How did you come up with your character?

[111]

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.

 

[Dartamian N'astal]

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.

[Ildur]

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.

[Braise]

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.

[SunKittyEm]

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.

[John Spiegel]

John Spiegel is an adaptation and reimaging of the FFXI character I RP'd. He's a highlander whose birthname is Jnsyn Silversheath but he goes by John Spiegel (as well as other names really). The character was my first attempt at RP, back in XI I was fresh-faced with anime and took attributes from Spike from Cowboy Bebop (namely the name and his playful nature) and mannerisms from Vash from Trigun. It's a little blurry back then but suffice to say it was a rocky road the first months as I was rough around the edges.

 

Through the years back in XI, JJ grew to be a rather complicated character. But still a goofy son of a bitch. The character grew as I went through my lovely teenage years. I came to find out how I RP JJ's fighting nature to be similar to that of Guts from Berserker.

 

In XIV, now that I'm older and matured, I took what JJ was at the core and adapted it XIV. He's an outwardly goofy bastard that talks a lot (about nothing, really) and keeps a lot of things close to the vest... things he doesn't even tell his children or even his now deceased wife. He's in his 50s and has been fighting his whole life, his body shows this with scars. His vitality is near infinite, he's always on go and full of life. In XI, JJ was a Musketeer/adventurer/madman. In XIV he holds no national alliances and distrusts government to do things.. he frequently probably breaks laws to achieve justice. JJ don't care. JJ don't give a #*%@. He seeks no reward or glory. JJ just does.

 

 

Alex and Grace are the adult versions of the babies JJ fathered back in XI. In XI, their mother was a monk. I adapted that to XIV as her being a Fist of Rhaglr and her father heading a sect within it. Alex takes after his dad in his dad's youth, meek and mild-mannered while Grace takes JJ's playful nature but her mother's quick-acting temper. They really have no inspirations past that, though.

 

 

Got a little off track buuut... weee!

[Erik Mynhier]

 

We are now friends for life Nat because Bob Ross is one of my heroes.

[UltraFennec]

I...made up a name. And thought a bit about how much I liked the Dancer in FF11. That was the only time I played the game for an actual stretch. Something like 8 months before other things and university/life finally made me pull the plug. 

 

So I tried to create a background that would 'prep' her for becoming a dancer type should they ever release that as a Job, and made her a Pugilist until then because I like martial arts and I figured I could fake the Dancer by cross-classing some of the basic buffing and healing abilities from Conjurer or Arcanist or something.

 

That's...pretty much the only thing that's been consistent with her honestly. My first character in every game I play is a jumbled mess of influences and things and I *usually* end up deleting them and going with someone more focused and considered...

 

But I really like her appearance, and I've put in enough time that I'm gonna keep her...probably as an alt until I can get her story straight and/or something Dancer-like comes along...

[Mijisaa Qisaa]

I think Miji just kind of happened. I'd never RP'd before so I drew a lot on my theatre experience to bring her to life. But she totally morphed on me. She started out sweet, innocent, kind but now she's the head of a mob family. I found myself searching for something new and I never got to play a lawful evil character.  Miji is perfect for it.  She's the last Lala you could expect for that sort of life and she's cultivated a mob family that seems to keep growing. Playing a lawful evil can be challenging because I have to always check my RP to make sure it's what she would actually think/do.

 

I came in with a completely different story for her but now I let her happen. I write stories about her for my FC which helps me develop her way of thinking and her perspective on life, which allows my RP sessions to flow better.  It's been a great experience!

[Entity]

Lets see...I've been drawing since I was 8, and writing stories since I was in...4th-5th grade? Though back then it was all about Sonic fanfics, because I had such an obsession with Sonic back  then. But then a good friend of mine showed me anime and that's when things changed for me almost entirely, and I wound making more original stories since anime had more room for creativity as a pose to using both a style and setting that was already implemented.

 

Eventually I got more interested in making characters after I spent enough time  playing the FF series along with other RPG franchises. Of course, this doesn't mean I disposed of the characters I make before then. I simply rehashed them (if that's the term to use for this description) and turned them into something more original rather than being based off of a style and world that already exists, and just went from there. I grabbed all the ideas I came up with in my fanfics and recycled them into something I could use and create on my own. Took a lot of work, but I'm glad I did it.

 

As I got older I found it a little hard to connect with these characters in a real genuine way, and that's when the genre of melodrama, conflict, and struggle gave me an idea. Not only did I see it fitting to provide them with ample challenges that would always keep them on their own feet, but also I felt it even more enterprising to give them their own faults and difficulties (this is when I started to hate characters like Superman), so as to make them more believable as a character you can bond or connect with.

 

The final step in my means to creating my characters didn't come until college, when I learned more about my favorite anime's creators and how they created THEIR characters. What I found is that in many of them, they often put a piece of themselves into the character they made, making it easier for them to create the character as well as their entire being and develop upon it as they went through the world and story they were placed in. Since discovering that, almost all of my characters, both ones that already had existed as well as ones I make, all have some small or large part of myself that allows me to have more fun with my character and really generate them down to the very core of their being. Yes, creating a character CAN get pretty complex, depending on how much work you want to put into it. However, like I said in another post, you also can't love what you create too much, because at that point one tends to go outside the limitations and rules one set for their own character, which to me just sounds so bad. Don't be afraid to kill off your characters, I think if it is done right, and done gracefully, people won't forget your character so easily, whether they're a hero, villain, or vagrant/vagabond, etc.

 

As far as RP goes, I have not done it as long as some people here, but it was an easy thing for me to get into because I would always act out my characters (when no one was looking, lol.) to get a feel for who they are. It was because of a friend I met in Aion who got me to come out of the closet and try out RP that I started to see storywriting and character development in a new light. RP makes you realize pretty quickly that, if you really want to go somewhere with what you make, RP is one such example of the kind of environment you may wind up in when working with a company or a group of people on creating a story, or world. It teaches you about interaction, compromise, and sacrifice. I say sacrifice for the same reason why it's okay to kill off characters. Learning about interaction allows you the luxury of personalizing your character, and really getting to know and figure out how your character responds to influences and contact with other people. Learning about compromise is being able to agree upon a certain outcome or turn of events, and preparing oneself to adapt to the changes that can occur with not just your character, but the world your character is in as well as the interactions you make. Finally, learning sacrifice, it allows you to be able to move on with a story without having to constantly depend on the characters you've had for a long time, or "become obsessed" with your character and story. It's being able to end a character's journey or life and pave the way for a new plethora, world, and future, of characters to come, be they yours, theirs, or characters created together. This is but a small breadth of what RP communities have taught me about character creation and story development.

 

Gosh, I always have a penchant for writing a lot in my posts. But to put it simply? A good character to me is one that tells a little bit about the creator, is faced with challenges, and can come face to face with sacrifice and compromise, or something that can potentially change and even end their life, which is the ultimate challenge of making a character, in my opinion. Also, to add to that, a character that is capable of having a lasting effect on an audience, be it good or bad, even in death. That is what my routine of characters are like. I'm not sure if I answered your question, but I hope you found this response helpful, lol.