Like if you're worried about making a backstory, want "believeable" and "unique" without "too complicated" or "too powerful" then my recommendation is to go for some variation on...
"I came from Othard, my parents died, I need to avenge my family... THROUGH THE POWER OF DANCE"
Stock tropes... with a single, minor, yet unique variation/subversion.
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Generally speaking though I don't think it's unusual or bad for a character to pick up a whole bunch of stuff as they roll through roleplay - they're like snowballs, not rolling stones.
Their personality will still be relatively simple. Most people's are. Maybe some aspects of it will alter, but it's a bit difficult to be, say, ruthless and forgiving. Development is likely to change personality, not add bits to it.
Most backstory stuff won't even come up in your average RP interaction! It can be fun working it into your character's inner thoughts without necessarily broadcasting it to others - letting them guess or put the pieces together as to what made your character who they are today. If you aren't infodumping, it probably won't cause an issue.
The time when it begins to become a problem is when you have to read half an hour of backstory to be able to even begin to approach the character for roleplay, because it's so special and so unique, and you can attend less and less events, and you get less and less people asking you for RP because they don't want to spend half an hour preparing for an RP like it's a damn exam, and it slowly begins to dry up for you... or, on the flipside, when you get shut of all the potential conversation you could have inside of a 5 minute window because the character is so generic and un-adventurous (both in-character and in the meta, usually).
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Like, this is pushing the boat out a bit and making assumptions, but maybe it'll be useful advice for someone if not for OP... if you're enjoying doing it, but you feel like it's "bad" because you've compared it to some standard (mental or literal) and it's "too this" or "too that", and yet you're not actually having problems finding or maintaining RP... maybe treat it like an anxiety issue instead of a character issue?
I have this problem myself sometimes. There are days when I'm tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to "fix" or "simplify" my character because it's "too complicated" or "too inconsistent" but at the end of the day, um... people call me back for RP? New people ask me for it? My friends enjoy it with me? I have fun letting his personality come out during interactions? So the issue isn't with my character, because no one else sees the issue. It's with my own perception of my character.
"I came from Othard, my parents died, I need to avenge my family... THROUGH THE POWER OF DANCE"
Stock tropes... with a single, minor, yet unique variation/subversion.
--
Generally speaking though I don't think it's unusual or bad for a character to pick up a whole bunch of stuff as they roll through roleplay - they're like snowballs, not rolling stones.
Their personality will still be relatively simple. Most people's are. Maybe some aspects of it will alter, but it's a bit difficult to be, say, ruthless and forgiving. Development is likely to change personality, not add bits to it.
Most backstory stuff won't even come up in your average RP interaction! It can be fun working it into your character's inner thoughts without necessarily broadcasting it to others - letting them guess or put the pieces together as to what made your character who they are today. If you aren't infodumping, it probably won't cause an issue.
The time when it begins to become a problem is when you have to read half an hour of backstory to be able to even begin to approach the character for roleplay, because it's so special and so unique, and you can attend less and less events, and you get less and less people asking you for RP because they don't want to spend half an hour preparing for an RP like it's a damn exam, and it slowly begins to dry up for you... or, on the flipside, when you get shut of all the potential conversation you could have inside of a 5 minute window because the character is so generic and un-adventurous (both in-character and in the meta, usually).
-
Like, this is pushing the boat out a bit and making assumptions, but maybe it'll be useful advice for someone if not for OP... if you're enjoying doing it, but you feel like it's "bad" because you've compared it to some standard (mental or literal) and it's "too this" or "too that", and yet you're not actually having problems finding or maintaining RP... maybe treat it like an anxiety issue instead of a character issue?
I have this problem myself sometimes. There are days when I'm tearing my hair out trying to figure out how to "fix" or "simplify" my character because it's "too complicated" or "too inconsistent" but at the end of the day, um... people call me back for RP? New people ask me for it? My friends enjoy it with me? I have fun letting his personality come out during interactions? So the issue isn't with my character, because no one else sees the issue. It's with my own perception of my character.
![[Image: tUzrT.png]](https://puu.sh/tUzrT.png)
