As a complete newbie, I've been hopping between quite a few different characters and classes as I try everything out and get a feel for things. I still haven't managed to get past level 20 yet (since ranking groups seem to dry up pretty fast) but I'm still having a good time.

Here's something I'd like to ask of the playerbase: How do you decide on a new character to roll?

Personally, my characters come to me as one-word sentences which I expand on later. For example, my current character, an Orc, was thought by the line "An orc who thinks he's an Anti-Paladin." (as an aside, I got my first Imm-awarded xp for his role today. Woohoo! I know 500 is fairly low but it's still special to me. :P) I haven't really expanded his role yet, though.

I draw inspiration from other sources pretty often, too - for example, one of my characters was inspired partly by the game God Hand. I know some people prefer to invent entirely new characters, but I'm not an amazing writer so I like to work of an established base. :P

Even if I'm just rolling a class to test out its abilities, I always have to have a cool character concept first.

How about you guys? How do you create characters or their roles? As a newbie this would be very interesting for me to hear. :)

I generally know what style of play suits me, and so I stick to that. I used to roll characters for maybe 2 or 3 reasons. Sometimes it's a combination of them.

1) I want to test a build or a legacy with a warrior. These characters I tend to lose interest in once I accomplish that though, and I only made it to hero with one of these characters, and generally I don't do this anymore. As fun as warriors are, they just do not hold my interest now.

2) I want to try a new class/race. Same as 1, I don't usually stick these out. However, if I enjoy them, I will usually design a new character with a role and such and then play them out.

3) I form a lengthy character role in my head that would be fun for me to play. If I have a vague concept for a role, I usually try to flush it out before creating the char, and if I can't see where it would lead I don't do it since I know it would end up being a deletion. Usually now I have the char's life scripted to old age. But then I take the RP of the char and the interactions they have and twist the char development so that they go along that general path, but in a fashion that gets driven by the RP. My explorer bard that ended up in scion was my last example of this.

This is pretty much the only way I roll a character now, and generally I tend to play out these characters to age/con death. I find a static role leads to deletion, dynamic roles are what make characters fun. The race/class/ethos/cabal is all ancillary to the role. You may have to tailor a role slightly based on the race/class, but the overarching role is what is important. So long as that is dynamic and entertaining, the character is a success for me.

Sometimes I browse around the interwebs for portrait pictures.. and then write a role around a picture I like.

Here's my perspective, which differs from the way, say, Twist does his. I've heard many times that people like to try combos they haven't done before. I've tried that myself, and frankly never liked it once. I've been playing CF on-and-off since about 1995, and the vast majority of the time I play goodies. I've tried a range of evils, and I just don't like it. I kept telling myself I need to branch out, and get some diversity. After all, it kept working for all these other people!

But after trying periodically for years and years, I finally realized that I simply like to play goodies, and I'm much happier if I stick with what I like. I'll still throw in the occasional neutral, and rarely I'll decide I should try an evil role that comes to mind, but I never go long before realizing why I don't like playing them.

And in the end, I'm fine with that. So, an alternative hypothesis for you to consider is to find what you like most and play variations on it a whole bunch! You can still avoid cookie-cutters. If you love the idea of Ragers, then play a ton of variations of them. If like me you enjoy playing goodies, well, there's a huge difference between lovey Acolyte healer, angry paladin Tribunal, or storm warrior Rager.

Once you have an idea of what you like, I usually find inspiration for specific roles on random, undeveloped ideas. It can be as simple as an idea for an emote. I'll then run with that and create a role around it.

Good luck
Aarn

Right proper bastard ;) Just can't remember his name at the moment.

It had been a while since I had interacted with a truly proper-speaking priest (I think Larcat's paladin empowered by Aarn, interestingly enough, was the last).

Always refreshing to see someone take a simple querk to make their character stand out. Lord knows I'm not the biggest fan of Magus, but I loved how one of his warriors had a lisp. Stuff like that is what I think makes characters vibrant.

Yes, that's the sort of thing I'm talking about! I forget that shamans name, but he was based around using highly-proper language, like thees and thous. My last dwarf was based around the oddity of a super-polite dwarf. You can take a little thing like that and come up with an entire character around it. Why would a dwarf, who are usually known for being gruff and loud, be really polite? Plus I find it's a convenient tool during the course of the character to latch on to this little oddity as a way of getting yourself into the roleplay, and avoiding the tendency to play bland characters with personalities just like some default.

I have played a lot of support characters to help bring about some semblance of balance in the game. Once the power shifts, I go to the next.

This phrase is the secret to creating a character that interests me, whether it is a pk-motivated character, a build-oriented character (explore or experimental) or an intriguing role.

For character longevity, I have to go with characters who are built from the role up. If I try to make a pk-motivated character interesting by writing a role around them, I get something flat and artificial that I quickly lose interest in.

My characters generally fall into 3 categories.

1. Most characters are rolled with just a desire to try something out, maybe a new skill went in, or I saw a log of some characters doing something I didn't expect and I want to see it first hand. These characters burn out very fast and often don't even last a week. Straight PK characters are like this for me too - thought I suck horribly at pk.

2. Archtypal characters, characters I enjoy playing and feel comfortable with, these I often do when I want to play but can't think of or am too lazy to do something new. Often these tend to be my favorite characters. As an aside I actually feel straight forward roles often work best because they are easier to RP and easier for other people to discern your role and thus RP with you.

3. Characters based from literature, movies, etc, if I am reading something new and a character catches my eye I often consider how I could shapre that character concept into a unique CF role. For me these are often hit and miss, they rarely in my experience don't turn out well for me.

Honestly, I look at the PvP aspect first and pick something that I think will be fun to play and moderately "effective". Then I come up with a role that seems interesting, etc.

In the past I've always had at least a vague role in mind before creating a character, but usually didn't write it up and add it until I had some hours under my belt. Recently I've decided that's a bad idea, so I'm trying to write my whole "intro" role prior to character creation and enter the whole thing at level one.

It takes some discipline to actually make myself write it all out instead of just logging on and starting to play.

at least in a long time, and play that.

Another thing I'll do is play something to help one particular char or another who seems to be having a hell of a time of things.

An example of the former would be Dupmasione, my elf paladin who ended up being Captain of the Fortress and age dying. I simply hadn't ever played a paladin since Virtues went in (a loooong time). So I figured I'd give it a shot, and it ended up working well.

An example of the latter would be Hunsobo. I'd played plenty of warriors, and several giant ones, but I noticed that the (at the time) Emperor character, Draktel, was often logged in alone during my playtimes, and had absolutely nobody to help him against hordes of Fort, Battle, and Outlander. So I rolled up a fire sword spec with the intention of levelsitting at about 33ish to just retrieve for Draktel if he needed it.

Draktel liked me so much that he kept promoting me and telling me to level up so he could promote me more, though, so I ended up getting War Master and then Emperor later. And age dying that char.

In between those types of chars I generally have hugely forgetable characters that I delete (relatively) quickly, even if they aren't huge failures.

> Usually I try to think about what I haven't played yet, or...

That's the great thing about CF. There must be at least a hundred different kinds of sword spec for one to enjoy.

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bashbashflurry!

Dude. I don't blame you. I've been trying to go break out of my own rut, and so far its been a resounding failure.

Wolderun, that staff/whip stsf battle warrior, the british fort invoker.
I'm sure there are a lot more that I've interacted with.

It's fun fighting you or with you.

I hated Hunsobo though. You bastard. :P

*grumbles about stupid Imperial summon ganks*

It is all about what I am feeling. I may be playin a char for couple hundred hours then think.... ya know I haven't did this in so long or really wish I could do this or that with this type of char and that's where it starts.

Then again I have some specific build types that I really, really enjoy, or cabals that I truly love (Battle).

Once I have an idea what I want to do, I brainstorm how I can get there with this char. I usually begin with back story, then go into how the thought process and actions happen to go, or mannerisms they may have to further my development.

There are a few ways that I decide to play chars.

1: (Most common) A role idea comes to me. Like you described above "An orc that thinks he's a paladin". Stuff like that. Then I sit down, work on the role for a few days, usually leave it without looking at it for 2-3 days, reread it, edit, and then get to work.

2: A mechincal character build comes to mind. Powergame style, examples: d-elf, warrior, stfs, soul of the mountain. Maybe that'll rock when being in empire following that certain imm? Then I sit down and try to do a decent role around that concept that I might enjoy.

The first alternative is 99% of the time MUCH more fun than the second. The second is usually just to try different combos out. The first gives me the most awards as well most of the time.

My last char however was something in between, I wanted to try a fame seeking guy, striving only to become famous by any means, infamous even. At the same time I had a mechanical build I wanted to try. It ended up quite decently and it is the most fun character I've played I think. :) (Ckath)

Always play first and call whatever you do the role.