anelia is Chaotic Good aligned character, believing that everyone should love one another, even if the opposite side may be Horde. Anelia has similar war orphan background story, but instead she starts extremely aggressive as a child, then grew up to be the most kindest paladin at the end. However, Anelia's character is a very shaky character in emotions and is an example of most Lawful Good character who try to do what is justified, but starts asking question to herself if she is really fighting for the right thing. Anelia's title "the Blood Hunter" or even "Azure Wing/Blade" is a small title adapted from series such as Mobile Suit Gundam franchise.

Quote:Creation of Ellaria Althene
I wanted to make a Lalafell character, a bit more wise yet non-mischievous person who looks at everything in a widened perspective. Ellaria's original name Elororo Eloro was altered and given the name Ellaria Althene by the credits of Anelia and Fiore Sadowyn. In an actual concept, Ellaria's last name Althene is an "ALternative" ideal of "Athene/Athena" as the Goddess of Wisdom and the female Goddes of War unofficially. Ellaria seems to wear white robe and seems to carry small hand note, just like Zhuge Liang from Romance of Three Kingdoms, where Zhuge Liang the greatest strategist was wearing white robes and carry a feathered fan with him all the time. Ellaria's nick name is Sleeping Phoenix, combined from Zhuge Liang's "Sleeping Dragon" and Pang Tong's "Young Phoenix". Last, Ellaria seems to wear red a lot, so she carries her name as Crimson Skillet, given by Bismarck's Culinary Guild. The Crimson Skillet is adapted from "Crimson Lightning" and "Red Comet", named by Johnny Raiden and Char Aznable - infamous anti-heroes/antagonists in Mobile Suit Gundam

Quote:Creation of Mizuho Mitarashi
Mizuho is still work in progress, and her background is still unknown. But her background's basic information is that she comes from a far east tribe, trying to regain her family's Mitarashi clan. Mizuho's appearance is very interesting, to a fact that she carries blue eyes. The blue eyes of Mizuho is adapted from "Memoirs of Geisha", where Chiyo/Sayuri carried the blue eyes of the "ocean", considered as amount of "good luck and fortune". In this case, Mizuho's eyes are more of eyes of "Leviathan" - Not really saying that she is primal, but is as fierce as the tsunami/maelstrom of Leviathan in her eyes.


RE: How did you come up with your character? - TheLastCandle - 02-25-2014

I'm a bit late on this, but what I generally do is come up with the general concept of the character I want to play first. For Yvelont, I decided that I wanted to play a knightly, martial type of character with little grasp of magick. From there, I decided a suitable place for him to have lived, in this case Ishgard. Then I chose his race and named him based on Elezen naming conventions. With that done, I began to think about what might cause him to leave Ishgard to begin adventuring out in the world, and the rest of his story's details were filled in as they came to me.

Fun fact: the character's personality takes a tiny bit of inspiration from the character Etienne Navarre from the movie Ladyhawke, which is why I chose it as his surname.

Edit: Another thing I feel that's important to keep in mind is that your character's history, while still important, doesn't necessarily have to dictate the present. I find that it's far more fun to allow RP with others to shape and mold your character, rather than keeping a narrative that boils down to, "Well, his backstory is -this- and so he pretty much has to end up like -this." Goals are good to have, but I've seen a lot of players end up abandoning characters because they feel they've written themselves into a corner. I've certainly done it myself, so I tend to go with the flow these days, viewing RP as a collaborative exercise in writing. But your mileage may very, and so on. Smile

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Maril - 02-25-2014

I had a lot of indecisiveness with Sastra. First of all, she started out as a miqote. For the first time ever, I'd actually -forgotten- to check with the naming convention, and it bugged me so much when I found out that I opted to change her to a Highlander. As it would turn out, I like the highlander lore a lot more. I created her personality and story through RP, simply by narrowing down some possible choices in my head and deciding in RP whenever someone asked, for example, "So where do you come from". 
Likes & dislikes over everything from food to the various races have been decided through her first encounters with them. So, one of her things is that she isn't too fond of lalafells because her first few encounters with them were negative. 
And somehow, with ample amount of time to develop, that has become Sastra as she is today. But, she constantly develops further, so who knows if she'll be the same another six months down the road.

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Crisiet - 02-25-2014

I was levelling my then-main (Moon-keeper MNK) through Coerthas and I realised I loved the setting. Then from there I started thinking about making a character native to that area. I hadn't gotten into FFXIV's RP scene at that point and Ishgardian lore really caught my attention. By the time I'd finished questing there I had thought up an entire concept. Then Crisiet was born!

I had intended him to be a side alt for me to switch to when I wanted to wind down, but I got so into both his class (DRG) and the ideas I had for his personality and backstory that he quickly became my main. Funnily he shares a surname with an Ishgardian NPC in Whitebrim, which was a complete accident.

His personality is similar to that of a character from writing I've done in the past. Means well, kind of a snarky jerk sometimes. Crisiet is a little bit friendlier than this other character though. Just a little.

RE: How did you come up with your character? - McBeefâ„¢ - 02-25-2014

I had never RPed before playing FFXIV, so Natalie was something of a spur of the moment creation. As you can tell from the name, I didn't intend to RP when I made her, and have had to jump through some hoops to justify it.

I started off by just talking to RPers around Ul'dah, and as they asked me things I would just make up the answers on the spot. After a while, and enough questions, a character started to develop. Fortunately I managed to start off in a transitive period for my character, (she was finally back in Ul'dah after years of war) so she's been able to grow and change quite a bit since I made her. She started off a bit puritanical and rulebound, but as she kept interacting with people the moral greyness of Ul'dah started to rub off on her.

For the moment her character has kind of crystalized for me, and I really enjoy playing her, but I doubt I ever could have come up with it on purpose. I view her as a roll of the improvisation dice that turned out particularly well.

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Kage - 02-25-2014

This is the worst thing in the world of RP and for myself... but honestly Kage came out of my wanting to try something new. I obviously didn't think I'd RP because I probably would have been named Kakageru Yuyugeru but no...

He's still very much a work in progress but I'm basing how he acts mostly around how I would react. He isn't -me- but it gives me the easiest basis to work with, without having had to actually build a character before wanting to RP him. Upcoming arcs will most likely be his most defining character builds... but he certainly had time to develop while his friends were in trouble. ><

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Eva - 02-25-2014

Eva is basically the grown-up daughter of a character I RPed in FF11. Adaptations in the lore were made as needed (e.g. her father the Ishgardian knight instead of San d'Orian knight). She and her upbringing are derivative of experiences from FF11 RP events without things being completely identical.

She's a pretty stark contrast to him and started as an experiment in playing a totally different sort of character. She's grown and evolved over the years on her own in ways we could not have predicted through her interactions with others and experiences along the way, and we love RPing her.

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Pip - 02-25-2014

Most of my characters start from what few bare facts have to be true about them. For Pip it's the fact that he is Duskwight (with the lore or lack thereof inherent in that choice), must interact with others in and out of cities (in order to actually RP him), and must somehow learn or know magic. From there it's just a game of recursive 'Why?' and following through with logical consequences for the answers.

The biggest boosts along the way came from reading the forever-long Duskwight Discussion thread a few pages back from here and talking a couple things through with one of the mentors in the welcome forum ((Edit: The poster above me, actually! Hi, Eva!)). That got me thinking about his clan as a living entity instead of shady background fluff, which in turn made the rest more or less fall into place like so:

Coincidence plays a huge role. I chose his last name, Dalaine, from a baby name site that said 'Alaine' meant 'little rock' - so I thought his name was a watered down 'from the little rock' in reference to his Dusky-ness. A couple weeks later, after reading that amazing thread, I went to google translate to name his clan and found out that 'alaine' apparently means 'wool'. He already had Weaving started up and I'd chosen Nymeria for a deity at character creation, so I went with it. Suddenly he came from a family of weavers who showed high regard for The Weaver for that reason. And maybe he lived in a clan where each family more or less served a function in the community (clothing, construction, etc)? For a clan name, I figured I'd bastardize some French version of 'manage' or 'coordinate' to be the surname of the leading family who managed the rest. The only one I could smash around into something that sounded good was 'se debrouiller', an apparent idiom for the 'make do/get by' meaning of 'manage'. When I checked the literal meaning of each word it came out to something like 'unravel themselves' - BAM! Nymeria reverence is suddenly very instrumental in the clan and therefore in Pip's life up to now. He even gained a personal curse: "Nymeria's Warp!"

That's a rambling way of saying happy accidents happen, and I try to go with them when I can and play it off like it's all planned.

RE: How did you come up with your character? - McBeefâ„¢ - 02-25-2014

(02-25-2014, 06:51 PM)Pip Wrote: That's a rambling way of saying happy accidents happen, and I try to go with them when I can and play it off like it's all planned.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Image: f3qOP4c.gif]

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Dartamian N'astal - 02-26-2014

Dartamian N'astal really is just the sum of how I have been RPing in the MMOs that I have played before.  With normal MMOs, you cannot be more than one class. I would designate the name Dartamian to all my combat classes, and would name my healer Astal.  So with this I combined the two names together.  His story is pretty simple as well.  I basically mad him a retired Adventurer (because I was burnt out on WoW).  His only goal in life after losing everything in the Calamity, is to build a mansion and remain at peace for the rest of his days.  So I decided I was going to make a class solely dedicated to making money.  I started as a Pagulist because anyone can fight with their fist.  But when I went to the miner's guild they told me I was not fit enough to work there.  This is what lead me to venture out.  And from there, I have just gone with the flow.

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Ildur - 02-26-2014

Ussually, most of my characters are born from the "I want an X class Y race character". This is true for ARR, but I also recycled a lot of characters from my TERA roster. Ildur is the most straightforward port, followed by Thiereia and then K'airos. My other characters, Aiswys and Qion, are mash ups of older characters.

On the other hand, Ulanan was born in the beta because I wanted to try roleplaying an alliterating lalafell (and it kind of won me over). Amaury exists because a friend wanted her character's brother to be around for roleplay rather than be a nebolous entity only reserved for backstories.

RE: How did you come up with your character? - Hunfrid - 02-26-2014

Most of my characters start from which race I find more aesthetically pleasing. I have a huge weakness for men of larger races, and thats how my main guy got started.
Then, after a few levels and shoe fittings, I get a feeling of where and how I want his backstory. With FF14 giving us the option of doing all classes on each character, I am happy to not have to delete and reroll anybody.
With a little fleshing out, i then take the character to RP and let them go from there.

RE: How did you come up with your character? - SunKittyEm - 02-27-2014

Well, I started on balmung because a friend of mine was like "I play on Balmung, you should too" and I was like "okay" because he was why I started playing. I didn't even know people RP'd in this game and didn't figure I'd get into it. Hell, when I encountered my first group of RP'ers, I was like "mmmmm" and just kind of... sat there... staring... for like 2 hours, as they rp'd.

Then I joined their LS. Then I met some people, and interacted with them. I was momentarily upset with not having followed the lore-given naming convention for miqo'te, but then my character told me "I left and I didn't want to keep the name they'd given me. So I changed it." And I responded to her by saying "that's alright by me."

Now I think I kind of figured that E would grow as a character to me - very rarely do I play anything where I can make my own character that I don't either gimp an old one or make a new one out of it unintentionally. Ultimately, I'm surprised I didn't go Lancer to begin with. I'm an earthy-person... or you know, like to believe that I'm close to it elementally... personality-wise... something. Shut up. And historically Dragoons are one of my favorite classes in Final Fantasy.

So why didn't I go Lancer? I don't know. But I like to think nowadays that it was the tiny initial spark of what would eventually become Emelie speaking to me. "No. I don't like to stab things. I like to punch them. Make me a pugilist." So I did.

And I fell in LOVE with Ul'dah. It's like, my favorite place in game. I love Momodi. I love Namamo Ul'namo. Raubahn is my favorite Grand Company leader and I can't stand Limsa Lominsa at all despite my character making forays into being an arcanist. I actually don't like the layout of Gridania, with all of its shards being in one half of it, like what's the bloody deal? 

And you know... I'm okay with all that. But long story short... it was organic. I didn't intend to RP, but everything about her creation - from her hair color to her starting base class to her city - wound up fitting her exactly and I don't think I'd have been half as happy with the game as I am now if I didn't do things as I did.