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+--- Thread: The Side-Character Creation Corner (/showthread.php?tid=9021)
The Side-Character Creation Corner - Gegenji - 11-21-2014
I'm that guy that peruses the Player's Handbooks for DnD and has a ton of random character ideas pop up in his head as he flips through the pages. I've a smattering of notes here and there with often little more than one-line blurbs about a character I want to try later.
"Bard whose 'instrument' is a songbird, refers to it as his maestro."
"Summoner who paints his minions in an art book, pulling them off the page and into the real world." (Not unlike FFXIV's Arcanists, now that I think about it...)
It's no different on FFXIV. I read threads, I listen in on RPs, and ideas flit into my mind unbidden. I've seen alts and NPCs and all sorts of interesting ideas, and so I thought I'd bring up a bit of general discussion.
Do you have an NPC (or future alt) idea rolling around in your head that you want to use?
Have you had a bit character you threw into an RP that has evolved beyond just as a stage piece in your mind or in your RPs?
How much detail do you put into them before/after having using them?
I just think it might be fun to be able to share those sorts of things, have a place to see if people would be interested in knowing about others' NPCs and flitting ideas. To open, I present the latest one of mine, which developed as a little (surprisingly wordy) spiel on a Notepad file:
Cenric "Flatfoot" Stay
Where there are laws, there are those that break the laws. Those that break the law needs must be detained or summarily executed. Men of both sorts also needs must be held somewhere as the lawmakers decide what to do with them. This requires a prison, a gaol, a holding cell. And such places need men to stand watch over them.
That is Cenric's role in life - he is a jailer. He watches wanted men go in, he watches over them, he watches them go out. Sometimes they return, sometimes they don't. He never had much in the way of empathy towards those he guards and, even if he had, the Midlander would've lost it over the passing of the cycles. It is naught but a job for him, and he performs it with a calculated indifference.
Yet, this is still Ul'dah, and one doesn't simply coast along unless they have quite the ample coin in their coffers. There have been more than a few detained who have either somehow escaped their confines or died suddenly in their sleep to unseen complications. Even with the posting of additional guards, it seems as if a phantom descends on the imprisoned and either spirits them away or leaves them lifeless. Meanwhile, the man whose flat feet make him both ill-suited for combat and silent as death itself, merely pockets a few extra coin he's found lying about somewheres.
RE: The Side-Character Creation Corner - Nebbs - 11-21-2014
Well Nebula started life as a quick created character for a forum RP while waiting for SWTOR beta. She has evolved and is a softer side of that char having been tweaked for Wildstar and now in FFXIV.
RE: The Side-Character Creation Corner - Zhavi - 11-21-2014
Yuuuup. I throw NPCs around like confetti, so I suppose it's only natural that eventually a few of them wind up becoming full fledged characters. One of the prime ones I'm thinking of rolling into a full character now is on another site, a sister to my actual character. They're my bullshit-nobility-political-player characters. My primary rp partner in that is making one of his NPCs a full character in order to advance some plot threads left open in a prior thread (huge sprawling family, spies, sabotage, and a major estate distant relatives are fighting over). He's better at it then me, his character is older and with more connections, my NPC inherited the title from his but lacks a lot of the practical application.
The thought of seeing the two characters at each other's throats, using their servants and family members to hit each other with setbacks and make precise economic stabs at each other makes me giddy. (just need to get back into the swing of things, first >>)
Part of one of his posts that made me first start considering taking on my npc full time (plus all of the underhanded insults and snark makes me ridiculously happy):
RE: The Side-Character Creation Corner - Telluride - 11-21-2014
Actually, I already have all eight of my FFXIV toon slots filled, though I only play three of them - my main, the fun alt I am gradually building up, and one that I occasionally throw a level on.
However, that last one best fits the topic. I've been developing a Midlander mage as a character who, to all appearances, is a collector of rare books and paraphernalia, but has a deeper agenda of weaponizing magic to larger and larger degrees, inspired by existing efforts to resist primals and the Garleans use of Magitek. After all, it fits pretty strongly with the FF franchise across the board - someone's always trying to design the Evil Superweapon that the plucky band of heroes has to defuse because it is a horrible threat to world ecology, yadda yadda. Funny, though, how the world we're trying to save doesn't stop producing more and more dangerous Magic Monsters, which we have to stop all the while getting lectured about how these beings are morally superior to us, despite the fact that said beings obey the whims of races that are, in action, barbaric and every bit as greedy as we are supposed to be. Such is his point of view, and he'll do whatever is necessary to bring the self-righteous primals to heel.
Hobbies include drawing in his sketchbook, researching the use of aether crystals as fuel and ammunition, and taking time to look for underworld connections to help him fund his project by any means necessary.
Of course, that takes time, resources, and connections. Being an altoholic, I already made his most trusted, yet unwitting accomplices - a brother/sister pair of Roegadyn who are convinced that their employer has the keys to defusing the primal threat, and wield axe and fire magic as his assistants.
Of course, I have plenty to do with my main right now, which might include finding a new Free Company as well, but all things in time...
And with a nod to Nebbs, I had 17 toon slots in SWTOR before I quit, and every one got at least a little RP in its time. Now, five of them were simply Pub-side duplicates of 5 other Imp characters - to be able to RP in both factions - but yeah, I like alts.
RE: The Side-Character Creation Corner - Gegenji - 11-21-2014
I think FFXIV has been one of the few MMOs that has quelled my desire for alts for the more... "tangible" reasons - filling party holes, trying out classes, and so on - due to the whole interchangeable class-through-weapon approach. In WoW alone, I had a NElf Hunter, Gnome Warrior (shortly replaced by a Gnome DK when they came out - named him "Shortlived," regret nothing), a Troll Priest that I desperately wanted to see rolling around in the goblin go-karts, and several other lower-level creations to see the starting zones and get a feel for the classes.
As such, I need to convince myself more to make alts here - and the whole roleplay angle is definitely working for me. I only have two characters at the moment - my "main" on a non-RP server and Chacha here - but I get an odd feeling that it's going to balloon as more ideas come to me that I want to try and play with. Even Cenric up there is becoming more solidified in my mind...
"His eyes are a dull, flat gray and his face noticeably bereft of scars. Scars meant stories, stories meant questions, and Flatfoot hated questions."
At this rate, I may have a low-level Midlander Pugilist making his appearance in Ul'dah in the very near future.
RE: The Side-Character Creation Corner - Zhavi - 11-21-2014
(11-21-2014, 12:50 PM)Gegenji Wrote: "His eyes are a dull, flat gray and his face noticeably bereft of scars. Scars meant stories, stories meant questions, and Flatfoot hated questions."
At this rate, I may have a low-level Midlander Pugilist making his appearance in Ul'dah in the very near future.
come to limsaaaa toooooo ;_;
RE: The Side-Character Creation Corner - Gegenji - 11-21-2014
(11-21-2014, 01:34 PM)Zhavi Wrote: come to limsaaaa toooooo ;_;If it makes you feel any better, my "main" on my non-RP server is a Maelstrom through and through.
Though, that's not to say I don't have prans where Limsa is involved. As I mentioned, if I see something new or interesting, I oft get ideas off it. And my idea character for Limsa involves... mechanics that aren't quite out as of yet. To whit:
Ahtynnoeya Doeniruhtsyn
(Is supposed to be Judging Eye, son of Thunder Smoke. I kinda just skimmed over the Roe language.
)Scrawny - for a Roegadyn, at least - this Sea "Pup" (as he has oft been referred to jokingly) has, like his kin, spent much of his life at sea. Often doing the odd jobs that require a lighter frame such as traversing the masts, or pushed into duties like the crow's nest in poor weather because the larger Roes could make him. With not much he could do about it, Ahtynn would just grumble quietly to himself and resign himself to being little more than a mere swabbie.
All that changed with the introduction of the Limsan flintlock. His lithe limbs and sharp eye, combined with an eagerness to finally have an advantage over the others, led to the Wolf learning the weapon quickly and well. Proving his skill as a marksman put him back on par with his kin, as well as serving as a major boost to his ego. Perhaps too much, in fact.
With pistol in hand, Ahtynn has become quite brash and flashy in combat. He has taken to covering his "good eye" to give his foes a chance - his surprising skill with the weapon being the only thing keeping him from missing all his shots - and has developed a penchant for trick-shots and aiming to disarm and humiliate rather than kill.
So... um... yeah.
RE: The Side-Character Creation Corner - Jazz Egi - 11-21-2014
I have TONS of ideas for NPCs. I occasionally use them in half-arsed ways in RP events or allusions.
A shadowy cabal of thaumaturges who oversee the freshness of Uldah's perishable foods via blizzard spells.
A ruthless kobold engineer who uses a diverse array of explosives... To rate the integrity of buildings and bridges.
A travelling beastman bardic troupe called Earth, Wind and Fire (Ft. Water)
A silver tongued merchant claiming to be the son of Nald'Thal himself.
I can rattle these off all day.