Character Inspirations

[resplendant_sun]

So I was talking about role-playing to one of my coworkers today (She is just getting into it in her college) and she asked me how I came up with the characters I played. I long ago came up with a formula that has kept me happy throughout my college career: I take an existing character and then start changing them until they are a new character

Comments

[lex_of_green]

This is really cool.

Ashan?

[resplendant_sun]

With his last name do you even have to ask? Ashan Molinari was inspired by Londo Mollari from B5. Quite possibly a bit of grown up Vir in there too.

[leftofdarkness]

I do something similar, except usually it's a mix of three characters minimum kind of smashed together like an unfortunate trans-dimensional rift accident. Like, Eliseo de Soldano from Nic's 7th Sea game was Aramis/Cardinal Richelieu/Captain Carrot/if Inigo Montoya had a kid... thing. Other times the character is made wholesale, but all of my characters take at least some influence from popular tropes/character types/tvtropes.org

And meeting new gamers is always fun, if only because you have someone new with which to squee in their general direction.

[voey]

Hm. A couple of my characters (Simon, Vernor-yes, he's mine!) have been inspired by Jeeves, but that's more a result of my crazed lust for British butlers rather than the character himself.

I think I tend to build characters that are about relationships rather than any other inspiration. When I build a character, the first questions I ask are "what does he love enough to kill or die for?" and "what won't he do, no matter what?" and everything else grows from there. I think a lot of my character design process grew out of reading the Villain-Building Workshop on GiantITP when I was in High School. That article's had a pretty potent influence on my character designs.

[aliseadae]

Those are good questions. I like motivations and such things rather than simple "what is his/her favorite ____". Backstories can provide things to add to motivation but the emotion seems to be what drives it.