Character Dev't question: What do?

[Kurt S.]

So say for example you've quite the irredeemable character. Hell one that you yourself find a little less appealing to be, and a complete disconnect on what they are and what they were supposed to be. The way they talk walk and act pretty much kills any rp you'd ever get out of em.

 

What would be better?

 

Rewrite them, their personality I mean. Straight up resocialization program. Complete with a new goals package. Assuming I can figure out what the new goal would be. Pretty much twist the essence of their character into something else entirely

 

Continue with it, hoping that someone, somewhere, somehow is going to fix em through IC interaction. Though that looks like quite the arduous method.

 

Scrap them to make way for another character entirely. Just hold down ctrl z until even before day 1.

 

Others?

 

Just really dunno what to do with a certain character who's literally an egotistical whiny spoiled self-centered ass to everyone they meet. Let's not forget rooooooodddddd

[Warren Castille]

People can change.

 

If your character is completely, utterly irredeemable,you could just stop roleplaying him and fantasia/namechange him into someone else and maybe no one will miss him. If there's a chance, though, it doesn't hurt to give it some outside thought.

 

Step out of the role as the guy who writes the character for a moment and try to look at him objectively. He's a whiny, arrogant spoiled ass. So what's important to him? What kind of event would it take for him to change or to grow? Does he have an easy ride in life because he's got rich parents?

 

Kill those parents. Derail the gravy train. Humiliate and humble your character. Remember, pain is growth.

 

Maybe he's just a prickish rockstar who doesn't care about other people because he thinks he's better than them. Have him witness a terrible act of brutality. Have a shifty merchant shiv a starving kid in the neck for stealing from him. Give him something human to react to, and use that to ignite a change for the better in him.

 

Is his attitude just bad? Bring back a new friend from the past or his childhood, and have that friend call him out on being a selfish brat, and express disappointment. Force him to come to terms with the fact he's unlikable.

 

Nobody is so cut off from the world that there isn't something that would draw a rise from them. If you want to change the character without repurposing him OOCly, then make him suffer and hurt and teach him a lesson. He'll either endure and push on, or he won't, and then you can rewrite him knowing that at least he tried.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

I usually try to avoid rewriting a character or retconning them.

 

But when struggling with a character, I do find it helpful to reanalyse their goals, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc.

 

What makes the character tick? Do they have any particular reason for acting that way? What would it take for them to want to change? How have other people's interactions with that character shaped them? Is it good? Would the character see it as good?

 

Giving a character the equivalent of a lobotomy may have the desired effects, but at that point, would you consider them the same character? If you're having difficulty RPing the character, is it a sign that the character may be nearing retirement? (Remember, a character's "story" doesn't have to have a happy ending. Or an ending. Or death. They could just seemingly continue their days untold.)

[Nero]

The short answer is "whatever you want".

 

The long answer is something quite a bit more complicated. Let's not think about the character for a moment. What is it that you want to do?

 

Do you want to get into plotlines? Do you want your character to develop? Do you want to be able to engage in casual slice-of-life RP on a whim?

 

You said there was a complete disconnect on what they are and what you want them to be. What's stopping you from developing the character into what you want them to be?

 

There is nothing inherently wrong with a character who acts unlikeable or has an unpleasant personality, mostly because whether or not something or someone is likeable is fairly subjective. The problem comes from a character being one-dimensional. Either A). the character's behaviour seems forced or arbitrary or B). the character has absolutely no positive traits or qualities.

 

So you have a character who's petty, egotistical, contrarian, and likes to push people's buttons and get them riled just for laughs.

 

My recommendation? Add dimension. What does your character care about? What gets your character angry? What qualities do they see as redeemable in people? If you can answer any of these questions, then you can assign personality traits to them that make them marginally likeable enough--even in very esoteric contexts--to get RP going.

 

Even Stalin had two wives.

[C'kayah Polaali]

I agree with Merc here. If the character is really unredeemable (and I usually take that to mean "no fun to play" - if you're enjoying playing them, then there's no real reason to change), it might be time for the spotlight of your RP to move away from their life. Make a new character (by fantasia/namechanging this one, or an alt, or however you choose) and try something new.

 

That said, probably the biggest piece of advice I can give is make a character that adds to other people's RP. Lots of people pay attention to their character's motivations and back story and construct all sorts of things that make their character internally consistent and all that. At the end of the day, though, we're looking to RP with other people, and the best way to find that RP is to make sure that your character adds something to their RP. I'm not saying completely dump your own desire for what to play, but I am saying that you want to focus on making sure that the people you're playing with are getting something out of the RP. Think about your character as if they were an extra in someone else's story.

[Meishali]

I think the guys said it all, but I'll still add my two cents.

 

I personally juggle between two characters (sometimes more) with extremely different themes and personalities. And guess what! It helps. 

There are times when your head is just so full of that one character, you need to refresh it, and then get back to work. My 'refreshing' process is playing someone who isn't them at all. Then, when I come back, I'm in with new interactions/ideas.

 

If the problem is really the way the character is built, then something must be done. 

I've seen countless people kill off their chars or straight up CTRL+Z like you said, which is a shame. (especially to all those other players who were in contact with your character before -- it would be so interesting to have them interact with the 2.0 of your character! It would give great RP opportunities to these other people.)

 

People do change, and you don't have strip them from their essence to show it. Lucile in my case was meant to be an elusive, wandering bard running away from an abusive household. Problem is that as a consequence, it made her dishonest and paranoid to the point that my IC interactions became more and more limited, making her a fairly isolated character. 

So I made sure she wouldn't have to run away anymore, and made her a more trusting, trustworthy, and honest character. But she's still on the road, she still likes to play, to sing, to do leves and drink until she passes out.

 

While major events are often excellent triggers, you can build it up more slowly. What you need to do is write down what you know about your character, and what makes him/her what he is. Once the list is there, take out the bad apples that you realize make your RP just boring, and replace them, put things you /want/ to RP with.

 

From that, decide the RP reasons that would make him/her change. It can be a series of small events, or one big thing, or both. That's the real literary exercise I can't help you with, as I don't know your character.

 

As for the rest, make sure these new things will enable interactivity. Remember that RP is collaborative writing! So what kind of material can you provide to others with these new elements?

 

Experiment, brother.

[Dat Oni]

I think the issue with trying to reboot your character is that you're retconning encounters with what is probably a bunch of people by now. If you have any dedicated friends or foes, this puts a lot of guilt on you. 

 

That's my issue with Edgar, sadly.

[Kurt S.]

I guess I ended up writing and implying myself into a corner with her.

 

Most of the interactions she's had are usually those one off things. Like you meet these people for the best part of...5 minutes and then they're gone forever. I dunno I thought it'd be cool to write that into her. How she's literally being left alone by her ego...but then that never exactly panned out like I thought it would. Left her in a mindset of 'hey I'm still pretty lonely anyway what's the point?'

 

I mean I would like to just handwave some of that stuff in behind the scenes, but I've done so much behind the scenes with her I sometimes I wonder why she was ever IC again in the first place. I mean it'd be cool to have someone slap the whiny little bitch out of her, but if it's just back to the same 'this happened behind the scenes' because there is no one out there who has the balls to slap the bitch out of her...I dunno. It just really makes me wonder if she's an actual RP character at this point with so much done in the background.

 

It also probably doesn't help that for the most part I can like RP her at like 12 midnight after a long day. Yes my timezone pretty much puts my non-busy hours at EST mornings/ EU afternoons (I think) and I gotta say, with the Quickie Sands as my metric, place is pretty dead. 

 

Then just lie down and remember how she USED to handle these things versus how she just handled it.