Comments on: Character Independence

By: Kyraine

Kyraine — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 23:15:54 +0000

I like having a very loose backstory because it does leave room for your characters to surprise you. Mine do all the time. All I decided for Kyraine before I rolled her right before TBC was that she was from Gilneas, liked hitting things with sharp objects for money, and took up herb/alchemy to pay the bills after she got hurt on a job and was sidelined from fighting for a while. I rolled her to level with a friend’s new Draenei priest and shaman, so I deliberately picked a loose background that would leave her without much attachment to any one place, a good deal of room to interact with others, and a reason to leave the Eastern Kingdoms for the Draenei lands.

Everything else came after I started RPing with her in game. And she’s changed so much from when I first rolled her. While she still likes getting paid for fighting, she’s also found people she genuinely cares about and would drop everything to go help. I can’t really think of one character that I’ve had a real detailed backstory for, what I’ve done with Kyraine worked when I first started WoW with my druid and has kept on working since then. I like not knowing and discovering through game events who they are and being surprised by them. It’s just better that way.

By: Corise

Corise — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:31:22 +0000

Heh… “character independence” pretty much sums up all of my characters all of the time. In fact, even when I do start out with a fairly well-defined idea of who and what my character is going to be, I often find myself needing to adjust those preconceived notions as time goes on. Usually, I I start out with a rough idea of the character’s personality and a few key points from their past, and I discover the rest as I go. On the rare occasions when I do try to be a bit more detailed with a character’s backstory, I find that it hinders me; like Syrana, I end up feeling constrained by what I’ve written.
So my characters definitely get a lot of opportunities to surprise me in all sorts of ways, both as they fill in the details of their past and as they form surprising connections with other characters in the present. For example, I never would have guessed that Corise, a gnome rogue of questionable morals, would form an incredibly close friendship with a Light-loving paladin — or that Lakena, a Kaldorei whose parents witnessed the Sundering and impressed upon her the dangers of arcane magic, would end up married to a human mage. Jenive always struck me as entirely too logical and unemotional to have any romantic inclinations — until she met Imble and fell head over heels in her own hilariously awkward and endearing way. And Yelgah, who was originally intended to be almost dogmatic in her devotion to the Light, changed considerably when my husband and I decided to level our dwarflings in the draenei starting zone and thus exposed our characters to the shamanism of the Broken and the Stillpine Tribe of furbolgs.

By: Sarai

Sarai — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:11:40 +0000

Arvoss has been pretty easy to RP. His backstory, while not set in stone, was pretty much complete by the time he got out of Acherus. He does do things now & then that make me go “Huh, I didn’t know that” but for the most part he’s stayed true to what I had planned for him.

Shaurria, on the other hand, has been completely surprising me for the past month. She’s done things that I never imagined her doing, like latching on to Aely and Feliche the way she did. Her deciding to sit and talk with them was completely her own idea. Her occasional episodes of “mama kitty” were another surprise, like a couple weeks ago when Aleros seemed to be sick and she kept going over to check on him. Last night with that death knight was another example. I’m still not sure why he creeped her out that much.

I could go on and on about this, but I think I’ll make my own blog post rather than clutter yours up. >.>

By: ItanyaBlade

ItanyaBlade — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:44:01 +0000

I’m always torn by questions like this. On the one hand, I like the sound of how free these simple backstories make characters. While I don’t script out lots of events, I do tend to have a general idea of where they came from. Sometimes, I even have an idea of where they are going.

I’ll use Dorri as an example. I knew I wanted a paladin to play hordeside and the moment they were a confirmed class, that was decided. Ghaar’s decision to have his warlock’s conniving succubus also be trapped in a belf body as a paladin added a friend for my pally. I already knew that Elerlissa would end up corrupting Dorri. I knew that Dorri’s original path was that of a mage and I knew she was angry.

What I didn’t know was that a few weeks into BC, Elerlissa would have talked Dorri into leaving her guild in a fit of anger. Or that Dorri would end up spending time in Shattrath with Keltyr after raids, walking around and boosting up his ego. Or that Keltyr would find Dorri similarly attractive.

Anyway, I had more than just a general backstory to get to that point. It wasn’t point by point, but it had some really strong incidents already in there.

By: Ezma

Ezma — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:09:59 +0000

That’s Dir! I rolled him, a male belf paladin, for the lulz. He was a good time boy, nothing serious or deep. I made him my DK’s brother for her plot.. and he ran off on his own and started doing great things.

I never would have guessed that underneath that jaded and lecherous exterior, he is really easygoing and just genuinely likes people. He’s the kind of guy who keeps his ex-lovers as friends.. and he has A LOT of exes. Bit by bit, he’s telling me who he is. All of my characters have had their moments of revelation but he’s the one who took the bit between his teeth and ran off practically on his own.