Hey fellow designers, I have been working on a game design for awhile now and am starting to work on the character profiles. But I'm having trouble in setting them out, and also how to write about their VAB (Values, Attitudes and Beliefs), or what you would call their 'personality'. I have the basic idea as to how I want them to be, but just don't know how to put it out onto paper. Any ideas or templates would be much appreciated. Cheers, -James-

I have replied you in email, but I just thought that I would also summarize it here since there is no other response.

When you look for character profile, you would normal find a long list of information about the character, including information like occupation, birthplace, blood type, lineage, etc. Seeing a list like that isn't obvious what is an effective order to design a character.

There are only a few things required to define or to show personality:

1) The goal they have;
2) The reason of their goal;
3) Their approach to overcome problems and to achieve their goal.

Once these are defined, the rest can be derived. You only need to derive the information that actually matters.

Example:

Character: Junior

Junior's goal is to become a Ranger because that is the honorable and expected next stage of her life. To become a Ranger, Junior must complete a quest assigned by the Elders. In her case, that quest is to search through galaxies and return StarTree to its kind, so that StarTree can live a life appropriate for its species.

Character: StarTree

StarTree wants to find its origin so that Junior could advance and become a Ranger, but at the same time StarTree could not and does not want to imagine what to do when it would find its kind. StarTree wants Junior to succeed because it likes Junior. But it also like to be with Junior.