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Wednesday, 10:19 am in Furc!

Watch out guys, it’s another Furcadia post…

One of the most common things I hear on Furc (after “wow nice port who did it”) is that I have a good character.  People seem to constantly be pleased that he is ‘well thought-out’ and ‘original’.  I have to confess, I’m always a bit baffled by this; to illustrate my bafflement, here is furc!Loki in a nutshell:

An ex-god.  Undead.  Immortal.  Has the power to manipulate fire.  Can sense magic, either active or latent.  Seven feet tall.  Male but androgynous.  Doesn’t wear a shirt.  Wears a leather dress and a fur stole.  Smokes; both cigarettes and a hookah.  Scarred.  Has glowing, pupil-less eyes and silver hair.  Empathic.  No real weaknesses.  Physically very much above average.  Wisecracking.  Aloof and arrogant.  A good fighter.  Demonic in appearance.  Has permanent ‘make-up’ burnt into his skin.  Multiple piercings.  A master thief and con artist.  Has strange blood.  Last of his kind.

You know, like every other character in Furcadia.  There is nothing special or ‘original’ about Loki; he’s no more well-thought-out that any other long-term (about ten years now I think) character.  Mostly, he’s just a hodge-podge collection of traits that, over the years, I’ve found ‘cool’.  Hell, his colouration still shows its roots in the Beetlejuice cartoon I used to obsess over as a kid (there is literally no other reason why his fingers are red to the first knuckle).

So, Dee, I hear you ask; what’s the secret?  How do you fool the unwashed masses into thinking you’ve developed a ‘good’ character when really, like everyone else, you’ve just recycled a bunch of clichés to vicariously indulge in?  Well, hopefully you’ll all still remember last time when I went on at length about why I don't para-rp.  I touched on a couple of character-creation issues in that, namely around so-called ‘overpowered’ characters, and mentioned ad nauseum that the fundamental line between what is a ‘bad’ character and what is a ‘good’ character is simply the skill of the writer in getting us to empathise with her creation.  I can even go so far as to boldly claim I can demonstrate this empirically; Loki sounds like a fun character, and so I get a lot of invites to RP.  However, as soon as most people realise that, no, he doesn’t want to be their character’s ‘friend’ and no, he’s not going to stop doing things that he knows constantly irritate their characters (the name thing especially) they tend to go cold; they de-empathise, and Loki goes from being ‘original’ to ‘yet another arrogant bastard character’.  Yes kids, I know the concept’s been done.  I even state both these things quite plainly on his character site, several times I believe.  And I know most people don’t want to play against a character like that (which is, again, something I specifically state).  But I digress.  What I was really going to do today was give you all a helpful run-down on Character Creation and Play 101.  You ready?

Step #1: The Concept

Okay, so you wanna make a character?  Well, first you’ve got to start off with a concept.  Contrary to popular belief, this doesn’t have to be anything spectacular or ground breaking.  It doesn’t have to be original, and it doesn’t have to avoid pandering to your vanity (though it is probably true that if you do your job will likely be harder).  If you want to make a dogged cop, go for it.  You want to make a demonic dragon?  Go for it.  And you want to make yet another gay vampire?  Go for that, too.  Hell, make all three at once.  While you’re at it, think of a name.  Names, at the very least, are where I suggest you at least try and be a little bit original.  Unless you’re specifically naming your character after some kind of mythological figure (ie. he is the angel Ammael, he is Spartacus), avoid things that are too obviously derivative.  So no ‘Sara de Lioncourt’, please.  Also, stay the fuck away from Japanese names unless you are 100% sure that you can pull it off.  I’m going to give you a hint right now; you can’t.  Especially if any part of your ‘Japanese’ name comes from an anime (or any movie featuring a little girl falling out of a TV).  Let that be sufficient warning.  I will also give a lukewarm warning against ‘descriptive’ adjective-noun names, like ‘Shadowpaw’ or ‘Silentfang’, mostly because they’re so passée.

While you’re thinking up your name, it’s a perfect opportunity to start fleshing out your character a little bit.  Why are they called what they’re called?  Is their name their birth name?  If so, was it given to them by their parents or someone else?  Do they have a surname?  Is their surname a family name or something titular?  If it’s the latter, what did they do to acquire it?  If their name isn’t their ‘birth’ name, what was their birth name?  Who changed it?  Why?

I’m not saying you necessarily need to have a huge, long, drawn-out story behind the name of every character.  To use the above example, once upon a time I had a character named Samuel le Chevallier. His true name was Sammael, and he was an angel.  Sam was his ‘human’ name, appointed to him by another character because it sounded similar to Sammael.  I got the surname le Chevallier from looking at the author list on a reference book I happened to have sitting next to me at the time (I believe it means ‘the Knight’ or something similar when spelt correctly in French, but that was more-or-less irrelevant to why I chose it).

So now you have a basic concept, and a name.  Time to do a bit more fleshing out.  So you’re a demonic vampire detective dragon.  Cool.  How?  Were you a detective first, or a demon or a dragon or a vampire?  How did you become a vampire?  Who was your sire, and why and in what circumstances did they chose you?  How did you become a detective?  Did you go through a police academy?  Where?  Are you still employed by a police force, or did you leave?   What happened to make you go?  How did you become a demon?  Were you born that way or is it a trait you somehow acquired?  How?  What ‘kind’ of demon are you?  What does being a demon mean, exactly?  What specific abilities or weaknesses does this confer?  How does this manifest in you physically?  Mentally?  How do other people react to your demon heritage?  Do they shrink away without knowing why?  Does it arouse their sense of dangerous curiosity?  Are demons inherently evil?  Does this confer to you?  Where does your draconic heritage come from?  What kind of dragon are you (if dragons in your ‘verse even have ‘kinds’)?  How do your draconic traits manifest?  Do you have wings?  If so, can you fly?  How?  Are you a ‘full’ dragon or some kind of half-breed?  Do you constantly manifest in a draconic form or do you have a more human appearance?  Do you even have a ‘draconic’ form?  Are you a typical scaled Western-dragon, or do you have fur or feathers?  Are you an Asiatic dragon?  Are dragons feared or respected?

Note that at this point I’m going to point out the obvious; with things like demons, dragons and vampires (oh my!) we have a set of pre-conceived stereotypes in our heads about what beings from these races ‘are’.  Our dragons generally come from Dungeons and Dragons; they come in coloured ‘flights’ (to mix in some Warcraft terms) that define their basic traits.  Chromatic dragons are ‘evil’, metallic dragons are ‘good’, gem dragons and ‘neutral’ (I think) and so on.  They are scaled, huge, intelligent, long-lived, capable of flight and breathe ‘fire’ (or cold, or acid, or whatever; they have a breath weapon, to use DnD terms).  Demons, on the other hand, are inherently and often irredeemably evil.  They come from hell(s).  They enjoy the suffering of others.  They are hierarchical (ie. there are ‘boss’ demons and subordinate demons) and, for the most part, based on Judeo-Christian ideals.  Our modern idea of vampires, on the other hand, is generally that of the Anne Rice/Vampire: the Masquerade variety – beautiful, amoral, immortal, created – with perhaps a bit of Buffy thrown in – soulless, evil, ‘morphing’, possessed.  They are weak against fire and sunlight.  They need to feed on blood to survive.  They are supernatural, nocturnal, fast-healing and almost immune to damage.  They have a strange weakness to stakes through the heart, beheadings, garlic, water and holy symbols.  They can turn into bats, mist and/or wolves.   They are somehow subtly both repulsive and attractive to humans.

The question here becomes do you play against type or not?  The St. George/DnD version of dragons is not the only one; Asian, South American and Persian mythologies all contained dragon-like figures different from their Western interpretations.  Three ‘demons’ (and one dragon) make up four of the five main characters in the seminal Buddhist story, Xi Yóu Jì (known as Monkey or Journey to the West in English, and Saiyuki in Japanese).  These characters escort a Buddhist monk across China and into India on a holy pilgrimage, and in doing so achieve enlightenment for themselves; showing a greater sense of free will than traditional, Western demons (who are usually irredeemably evil for the sake of it).  And there are as many different takes on vampires as their are cultures that have had them (which is to say; most), including the vampire watermelons of Romania.  Recent pop culture takes on vampires often focus on a more ‘science-centric’ version of vampirism; that is, a communicable, blood-borne disease that causes photosensitivity and a kind of anaemia, but may also conversely bestow heightened physical attributes.  Note also that attempting to play against type (ie. having a character that doesn’t conform to the ‘normal’ stereotype of its race) might itself be a kind of ‘type’.  There’s a running in-joke amongst DnD gamers about the supposedly ‘evil’ drow race of dark elves; the huge popularity of the character Drizzt Do’Urden has lead to an explosion in the amount of “good loner-outcast” drow characters, leading some gamers to quip that the “entire drow population is composed of angst-ridden chaotic good drow rebelling against contemporary drow society.”  The popularity of the Buffyverse characters Spike and Angel has done the same thing for vampires; though old school Anne Rice fans might argue that they’re just treading down the path already cleared by everyone’s favourite existentialist vampire rockstar, Lestat.  Playing a stereotypical example of a race or not is up to you, but being different in this case doesn’t necessarily make your character better or more interesting.  I’ve seen a lot of ham-fisted and quite frankly boring kind vampires and good demons in my day.

Step #2: The Character

No matter if your character is human, supernatural, furre or miscellaneous, she undoubtedly comes from some kind of culture containing others of her kind.  No-one grows up in a vacuum.  No matter if she’s rebelling against her society or not (if so; why?), it’s helpful to get at least a basic handle on the kind of upbringing she’s had.  Was she born in a city or a village or engineered in a vat of amino acids?  Who were her parents and/or siblings?  Are they still around?  What were some of the cultural tenets of where she lived?  How were women treated?  Foreigners?  What was the major religion?  What were common local pastimes?  If she was created, how?  How many others of her race are there?  Where are they?  How have the events from her childhood effected her current behaviour?  Does she even remember her childhood?  If not, why not (note: ‘amnesia’ by itself is not an answer)?  What language do her people speak?

It’s about this time where you’re going probably going to have started to develop what is known as an archetype for your character.  Archetypes are yet another kind of literary shorthand.  Boiled down to the bare-bones, they come in three types; hero, anti-hero and villain.

The Hero is fairly self-explanatory; she is good and bold and (generally) virtuous, defender of the weak and doer of fantastic deeds.  Frodo, Harry Potter, Superman and King Arthur are all examples of archetypical Heroes.  Heroes generally start from ‘humble beginnings’ (farm hands, orphans, that sort of thing) until some kind of dingus (The One Ring, Hogwarts, being an alien, the Sword in the Stone) manifests itself and drives the proto-Hero on the Hero’s Journey, which generally involves overcoming some kind of impossible adversity.  The Hero’s Journey or ‘monomyth’, originally described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, is arguably the oldest plot line in human history, and has been producing stories for literally thousands of years.  The Hero herself traditionally embodies all the traits that are considered to be of paramount importance in whatever culture spawned her; honesty, fairness, kindness, truthfulness, self-sacrifice and so forth.  Heroes are not always flawlessly perfect; so-called ‘tragic heroes’ are otherwise honourable characters that have some kind of massive flaw that eventually leads to their downfall.  Sirius Black and Anakin Skywalker are generally cited as being the two most well-known examples of modern tragic heroes, but it should also be pointed out that this role in recent years (i.e the last hundred or so) has been increasingly usurped by the anti-hero, and the two words are often interchangeable.

The Anti-Hero is a much more common figure in modern pop culture (and literature, for that matter).  Anti-Heroes are a bit like Heroes, except they possess some traits (often a lot of traits) that are non-heroic.  Han Solo and Batman are the two ‘classic’ anti-heroes, though it’s interesting to note that the anti-hero is slowly encroaching on the territory usually reserved for the full-blown hero.  Like the Hero, the Anti-Hero generally embarks on some kind of Hero’s Journey, though he is generally reluctantly dawn into it, as opposed to the more willing Hero.  Some Anti-Heroes, especially in modern pop culture, are arguably not actually anti-heroes at all, but are in fact villains who have the luxury of having the story told from their point of view, thus drawing the sympathies of the audience; Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and Light Yagami are two comic examples.  Neither have any particularly redeeming features (and both are maniacal spree killers), yet they are the protagonists of their own respective stories.  I should point out that this kind of anti-hero is much easier to do in fiction where one person controls all the characters than it is to do in RP.

Finally, of all the archetypes, Villains are the hardest of all to do well.  Unlike tragic or anti-heroes, the Villain has absolutely no redeeming characteristics whatsoever, and generally does evil simply for the sake of doing evil.  The most difficult thing about Villains is not only giving them ‘evil’ acts to do (in this age of moral relativism; what constitutes an evil act is sometimes difficult to pin down), but giving them worthwhile, believable reasons to do those acts.  “Because they’re evil” generally doesn’t cut it (unless you’re Satan, and even then possibly not; is being the source of all evil actually ‘evil’ if you’ve been commanded to do it by God?).  The thing is, very, very few people in the Really Real World who perform ‘evil’ acts actually think of themselves as, well, doing evil acts.  Hitler was a warmongering mass-murderer, but the really frightening part about Hitler was not that he gassed lots of minorities, but that – as far as anyone could tell – he not only honestly believed what he was doing was right, but got other people to honestly agree with him.  Undoubtedly Hitler didn’t wake up in the morning waxing his moustache and cackling maniacally, counting off how many Jews he was going to persecute that day.  He probably woke up thinking about how he was going to rebuild the might of Germany; when they weren’t persecuting minority groups the Nazis were also quite pro-social and state health programs.  Generally, Villains in literature are shown as being some combination of ignoble, dishonest and socipathically selfish to a degree that excludes them from being anti-heroes.  They are generally power-hungry at the expense of others, and usually hold social values that are diametrically opposed to the protagonist-group.  Villains are a bit of a catch-22, since they almost always run the risk of becoming popular characters; a precedent that can be traced back to Satan from Milton’s Paradise Lost, who is generally considered to be the only worthwhile character in the whole boring tome.  The modern examples are, of course, Agent Smith and the entire population of House Slytherin.  J.K. Rowling was reportedly horrified to discover the sheer popularity of characters like Voldemort and Severus Snape.  In inexpert hands this kind of reader backlash can then cause a kind of author-backlash in which villainous characters suddenly ‘ramp up’ their villainy in seemingly arbitrary and out-of-character ways.  Alan Moore’s seminal Killing Joke graphic novel is often criticised – when it is criticised at all – for the Joker’s seemingly arbitrary shooting and sexual assault of Batgirl; people point out that, up until this point, the Joker had been almost entirely asexual (often to the frustration of Harley Quinn) and the assault seemed a very out-of-character action designed only to make the Joker seem ‘evil’.  Speaking of the Joker, incidentally, superhero comics are one of the few refuges of the ‘traditional’ evil-for-evil’s-sake Villains.  (One of the themes in Killing Joke is of the ‘One Bad Day’; the Joker points out that while his One Bad Day lead him to becoming a criminal, Bruce Wayne’s One Bad Day lead him to becoming a(n anti-)hero.  Batman’s refutation, incidentally, was pretty weak; Moore is known as being antagonistic to superheroes in general, so this might be deliberate.)

The Holy Trinity of character archetypes, then, poses the obvious question; which is your character?  This can be broken down even further into which does your character think he is, and which do other people generally see your character as.  There are also archetypes within archetypes; the Trickster is often an anti-hero, the Sage a hero, the Gatekeeper either a anti-hero or villain, and so forth.  There is nothing, incidentally, inherently wrong with drawing characters out from this stock base of literary clichés; using an archetype does not in and of itself make a character a one-dimensional stereotype, and many extremely popular characters run fairly straight down archetypical lines.  The problem with bad characterisation comes not from using an archetype as a starting point, but using an archetype as a stopping point.  Figuring out if your character is a Trickster Anti-Hero or a Hero-Sage or a Femme-Fatale Villain is good to sketch a rough outline, and will help you keep ‘in character’ to a certain degree, but it won’t fill in the details.  There’s only really one way to fill in your details, and that’s to get to know your character.  Ask questions, give answers, ask more questions from those answers, keep the cycle going, ad infinitum, until you know your character and his motivations better than you know yourself.  Because that’s more or less your objective here.

Step #3: IC is for Drama; OOC is for Friendships

I’m going to state this in big bold letters, since a lot of people have trouble with it and it’s the number one cause of bad characterization: you are not your character.  It’s highly likely that your character is based on and does things that you would like to do, but when it comes down to it, your character is not you.  Your character, however, is a little bit like you in the respect that every action she takes has some kind of justification from her history.  The kinds of people she likes, the kinds of people she doesn’t, whether she drinks, how she reacts to danger, what she’s afraid of… no-one does anything just because.  It’s far, far too common to run across characters in Furc (and fiction) who act the way they do simply to appease the egos of their creators; they flirt and fight and ‘cuddle’ and insult ‘just because’.  This is an appalling way to RP; seriously, don’t do it.  I’d rather RP with a godmodding twink than someone whose character is merely a one-dimensional, vacuous extension of themselves.  In the Really Real World we rarely ask ourselves why we, as individuals, act the way we do; we don’t have to investigate the roots of our behaviour because it’s our behaviour, it comes naturally to us, we don’t have to exert conscious will to act ‘in character’.  When roleplaying, we don’t have that luxury; it’s trite but true that to do a character well we need to know them better than we know ourselves.  We need to know not only what they would do in any one situation but why; once you can get this down, you’ve reached the mysterious and highly sought-after goal of Consistent Characterization.  You’ll often hear authors talking about their characters as if they are separate entities that have their own opinions and semi-autonomous actions; this is generally the end result of a well-developed character, one whose personality is so well understood by the author that their actions seem ‘natural’ (ie. the author is able to stay ‘in character’ without any conscious effort).

Characters that reach this point are good characters.  Full stop.  You may not personally like them, but they nevertheless cause an emotive reaction; you become invested in them and their actions, even if it’s from a negative perspective.  No matter what type of character – hero, anti-hero, villain, comic relief, damsel in distress, et al – no matter how clichéd or indulgent the concept, if we the audience get invested enough that we believe that the character is real, then the author has done their job.

That’s all great for writing, Dee, I hear you asking, but how does this apply to roleplaying?  Good question.  It applies by reminding us that even though, to a certain extent, we ‘are’ our RP characters, our RP characters are also separate entities who have different histories, goals and desires to us.  We need to know what they are in order to avoid accidentally falling into ‘gaps’ in our character’s personality.  What do I mean by this?  Well, when we design characters we tend to design them with a certain pre-defined set of expectations about what type of situations and characters they will encounter.  “My character is an amoral assassin.”  Well, that’s well and good if he’s sneaking in windows and smothering people with their pillows, but what happens if he has to go to a cocktail party?  Is he comfortable there?  Why?  What would he wear?  Why?  Who would he make small talk with?  What about?  His job?  His invented cover persona?  Obviously we can’t pre-plan every situation out beforehand.  However if we know our characters well enough we can hopefully avoid the trap of ‘butterfly reactions’; that is, falling out of character in unexpected situations and ‘stopping up’ the gaps with either external stimuli (“this other person in the scene says one thing so I will incorporate that into my character too”) or our own personalities (“if I were at a cocktail party I’d do this”).  While we’re playing our characters we need to make sure they keep in character.

What happens to our characters stays with our characters.  If they have IC-rivalries or enemies, we need to make sure we’re mature enough as players to keep those relationships as strictly IC.  A lot of people have problems with this and personally I’ve always though it was a pride issue.  We invest a lot of emotion and effort into our characters and it’s hard not to take it as a personal slight when other people don’t think they’re as fantabulous as we do.  Get over it.  Fess up to the fact that not every player is going to like your character.  Not only that, but even if other players do think your character is great, their characters might not.  I’ve had this a couple of times when people I’ve been RPing with realise that, no, my character Loki isn’t interested in being their character’s ‘friend’.  Loki doesn’t ‘do’ friends; and I can give you some very structured reasons why.  So while I personally may like someone, that doesn’t mean that my character is going to by default ‘play nice’ with theirs.  It goes further.  Just because you think your character is acting ‘cute’ doesn’t mean that it’s going to be construed that way by any other character (and, sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to the fact that ‘cute’ really is nine times out of ten actually ‘annoying’).  Just because you think your character is a badass, doesn’t mean anyone else is going to automatically be intimidated by her.  Just because your character wants to win friends and influence people doesn’t mean that that motivation is shared by every other character.  Just because you think your character is hot doesn’t mean everyone else wants to jump his bones.  Just because your character likes to ‘cuddle’ and touch others doesn’t mean every character has to enjoy their personal space being violated.  I could go on.

When I’m RPing I generally keep up a constant stream of OOC whisper-talk giving peanut-gallery style commentary on my character’s actions.  I suspect this annoys some people no end (tough), but the reason I do it is to distance my own opinions from that of my character.  Quite frankly, I enjoy playing drama and fight scenes and general antagonism – I much prefer it to the bland, plotless “let’s be friends!” style encounters – so long as it stays in character.  Because my main RP character is so cold and antagonistic, I keep up a running OOC commentary to try and gauge the reaction of whomever I happen to be roleplaying with; if it seems to me like they’re taking his attitude too personally, I’ll break off the RP.  Having a ‘bastard’ character is never an excuse to be deliberately cruel to other players; but go nuts on their characters.

• Tags » characters, furc, furcadia, furn, roleplaying, writing
• Comments By » Secura, Ceres