What does your Bio say about you?

Tried Roleplaying a few times. Wasn't too good and didn't enjoy it. These were catastrophic, either. Just waited for that "I'm enjoying this" moment to click only to find it never did. I suspect this is due to do things. I am horrible at acting/emulating actions, since the finer points of social interaction are more difficult for me to understand than quantum physics. Second, I've been an unintentional god moder since I was three years old, and if things don't go my way then frankly I don't give a damn. This is an improvement, since when I was a child I would burst into tears when things went awry.


With that said, whenever I make one of my toons I always give them a full bio, oddly enough with none of the things that the OP listed (Even if two of my toons are married... to each other). These bios are usually an origin story with a bit of a description of themselves, always including their real full name. It goes beyond there, for whenever I make a character I would construct elaborate storylines that would occur in my head and play them out whenever I am bored/at work/crossing the street. The largest one I made many years ago was expansive and detailed enough to make 3 full seasons of a show out of. Oddly enough it was based on CoH, even before I ever played the game (A spines/dark armor scrapper named Raxx who was really a psychotic serial killer. This was before CoV came out). These storylines will often coincide with events that happen in-game, often times unintended.

Though a lot of my toon bio's will have some similar elements. One of them is an element of adolescent determinism. Nearly half of my toons have some kind of "scorned by society" or "abandoned as a kid" or "picked on" thing going, even if their reactions to the same event will be completely different. Second one is social inadequacies. Nearly all my toons have it either written or heavily implied that they are strange and unusual people before super powers come into play. The gambit runs from being blind as a bat to having autism, and everything in between.

What does it say about me? Well, I do have aspergers syndrome and a traumatic childhood, so I suppose I am subconsciously writing what I know into each of my toons. Extending an ounce of my soul into each exaggerated embodiment of my person.


As far as theme songs go, I could never give anyone a themesong other than non-plot-crucial battle music, since I always see each character's entirety being around a very wide spectrum of emotionally diverse events. With characters turning evil, turning good, falling in love, falling out of love, doing drugs, getting rich, losing, winning, and having to fight battles no one wants to, it is nigh impossible for any song to signify all of that uniquely for any of my toons. Basic battle music is pretty good, though, since the appropriate response to any change in plot for a superhero/villain is to bust some heads.

But I put can music to different moments in the plot. At some revelation or a particularly meaningful battle, if I hear a song that happens to tune itself seamlessly to that moment, this song will be forever attached to that moment, regardless of how much I want to change it. Sometimes vice versa happens, and a song or even a combination of songs actually creates the scene in my head. Favorite example of this is when I heard Damnear Divine's cover of Circus by Britney Spears, and almost instinctively created an "episode" in my head where a villain ambushes a hero in one of their battles, causing a background song change from Spears to Divine.


But enough about me. I actually think this is a decent guide to several RP elements, and explains some of what I see in different places. And yes, Pocket D is a scary place.

Hah! I love it, and yes - I agree on most of those things too, though I have yet to interact with a "Literate/advanced/elite RPer" (knowingly anyway ).

Just to clarify about literate role player: From what I recall of my days posting on the gaia forums, literate role players were the people who would use good grammar and spelling. Some of them were terrible at actually describing things and would just fancy up their words instead of putting real effort into rambling a description out for 3 or 4 paragraphs, But quite a few were actually capable of high quality long posts. And they didn't usually employ word switch tactics to make it sound fancier, they just wrote better.

Does this help at all in CoX Roleplaying situations? Not at all. In fact, it can make things horrible. These people tended to take time and put a lot of effort into each post, and because of the limited length of each chat sending, and how long they might take to say anything, you could be in for a long wait while they polish their hello.

So if you see someone with 'elite roleplayer' 'literate role player' or 'elite literate better than you role player', then you might well be in for a ride on the slow boat to longpostistan.

Now, in the interest of going on for entirely too long and rambling, I'll keep going about the literate role players on Gaia. There was, and probably still is, a level of 'how literate you are' system for Gaia, There were the Lite literate role players, who were looked down upon by the most snobbish of other literate role players, regardless of weather or not they were actually better. Lite's are the kind of literate role player who will post a minimum or short amount of information instead of multiple pages in a post. Their longest posts tend to be a few paragraphs. The quality of description value varies, but all literates are generally using correct spelling and grammar.

The middle ground was simply referred to as Literate role players. They were the people who could belt out multiple paragraphs easily, with their longer posts reaching into a page or two. They generally weren't given any flack from anyone on the higher or lower range of the literacy level chart.

There were also the Oldbies, people who had been role playing for more than 5 years. Now, by more than 5 years, I mean more than 5 years on a forum. It doesn't really matter how many years you've been playing dnd or doing other forms of role playing, the only way to be an Oldbie was to have been role playing for a long time on forums. Or you could claim to be one as long as you made suitable references to things which were old and role playing related. "Back in my day, we played Neverwinter nights on a 28k modem and we thought it was the bee's knees in our America Online chatroom." Oldbie is a modifier, and you're not likely to see it in a CoX character bio.

There was the Elite Literate Roleplayers as well. Or, who I like to refer to as the snobs. Quite a few of the people who claimed to be elite literate role players did in fact have a fair amount of skill, but they also had a rather, well, I don't think I can adequately describe them without going past the pg 13 limit of the forums. So instead I'm going to say they had a mickey mouse hat. The worst of them would lock themselves away into private guilds and never allow anyone new into the guild unless that person had been scouted by one of the members of the guild, then 'tested for literacy'. The best of these people either didn't use the term 'elite literate' went with 'advanced literate' or used the term simply to find people of a like skill level with which to role play. They didn't begrudge people for not wanting to sit down and type out a 3 page background story, But they did generally require anyone in a role play they were in to use mostly correct spelling and grammar. Which was reasonable considering that the most you were usually going to get for picture making was going to happen in someone's bio, where they might have gone out into the wilds of the internets to pick out a picture for their character. In fact, this became an extremely popular option, and the way of learning how to describe what your character actually looks like just flew out the window, rarely seen again.

As a final note, I just have to say, if you guys all think Pocket D is bad, then you haven't seen how bad it an get in some places where the light of compassionate, considerate role play refuses to shine.

I try to give my characters a good Bio, sometimes a story etc...

However they usually start a sjust a blank WIP...

I need to "feel" the character before fleshing the concept and putting the details out there

None of my 27 alt bios are alike aside from one tag. Some are factual, some are like Paragon Times news articles about the character, some are descriptive, some are one liners, some have a history of the character...whatever strikes me as fitting at the time.

My bio says I'm Awesome.

I didn't write it, it was like that when I logged in.

What does that say about me?





-np

I don't even put (RP) or any variant in my bio. I have a bio that I've spent some time and care writing and refining, and I am nearly always roleplaying. I feel that says enough about whether or not I am a RPer. My roleplay can and has sometimes been violent, but only when I've been in the company of other MRPers. When in lower-rated or mixed company, I tend to reduce my own rating to match and would hate if having (MRP) in my bio were to turn anyone off preemptively.

I like to think of the character bio as the stuff that might be learned about a character on the pilot and early episodes of their TV show, plus maybe a few hooks that might come up later in the show if I'm feeling generous. Junior's bio has a leetle piece of "top-sekrit" information about him just in case another player wants to follow up on it and does so in a fun way, but if anyone were to just metagame it he'd simply deny it outright.

Writing bios is probably my favorite part of the game, actually (and certainly a plus that sets CoX apart from the Distinguished Competition), but generally I try to go for what I'd expect to see on the interior cover of that character's comic book-- Brief origin, general status, etc.-- enough to let you jump in the story if you wish, but probably not a complete background.

My bio usually says, "Somebody needs to tell this dude about paragraphs, yo."

Aside from that, I aim to communicate a bit of my character's publicized past and current activities. Is Emgro spending a lot of time in the RWZ? Then I mention that. Have I pulled a "big job" on a character lately, a tough TF/SF or involved RP piece? That goes in.

As for the publicized past, that usually is invented partially during creation. Emgro is an alien from an unknown world; all people know is his landing on Primal Earth. The Everted has a long and illustrious heroic history. Violet Hayes has a long and generally unknown history since she barely qualifies as a "super" hero.

My habits aside, I feel this thread is informative and helpful for those of us who haven't been RPing online for years. I think a lot of people are interested in RP in CoX, but would prefer to avoid getting sucked into a game of Uno without realizing it.

Mine says I'm impatient.

My bio consists of The stats like his real name, height, eye color, etc.

And then the rest of it are key notes, not an actual story. A summarized note compilation of what's found on his Virtueverse(which I need to organize ><)


Recently I found that the powers I gave him are a bit OP, so I added in quite a few limitations that are rare among the people who RP as demons.

I'm quite satisfied.

Just my 2inf, but there's more to WoD than just vampires. >.>

You won't find anything in my bios that's not readily apparent to others. This is mostly physical stuff, with the exception of one character I have that basically screams psychically all the time. Its not her fault; she doesn't know she's doing it! But anyway.

You won't find a backstory or a long personal history. Why? You don't know it yet, that's why. And I'd rather be approached by an RPer able to handle themselves in an actual conversation, than one who has to 'know about the character' in order to make sure 'they fit' before speaking to me. Nine times out of ten, those are the people looking for ERP anyway (most often couched as 'romance' or 'a relationship').

I'm not saying I won't play with people who put a backstory in their bio mind you. Its really the fault of whoever decided to name it a biography in the first place. For heroes, its fairly useful, because everyone might have seen Ultraheroman stop the bank robbery on TV. That's safe to put in a bio. But for people who don't pay well-known get-followed-around-by-cameras-all-the-time types, no one knows. So why ruin the suspense of finding out? Some of the best RP moments are you finding out about awesome/surprising/terribad things that have happened to a player at the same time your character does. If you know about it ahead of time, its just, 'Oh, glad -that's- out there now so I don't have to pretend not to know it.'

But really the only thing tat bugs me is the blatantly contradicting lore characters. If you've found a hole in lore by all means, take advantage -- at least until they fill it; then you might be in trouble. But if say... you're a Praetor, or Lord Recluse's son, my characters will laugh/attempt to staitjacket/go off in search of your keepers as the mood suits them.