How i create a good RP character?

JeanPhilippeGunghar

Hello,
I'm interested to RP in Ashes of Creation. The problem is i have no clue what informations is mandatory to have a good background. What lore is recommended to? I plan to put a bit of my character past. Do it's recommended? If yes how many informations? What lore or character infos i must avoid? I have a lot of lore to read to be honest. Any suggestions to help me to have a pretty good character bio?

Tyranthraxus

We're a tad early to know exactly what's "on the table" for claims to RP and RP backgrounds.

Ultimately, there are - at present - few fully-fleshed-out characters you can really commit to the personality of, at this point (we're at December of 2020, at this point; the differences between the races of human, elves, and dwarves is yet to be well-defined).

Yours truly has seen people come into a Jedi community with the personality of their super-large, overly-strong toon being "Indubious Bulk SMASH!" who have pulled it off well; The depth of your RP will likely be shaped by only 2 elements: 1) how well your RP fits with the background of the world (Santuns - of a completely non-magical world, from which people are immigrating to the older, magical-based world), and 2) how well you can project the image of someone who is just as new to the world we will be exploring as we are; Someone who is very first poking at Verra, a world in which previously-thought-impossible and magical mechanics exist alongside science and visible proof of the divine.

In the coming couple of years, we'll fore-see-ably receive more information on the races-to-be, and their cultural differences, from eachother; Sanctus was a pocket-dimension-esk side-dimension world; As such, there were likely struggles and conflicts over rather-limited resources, in the thousands of years between which the races were forced from Verra, and the point at which they were able to begin to return.

ariatras

Like @Tyranthraxus said.
There's not enough known, I've been hounding and lobbying since the old forums. It doesn't look too promising on the whole right now. The commitment of a simple server tag that says RP wasn't even going to happen. As I recall Steven said something along the lines of not needing it, because everyone will RP to some degree.

It's not something I personally agree with. There are many elements of RP which are equally as important, if not more so. Which require conscious RP on the side of the player, walking through a village/metropolis, sitting in a park. These little things outside of guild RP.

There won't be any add-ons allowed so something along the line of TRP or MRP are out of the question. The best we can hope for, is that all characters get a character sheet of sorts, which is totally optional to fill out, you know to give a small description of the character, perhaps some background, stuff like that.
The least they can do (other then nothing) is what FFXIV does adding RP tag in-game by typing /roleplaying

But in order to create a bio that's not lorebreaking, we really do just have to wait.

Lordofhounds

Most importantly ( keep in mind this is my opinion , and a few friedns agree) try to stay away from soundin like a dark ages priest by saying things like" thou art" . Then read the style of your class/race ( this is my first day on ashes of Creation so I don't know if there's races and classes or if it's just open) .
Movong on , decide your demeanor and background. Let's say for instance that you are an both wizard, now most solvent elves are focused calm and as a wizard they're going to be extremely intelligent. Let's say for instance a dwarf warrior now there's a lot of ways that you can go with the demeanor of a warrior as a dwarf especially . You can be the kind of dwarf that likes his al ale and shouts to his clan/god when rushing into battle.. also don't forget role-playing 90% of it is done outside the battle maybe even 95% of it, what I usually do is I figure out the stuff I mentioned and then I get a pen and some paper and I'll write down some quotes that I can use but I make sure and this is important that you use these quotes at the proper time let's say you get some loot You're a wizard someone's got a diamond necklace of intellig ence and they offer it to you One of my quotes is " you have no need for such useless trinkets you keep it!! " That's coming from a dark elf wizard but there's a whole bunch of crap I mean you can really do it however you want to do it and you'll get better as it goes along but another thing to remember is that you don't want to overplay it most people will get annoyed if you do it too much of the time.. get on your phone look up some archaic words get a pad in the pen write some s*** down and you will get the hang of it I enjoy doing it a few times a week Good luck to you!

Dayuhan

While Lore is an important aspect to role-playing it is not required for creating a character concept. This is where you should be starting. What is your character's race, what does your character look like, what are your character's mannerisms and identifiable traits? What is your character's trade? Young, Old, Family, Loner; the list goes on, but in the end you need to give your character a personality you will have fun role-playing in the game.

The character does not need to start out as a fully fleshed out Hero/Anti-Hero/Villain. Start out as a normal person, but now you have a personality to work with and you will have an idea of how your normal character reacts to certain situations, and those reactions may eventually thrust the character in to the role of hero/anti-hero/villain.

So, have enough information on your character that you know what is In-Character (IC) for your character, this will greatly assist you in role-playing your character regardless of the eventual background lore. Fit the lore to your character, not your character to the lore.

JeanPhilippeGunghar

What i understand is i need to wait a bit more to create my character . Maybe just before the game release?

Jerec Tharen

I might be able to provide an alternative path to a way you can start designing your role-play character. When you come down to it, role-playing is about telling a story with a character, so our best resource to draw from when designing that character should be the patterns that are used in popular media like books, movies, and television.

When I think about what makes a character engaging, it isn't usually how a character looks, their likes or dislikes, or even really the lore behind them. It's the struggle they must overcome. My advice to you would be to come up with an idea of a struggle that your character is trying to overcome, and how you can support it with game mechanics that are currently planned or even in the game, and then fill in those other details from there.

For example, I am a huge fan of the Stormlight Archive. I don't want to spoil anything, so I'll just say that in those books, there are these groups that are devoted to different concepts. One of them, that I might want to replicate in the game, is highly interested in maintaining and enforcing the law. Now I want to tie this into game mechanics, the most interesting of which (to me anyways) is the node system. Particularly, for this character, I am interested in having them spend time in a mercantile node. Then I just have to fit together the pieces to find chat about a mercantile environment would challenge a character who's defining attribute is following and enforcing the law (to a fault), and I came up with this:

"I am Gilad Tharen, a Tulnar male seeking a place in the world from outside the caverns I grew up in. Unfortunately, a lot of the other adventures in the world were not accepting of those of my kind, all except those of the <Insert node name here (I'm just going to say Intrepid as a placeholder for the node name)> encampment, for their interest was only in how I could help their members increase the economic prospects of the region. They took me in, and with my assistance and protection (I am also designing this character as a tank) the encampment grew into a village. I was quite at peace in this village, serving them and the laws they set in place, but as Intrepid grew, so did it's desire for wealth. When currency is king, often convicts can buy their way out of their sentences, or sometimes even arrest. This makes it hard to uphold the law and I find myself struggling between the oath's I have sworn to the letter of the law, and the weight of my conscience as I am forced to accept what are little more than obfuscated bribes. I must find a way to sleep at night, but also stay away from using my own fallible morality to replace that which was written by those who took me in."

Probably not going to main that character, but it's a fun exercise. You could do this with almost anything. Think about spiderman, and how he is trying to balance his responsibilities as a superhero, and as a civilian. Even inside each of those he has to balance sticking up for the little guy, and the big fights that change the world. Going off of this, you could have a character that joins a scientific node, specializing in caravan protection (sticking up for the little guy), and has to balance that against becoming a master of a few different professions while also contributing to the larger node sieges, castle sieges, and large scale raids unlocked by the Metropolis he lives in.

Basically, the possibilities are endless. Find some inspiration, then think about what kind of stuff you want to do with your character, and then tie in some flaw or struggle they have to overcome, and maybe some consequences and stumbling blocks along the way. Hope this helps!

NodeStone

As others said, we don't have a lot to go off of. Doesn't mean you can't make a character of course! It just means we can't get into the nitty gritty of details.
From my experience though, the best RP characters are the ones who you keep open ended. Meaning, don't plan out what you want to happen. This can be done by either making the character and just freestyling how you roleplay them, or by giving them some backstory and then letting them loose like a wind-up car.

More than anything though, let other players potentially influence your character and vice versa! Don't get too stuck on your character "needing" to go through some preconcieved story arc, like their whole story is already written and everyone else is just there to watch. That's no fun for other roleplayers, there's nothing organic or natural about it, it's staged and artificial. It's the difference between acting on stage and roleplaying.

As for the lore, the biggest bit you should consider is that players are expected to start the game taking their first steps into Verra through a portal from another world that has no magic whatsoever. If you're roleplaying literally right out of the gate from that point in level 1, then your character was born and raised in a world where magic could never be practiced, so keep that in mind.

thesainteaon

I'm gonna be that dude and sidestep the lore questions for a minute and post a less popular opinion.

You don't really need to know lore often to make a good roleplay character.

Lore is important for knowing places, histories, cultures, etc., but a lot of people get lost in that detail and incorporate a useless amount of it into their characters. Unless you're literally RPing a loremaster, there's no reason you need to know the seven kings of whatever dead culture, all the languages spoken in some unknown region, the history of evocation as it refers to who or whom is more naturally enclined to practice that school of magic culturally.

Truthfully, unless your character's a soldier or bannerman for a particular faction or lord, you don't really even need to know much about your governing bodies.

A good character can exist in any setting because the elements that make good characters are pretty universal. Ask yourself this:

What kind of character do you want to be? A Noble Hero, a Stealthy Ranger, a crafty mage? Any combination of them, or maybe something else entirely?

What are they hoping to get out of returning to this formerly lost world. What are their goals, their passions, what are they striving for?

How do you see your character fighting enemies or solving problems? If you see a boulder has fallen and trapped the leg of an ally are you gonna lift the boulder with your incredible strength, or use your knowledge to find something to use as a lever, more easily moving the heavier object?

You don't need to know the race, gender, national identity, birthplace, parents, or anything of the sort to come up with some of these ideas. You can come up with these concepts independent of a character's physical appearence or nationalities. They can be applied to anything.

Most importantly though, you want to come up with character flaws. Personally, having RP'd for decades at this point, I think character flaws are more important than anything else. There'll be 2000 generic heroes in every taver, 1500 shady rogues, and 500 villains that no one will remember. They won't really have anything to add and they wont really stand out. The characters you remember are the ones who stand out the most because there's something human about them.

The Paladin that wants to believe desperately, but as seen so much he questions his faith.
The Ranger who's drive for vengeance against the foes that stole his family may take him from hunter and turn him into a killer.
The elf who keeps a healthy distance between her comrades and herself, because she is afraid to lose anymore mortal friends.
The genius doctor who can only function due to his severe addiction to painkillers.
The blood splatter analist who can't stand the sight of blood without fantasizing about the next time he plunges his knife into his next victim's chest.
The sickly teacher who just wants what's best for his family and who's drive for success will push him to create a narcotics empire.

If you can find a good enough flaw, you can take any seemingly boring character and turn them into a fucking icon that everyone wants to RP with.

Just a quick edit: Also don't get too absorbed by making character flaws. Everyone equally dislikes the pretty girl who seems likable enough but isn't approachable because literally her entire family died. You want a healthy balance between flawed and fucntional, and dark pasts are overrated and not nearly as compelling as people who've been RPing for about 5 years think they are.