How did you come up with your character?

[Yssen]

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. 

 

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]

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.

 

Glioca started out as a character for me a long time ago.  I originally pulled her concept from another game I played when I was first starting out in MMO's.  She was a goddess who was defined in the non-player game lore with one sentence about her.  I loved the idea, but I wanted to give her life and depth and story.  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.  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.  I've had her since roughly late 2000ish, and she's been a blast to develop.  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.  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.  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).  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.  That gave me the springboard of making her an Elezen.  Most of what I'd read from Elezen directed me to them being from the Shroud.  Gridania, Elezen. 

 

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.  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. 

 

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.  I know that sounds a little odd, but that was the general idea of her.

 

 

Liviana was a concept that was as easy as could be to put together.  I wanted a girl who had ties to Gridania and Ul'dah, who was very new and fresh off the wagon, as it were.  I wanted her to be idealistic, and upbeat, optimistic and eager to learn everything.  I basically wanted the exact opposite of Glioca, for those times when I really just wanted to relax.  I also wanted a much more easily lore-immersed character, one without ties to anything else, and any former stories or characters I'd created.  

 

So I took a girl who was born in Ul'dah, returned her to her father's family home in Gridania, and had her grow up there until the Calamity wrecked it all, and took two of her family members.  Unlike Glioca, who is worn down by time, Livi accepts that even though her family is gone, she's not alone, and she's got a life to live, so she's moving forward constantly.

 

Glioca's also very adept at fighting, so I wanted Liviana to be very bad at it.  She's just now gotten to the point where Marmots don't constantly kick her butt, but she's still not very adept, and comes home bruised and hurting more often than she does triumphant and unmarked.  She wants to be an adventurer some day, she listened to the stories of adventurers in the Carline Canopy, but alas, those days are very out of reach for her right now.  She's probably going to be a Pugilist who can't do much of anything for a very long time.

 

That said, I'm having a ton of fun with her.

 

[LadyRochester]

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  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]

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]

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.:lol:

[Kittycat88]

Someone makes a comment/ I watch a movie/ read a book. Then my mind just melts it together and brews it into something.

[ZoktaiKhor]

My first and foremost character i ever make in a universe will follow this ismple question- With my current skills and abilities and life what would i do in this universe.

 

Then my other characters are based on a mix of old short stories I wrote plus Random Number Generator shorts

[ɴᴘᴄ]

Well, I haven't developed a character for tabletop in many years, so I am a bit rusty at the practice.

 

With Ancel, he started out as a Gladiator, and I wanted to main Paladin. I looked the the nations of Eorzea and thought, from his perspective, "who needs it most?" It seemed that Gridania was leanest on this type of fighter, so he threw in his lot with the Order of the Twin Serpent.

 

At this point, I only had a vague idea of what this character should be, plus there wasn't much public RP on Ultros. A few months into the relaunch, two different issues, namely network latency and GPU woolliness, started making tanking an impossibility. So I took a hiatus, chalking it up as a serious injury which required time for Ancel to recover.

 

Once I moved and got a new rig, I had to rethink how I wanted to play. I was way behind on the tanking meta and had forgotten most of the dungeons, so I decided to hang up my Paladin hopes and start from scratch. The only class that seemed to fit was Bard, so that's what I went after.

 

From this, you can see that the character started out only as a sketch and that responses to gameplay circumstances were central to filling in the story. In Ancel's case the background elements were all fleshed out retroactively and piecemeal.

 

I would like to have a more well-planned RP character, but finding room on Balmung is problematic, to say the least.

[Mae]

My original character, I ended up burning out on her in just a couple months -- I had made something so far from my normal character type, she was just... mentally exhausting to RP for more than twenty minutes every few days. Great concept, she was just too dumb for me to wrap my head around.

 

Kara was the result of me saying "Okay... if I don't come up with something new, I'm quitting the game", because by that time I hated my original (Silke) and just wasn't feeling it with my other existing alts. I spent a little while in character creation, just making something I liked the look of while actively not thinking about any RP stuff. I randomized names until I got a last name I didn't mind, grabbed a random name off of my project name list for a first name, and ran with it. After that, I played until I got my airship license, then grabbed a friend to RP with. I had no backstory, no idea on personality... so we just ran with whatever popped in my head. The whole session was non-canon, and maybe only a third of the stuff that happened in that actually made it into Kara's ultimate concept.

[Rising]

I'm not very adventurous when creating a character. I love the Ranger archetype and in games I like to play the Ranger/Hunter/Archer. So that's always where I start. My Rangers may have different personalities but they all usually have certain things in common, like Neutral/Good alignment, serious demeanor, personal code of honor, a sense of duty or obligation to her faction/people/friends/family/etc., and a willingness to do what needs to be done.

 

That's my framework, familiar and comfortable as it is. So for me, that's the easy part. The rest lies in a little lore research into my setting. I figure out what species/race 1) Most fits the archetype, 2) Figure out a rough idea of where they came from. Trust me, I do mean rough. 

 

Next step is the character creation in game. I actually derive a bit about their personality as I create them. Not sure why that is, but it is. I also find naming extremely important. I was very unfamiliar with FF so actually playing an Archer has helped develop the character in my mind.

 

As I play, explore, and learn the lore a bit, the personality and backstory emerges. Most my characters are pretty closed so I can get away with giving little info when I RP casually but that casual RP really helps develop and set the personality of the character for me.

 

Anyway, I suppose I would say that I take the class/profession/job I enjoy playing the most and work from there.

[Addison]

I role played a character in Everquest 2 for a long time. I liked her concept. I enjoyed the way she grew. It opened a lot of doors for a lot of different types of roleplay.

 

My character was the beta twin in a brother/sister set of twins. The brother was a real asshole. The trouble I learned with playing assholes is no one wants to roleplay with them after a while. So I roleplayed the sister, who went through a lot of training in a military setting. It hardened her, perhaps a bit too much so. After several years, she was angry and bitter and went from the good guy to the bad guy. That was fun for a while but then it lost its allure.

 

So my idea for Addison? Create the exact opposite of what my previous character was.

[Sig]

I came up with the general concept for Sig while drinking an imperial IPA, watching BoJack Horseman, and listening to the four songs linked on his RPC wiki profile.  The music really guided my inspiration for the character on an emotional and aesthetic level.  I performed some basic online research to confirm his background lore.  Sig is extremely difficult to RP at times because he can be highly volatile and alienating, likely as a result of the initial brain storming session.   

 

But, it's been just as enjoyable thus far, because he's slowly stomping out various inner demons IC in-game and turning into a better person.  They'll probably never go away fully, and he'll never be a saint (or "good" in any sense), but he's already tipping much closer to neutral.

 

Good times!

[C'kayah Polaali]

I like character creation, so I seldom recycle character concepts at all.

 

I started out playing FF on Siren with a few friends who didn't RP, and C'kayah (then C'kayah Tia) was just this storyless avatar. I liked the looks of Miqo'te, so I made him a Seeker.

 

When my friends stopped playing a month or so later, I thought I'd check out the RP community here, so I re-made C'kayah on Balmung. Exact same thing as C'kayah on Siren, so I had a few things already set up: He was a Seeker, he was tribal (hence Tia), and he was no longer with his tribe. I started out an archer because I played a hunter (archer) in LOTRO and liked that mechanic, so he started in Gridania where there normally aren't a lot of Seekers.

 

I liked the idea of playing a criminal, so I figured I'd make him a smuggler. It gives him a reason for moving around, and I thought it would be interesting playing a grey area criminal (as opposed to a "Doctor Evil" type). I'm a huge fan of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories, and brought his tendency to drink like a fish from those stories.

 

I happened to be reading Casanova's autobiography at the time (it's long, but it's really entertaining). Casanova had a very interesting approach to social interaction, and he wrote down entire conversations in his autobiography - embellished, of course, but you still see Casanova shining through in them. I thought it would be interesting to bring that into C'kayah. His womanizing tendencies, his attitudes towards life (easy come, easy go) and people (enjoy them while they're here, appreciate them for who they are, don't fuck them over; love is love, business is business, and the rest is bullshit) all come from Casanova, as well as his style of speaking. In a game world filled with straight talking upright good guys and dark villains, this all makes him a very slippery fellow.

 

From this point he started to evolve. I'd been toying with the idea of him having a Keeper ancestor in his past, so when I met Miah Polaali, we decided to codify that: They're cousins. His maternal grandmother was from Miah's clan, and some sort of great aunt to Miah. When name changes came in, I changed his name to C'kayah Polaali (ICly this was because he decided that Tia didn't fit, him not being part of a tribe anymore). Of all the things I've done with him, I've gotten the most mileage out of this one decision. He has family ties now with other players, and that translates into limitless hooks for RP opportunity.

[D'aito Kuji]

tl; dr 

 

 

I wanted a character inspired by the Lore, without a tragic backstory, who seeks adventure and opportunity for the thrill and freedom it provides.

 

I've almost always played a self-insert character in previous games.  For D'aito Kuji, I wanted something different than me and so I had to think about her personality and the experiences she must have had to be like that.  I looked into Seeker lore (there was ZERO doubt that I'd be playing a Miqo'te.  It's the sole reason I play) and there was a lot of good opportunities there.

 

I wanted her to feel uncomfortable and caged by her tribal tradition.  I wanted her to have a deep need for adventure "to chase the horizon."  She respected her people and their ways but she didn't want to be a part of it, at least not until she saw the world.  All she needed was an opportunity.

 

One thing that I always try to avoid is the "tragic backstory" and while I'm not 100% successful, I think if one understands the lore, her sire's death is not the primary motivating factor.  It's expected that the Nuhn will eventually be defeated.  They will either be banished or killed, that's just the way of things.  But the how of the defeat is important.

 

His brother cheated to become Nuhn.  This would mean that his predisposition for treachery would be carried forward in the next generation.  D'aito knew what he had done but understood that exposing it could mortally destabilize her tribe.  Rather than recognize Kujo has the Nuhn, D'aito ran away.

 

So with this backstory, I feel that D'aito is respectful but uncomfortable with tradition, she longs for adventure, and has a strong sense of what is right and wrong.  Her leaving the way she did also makes me think that she's an opportunist.  That trait has served her well as an adventurer, as she often brags "No job is too big, no fee is too big."

 

I wanted a character inspired by the Lore, without a tragic backstory, who seeks adventure and opportunity for the thrill and freedom it provides.

[Kalooeh]

Basically it's a general idea for the character, sometimes just from screwing around with a character creator, as well as going through lore info (if I can find anything. Or sometimes I just get an idea from reading through lore) and then derp around on them until I get more of a feel for them and they start to develop and more or less take on a life of their own.

 

Like we'll take Dheina for instance, since what I remember the most for that.

Started off as wanting to make a troll because all the current rp friends at the time had taken up trolls (warcraft) and I was being left out of rp because they were mostly in troll/troll only areas and mostly just rping with other trolls. So I start reading on lore and come up with basic looks for Dei'fon and where she'd come from and so on. And then just worked on leveling her and as I went on for whatever reason certain traits started sticking with what felt right for what'd work and eventually she was fleshed out as this skittish skinny troll that's somewhat obsessive and protective about food, cries easy, is a bit slow in the head, has a weird obsession with pink and pretty things, and can be kind of bossy/loud when she'd feeling braver/is angry about something.

And coming over to FF there was a bit of an overhaul with her because would be far different experiences in background while growing up, but kept her key personality points and just been adapted to here.

Like FF Dhei hates hurting people and fighting and is more just a healer type, and is a lot more soft hearted. Her view of cannibalism is a lot more passive than Dei's, as cannibalism for trolls is a LOT more common. She still isn't disgusted by it, and would be fine enough with eating anything, but she'd be upset if someone else was actively hunting other people to kill and eat (unless the victim was a horrible/mean person. Then her attitude is "GOOD! They were mean and now they can't be mean to people anymore! D:< I will eat them too!"

Whereas troll her doesn't really have any issues with it as long as someone's not trying to eat her or people she likes. She also commonly enough hunts people (Mainly gnomes or other "Alliance" races) to eat because normal enough and just another meat. Dei'fon is also a druid, and while she trains mostly for healing, she knows more offensive magic and shape-shifts and is bolder with fighting because while she tends to run away if she can, she will also fight for survival reasons and is a lot more familiar with death and killing than Dheina.

 

And for Kal, she started out a semi-self insert all those many years ago (Seriously like near 10 already? Shit), but I quickly enough got bored with it and ended up horde-side with a loud-mouth brat tauren and after worgen/human hunters came out I ended up picking up Kal again and redoing her background and personality and over the years she evolved as well from being kinda quiet/reserved/shy and temperamental to being the loud, aggressive-but-friendly brat she is today

 

And other alts always started out kind of awkwardly too or were meant as something that wasn't planning on really having as an actual character because just was mainly bored and wanted to derp around on a new class, ended up in random casual rp with people who'd initiate something (and if I'm not doing something like for a quest or crafting I'll play along instead of being the killjoy and can be a fun way to keep entertained) and end up developing them as an actual character. Other times it's because friends wanted to make new characters and level together with someone and rp with them but eventually lost interest but I liked how the character had developed so kept them.

Oh yeah and sometimes a character was made to kind of explore a specific concept/trait or something and researching the related subject helps with fleshing them out and drawing somewhat on my own experiences and expanding on my own experiences and traits.

 

Ignore Twin Rova. She's my lololol zelda derp character and I've done shitall with her so far :I She's still in the awkward phase, if I even decide to do anything serious with her