Creating High Quality Characters

[Linaze]

How to create a high quality character

Characters have the most important task in a story game or such, it is their duty to make sure that the reader / gamer etc keeps the interest in the game or story. Without good characters, a storyline cannot become good, take the warcraft lore for example. There is extremly advanced characters involved in their story, take Thrall for example. There are records of his entire life, there is even a whole book about him. An example of a bad and a good character is shortly displayed below, it is not a long example but just to make you understand the difference.

1.BEGINNING OF CHARACTER CREATION

Now first of all, ask yourself this: "What is this character's goal in the story/game/what so ever", is it to make the story go on, like it cannot with the character, or is it a character that helps the main character, like a trainer or mentor. Perhaps the character is a merchant, but still has a large enough role to be worth to put time into creating him/her. Now follow the steps below to be done with part 1 of the character creation.

1.0. Open notepad, wordpad, word or whatever program you will use to document your character.

1.1. Many people believe that they should begin with coming up with a name for the character, which in my opinion is wrong, since the name should be based upon race, heritage, also gender which in my opinion goes over all other. Begin with filling in the following things about your character: "Gender", "Race", "Childhood", "Class" and probably the most important, "Role in the story/game". For an explanation of the four previously named, Gender, which gender the character has, for most races that'd be male or female. Race, which race your character has, Human, Orc, Undead etc. Childhood, how did they grow up, like Thrall in imprisonment, or like the son of a farmer, only your fantasy set limitations, the class is which class your character is, Fighter, Archer, Merchant, King etc. For the role in story, that pretty much tells itself. Once your done with this, it should be something like this:

Example

Gender: Male
Race: Human
Childhood: Grew up in the grasslands of Astori, was the son of a peasant who lived by selling grain and wheat to the village of Dinám who was just a few kilometers away from their farm.
Hero-Type: Warrior
Role in the story: Main character who knows little that he one day shall challenge the current dragon champion for control over the mountains of thousand tops and free the elven world from his corrupted rule.

1.2. So now we got a unnamed character who only has very little data about him, it is time to give the character a name, using the information we have, I think it is pretty easy to come up with a fitting name. He's a human, a guy and a warrior. Since he was raised in a farm that sold wheat and grain, that doesn't sound Asian, since they would probably grow and sell rice instead. So a European name would be more fitting, I think. For this character, I will choose the name Morgen Dagh. The next thing to fill in is age, siblings and parents. The reason too fill in age now and not before is that you should not base the age on the name because you think that a old character should have an old-sounding name, like Merlin. But remember that the character has not always been old. Though age should be the age of the character when the story begins. However, here follows.

Example

Gender: Male
Race: Human
Childhood: Grew up in the grasslands of Astori, was the son of a peasant who lived by selling grain and wheat to the village of Dinám who was just a few kilometers away from their farm.
Hero-Type: Warrior
Role in the story: Main character who knows little that he one day shall challenge the current dragon champion for control over the mountains of thousand tops and free the elven world from his corrupted rule.

Name: Morgen Dagh
Age: 23 years old.
Parents: Father Josef age of 40, farmer in Astori, mother Maria died when Morgen was very young but he has a few memories of her.
Siblings: None.

Now we know a little bit more about the family of the character, and thus we have given the character a little bit of background, now many of you surely believe, nice, now I can start making my story / map or whatever. NO, is my simple response to that, if you want a simple story map with no patience to make decent characters, then yes, you should stop here. Though if you want quality characters, quality story, then the next section is the section for you.

2.CONTINUATION ON CHARACTERS ROLE IN STORY AND ADDING APPEARANCE

2.0. With the basic concept of the character already done, in this step you will make the character get a role in the story, to make difference in a story. We are going to add the following to the character: "Immediate Goal", "Long Term Goal" and "3 things that want to be improve about themselves". The reason for adding these things is because basically these are the things the character's are going to, or failing trying to do. Perhaps if the character was hunter, he would want to immediately to hunt a boar and eat it, and his long-term goal would be to perhaps hunt down the wolf pack leader. 3 things that want to be improve about themselves are for example: "Get stronger", "Become more of a daredevil" and "Become less of a coward". Now to fill those things in, when you're done it should look something like this, with your data, of course.

Example

Gender: Male
Race: Human
Childhood: Grew up in the grasslands of Astori, was the son of a peasant who lived by selling grain and wheat to the village of Dinám who was just a few kilometers away from their farm.
Hero-Type: Warrior
Role in the story: Main character who knows little that he one day shall challenge the current dragon champion for control over the mountains of thousand tops and free the elven world from his corrupted rule.

Name: Morgen Dagh
Age: 23 years old.
Parents: Father Josef age of 40, farmer in Astori, mother Maria died when Morgen was very young but he has a few memories of her.
Siblings: None.

Immediate Goal: Find Roshuka, rumored to be the greatest trainer ever and gain his training to become stronger.
Long-Term Goal: Free the elven civilization by killing the current evil dragon champion who uses dragons to get his will trough.
3 things that want to be improve about themselves: "Get stronger physically", "Become less shy with girls" and "Become more of a daredevil".

2.1. Now it is time to add what many could've been waiting for, adding appearance to the character, which means how the character looks. We are going to add "Hair style and color", "Eye color", "Body shape", "Skin color", "Commonly used clothing" and "Special marks or scars". It is very important to detail the character's look as much as possible, especially for books since the reader see's only letters and without images and a good description, he/she can't really get a feeling of how the character looks. Fill the following in and it should be something like this:

Example

Gender: Male
Race: Human
Childhood: Grew up in the grasslands of Astori, was the son of a peasant who lived by selling grain and wheat to the village of Dinám who was just a few kilometers away from their farm.
Hero-Type: Warrior
Role in the story: Main character who knows little that he one day shall challenge the current dragon champion for control over the mountains of thousand tops and free the elven world from his corrupted rule.

Name: Morgen Dagh
Age: 23 years old.
Parents: Father Josef age of 40, farmer in Astori, mother Maria died when Morgen was very young but he has a few memories of her.
Siblings: None.

Immediate Goal: Find Roshuka, rumored to be the greatest trainer ever and gain his training to become stronger.
Long-Term Goal: Free the elven civilization by killing the current evil dragon champion who uses dragons to get his will trough.
3 things that want to be improve about themselves: "Get stronger physically", "Become less shy with girls" and "Become more of a daredevil".

Hair style and color: Short brown colored hair.
Eye color: Blue
Body shape: A tall, muscular boy with rather long legs for a boy.
Skin color: Rather brown.
Commonly used clothing: A leather vest, long pants made of animal skin, has a red and white bandanna tied around his head at all time.
Special marks or scars: A scar on the biceps of his right arm he got when he fell down from a tree at young age.

2.2. Hello guys, at last 2.2 is here and this time we shall add the social part to your character, including best friend, greatest enemy, any girlfriend/wife, or someone he just has a crush on. Anyways, we shall now fill these things: "Best Friend", "What does he think about this character?", "Greatest Enemy", "What does the think about this character?", "Engaged, married?", "If yes, What does the think about this character?", "If yes, has your character had an affair with another woman?". Now you're probably that there are lots of "What does the think about this character?", well that my friends is really important to have for when writing dialogs when those two characters are together, I mean you can dislike some things about your best friend, but still like him as a whole. What I mean is that if we have a scenario with the two best friends since childhood are together, but the main character dislikes the fact that his friend swears so much. There wouldn't be much about this, but the main character would probably try to squeeze in "Could you please stop using these swearing words so much, it's rather annoying actually" into the conversation, hope that made it clearer.

Example

Hero-Type: Warrior
Role in the story: Main character who knows little that he one day shall challenge the current dragon champion for control over the mountains of thousand tops and free the elven world from his corrupted rule.

Name: Morgen Dagh
Age: 23 years old.
Parents: Father Josef age of 40, farmer in Astori, mother Maria died when Morgen was very young but he has a few memories of her.
Siblings: None.

Immediate Goal: Find Roshuka, rumored to be the greatest trainer ever and gain his training to become stronger.
Long-Term Goal: Free the elven civilization by killing the current evil dragon champion who uses dragons to get his will trough.
3 things that want to be improve about themselves: "Get stronger physically", "Become less shy with girls" and "Become more of a daredevil".

Hair style and color: Short brown colored hair.
Eye color: Blue
Body shape: A tall, muscular boy with rather long legs for a boy.
Skin color: Rather brown.
Commonly used clothing: A leather vest, long pants made of animal skin, has a red and white bandanna tied around his head at all time.
Special marks or scars: A scar on the biceps of his right arm he got when he fell down from a tree at young age.

Best Friend: Jonathan, a guy from the academy that has always stood up for him.
What does your character think about this character: He thinks Jonathan is a nice guy with good attitude, he dosent really think his friend has any obvious cons.
Greatest Enemy: The current dragon champion, imprisoner of the elves.
What does your character think about this character: He believes that this character is as evil as evil itself. He only wishes to see him fall dead to the ground.
Engaged or married: Neither, but he once had a relationship with a girl he met on a bar called Sarah, but it was never anything serious.
If yes, What does the think about this character? -
If yes, has he had an affair with another woman? -

For now, this tutorial is currently over, but if this gets approved it will be updated, you can and should add more detail to the character, my character is just fast made example and should not be used as a serious template.
I encourage all who used this tutorial to check out: The universal Mary-Sue test which checks if your character is just too, much... Like a girl with perfect looks, afraid of breaking a nail, but still somehow can defeat a dragon without problem is just, weird. Be sure to check out the test, thanks for reading my tutorial, thanks.

 

[Hawkwing]

Positive Comments

[+] Very helpful!
[+] This will come in handy for any project.
[+] It's organized and easy to use.
[+] Very good examples; and they are seperated from the steps (by having them pushed forward).

Negative Comments

[-] The "Goals" section isn't really needed. It should just be in "Role in the Story".
[-] Personally I think you should change Class to "Hero-Type". The Class field is more or less a reference to WoW.
[-] Try to make spaces in between each step. Just press Enter twice once you reach the end of a step.
[-] The last two steps are not bolded.
[-] Under Step One "Begining of Character Creation" make the first step "Step 1.0" instead of "1.1". Make the second step in step two, "Continuation on Characters", "Step 2.2". Etc.
[-] The good and bad examples aren't really needed. They don't have much to do with the overall tutorial. What you have here is more or less a template for displaying information on characters, while those examples are just summaries of the Character's lore. It kind of just throws you off of the purpose of the tutorial.

Comments: Very well done. I am using a more basic version of this for Warcraft Chronicles, but I will use some of what you have shown here as well. I hope this gets approved! This is awsome!

 

[Linaze]

Thanks your Hawkwing for the reply.

I have red carefully what you wrote, and I am grateful for your [+]'s, but also for your [-]'s as I see them as a way to improve the tutorial overall. I fixed all you said, except for removing the "Goals" section. Let me explain how I am thinking. A character's role in the story could be something like this (This is written for a blacksmith-character): "Crafts the sword for Morgen that he needs to fight the dragon champion". Whilst goal could be something like this for example: "Reunite with his daughter who traveled south to join the army several years ago". You can see some clear differences, aight? Thanks again for the reply, hope the quality of this has been somewhat improved now.

 

[rover2341]

wow

Relly cool!

So far i not sure how to put into my current games, but i know by adding that ect bit can make your game that much more rich and give it the edge it needs. instead of those stall(i cant spell this word) story lines.

 

[Linaze]

Thanks rover2141 for your reply, I am also glad that you said that the tutorial which nice, it warms me. If a moderator approves this tutorial, I will surely update it with even further on how to design characters.

Feel free to +rep me if this helped you in any way J/K

 

[Ralle]

+ Rep
I like the tutorial, it's not really world editor or anything -related but it's still VERY helpful.
I'd like you to actually finish the tutorial before it's done.

Good work!

 

[Linaze]

Thank you Ralle for the kind words, (and for +rep ). I have now updated the first post to make it look more attractive whilst still keeping the same standard of the tutorial, I have also added a new part, 2.2 to the tutorial. Thanks guys, I mean it.

 

[Ralle]

I find this tutorial very fascinating and it's exactly like this people should make characters.

Approved!

 

[StasMaN]

A really great tutorial , +rep ^^

 

[Vercas]

Awesome tutorial about characters, VERY useful for Open RPGs! Like mine, i will be shure to give you credits in my texts about characters!

 

[stump007]

Positive Comments

[+] Very helpful!
[+] This will come in handy for any project.
[+] It's organized and easy to use.
[+] Very good examples; and they are seperated from the steps (by having them pushed forward).

Negative Comments

[-] The "Goals" section isn't really needed. It should just be in "Role in the Story".
[-] Personally I think you should change Class to "Hero-Type". The Class field is more or less a reference to WoW.
[-] Try to make spaces in between each step. Just press Enter twice once you reach the end of a step.
[-] The last two steps are not bolded.
[-] Under Step One "Begining of Character Creation" make the first step "Step 1.0" instead of "1.1". Make the second step in step two, "Continuation on Characters", "Step 2.2". Etc.
[-] The good and bad examples aren't really needed. They don't have much to do with the overall tutorial. What you have here is more or less a template for displaying information on characters, while those examples are just summaries of the Character's lore. It kind of just throws you off of the purpose of the tutorial.

Comments: Very well done. I am using a more basic version of this for Warcraft Chronicles, but I will use some of what you have shown here as well. I hope this gets approved! This is awsome!

Are you serious??? You have no idea what you are talking about and I have no idea how you think your negative comments are relative. Firstly you were criticising him not typing a section in bold?!? YOU MORON, HOW ARE YOU A MODERATOR??? Secondly you mentioned him making more space, and you told him how to do it "...just press enter twice...". Thirdly, you criticised his good and bad examples because they were'nt relevent to the tutorial? ARE YOU INSANE!!!!? They are completely relevent to it!!!! And finally you told him that he should change his "class" to "hero type" because "class" was a reference to World of Warcraft? you idiot, 1. so what if it is a reference to WoW? WoW doesn't own that terminology, 2. why do you care about that? he didn't say word for word moron!

I think you just like the sound of your own voice, and because you're a mod everyone agrees with you. But you have no idea what ur talking about, he made the tutorial not you! You know SQUAT! All your comments were completely unprofessional and "nooby" enough said. And I can i just mention that you said it was organised, but then you are telling him it wasn't by saying he needed to use two spaces by pressing enter twice, I cannot believe how dumb you are.

Feel free to reply

 

[Linaze]

1. You are an idiot, gtfo out my tutorial please.
2. Hawkwing was not a moderator when he wrote that comment.
3. His comments were good, and his post was useful, unlike some other I could name.

Could any moderator remove this message and the one above please?

 

[Vercas]

stumb007
you should be baned for this
this tutorial is unique and extremely useful because it incrases the quallity of every map!

 

[stump007]

Did any of you guys even read what I wrote?

I was saying that Linaze made a great tutorial and that Hawkwing was making comments on irrelevant things in it, like your typing! What does that have to do with making a good RPG character? Nothing.

So dont start swearing like your are some big man, if anyone has a problem with me talk in a respectful mature manner.

 

[stump007]

stumb007
you should be baned for this
this tutorial is unique and extremely useful because it incrases the quallity of every map!

Banned for what? Calling someone a moron and an idiot? Well as far as I've seen that is not the worst language used on this tutorial so get over yourself.

I have already apologised for insulting Hawkwing but the things I said about his comments being irrelevant are still valid.

 

[Mecheon]

Its virulent yes-men afraid to give any form of criticism like you, stump, that have made criticism a lost art

Stop being such a nice person and let what has to be said be said

 

[Septimus]

Did any of you guys even read what I wrote?

I was saying that Linaze made a great tutorial and that Hawkwing was making comments on irrelevant things in it, like your typing! What does that have to do with making a good RPG character? Nothing.

So dont start swearing like your are some big man, if anyone has a problem with me talk in a respectful mature manner.

Off Topic* : If you cannot be nice to a person, how can a person be nice to you ? If you disagree about what he said, you can tell it in much better way. Not just said a person a moron or idiot.

 

[stump007]

Has anyone realised that I have apologised?

I had complete validity for what I said and stand by it. So I said moron and idiot, whilst that wasn't nice of me to say, its not nearly as bad a language as I've seen others use on this site. If what I said was that bad, crack down on everyone else verbally abusing eachother and compare that to "moron" and "idiot".

I refuse to be punished for "flaming" a mod. Instead, if I must be punished, punish me for insulting a user of THW, regardless of if he is a mod or not. A mod is no more important than a simple user giving feedback. We must respect eachother for being valued members of the Hive, not people like me having to grovel at the feet of "Mods" because I had a few misplaced words.

-stump007

 

[Vercas]

If they are moderators means that they DISERVE to be. I know that Ralle had a reason for chosing his moderators. I am just a user, but i know that without moderators a web site could be a junk. I personally respect every of them, and consider them important, maybe more important than me or others here.
This is my opinion, stump007

 

[Linaze]

stump007 has said he's sorry. Enough of this, please, can some1 clean up this thread?

 

[saphiree]

yeah omg!! all theese treads should be removed as they have nothing to do with the tutorial. SO JUST FORGET ABOUT IT!!!!!

now, to the tutorial.
I think it verry usefull, and maybe i also think some steps is a bit unessesary, but i fill them in anyway, cus you made it FUN! And thats very important
i loooove using it, and i wish you could make more steps to fill in!

btw, can you explain the siblings part? i dont know what sibling means. so... well, what is it?
And this tutorial would not be smart for an undead character which is being controlled by somebody else right?

+rep

 

[Linaze]

A sibling is either a brother or a sister. Just a "collection word" for both.

 

[saphiree]

aha. thx

 

[Dezedor]

Well, this is certainly usefull. The characters i need for my map, unfortunately, have to be a bit more bland, so that the player can assign personality during playstyle. That being said this is still a big help.

Thx for the tutorial. +rep.

 

[adnertsy]

Really good tutorial, i maybe use some thing like this when i start my new project. ^^

 

[saphiree]

i already used it for my 4 main characters in my campaign
And btw, i shouldnt use this for undea ppl should i? I mean i have an undead lord which has his own mind (not controlled by some higher power like lich king). Should i make it for him too?
(he's one of the key characters.)

 

[adnertsy]

i think u shoud but ask the master guy here first...

 

[Linaze]

"The master guy", lol.
Anyways, this could definitely be used for any character that has a story, a goal, and a role.

 

[White Flare]

Ok well this is my second post but i hope i can make a positive impact in the real purpose of this thread. If you find my suggestions useful you can add them where you will, i haven't thought of where they would belong exactly. So let me get right into it.

Firstly you may want to ask if your character has an official title. Just the background wouldnt be enough in some cases. Say a character has a noble birth, well ok you would think people would call him lord or something like that but if he became an outcast or runaway when the quest began he could be "the deserter" or something like that. plus a title as effects on peoples personalities, lords tend to have bigger egos and what not.

Secondly how about any special talents or achievements? was your character the best student in school? what about the fastest field plow the land has ever seen? these type of things could cause later discussions for filler quests (or chapters if you use this tut for books?). Also it would be good to know if someone had mastered special skills to know what they can and cant do. someone may have attended a mage school but may still be a novice.

So yea i hope this is slightly useful and i hope to see this flourish, it is a very nice tutorial. also if i think of anything else ill put that up too.

 

[warman45]

with undead guys you have to condsider that they weren't always undead. follow the format as if they were still regular. then pick a date that they became "undead" and write their role's and current info like that. as well their name should reflect their past (ie a blood elf name for an undead that used to be blood elf.)