Character Sheet Guide

[Spatz]

Character Sheet Guide

Welcome to the Character Sheet Guide. The purpose of this thread is to help those with, less than adequate character forms, and make the characters be their own being.

Introduction To Character Sheets

Character sheets come in many shapes and sizes, often directly attributed to what the subject matter of the RP is. In my RPing experience I've seen large intricate sheets, and short sweet sheets. All are fine, so long as the character is conveyed well enough.

An example of a small sheet:

-Name:
-Gender:
-Appearance:
-Personality:
-Biography:

The most important parts of the sheet are also the most obvious. A character can be as detailed as possible but without a name, it's still a no-body. The other important part is gender. Gender will effect how other character's view your own, and likely effect your own character's actions to some limits.

Appearance

Appearance is also quite important. A meager description will make it hard for others to envision your characters, and will often be slightly generalized.

-Appearance: Example is kind of muscular, and wears a black shirt with blue jeans. His messy hair is black.

I've seen this kind of sheet before, and to be perfectly honest, it makes me cringe. There is much than can be done to help this, or as many prefer to call it, Fleshing It Out.

-Appearance: FIO has a fair muscular build, and stands at an average 5' 11", weighing in at 175 lbs. FIO's black hair sits messily upon his thick head, falling down the back of his neck. FIO's face is chisled, something of a hardened war vetran's build, with fair black stuble along his cheeks. FIO has deep green eyes that almost always seem distracted, and has a slight discoloration in the left eye. FIO wears a slightly worn in black shirt and faded blue jeans. He possesses a couple small scars along his right arm, a result of an accident in his past. FIO wears maroon shoes with a rust coloured detail.

This form, if you noticed, uses a top-down method, where you describe the body's build first, then describe the person from head down. This method is what I prefer, as it seems quite organised. I know that other people use other methods, and they are fine, but I prefer this method.

Appearance helps define your character's personality on top of outward appearance. This can be helpful in the describing of personality.

Personality

Sadly, I feel this the least important of the base sheet. The reason being is that it can often be easily passed off with a short but to the point description. These also can be given a PO, or played out, description where the player simply plays out the character as they see fit, often finding that they wouldn't have ended up playing the character personality that they would have initially described.

If anyone else would like to add input on this part please feel free.


Biography, Background, or Character History

This is one that I feel is enormously important. Appearance and personality judges how you character acts and behaves, but biography defines who they are by describing what they have done and put up with in their lives. I take a great amount of pride in drawing out extensively long bios, and I know there are others on the boards who do too. Unlike the appearance examples, the Bio examples I can not make a meager short one, then flesh it out, so instead I'll show one that had little effort put into, then one that I had worked on for some time.

-Background: Example was born in New Vegas, Nevada. Their he was raised by his widowed mother who taught him the basics of life. Over many years he lived the average life of one living in the wasteland, killing raiders and mutated animals that drew too close to the homestead, and scavenging from nearby ruins to ensure that he and his mother could live in the land. Severals years later he would meet up with (insert important character here) and decided to leave on an adventure across the dangerous land, hoping to find glory.

This is a shorter sheet, still covering most aspects of the character's background, but not making it all too terribly interesting, and often leaving much to be desired. It is longer then some I've seen, and that is what makes me sad, that even when tryig to make a short and uninfluenced sheet, it still ends up longer than some I've seen.

-Background: Oni was born in the ruins of New York City, where the descendants of Japanese software developers inhabited several office buildings, and had become experts at long range marksmanship. Oni was born in what is known as Cess Mod, the home building of the descendants. His father is one of the top marksmen of the home building, and was charged with defending it for life. His mother is a lone member of the brotherhood of steel, having been defeated by slavers in an ambush in Texas, and had been transferred from slaver to slaver, and finally ended up retrieving her armour, which had taken a separate route, but ended up in the hands of one of the slavers, and defeating those who sought to keep her in chains.

Shortly after birth, Oni’s mother left, having now developed a need to stay on the move, now unable to stay put. Oni was fostered by his aunt, who raised him with his father, ensuring Oni was properly raised to understand technological workings, mechanical workings, and marksmanship. It was at age 8 that Oni went on his first scouting mission, with two of his elder cousins, he was given a switchblade and a silenced 9mm pistol to fend any raiders off, a very likely thing as New York was filled with them due to an abundance of reclaimable, albeit irradiated, resources, food, and weapons. Oni was soon separated from his cousins, and eventually surrounded by cannibalistic raiders from the Bronx district of the city. In a surprise outcome, he managed to kill all five, and was granted his adult name much earlier than most in his tribe, named after his almost sadistic ability to systematically defeat overwhelming odds.

Oni came to discover vehicular mechanics, and learned how to repair and care for the Pre-War vehicles, and eventually fixed a Pre-War motorcycle. He learned how to ride it slowly, though balance wasn’t the problem, so much as acquiring free time, and a safe environment to do so. His tasks through adolescence involved helping his father on look out, marksmanship training with assorted long range weapons, primarily rifles, maintaining smaller power generators, scavenging for supplies, such as energy cells, scrap metal, light bulbs, scarp electronics, and working machinery, a task made slightly easier by use of his motorcycle. Eventually the Pre-War fuel he had been using ran out, and he couldn’t find an appropriate source for it, so Oni decided that it was best to refit his motorcycle to run on a microfusion breeder cell, something commonly found in recharger rifles, not hard to acquire.

Come young adulthood, Oni was given a choice, make a life for himself beyond the ruins, or remain here and help his people. Oni wasn’t the first in the society’s history to depart, but was described as the most conflicted. Oni left his family with a promise that he’d return someday, and set out on his bike, heading west. He’d eventually discover several society’s along the way, some similar to his own, others greatly varying, and some quite repulsive. Oni made sure his nickname was well known to those he visited, many of which plagued by raiders prior to his arrival. He made a great deal of friends, and even more enemies in his long journey to the west, a small portion of his mind guiding him to discover the whereabouts of his mother, following rumours, whispers and vague clues, getting closer and closer to the west coast.

By the time he arrived in Texas he discovered what was left of the branch of the BoS that his mother had been part of, and managed to acquire and refit a military truck to service his needs, as well as a dog.

This I pulled from a Fallout OC sheet I had developed. As one can see his history is much more fleshed out than the other, having quite a bit of thought put into it. Backgrounds this long are often regarded as tl;dr, though will sometimes be fully read to validate that the character can have a background of this sort. This is my prefered length of Bio, but most people won't expect more than a couple paragraphs (note: A paragraph is eight full scentences long. Remember your english classes)

Other Notes, as well as character sheet examples

(Not sure what to put here yet, will likely edit later...)

Name:
Age: Gender:
Trainer’s License ID Number:
Home Town and Region:
Appearance:
Personality:
Biography:

Pokémon:

-Name:
-Species:
-Age:
-Moveset: (Must be legal and only four moves)
-Personality:
-Accessories:

This sheet is much more fleshed out than the one at the begining, allowing the player to better describe the character, and in this case, even their Pokémon. I prefer these sheets, but they need not be this long, and most people prefer filling out shorter forms.

 

[Monoking]

Hey, you finally made this! Good. I hope people will pay attention. As for me, I'm bookmarking this.

 

[Dragon]

I'd have to disagree with what you said about personality being unimportant, or that it's okay to just put PO. If someone doesn't know how their character acts in general when they start writing up a form, then they don't have a very strong character! imo, at least two decent sentences are fine but the more the better. Having to think about how your character acts and thinks helps flesh them out.

Something like "he's bold, brash and prone to make quick, not very thought out decisions. He also likes to show off and try to impress people, though he's somewhat clumsy at it" gives you an idea of the character already, even if it is really vague. That has a lot of room for manoeuvrability if you want to change your character, but everyone can get an idea of what your character is like. Hope that made sense.

 

[Spatz]

I'd have to disagree with what you said about personality being unimportant, or that it's okay to just put PO. If someone doesn't know how their character acts in general when they start writing up a form, then they don't have a very strong character! imo, at least two decent sentences are fine but the more the better. Having to think about how your character acts and thinks helps flesh them out.

Something like "he's bold, brash and prone to make quick, not very thought out decisions. He also likes to show off and try to impress people, though he's somewhat clumsy at it" gives you an idea of the character already, even if it is really vague. That has a lot of room for manoeuvrability if you want to change your character, but everyone can get an idea of what your character is like. Hope that made sense.

Alright, sorry. I've always found difficulty with personality. If you'd like to contribute, please do.

 

[Dragon]

Alright, sorry. I've always found difficulty with personality. If you'd like to contribute, please do.

If no one else wants to write something for personality, I'll make something at some point :0

 

[Zero Moment]

First off: There are a few grammar and syntax errors that are somewhat cringe-worthy. (For example, in the first quote it should be There, not Their)

And for the personalities, I find that, once you have all the other parts fleshed out, you can likely imagine them in a situation and figure out how they react.

EDIT: Ninja'd

 

[Dragon]

And for the personalities, I find that, once you have all the other parts fleshed out, you can likely imagine them in a situation and figure out how they react.

Yeah, this! This is basically how I write personality sections.

 

[Stormecho]

It's the opposite for me, personality is what I write first and I always have personality concepts, occasionally with backstory thrown in. Appearance is the least interesting and useful for me, as I find it difficult to visualize normal people let alone my character or anyone else's. History/bio is somewhere in between - sometimes, they're normal and I can't write a ton for it, but often they're what made my character into who they are now and the specific circumstances are fun and necessary.

I know that not everyone finds it the same way, but for me, personality is everything and the most important part of a profile. I generally don't find it difficult to adhere to that character once I make them, or have them change drastically, maybe because of how my concepts spring up.

I meant for this to be some sort of actually useful post but it turned into a rambling mess. Sorry.

 

[Coloursfall]

0: hey you should mention stuff about using Generic Anime Images pulled off google for character art, that always bugs me.

(also you should post this here too!! Useful for linking to things all in one place for when i make RPs!)