I'm very new at this story writting thing, so I need some help on character development. I guess that everybody knows that the way characters interact are very important in the game story, so I wonder how can you make a very interesting character? I have played a lot of RPGs, and find that sometimes the character development in the story keeps the same pattern. I mean that sometimes the characters are the same, for example, often there is a misterious guy who doesn't care about anything but himself, cold blooded, killing machine, etc.. My point is, how do you do to make a character that isn't limited to the classical pattern. I need a character that plays more enphasis on the story itself, not in the battle system (I don't want a Killing machine!) or other less important things. If manage to get a very interesting story, I'll get a very good game, that's the rule. What's the point of playing a very good 3D RPG game with great music and graphics, if the story and the characters are there for no purpose at all? Any ideas will be appreciated!

Hi, it's always nice to see someone new here. :) When you talk about seeing the same type of character over and over again, you are actually seeing a few different things: Tropes, Archetypes, Roles, and Character Dynamics.

A trope is an object that shows up often in a genre of fiction and has some symbolic value. Tropes may be inanimate objects such as magic rings, birthmarks, talking trees, unicorns, laser guns, etc. Character tropes in particular include things like: ninjas, ronins, kings, mad scientists, absent-minded professors, knights, wizards, werewolves, vampires, and other things like that. If you want your work to feel original try switching tropes for less common ones, using tropes from more than one genre, and giving your tropes detailed worldbuilding different from their stereotype, like werewolves(switch for a different animal) that don't have anything to do with the full moon.

Your cold-blooded killing machine is an archetype, but don't think archetypes are bad - they are very important to creating great characters. Archetypes occur in fiction over and over again because they resonate with what's already inside your audience's heads. Your player should be saying, "Oh yeah, this character's all about faith, he was born to be a sidekick I feel sorry for him because his leader mistreats him..." Or, "Aha, this guy's way too proud, I can't wait to see my character make fun of him and cut him down to size..." Or, "This woman is greedy, maybe I should try to bribe her..." The key is to start with an archetype that either matches or contrasts interestingly with what that character is going to be doing in the story, then explore why the character thinks that way, and give them some more traits and a strong, unique motivation so they're more 3-dimensional. How much you do this should depend on whether they're a major character or a minor character - 4-6 major characters is plenty for even the longest computer game, they should get 3 or 4 traits each because they have multiple roles to play in the story and they should have a trait related to each role. For example, you could have a healer mage who always grumbled when he had to heal someone, and this same character could also be afraid of churches because of something that happened in his past, grumbling to hide his fear, then suddenly going completely silent when he got really afraid, then, as soon as his fear was relieved he would start grumbling again, but suspiciously cheerfully, and the other characters would laugh at him.

Roles are things like leader, sidekick, advisor, skeptic, persuer, avoider, loner, etc. A role basically describes where a character thinks he should be in relation to others. A leader happily orders others around, while a loner or a sidekick would dislike ordering others around and try to avoid it. A skeptic always plays devil's advocate and predicts that things will go wrong, while a sidekick is supportive and has faith in everything.

Character dynamics are the relationships between two or more characters. Some examples are ruler-champion, lover-beloved-rival, brothers, arch enemies, teacher-student, prankster-victim, etc. For the main characters of your story, these should change over the course of the story; beginning, growing deeper through being tested, or being destroyed.

I would say those are the basics of how to create good characters. There are also lots of things written about characters in the post archives for this forum, try searching for whatever you're interested in. Here are a few of the ones I wrote or contributed to:

Character reference books are listed here.

A story is when somebody wants something...

Characters to Fall in Love With.


If you have some ideas for characters go ahead and post them here and I'm sure people will give you advice on how to improve them. :)

[Edited by - sunandshadow on August 24, 2004 10:26:56 AM]

But you've got to remember... while many "stereotypical" names suck heavily... many stereotypical characters don't. When people, who have no character development/creation skill, try to come up with something new and exciting for a character... it usually blows. I could give you a huge list of examples if you want. Right now, I'd say, "Loosely base your new characters off of time tested and proven ones." Like Auron from FFX. He's a pretty typical old mysterious guy who kills everything, but has this wierd mystical charisma too. Raziel from Soul Reaver, Link from Legend of Zelda, and Auron are all good examples of well made, and well loved characters. If you take them, and change them a little -- add your own little "flavor" to it -- you should have some pretty good characters. Now if you want entirely new kinds of chars, then I'd say, "Don't be afraid to go to the old ones for ideas, but if you have a GOOD idea for a totally new and unseen kind of char, then do it." New stuff is always a good thing. Well... almost always... we all know about Ratchet and Clank...

Interesting characters all have one thing in common in my opinion. I don't care what their names are or whether or not they are a tired archetype that everybody uses.

An interesting character must have a full indepth background. Something that explains why the character acts the why he/she does. When you're writing that you'll discover things about that character that you wouldn't have considered had you not written out the characters past (or at least done a point form version of it).

Thanks for the welcome sunandshadow! and thanks to all for the feedback!

With that I have to start writing my characters, although I find another problem in the character design part: motivation.
You mencioned that erlier, but I have to ask: How do you manage motivation in a character? because in the case of a villain, the 'I want to conquer the world' motivation is not the one I want to implement. I guess that when the caracters start to get complex they found really good motivations to do things.

Quote: Original post by enker
Thanks for the welcome sunandshadow! and thanks to all for the feedback!

With that I have to start writing my characters, although I find another problem in the character design part: motivation.
You mencioned that erlier, but I have to ask: How do you manage motivation in a character? because in the case of a villain, the 'I want to conquer the world' motivation is not the one I want to implement. I guess that when the caracters start to get complex they found really good motivations to do things.

There are lots of possible motivations a villain can have. 'Taking over the world' could be greed (I want the world to be mine), or it could be ambition (I want to be the big boss), or it could be control (I need to control the world because it's too disorderly), or it could be egotism (I should control the world because I deserve it), or many other things. Or a villain may not want to take over the world - he may want to marry the princess (or even the hero! o.O), or kill the person who tormented him as a child, or prove that he is capable of doing something great even though others doubted him, or lots of other things. The way to think about villains is, what they're doing probably seems like a good idea from their perspective. They're probably responding to a real problem or injustice... just going about it in a way that innocent bystanders are going to suffer. Generally villains are not purely sadistic, they're just more concerned with the ends than the means, they're willing to break eggs to make an omelette, etc.

I have been thinking on what sunandshadows and boolean said and found finally a conclusion.

I think that the key to get a well made villain is to see from his eyes. Because they think that what they are doing is right, althgouh we look it different.

The second thing I figured out is that when designing characters, the easiest way to make them is to use our environment. Because the person we know better is ourself. My point is that is natural to see characteristics of our own in our characters.

I guess for start, that my characters will get some characteristis that are inherent to me.

Well thanks for the help! any other idea will be of help!