Personality
Table of Contents
About
Your character's personality is probably its most crucial aspect. If you decide to build a character completely different from how you are in real life, you might have difficulty playing him or her. On the other hand, if you make a character exactly the way you are in real life, you might get bored after a while. If you aren't starting with a puppy, it may be a good idea to figure out the details of your character's history and use that to shape its personality. To start off, it would probably be best to include aspects of your own personality as well as aspects that are wildly different from you -- this way, you will be familiar with some parts of your character, but it will be a fun challenge to figure out other parts.
Creating a Personality
It may be helpful for you to begin with a short list of traits and descriptors rather than a full-fleshed personality -- it's much harder to think on the fly and create traits for your character and also formulate these thoughts into complete sentences. So, if you have some general ideas for a character, try writing them out in a brief list format with bullet points:
- Outgoing, loud
- Intelligent, clever
- Socially inept, lonely
Your list will probably be longer, but now that you have one, you can take each piece of information and expand upon it. Consider to what degree your character displays these personality traits as well as how they acquired them in the first place. With reasonable explanations behind each character bullet point, not only do you have your personality taking shape, you also have a start for their history!
- Allyn is an outgoing and friendly canine -- an exceptionally outgoing child, the loss of his parents, siblings, and homeland have given him a constant yearning for companionship and an intense fear of being alone. He throws himself into social situations quite willingly, and tries his hardest to avoid alone time.
- Allyn is an intelligent and clever boy, excelling in learning new tasks and eager to absorb information. Though he did not find it easy, he was able to survive in the wild on his own from a young age, and made it to 'Souls from eastern New Brunswick.
- Allyn is rather awkward around those he doesn't know, to the point that some might call him socially inept, thanks to some months alone during a rather formative time in his life. Despite his awkwardness, he yearns for companionship, and often embarrasses himself in his eagerness to impress others and make good of them.
From these points, you can continue to break them down until you're happy with what you have. Some roleplayers find it taxing to write a personality prior to actually roleplaying a character -- it can be difficult to "live to expectations," so to speak. Even so, we do ask that all new players have a basic idea of the character they'd like to play -- if it turns out your character is wildly different from their written personality, you can (and should) update their profile to change things around.
The Influence of History
It's important to remember that your character's history will influence their personality. You may find it easier to work on history and come back to personality. Alternatively, you can write your personality first, and then write a history to make such a personality plausible. A character with a dark past, such as one who has lost all family members, could possibly have some attachment or detachment issues -- ranging from being too clingy in relationships to the character avoiding all close personal relationships for fear of losing someone again. Just because a character has a normal, unscathed background doesn't mean they can't end up being twisted psychopaths (if that's what you're interested in playing). However, rather than bring in damaged goods, you might find it a lot more fun to actually roleplay the damage as it occurs to the character.
Flaws and Imperfections
"In the creation and criticism of fictional works, a character flaw is a limitation, imperfection, problem, phobia, or deficiency present in a character who may be otherwise very functional. The flaw can be a problem that directly affects the character's actions and abilities, such as a violent temper. Alternatively, it can be a simple foible or personality defect, which affects the character's motives and social interactions, but little else."1 There are major and minor flaws; major flaws affect the character in a very direct way and usually directly relate to character development, while minor flaws are less important.
You should never strive for a perfect character! Flaws and imperfections give real people depth; this is easy to see when comparing a picture of the average stock model to a Photoshopped and airbrushed magazine cover model. Of course, this extends to personality as well as appearance -- character imperfections. It's important to remember to mix in a few flaws and poor character traits in with your character's personality.
Dynamic Characters
An important thing to remember is that your character, like people in real life, has the ability to change. Are you really going to enjoy playing the same character for months, or years, even? Dynamic and changing characters are far more interesting than static characters who retain the same personality for years. This can also work inversely, however -- maybe you'd like to bring in a truly damaged character and work them toward sanity. Character development is a crucial aspect of roleplaying, and if your character has no room to grow, you'll quickly become bored with them! If you're finding it tedious to roleplay a particular character, try to tweak his or her personality or conceive a plot to push your character in a certain direction. It's simpler and more interesting than just creating an entirely new character, anyway.
Character Alignments
Character alignments aren't horribly important since the most fun characters tend not to fit in any mold exactly. Still, they've historically been used in more traditional table-top roleplay games (such as Dungeons & Dragons), and are an easy way to give your character's personality a foundation. There are nine total alignment categories and they are as follows: Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral (or just Neutral), Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, and Chaotic Evil. For an in-depth look at these alignments and for examples of characters that fall into each alignment, please refer to the Wikipedia article on the subject.