Most of my character's have histories, but it is only on a very rare occasion that I actually bother putting it into the character's bio.
@Morac | Twitter
Trust the computer. The computer knows all.
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I generally have some kind of biography in mind for every character. Having a shared background for many of them helps. We begin with relating them to the background, and noting their roles there.|
Originally Posted by Jophiel
Just idly curious and some questions on character biographies:
What percentage of your characters have biographies? Do you usually write them at creation or after you've had a chance to get a feel for the character? Has a good biography saved a character you otherwise weren't that thrilled with? |
Many other characters are named after mythological or historical figures. At least for starters, these write themselves; you can always condense something from Wikipedia.
Then, I condense further. While every character needs a biography, I think that really good ones get to the heart of the matter very quickly. My characters do not to have particularly distressing backgrounds or angsty stories about how they took up their in-game lives for revenge or what not. So the long introductions don't need to be made.
A couple short favorites:
Maiden Heaven (fire/regen scrapper)
Why can't everybody just be nice?
I'm on a mission from God to find people who aren't nice and, like, set them on fire.
Betsy Ross (spines/WP scrapper)
Everybody goes on and on about how I originated the design of the American flag. But it really wasn't so hard to think it up.
William Shakespeare (rad/archery defender)
It is an insufficiently appreciated fact of history that William Shakespeare could shoot radioactive beams from his hands and infect his rivals. What do you think *really* happened to Christopher Marlowe and Ben Jonson, anyways?
Laird of Kinfyre (fire/kin controller)
I was playin' me bagpipes when all of a sudden the imps cam oot of 'em. I think they likes the music.
Probably even more important to me than the biography, though, is a good set of banter binds. That's what sustains my interest in a character.
<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
What percentage of your characters have biographies?
100%. Every character I make has a biography/history.
Do you usually write them at creation or after you've had a chance to get a feel for the character?
I know what the bio is at creation about 98% of the time, though it usually doesn't get written until all of the physical details of the character are nailed down (costume, powers, etc.) Sometimes as late as level 10, sometimes as early as level 1 just after it hits Atlas/Mercy.
Has a good biography saved a character you otherwise weren't that thrilled with?
Yes! In fact, I was about to delete a character when I thought of a new costume and bio that suddenly made the character seem fresh for me. I kept it, and still play him now and again.
And I have noticed that behavior on the bio screen. I am fairly certain the character count jumps you mention are due to HTML tags randomly coming into existence and being counted such as a "<br>."
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And I thought I was the only one who did that...|
Originally Posted by Ideon
For most of my characters, a quick bio will be made up for them on their creation. It doesn't matter if it's short, it works as the backbones as to who the person is, and will most likely get expanded.
For others, their bio may come a little while after their creation, when inspiration hits, and sometimes, they'll get their signature uniform changed due to this. For almost all though, they'll have to somehow join my relationship tree in my head from any angle, even if it's minor. And putting it to paper gets me this... [IMG: Web of Connectedness] Before you ask, yes, it does get a bit confusing. :3 |
Most of my characters are connected (some retroactively) to the company my first villain 50 owns and operates.
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I admit that I'm envious of the Virtueverse thing.
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Originally Posted by Angry_Angel
One day, I'll get around to making my own Virtueverse.com page. Pity not every server has one.
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They all have bios, but how much the bio reveals varies.
For instance, I have one...when people find out without actually RPing, that the hero is really a guy, they treat him as such. So, I still keep that part of his story out of his bio, and thus his bio is rather small, because his bio would give it away.
And even still, it's happened where people will ask others OOCly, and then treat him as such :/
Except for a little after my three day banning of one toon's bio, I've never made a toon without one.
BrandX Future Staff Fighter
The BrandX Collection
Almost all of my characters have bios. Most of the ideas for them are formed while in the character creator. I always start with a AT/powerset combination in mind - my characters are never driven by concept, rather, what I want to play informs the concept. Given the AT and powersets, I fiddle around in the costume creator, and by the time I have something I like, I have an idea for a story explaining someone with that origin and those powers who looks like that.
Because of this, most of my characters get their bios by level 20 or so. That gives me some time to flesh things out in my head. Sometimes I get a solid enough concept that I write it in the creator or immediately after, but historically it takes me a little longer.
Most of my characters follow one of a few tried and true formulas explaining their backgrouns. Most were either empowered by some accident or experiment, and most were transformed as individuals by some tragedy, betrayal, or other life-changing event.
My favored root causes for transformation into a hero or villain are.
- Experiments by Portal Corp, Crey, Arachnos, the 5th Column / Council, or regular national govenrnments
- Dimensional portal experiments (Portal Corp or other)
- Events surrounding the Rikti War
- Interaction with demonic/netherworldy forces (But never via the CoT. Wow, is that overused, and really often in ways that just don't fit with known canon.)
- Interaction with the Entities (the old-school way the game referred to gods). I have a character who's backstory sounds a lot like an Incarnate, but I wrote it in Issue 1.
Edit: That was so long, I forgot to answer one of the most important questions. Yes, a bio always helps me connect with a character, and improves my enjoyment of them even if they aren't rocking in game. This has definitely saved a few characters I might have shelved if not deleted (it's very rare for me to delete a character over level 20 or so). Ironically, game changes have brought many of them back around such that they are actually now quite powerful, meaning I have characters with a backstory I dig, a long history of play, and who really kick butt. It doesn't get better than that.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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So I just looked at that, pretty impressive! So I wonder why the Devs and Paragon Studios don't just buy the code from Titan Network and incorporate that into their system?
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Originally Posted by Angry_Angel
I use City Information Terminal as my own personal City Vault-like page. This is my public list. I've got their little avatars, biographies, badges, and levels listed.
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"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."
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Ouroboros Portal is the Virtueverse for the rest of us.
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Originally Posted by Jophiel
I admit that I'm envious of the Virtueverse thing.
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<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison
I'd say..pretty much every one of my characters have some sort of story.
In my head.
About half of them have a written story somewhere.
About 3 of them have a Virtueverse page.
And only one of those virtueverse pages is anywhere near "presentable"/finished.
I mean, I really like creating interesting stories for characters, but I always get bored of the characters playstyle before I get anywhere.
I think all but one of my toons have biographies (or "biographies), though many are one sentence long. My creation process is pretty much the same as this:
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I just wish my costumes didn't mostly suck.|
Originally Posted by UberGuy
I always start with a AT/powerset combination in mind - my characters are never driven by concept, rather, what I want to play informs the concept. Given the AT and powersets, I fiddle around in the costume creator, and by the time I have something I like, I have an idea for a story explaining someone with that origin and those powers who looks like that.
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Typically most tend toward (attempted) humorousness, as I suppose The Tick is the source of most of my superhero knowledge. Like Sailboat (whose toon with a nice biography was standing next to me once at WW)
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Originally Posted by Sailboat
my bio spaces are used for very different styles of writing
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- A sub-literate recounting of power acquisition (my forum namesake's)
- A recipe
- A whirlwind tour through real historical events that the character experienced
- Journal entries
- Passages lifted (and modified slightly) from historical documents
- A personal ad
- A warning label
- An alien trying to parse and fit in with superhero culture
- Two citations from the Qur'an
- A condemnation of the reader
- A short joke on the character's name
- A breathless newspaper article on the character's exploits
- A song whose lyrics need a lot more refinement
- Meta-comic book material (Unlikely Man: No one ever expected a kid from across 110th Street to grow up to fight evil with magic, a robot arm, and a bow.)
Other players' good biographies and costumes make the game delightful almost every day.
All of my characters have bios, and all were given those bios at creation. I don't create a character because of build, I create a character because I already have them in mind and the build only fits their concept. As such, I have reused a few powersets as consequence.
Most of my Characters have Bios. It's a bit complicated. Either:
1. There's a fully formed idea in my head when I start character creation. or:
2. An idea comes from the costume creator.
or:
3. I'll make it up as I go.
In either case, having a bio is a good sign that I will be keeping that character. Any one that gets to 15 without a bio probably will not last much beyond that.
Writer of In-Game fiction: Just Completed: My Summer Vacation. My older things are now being archived at Fanfiction.net http://www.fanfiction.net/~jwbullfrog until I come up with a better solution.
Hrm. Just dug out my entry into the Freedom PERC bio contest (I didn't win). I quite like it, but sadly it is over the character limit. I really wish they would up that.
@Morac | Twitter
Trust the computer. The computer knows all.
I'm too much of a perfectionist when it comes to bios. Even though all my characters have in-depth concepts and backstories, only three have bios, because I don't always feel capable of writing a bio that feels worthy of the character. No bio beats an average or mediocre bio, in my opinion, and I've gone so far as to delete existing bios that seemed less stellar at a second glance.
Here's an example of a bio I'm happy with:
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(Razorgirl, Kat/SR scrapper) She was born under rainy skies and neon lights, a place of dark streets and bright dreams. Long ago people called it the City of Heroes, but now graffiti on the walls read "Paragone" and "hero" meant a broken Rikti War vet. Superpowers were passe and beauty was cheap, thanks to technology. Signing a ten-year contract with the Japanese zaibatsu or Chinese mafia got you enough cybernetics and genemods to squash an armored division. You got to do their dirty work on the streets, but hey, it was a tax-free job with benefits. They called people like her razorgirls, delivery boys, street samurai. She bought into that promise of power: a life of dodging bullets, blowing up robots, cheap thrills and expensive living that ended when the high-tech doodad she was hired to guard malfunctioned and kicked her rear forty years back in time. When she woke up in a hospital she asked "Where?" and they said "Paragon City", and she smiled and spent a week in a coma. Later she wished she'd asked, "When?" |
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Aw, thanks. Now you have me guessing...|
Originally Posted by Reptlbrain
Like Sailboat (whose toon with a nice biography was standing next to me once at WW)
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Originally Posted by Reptlbrain
Other players' good biographies and costumes make the game delightful almost every day.
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Originally Posted by Laevateinn
Here's an example of a bio I'm happy with:
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If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
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1. 100%.|
Originally Posted by Jophiel
Just idly curious and some questions on character biographies:
What percentage of your characters have biographies? Do you usually write them at creation or after you've had a chance to get a feel for the character? Has a good biography saved a character you otherwise weren't that thrilled with? |
2. At creation. Concept creates the character.
3. No.
--NT
They all laughed at me when I said I wanted to be a comedian.
But I showed them, and nobody's laughing at me now!
If I became a red name, I would be all "and what would you mere mortals like to entertain me with today, mu hu ha ha ha!" ~Arcanaville
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I check for bios while roaming around if the name or costume strike me as unique to see how fleshed out a character is. I don't always have the opportunity to read them though, especially the looong ones, in the MOAR XP NAO! mindset of the PuGs I tend to find myself in. |
Originally Posted by Sailboat
...Even after years and years, one of my favorite things to do is to lurk in the public gathering spaces and watch the dazzling array of exotic and mundane characters pass by...
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Hehe. Character watching has it's drawbacks though. Broke down a few day ago and dragged my VG to D for a change of pace. And during the course of the time we were there, I actually lost track of the pairs of legs in miniskirts and high heels sauntering around.
Tales of Judgment. Also here, instead of that other place.
good luck D.B.B.
Pretty much all of my older characters have a bio written out. More recently I've gotten lazy and either not written the bio out or not even come up with anything beyond name and costume. I'd guesstimate that for recent characters about 40% have written bios, 30% have mentally stored bios, and 30% have nothing beyond a basic theme.
For characters that I gave bios I usually had the basic idea and shape of the bio in my head at creation, then I refine that into an actual written piece sometime during the first 20 levels (generally typing bits out into a text editor during loading screens or while waiting on a team getting organised).
Style varies from probably-quite-boring-and-wordy serious bios, to more light hearted tongue in cheek stuff, to a few that are just a couple of sentences or words (Pinchy's bio: PINCH! PINCHPINCHPINCH! PINCHY PINCHY PINCHPINCHPINCH!).
I don't know what my percentage is, but it's a lot. I've maxed out every server with characters, so somewhere north of 135 bios.
The Alt Alphabet ~ OPC: Other People's Characters ~ Terrific Screenshots of Cool ~ Superhero Fiction
Here's my latest effort, for the explosive hero Daisycutter. It just makes the character limit by a few strokes:
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Ending the Vietnam War was the second best thing Richard Nixon ever did for his country. It also made sense to order air support for the struggling South as America withdrew. John Smith actually loved the Vietnamese girl and their infant daughter. He came to save them. He didnt know about the mutagenic interaction of LSD and Agent Orange in the womb, nor was it his fault he was shot just outside the embassy gate. The ARVN soldiers were fighting for their country. They knew victory was near no need to harm this woman or the child of their enemy. Leading them to safety, they didnt know theyd been spotted from the air. The huge BLU-82 Daisycutter bomb could only be carried by a cargo plane the sort that should be carrying people to safety instead. It could not be left behind for the enemy. It had to be used. And so a series of good decisions, taken for sound reasons, ended in this blackened clearing, a baby lying unharmed in its center. Even though it was nobodys fault, she began to cry. |
If we are to die, let us die like men. -- Patrick Cleburne
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The rule is that they must be loved. --Jayne Fynes-Clinton, Death of an Abandoned Dog
I mostly write out the bios for characters that have reached lvl 20; a couple of the new ones have bios too, though.
Also, my bios tend to be origin stories and not a record of what the character has done so far.
Ideon and others:
May I humbly suggest Personal Brain software from thebrain.com - it's QUITE useful for connecting related 'stuff' together.
As for bios? All of my characters have something rudimentary by level 5, if not at character creation.
And I will have to look into Ouroportal - VV is wonderful, but I may be moving some characters around and I don't intend to NOT roleplay with them just cos I'm not on an RP server.
"City of Heroes. April 27, 2004 - August 31, 2012. Obliterated not with a weapon of mass destruction, not by an all-powerful supervillain... but by a cold-hearted and cowardly corporate suck-up."
2. Some I write at creation. Most are done before lvl 10 if I'm playing them often. I usually have a clear idea of what a toon's "personality" and backstory is when I skin them up in the costume creator (I mean, how can you dress them if you don't know their tastes?). Sometimes I know the bio I want, but haven't committed to writing it 'til I had it "right" after a few play sessions.
3. I can't honestly say I've deleted a toon that had a bio, except for one kinetics defender back in mid 2004, "Fafnir". Nice bio, ugly costume. Got him to 12 before I tossed him in favor of other character designs.
Extra credit: I've seen that text field bug too. I wish they'd fix that one day. It's been hoppy for years.
@TURGENEV - Freedom Server / IRON / B.A.N.E / HORDE
Turg Fiction: Ghost in the Machine Acts III & IV coming 2012!
Turg Fiction: IX is now LIVE on Architect Entertainment!