DrakeHaze. 2481 Share Posted March 22, 2021 Spoiler Goal of thread: To gain insight from peers on character creation/storylines in the current LoTC meta. Additionally, seek opinion on current LoTC roleplay meta. Hello to everyone that clicked on this thread! Goal is in the first line of the thread, give that a look in case you missed it. Brief introduction of myself, I’ve been here since 2011 and have had maybe a handful of characters most of which have never had much of a conclusion to their story and were dropped out of boredom or other such reasons. That is to say, I’ve never formally PK’d a character on LoTC that I can recall. I’ve looked back on my old characters, the era in which they were around during LoTC and various other aspects which have led me to where I am here today. Essentially I am once again at a point where my main character has become a bit exhaustive to play and his storyline both depressive and inconclusive. So I am looking towards the future to pursue a new character until my main character’s storyline picks up to reach its conclusion. However I am currently at a standstill in creating a new character for a few reasons so I am seeking some insight from the community both new and old in regards to creating a character in the current LoTC meta. I’ll begin with my thoughts on what I believe to be the current LoTC meta, feel free to correct me or give your opinion on the matter as it will ultimately help me understand a few things. Firstly, I believe currently LoTC is much more of a civilization/community builder. That is to say, a lot of the driving force for RP at large is done so from a Nation level as opposed to a character level. To me this means that rather than characters entering the realm and fleshing out their own story with potential impact they are instead slotted into numerous Job-based roles within a community in order to serve that community’s overall story and make a name for themselves as both a character and player. I personally find this to be most exhaustive and stressful due to the underlying OOC aspect of community building, and the responsibility therein. Do you agree or disagree with my take on LoTC meta? With that said, I have a few questions for anyone taking the time to read this! How do you come up with a core idea for a character? Do you draw inspiration from others’ RP, from movies, books and other media? Do you even have a core idea when you create a character or do you start with a somewhat blank slate and allow RP interactions to shape the character thereon? How do you further flesh out the core idea of your character? Do you post interactions from in-game on the forums you find impactful? Does this help you flesh out your character? Is it for others’ sake? In practice does the idea you have for your character get fulfilled when you finally start playing the character? Does it fall flat in comparison to what you believe it would achieve? How important is it to you as a player to have achievable goals for your character to try and accomplish? Do these goals change often due to RP? Do you already have some semblance of an idea for the character’s conclusion before you play it? Do you let RP dictate when your character has reached its conclusion? How do you deal with failure? If those reading this could answer some or all of these questions I have, it would give me greater insight on what it is I can do as a player to achieve my goal of having fun on the server and creating a character. In conclusion, there have been a few PKs recently that have given me a bit of a push towards wanting to create something new and exciting again instead of only logging in to help my friends and their goals. I want to login again and feel like I am progressing towards character goals instead of running around in circles eating taters, listening to music and hoping something interesting happens within my sphere. Sorry if this thread reads strangely or if topics are jumbled. It is difficult for me to get my thoughts onto paper, I find it easier to get my thoughts across through verbal discussion. Also any tips for creating a character in general is appreciated! Thanks for reading. 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
NotEvilAtAll 9926 Share Posted March 22, 2021 23 minutes ago, DrakeHaze. said: Firstly, I believe currently LoTC is much more of a civilization/community builder. That is to say, a lot of the driving force for RP at large is done so from a Nation level as opposed to a character level. To me this means that rather than characters entering the realm and fleshing out their own story with potential impact they are instead slotted into numerous Job-based roles within a community in order to serve that community’s overall story and make a name for themselves as both a character and player. I personally find this to be most exhaustive and stressful due to the underlying OOC aspect of community building, and the responsibility therein. Do you agree or disagree with my take on LoTC meta? Agreed completely. When I first joined in early-mid Axios, the bread and butter of the LOTC experience was getting a parcel of land for you and your friends and doing something with it. Be it a chartered region (which were much easier to create and hold onto back then), or as a vassal of Oren, Courland, or whatever the popular vassal spam nation of the time was. Nation roleplay back then was as much about the many small groups contained within nations as the macro of the nation as a whole. With the end of easy independent land after the 2020 Charter Reform and important mechanics like Tile Improvements that can only be purchased by NLs, the tides of roleplay have shifted towards civilization/nation building rather than the many characters contained within said polities. You can still get a bit of land as a vassal of a big nation; the key difference is that you'd probably get taxed more than you would have back in earlier LOTC, and unlike with Nexus where there were several things you could do to be economically powerful on non-capital city land, within Vortex any non-capital tile is unable to be all that economically relevant. The amount of nodes you can get away from the big cities just isn't as good as what you'd have if you were doing your part as a big city guard. Combine the above shifts in national power with activity checks that reward increased quantity of players, and you have a recipe for very community building centric RPing. Events are no longer planned just for their own sake. Modern events are planned to increase activity numbers by getting people to log online. The number one priority is to get you online so that the community as a whole can benefit from whatever OOC gizmos the staff are handing out for high activity. This system does not lend itself towards super character-focused storylines, as those lack the mass appeal needed to boost up playercount for communities. 35 minutes ago, DrakeHaze. said: How do you come up with a core idea for a character? Do you draw inspiration from others’ RP, from movies, books and other media? Do you even have a core idea when you create a character or do you start with a somewhat blank slate and allow RP interactions to shape the character thereon? How do you further flesh out the core idea of your character? Do you post interactions from in-game on the forums you find impactful? Does this help you flesh out your character? Is it for others’ sake? In practice does the idea you have for your character get fulfilled when you finally start playing the character? Does it fall flat in comparison to what you believe it would achieve? How important is it to you as a player to have achievable goals for your character to try and accomplish? Do these goals change often due to RP? Do you already have some semblance of an idea for the character’s conclusion before you play it? Do you let RP dictate when your character has reached its conclusion? How do you deal with failure? 1: I base my characters on a profession I want them to roleplay doing for a living. When that profession doesn't work out, they become an ordinary farmer. Thus, I mostly make blank slates with some added initial flair that gets lost to time. 2: As stated above, all my characters become farmers when I realize there's not much need for RP woodworkers these days, and that my initial idea wasn't gonna work out all that well. Maybe one day I'll be able to make a good woodworker character who doesn't instantly become a farmer. 3: I write newspapers on my primary character. It helps flesh out the character a bit, as I get ideas for their writing prose (which happens to mirror my own for some reason, real shocker there!). The newspapers in particular are mostly for the sake of others, as it helps recruit people in this oh so community building centric server. 4: My characters are almost never what I expect them to be. I don't really think much when I roleplay I just see what happens. This weird habit of mine makes my characters as unpredictable as the whims of my mind. 5: I don't have many goals besides planning the next event. I think a week into the future, and what I ought to accomplish next week is a matter for next week and not today. 6: My characters conclude whenever some random RP death happens to line up with me getting bored of them as a character. When that happens, I PK to the RP death and write up a quick PK post, swiftly moving onto the next character afterwards. 7: I don't have high expectations, which is a real blessing. Whenever I try to do something ambitious and it fails, I was probably expecting it to fail regardless. Sometimes I'm unable to cope with unexpected failure and just mope around IRL because I'm mentally unstable. I should probably stop doing that. 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Notic 941 Share Posted March 22, 2021 1 hour ago, DrakeHaze. said: How do you come up with a core idea for a character? Do you draw inspiration from others’ RP, from movies, books and other media? Do you even have a core idea when you create a character or do you start with a somewhat blank slate and allow RP interactions to shape the character thereon? Frankly, I look at specifically character traits I want to play in someone and then look to hobbies. It can be easy to flesh out a character's personality first based on either yourself or just 'what sounds cool' before molding the backstory around it. Alternatively you could start as a bland no interests baby and morph it to their life experiences. 1 hour ago, DrakeHaze. said: Do you post interactions from in-game on the forums you find impactful? Does this help you flesh out your character? Is it for others’ sake? Haven't ever tried this so I suppose it's a personal thing. Usually I just remember them and occasionally bring it up in conversation with the player. 1 hour ago, DrakeHaze. said: In practice does the idea you have for your character get fulfilled when you finally start playing the character? Does it fall flat in comparison to what you believe it would achieve? Personally I go in with absolutely no expectations. Even still, I feel this happens to everybody eventually, and sometimes you have to find other things that weren't even planned from the start. For example, my concept for my current main (Monkey Peregrin) originally started out as a travelling bard without and real set home. Before I knew it, he was adopted by a long line of tinkerers and became one himself. Now, he's a Farseer Shaman. The point is, don't always try and railroad you're roleplay experiences, and let them more come naturally. 1 hour ago, DrakeHaze. said: Do you already have some semblance of an idea for the character’s conclusion before you play it? Do you let RP dictate when your character has reached its conclusion? I don't think I've ever actually started with a conclusion, no. I know for most human players and such they have to stick to the whole "Have kids, do this, do that" but as a Halfling player, I have never really seen the need to plan things out. I find it much more enjoyable to fall into things. 1 hour ago, DrakeHaze. said: How do you deal with failure? No powergame no metagame lole. But seriously, don't have an answer with that one. If you fail at a persona, I would just pick it up and try again or go a different route entirely. Also, for a final note, the more random personas the better. It gives a lot of depth so you don't get burnt out easily. My two current main personas are a Shaman Halfling and an Epiphyte who wants to conquer the world. 2 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slorbin 1771 Share Posted March 22, 2021 my characters are based completely and solely off of images i find from google 4 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sorcerio 4595 Share Posted March 23, 2021 3 hours ago, DrakeHaze. said: How do you come up with a core idea for a character? Do you draw inspiration from others’ RP, from movies, books and other media? Do you even have a core idea when you create a character or do you start with a somewhat blank slate and allow RP interactions to shape the character thereon? This is always a question I've struggled to answer. Personally, I've always struggled to develop characters quickly and it takes me quite a bit of time before I can come up with a good one, and even then, it might be fun in concept, but horrible to play. However, I do tend to draw a lot of my characters from novels and books. It may seem stereotypical and bland, but I do enjoy using the LOTR as a good medium for inspiration - though not an outright replacement for self-generated character concepts. 3 hours ago, DrakeHaze. said: How do you further flesh out the core idea of your character? I think, for the most part, I've gone about by having a base-line personality and allow them to develop from there. For example, one of my current characters, actually took a very interesting turn this way. They were probably one of my most innocent and benign characters, and yet narrative twisted them in such a way that makes them utterly indistinguishable from who they once were. 3 hours ago, DrakeHaze. said: Do you post interactions from in-game on the forums you find impactful? Does this help you flesh out your character? Is it for others’ sake? Yes, and only very recently too! This isn't limited only to impactful events, but sometimes just ones that I think would be neat to write about. I feel that posts like these help to relay the mind of a character better than regular roleplay interactions, as you're not usually emoting to the other person what your character is thinking. With these, however, I've found that it allows other players a sort of "window" into the mind and soul of another character, which I personally think is really neat. Here are some examples if you want. I apologize, they're a wee bit edgy: Spoiler https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/197271-the-third-advocate/ https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/199349-a-psalm-of-lament/ https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/199450-soliloquium-in-stone/ https://www.lordofthecraft.net/forums/topic/199632-silence-broken/ 3 hours ago, DrakeHaze. said: In practice does the idea you have for your character get fulfilled when you finally start playing the character? Does it fall flat in comparison to what you believe it would achieve? Absolutely. I myself tend to struggle with being mesmerized by the concept of a character, only to play them for a few days and becoming bored. I've found that planning what to do with a character ahead of time almost never works, and that it's best to act in response to roleplay and let narrative leave from there. Otherwise, you become disappointed and more discouraged over what could otherwise be a neat character. 3 hours ago, DrakeHaze. said: How important is it to you as a player to have achievable goals for your character to try and accomplish? Do these goals change often due to RP? This is a difficult question as well. I tend to jump around with goals a lot and I find it difficult to stay in one place all the time, though I have managed to become a bit more focused recently. It is good to set out a series of goals for a character, though I believe that the goal set should be one that is realistically attainable and makes sense for where the character is in terms of their narrative. 3 hours ago, DrakeHaze. said: Do you already have some semblance of an idea for the character’s conclusion before you play it? Do you let RP dictate when your character has reached its conclusion? Sometimes yes, other times no. I've always enjoyed my characters ending in a memorable or tragic way (mostly because I'm dramatic), though sometimes that doesn't always go according to plan. I usually let narrative dictate what happens with my character and tend to focus more on what they are doing now, though I also find that planning their end ahead of time can help to keep them affixed towards a certain narrative as well. 3 hours ago, DrakeHaze. said: How do you deal with failure? Its a very difficult thing to encounter a lot of the time. On LOTC, we're given the great ability of being able to pretty much do whatever it is we want, capable of avoiding virtually any consequence or interaction we want. There are some who might say; "simply go to the monks", otherwise just ignore the alteration to their character by making another, or simply avoiding the roleplay of the negative effect whatsoever. This typically comes as a result of players feeling like the consequence or detriment didn't really fit their desired narrative for the character, which I can understand considering people do want to be able to have fun. However, I also believe that at the end of the day, the story we're creating on LOTC is not our own, nor our characters', but a very broad and over-arching narrative that contributes to so much more than any one individual or player-group. With failure, I've always recommend that players address things narratively. Allowing for detriments and negatives to happen to your character, even if it wasn't one you intended or liked, arguably draws you more to the character as a result. They become more precious because they're not only a product of you, but a product of interaction with others, allowing them to become something far more complex than they were before. For example, I try to hold my characters to a strict PK clause and not use the monks. I do understand that this is not a very easy thing and I by no means expect other people to adhere to it either. Nonetheless, my point does stand that people should face consequence with the mind of "what happens in roleplay is narrative". Of course, this is only an ideal, and it can't really distract from the reality that there will never be perfect resonance among the LOTC playerbase. Still, I do believe that the more people who manage this mindset there are, the better the server ultimately becomes as a general whole. Overall, I hope this helped a bit. I know my responses seem very cliché, but they really are what I've found to be engaging on this server, at least to me. Just about anyone could write a novel to be more consistent and flowing than LOTC, and yet it still ends on the final page no matter what is put into it. And that's why I love LOTC so much, because it's not a single narrative with a single end, but a continuously living story with so many different outcomes and events. It allows a sense of creativity that no author could imagine on their own, and I think that's what attracts so many people to it. Only thing now is for players to realize that. Anyway, if you need my help or have any questions, feel free to shoot me a PM on discord or the forums! Good luck with your character and welcome back! (EDIT: im a bit sleepy so I'm only now realizing grammatical errors. Forgive me) 3 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts