Character Attachments - OG Myth-Weavers

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Character Attachments

   
Character Attachments

I am a person very emotionally tied to my characters. I basically have a character for every mood I'm in. I've got the haughty and brazen one, the painfully devoted one, the fun, rompy one, the jokester, the endearing kid, the acutely moral self sacrificer... And each of these benefit during whatever emotional state I'm in, intermittently exchanging the spotlight throughout the year.

Because of this, perhaps, I like to recycle characters rather than create new ones. Old characters flow easily from the fingertips into the keyboard while new characters is like starting a new relationship, the writer and the new idea circling around eachother with wary and uncertain expectations. I have always been a full believer that the character comes to you and demands creation, not the other way around. But then I never played dnd before writing here, either, so I think my perspective is a little skewed. I don't choose my characters by what I want to try, rules-wise, or build. I let the character form themselves first then try to structure rules and setting around them.

This thread is about character attachments. How much of yourself do you put into your characters? Do you discard them when their game dies and start anew, do you find them new homes, or do you work inbetween? Do you consider yourself to have relationships with your characters, or do you write from a distance? How hard is it to write a happy go lucky character when you are feeling down and out, and vice versa?

Let's hear it.

I choose my characters only by what I want to play in terms of mechanics, but that is very fluid in terms of flavor, if you know how to properly manipulate it.

I think this is a good question. I will admit that not all my characters are created equally. You mentioned that you like to recycle characters, and I think I do something similar. When I used to be heavily into
And would like to again
tabletop there were ample oppurtunities for generating a character concept. With 10+ players intermixing to create a cache of games it wasn't uncommon for me to test out a concept in one DM's one-shot so I could see if I wanted to play that on a weekly basis. Strangely enough, a lot of my more user-friendly and fun characters to play were evolved in this process. I don't think this is uncommon for players, but because of this I've grown attached to some PCs over others.

Here on the Weave I have tried to reuse PCs but I have run into a small problem. If a game dies before it begins but I have a PC I wanted to play, I've tried to apply him to other games but it always feels cheap and/or unsatisfying. Usually my concept was immersed in the last DMs world and trying to adapt him/her doesn't work and I just create a new one. But on the flip side, when a game makes it a few months and dies out and I enjoyed my PC thoroughly (I'm looking at you Noisms, Finsir rocked!), then I want to just edit him to work in another game...but it has to be a special game because I've grown attached to the PC or the PC's potential. Hard Place...meet Rock.

I have a few that I never want to let go of but the problem is fitting them in with a new group in a new campaign. I solve the problem sometimes by making up characters related to my 2 core characters so I already have a good back story I am familiar with, I only have to tweak it for the new people to account for their existence. Sister, cousin, child whatever I need as long as the class fits the back storyand the new campaign.

I get very into certain characters, especially when developing them for a game I would love to be a part of. I have had characters enter games and the game die out right away. Using that character again for the next game doesn't bother me - I actually want to do it to give that character a home.

One of my characters is on to his third game, obviously having horrible luck but still holding a place in my heart.

I have a character that is like my alter ego, and I
Well, more than usually, not only, I DO have more characters
always use for whatever "main" campaign my RL group has moved onto.

Vastadule, an aged Dwarf.

He's usually of some kind of Divine related class, or martial depending of course on whatever the GM's doled out world and storywise.

It may be because he was my first RPG character, I killed my first Dragon with that Dwarf, I died and was resurrected for the first time with that Dwarf, and I slayed my first Plot important antagonist with that Dwarf. My first Critical Hit was with his Dwarven Battle Axe, those are for some reason important things.
My ups, and downs, 1's and 20's, the best and worst of times were for Vastadule.

As for the originality or creative prospect, I change his story just about every time he's re-incarnated for a new campaign, and if that's not enough it's a new beginning after all, I'll get many chances to do many different things under the guise of his hearty laugh and impressive whiskers.

I used to put a piece of me into every character, something I could relate to making my role-playing easier.

But after playing hundreds of characters over the years, I find it more interesting to play characters unlike myself... making you stop and think before acting or saying anything instead of playing on impulse.

It started when I read the first Dragonlance Trilogy in the early 80's. I saw a little of myself in several of the characters in the story and thus I made my characters with a little of myself in each. That was fun for a while, but it got repetitive.

Like Freefallin, I've also come to enjoy creating a character that is vastly different from myself. I don't think it's possible to create a character that does not contain a piece of oneself – the creation cannot help but to carry the stamp of the creator. Often, a character surprises me by being different than I had originally envisioned. I don't see this as the character demanding creation – that's a bit too metaphysical for my way of thinking – but I think it's a fascinating example of the subconscious in action. Somewhere, my brain made some connections of which I was not conscious, and only realized when I find my writing going in a different direction than I anticipated. It's an awesome feeling.

At one point in my life, I did create characters which echoed my emotional states, and it was difficult to play, for example, the happy-go-lucky bard when I was depressed. Nowadays, I try to find in my characters the complete range of emotions I experience. Discovering what would make the character feel happy, depressed, offended, etc. goes along ways towards creating a three-dimensional character, with a caboodle of memories and life experiences that inform his (or her) current actions. This alleviates some of the emotional stumbling blocks, since I can imagine how my character might be happy, even though I'm depressed at the moment.

And kudos to you, Cleo, for envisioning the character first, and then defining her (or him) in game terms. That's the only way to go, IMO.

I have to admit, I'm not one to delve too deeply into the psyche's of my characters (or myself either). But I don't like to recycle them for a variety of reasons. One, I really prefer to play a wide (very wide) variety of characters. Two, if I get to play a character for any length of time, that character becomes totally tied up in that setting and with that group in my mind. Putting aside that history almost always feels jarring.

I do occasionally recycle characters, oddly, I almost exclusively do this only with superhero's and almost always across systems. No idea why. There are superhero characters I've statted up in as many as 6 or 7 different systems and played in at least 3 or 4 of them. Maybe it's tied to the comic idea of the retcon. Or maybe I'm just odd.

Most times my characters come to me and then I try to create them within the rules of the system. Often that proves difficult, if not impossible, but I tend to get the majority of the character's personality in there. Occasionally I've thought about playing 'this' class and then built a story around that - these characters usually don't have much of a background to start with and usually take a little longer to find the personality quirks of that character.

All my characters, over time, become their own 'entity', so to speak. Their past details get nailed down and they become a person who often has different goals in life than myself and when I write for them I become them for a time. (I can't always do this with RL games funnily enough, because RL keeps intruding and breaking the suspension of belief.) Sometimes when creating a character I'll stretch myself with something almost completely different than my own personality; sometimes I'll go with my current mood; others I'll go with the tried and true. Lately I've picked up two characters not created by myself and the challenge there has been to keep the flow of the old character there without too much of a hitch, which I have really enjoyed.

When I'm not playing a character (because a game dies) they go into a dormant state and never really die, and depending how attached I am to the character they often get scenarios written for them long afterwards. Occasionally I have tried recycling a character into different games (and even different game systems) but they usually end up being a slightly different flavour of the first.

And I am VERY attached to my characters. I've never had one die (permanently, they've always been resurrected), and losing one would be like losing a beloved pet.





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