Backstage - OOC Forums
EVE-Online RP Discussion and Resources => EVE OOC Summit => Topic started by: Makkal on 18 Jun 2013, 18:37
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PCs are creations of the player. Within the limits of what EVE offers, you picked a specific group of traits (faction, gender, ideology, personality) and have likely poured hundreds (some thousands) of hours into that PC.
Why that specific one? What is it about your character that appeals to you?
Why ruthless instead of compassionate? Why loyal instead of self-interested? Why Caldari instead of Minmatar? Why a noble instead of a commoner? Why someone who likes hiking, swimming, and gardening instead of someone who lives out of their pod?
Where there any specific themes or interactions you were drawn to?
Addendum: If you're the type to play more than one character or you have a slew of alts, feel free to chime in as well. When you create an alt, what are you looking for? If you have several mains, why do each of them appeal to you?
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUUB96c6EpY (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUUB96c6EpY)
of course, Nico isn't male, but the point still kind of stands.
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I picked Achura because I like playing characters who are introspective and clear headed, and also because I have a lot of knowledge of eastern faiths like Shinto and Taoism, which they seem to be all about. Write what you know, as they say! I also liked how they look (because I'm shallow and like characters to passingly resemble me if they're something extremely long term). Her physical design was vaguely based off another fictional character as sort of a reference to them, but saying which would probably be kinda a minor spoiler.
I was drawn to the Caldari State as a faction because I like extremely traditional socities that aren't portrayed as being backwards technologically or rooted in exclusively ancient Western cultue, like the Amarr. Also because I like merchantile roleplay, and I figured there'd be more of that about.
I made Gwen the way she personality-wise is because I wanted to challenge the sort of underlying themes of EVE with her worldview without the clash being paticularly loud or violent. I can't remember where on earth I heard this, but what Eve is supposed to be "all about", centrally, is supposedly power - Having it, the struggle to gain more, imposing it on others, etc. Thus, I made Gwen a character that rejects the value of power as a concept, and is even fearful of the idea of posessing it and holding it over people. This idea has led to some pretty interesting results, and thankfully hasn't just led to her being a goody-two-shoes, but rather being messed up and selfish in a way that's subtle but very distinct from a lot of other Capsuleers.
This also influenced my design of her sect of the Achur faith, if anyone at all remembers one of the few times she's rattled on about that ICly.
Additionally, I made her compassionate and kind because I like characters that start off fairly naive, innocent, and overall good people and are changed (either by those attributes being destroyed or reinforced) by the world around them and what happens in roleplay. Why start off playing a ruthless, jaded and extremist individual? The fun is, in my opinion, in the journey, not the destination - Regardless of where it takes you.
Finally, I play a mostly non-combat character because (In addition to the reasons above) I figured I'd be kinda bored and intimidated by the PvP in this game. I'm feeling more adventurous now, though, so that's probably due to change.
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I'll preface this by saying that one of the most compelling aspects of EVE's lore, at least with regards to roleplaying and what drew me to that, is the premise of the rampant capsuleer. How all the horrible behavior and disregard for the rest of the universe outside their own 'gameplay' that the average, not-roleplaying player exhibits is still accommodated by that premise of human beings stripped of their mortality and given obscene amounts of influence. Power corrupts and all that, though a bit more nuanced.
That is why I'm comfortable playing Della more as an in-universe extension of myself than as a truly independent entity. Exploring the ramifications and impacts of what is at core my personality on and by this universe.
Her lineage was picked out before I consciously decided to do this, but the contemplative spirituality advertised for the Achura by the character creator just matched.
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Esna's creation fell in several distinct steps, each of which corresponds to me falling deeper into the RP community.
For the first... I'm going to say 10-11 months of my EVE experience, I had little to no interaction with the RP community. I don't even think I really new about it until I started poking my head into the IGS and realised that there was actually a significant amount of posting going on in an RP-dedicated subforum. Already a few choices had been made: Esna was Amarr because I wanted to try out using lasers from the start - the idea of a "no ammo" gun appealed to me - and was True Amarr/Wealth Commoners/Imperial Academy because - for you young newbies - back then your starting choices actually dictated what stats and skills (of about 700k starting SP) you received.
Like a lot of new Amarr RPers, I first was drawn into RP by the slavery issue: when I looked at the IGS - which I'm sure we all know to a perfectly representative slice of every single faction (lol) - it seemed to me that there were a lot of "abuser" kinds of Amarr characters out there. I'm fairly sure that some of the faces I were seeing were people I'd understand today to be political outliers at best, and downright pirates masquerading as Amarr at worst; nonetheless, I felt like most Amarr were okay with things like forced breeding and treating slaves as disposable property to be abused at a whim.
At that point, I understood a second thing: I did not want to go with that fad, because it just seemed silly. People who want to religiously indoctrinate an entire foreign culture may be brutal or unyielding, I thought, but they would not treat their charges as disposable.
So Esna became a liberal, advocating for softer treatment of slaves as a means to better drive their conversion. I had a hard time working out exactly how he'd stand on a lot of issues until I came across another great RPer by the name of Veron Daerth, who I was inspired by (and, I dare say, shamelessly copied in some places).
At this point I was stuck in RP-lite mode. I visited the Summit, OOC, and ironically The Last Gate quite often - the latter being one of the 'hot' RP venues of the day - but I didn't really have much of story to him besides some views on certain hot-button issues. At some point I decided he should be a Holder, because I felt - correctly or incorrectly - like Holders had more of a chance to be "multipurpose characters", equally at home in backroom machinations, diplomatic deals, or business boardrooms as on the field of battle.
I'd say that this might also have been somewhat formative for Esna as well, simply for having a lack of major RP direction: Because I didn't belong to an RP corp (or even an RP faction, really), I hung out with everyone; thus, Esna had to rationalize hanging out with everyone, which lead to him being extremely open about pirate associations. Then I ran into the Ordo people, who in turn introduced me to Amarr Legio Basilica... and it was all in from there. Esna gained a deeper backstory, greater personality, and began lurking in all kinds of RP channels. He's only been growing from there.
Probably his greatest change in character then was gaining an intense hatred of Blooders and all who'd aid them, resulting from a very long-term RP cycle I had with a Blooder character involving lots of vengeance being taken on both sides. Esna grew to hate them not because they hurt him physically, but because they brought him dangerously close to infecting him with their own bloodlust.
Fun fact of RP history: Esna was at one time heavily hinted to have a home somewhere on the Amarr-Minmatar border in the Bleak Lands. I decided to retcon that because I realized the danger it'd pose to "railroading" his response and greater storyline if war ever did come (it'd only been hinted at for... oh, about 3 years). I am in retrospect very glad I did that; Esna has become a much more interesting character, in my opinion, than if he'd had to turn into a furious GRR ARGH MATARI ATTACK MY HOMEWORLD type after Empyrean Age.
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I wanted the challenge in portraying a ruthless and pragmatic Deteis Executive while exploring the complexities of Caldari concepts of duty, loyalty, obligation, culture, honour and tradition while at all times seeing how they can be bent in order advantage themselves and the people they work with.
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I created Karm because I wanted to try RP and had never played Amarr. I found PIE and over years Karmilla became complex and very fun to play. Sometimes I play other characters or step back from RP, but I always come back to this one.
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I was Caldari to start with, because I thought they looked cool on character select. Didn't really put a whole lot of thought into it. I joined I-RED because John seemed to offer exactly what I was looking for in PvP and RP training without piracy.
Most of my IC decisions tend to be OOC ones, with Katrina being a mere extension of myself. Most people give me all this credit for playing a really believable character, but tbh... I cheated. I'd give more credit to Silas or Rodj.
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Because being a complete and utter bastard OOC is far more fun with RP flavor, dialogue and rationalization.
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Foley Jones is actually what most people would call a "Alt ego" to me
Why caldari? kinda the same reason kat said
i was originally Kane mercer in the 1st build of DUST (before the character wipe in the "E3" build THEN i became Foley Jones) , i choicen caldari because once i knew this was a FPS with a spec system i knew exactly what i wanted
Assualt rifles, Assualt Suits, Assualt salt, Assualt vehicles, Assualt pancakes
and at the time there were only 4 different suits
Gall scout
Amarr Heavy
Minmatar logistic
and Caldari Assualt
so i went & sided with caldari hoping i got bonus points or something (HERP A DERP)
& today still even with every race having a Assualt Suit i still stay loyal with the classic caldari suit
never thought i end up joining the EVE RP community so.....im happy to be here still!
another thing i like to say is that i gave Foley "amnesia" so it can be a excuse to ask PF questions on the fly because honestly i dont know much about EVE lore
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Ghost evolved from a self-insert, boyish fantasy into a product of intentional design and purpose as I played EVE.
My move into making him Sansha originated from how much I aesthetically enjoyed the faction. As I explored their backstory, I also came to adore their design and message. Unlike their contemporary of the time, the Borg, I felt the Sansha had a great deal more depth and potential to them. I was very curious how the dynamic of Sansha Kuvakei would play in their hive mind. The Borg already answered the question of what 'one collective will' can do. What would a collective will + another do? So on, so forth. When I made the move to play EVE as a full time roleplayer, I redesigned Ghost from an insert into something that would 'fit' the Sansha.
He's done supremely well in this role, even though 90% of his backstory remains unpublished.
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.........Wait, sansha aren't borg????
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To be honest... I don't play a character. Istvaan is me. I think the first few years certainly were playing a character, trying different things my own character wouldn't want to attempt, like socializing with bunches of people, but I just fell back on the default: me. Istvaan is criminal scum, I am criminal scum. Istvaan is self-preservational, so am I. Introvert:introvert. Istvaan is selfish; as am I. I even modeled Istvaan's face after my own - there can be no greater height of egomania. The face is hardly important - both Istvaan and I wear masks with ease, and lie with nary a twitch of the crow's foot while smiling. Both Istvaan and I fuck supermodels and sniff powders from their bosoms. Both Istvaan and I succeed at everything they put their mind to, yet are plagued by an ever-present Other that colours their thoughts, and masquerades its inserted suggestions as the thoughts of its originator. Both of us suffer from the Jovian disease. Both of us are trusted whenever we want to be, even though we never should be, ever. Both of us are completely, utterly without anything the rest of you would call morals. We have our own morals, but they work differently from yours, and you'd find yourself filled with distaste if I ever fully explained them, because to both of us, you're just one of billions. Disposable. There's about three, maybe four people on this planet I wouldn't kill for a Twix.
Most of all, Istvaan and I have figured out something in common. Everything we strive toward is meaningless, even though we can achieve everything. Every asset we earn means nothing, even though by the sum of the average, we're rich. Every person we meet is just a self-interested adversary, nothing more - they can be counted on to be selfish, just as reliably as you can, and they can be counted on to keep being selfish long after you've stopped, however predictable that makes them.
Of course, the only reason we've stopped... and that is to say, stopped caring about most things, in this world or the world of our fictional counterpart, whichever that may be... is that we both see the same conclusion to this story. We've predicted the end, because we've seen the plot elements that lead up to the end. We can't see anything but the end. We've always been able to perceive patterns and consequences, and make extremely lucky guesses as to how events would unfold.
Istvaan Shogaatsu firmly believes he will witness the end of his world.
The player behind him... is concerned about the developments of the previous three decades.
edit: correction - "I wouldn't kill for a Twix." - The candy I meant to refer to was a Klondike Bar.
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I didn't create Sak with anything specific in mind. I was torn between Gallente and Civire at the start, but went for Civire due to the whole "militaristic" description in their bio. Also, you know, I didn't want her to be space French~. The male Civire looked like roid ragers, whereas the female Civire looked fairly nice while still possessing a militaristic stance to them. Hence, Sak's background as a female Civire.
Her personality was not "created" by me, it's the natural extension of 8 years in-game. I am not Sak, nor is she myself. When she first started doing RP, she was actually quite reserved and polite, with a lot of freespace ideology driving her as to "why" she fought people. Over time, the world's just naturally corrupted her point of view, making her far more crass and arrogant, but understandably considering she's killed hundreds of thousands of people in her life (that's not an RP handwave, those are actual player ships with their crews). So, she doesn't quite care what someone's background is or how they're perceived, unless they can back up their words in space. She also detests titles unless they're earned, especially ones like the FW ranks.
As for what I like about Sak, she's in many ways the kind of woman that I like in real life, in that she's intelligent, doesn't take bullshit, and is capable of protecting herself. Her ability to strategize and make an educated guess about the future is probably another trait I really admire, there are too many people that focus on the present and lack imagination for my liking IRL. There's also a softer side to her that's often overlooked that I think can be quite endearing as well, but most people won't get to see it, especially if they typecast her as some nullsec pirate bitch, or something along those lines.
There's also her four sisters... I feel a bit bad, in that I don't have enough time in real life to devote to them to flesh out their stories, their experiences. In many ways, they're unfortunately riding the coattails of their eldest sister, bouncing from one thing in life to another, trying to find purpose but inevitably being compared to someone else. In that respect, I think they resemble a lot of sibling relationships, especially where one member of the family is very successful, and the rest are working retail or fast-food or the like, just trying to get by in life.
With them, though, they're still discovering what they want to do with their life. Ereka's probably the most far down the road, I think, mostly due to her hatred for Heth and what he represents about the Caldari people, making them all look like a bunch of racist, genocidal idiots. She's always had a bit of a crush, for lack of better word, on the Fed, and has flirted with the Fed militia in the past. However, I think what it comes down to is the four need more interaction with others to really develop their personalities, their motivations, etc., and that can only come about with time and things like friendships.
PS: I'm really, really exhausted atm, sleep time.
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Also, note to self - do not invite Istavaan to east coast barbeques. He will steal your stuff.
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This movie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=yQMoKTzTvaA
From 45 second on until 04:43. Having watched it, the minute I saw there were tubekin in the Caldari faction - I was there. Not to play a mindless drone, of course, but to try and subvert that.
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I started Streya as a way to get back into EVE roleplay with a more comfortable and familiar character that I felt would be more natural to play than my previous characters. I made her Minmatar because I'm already familiar with Minmatar roleplay, and I felt like going with any other race would reduce the flexibility I as the character-creator would have in defining her attributes, beliefs, personality, etc. I went with Vherokior because I wanted to play a calmer, meeker character that is more willing to listen to the advice of others, but made her mixed-blood and threw in Thukker influence to explain her familiarity with spaceflight and combat (since I as a player am familiar with EVE's mechanics and thoroughly enjoy PvP). I made her female in order to explore feminine gender identity within a community that is generally accepting of that sort of thing.
I still struggle in reconciling her peace-minded beliefs with my love of PvP, however. I'm currently sat at -6.7 security status and OOC not ashamed of it, but it's rather hard to explain IC :oops:
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I chose Caldari from the onset due to their corporate background. My first real PnP RPG was Shadowrun, and I later became a GM for that system, so I felt comfortable with the idea of playing someone who grew up immersed in corporate culture.
Then I saw the Civire male options, and was intrigued. These were clearly not the typical recruiting pool for wage slaves. I toyed with the idea of making Galen a soldier (and indeed, chose merc as his background) but in the end I rejected that on the worry that it would be too bland. I also wanted him to be a little more blue collar: uncouth, boisterous muscle.
So, I decided that in spite of whatever automation may be present in the EVE cluster, there had to be at least one mega that still employed flesh-and-blood dockworkers for "that human touch." At a premium, of course. That led me to make him a former dockworker for Lai Dai.
He was always going to be a Caldari patriot, I just didn't know if he would actively fight for the State of just wind up as a merc. As it happened, after joining the most pathetic excuse for a merc corp I've ever seen and leaving after a couple of day, I ran across CAIN, and immediately knew that's where Galen was supposed to be.
Since then his character has evolved, in ways that I predicted and in ways I was totally blindsided by. I knew he was slowly going to lose his identity as blue collar, no matter how hard he fights to keep it. He used to have a somewhat heavy accent, these day's it's barely there and if he's speaking quickly or urgently, it tends to vanish entirely.
What I didn't count on was the erosion of his ideals as a Caldari patriot. Heth was a body-blow in ways more than one: being from a similar background as Galen only made things worse. Dammit, Galen lived the low-class life, and he was damn happy for his place in the State, where the hell did Space Hitler and his damned Caldari People's Front come from?!
Galen soldiered on for a while with CAIN in FW before taking a vacation stationside to imbibe copious amounts of alcohol. When I came back to the game, I tried different things: flying with CVA, flying with CAIN, flying with CAIN in null. But I just felt listless (and so did Galen), and ended up lapsing again. Eventually, an old friend dragged me into wormholes, and Galen discovered that his battlelust could be reason enough to fly. Should be interesting to see where things go from here.
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I
I once read a story about a girl who put crushed seashells in her sandals so she might better know Christ’s suffering. I wanted to play an EVE version of that girl.
I’ve noticed that many character’s personal arcs are built around a ‘fall from grace.’ Makkal is a character for whom the assumption of grace is as seductive and bizarre as the loss is for others. Her search for and submission to the divine defines her more than anything else.
I find that sort of thing fascinating.
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Khanid culture is full of things I find repugnant and I enjoy playing with them until something that looks honorable and noble pops out. I’d say the longer I’ve played Makkal, the more alien I find her viewpoint.
Sadly, this sometimes makes her hard to maintain.
The other factions appealed too much to my modern, Western sensibilities when I first started, though as I’ve learned about the setting and interacted with other characters, I’ve come to appreciate how they’re awful as well.
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‘Grimdark’ doesn’t interest me much. Angst doesn’t interest me at all. Factional animosity is okay but not something I want to immerse myself in. I find playing characters that sullenly sit in the corner or piss people off whenever they open their mouth to be boring.
Makkal is sincere, polite, and approachable. It’s a well-developed social mask*that she’s usually able to maintain even if she’s interacting with someone who she considers crude, stupid, insane, barbaric, or just strange.
As a player, it means that if I don’t want to deal with the bullshit flavor-of-the-moment, Makkal can just smile and nod. Even if Makkal cares deeply about something or strongly disagrees, she’s apt to fall back on pleasantries.
*I’m not using sincere as a synonym for authentic here, which is why I describe a social mask as sincere.
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Also, note to self - do not invite Istavaan to east coast barbeques. He will steal your stuff.
Would it help if I said I honestly tried my best, but can't help myself against stealing your stuff? It is a compulsion! Kleptomania, surely!
Would it help me steal more stuff, that is to say, if I said that? Because I'll say anything if it gets me at your sweet sweet silverware.
Gimme dem goodies you fffrugginmugga#xkhoxha&ylga...frug...
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When I created Halete I simply desired to fly ships very fast.
I decided that my hot-headed interceptor pilot was going to look cocky and venomous, so that also shaped the foundations for a personality.
It's kind of funny to think that's literally all of the groundwork that went into the character.
I liked the sound of Minmatar and Amarr from the very brief descriptions available at character creation. I made an Amarrian and then immediately biomassed when the group I started playing with decided that it would be cool to see a more diverse ethnic range of characters. Out of the Minmatar bloodlines Sebiestor stood out to me the most. I did not make a man because Sebiestor used to all look the same in the old generator and not really to my liking.
Everything else has more or less been a steady evolution.
Regarding the idea of 'fall from grace' arcs; hmm...
I feel that in many ways Halete has significantly improved as a person over the last few years. She has become compassionate (although at times distinctly lacking compassion), selfless and weary of how her actions effect her surroundings and peers. On the other hand, her ideology is so strange and she is so eccentric (more eccentric than when she was first created for sure) that I could easily see people pinning her for that type of character.
From my perspective it's less about that and more about Halete's personal strive to improve herself and do what is best for her kindred all the while her shroud of humanity unraveling.
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I've had so many of those fall from grace motherfuckers that I can't wait to start falling toward actual grace. It's gotta be a curve of some sort. Goddamn CCP, isn't it time you gave me my dimension-bending battle casino?
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To elaborate, one example I often give when talking about some of Halete's dynamics comes from the concept of 'The Beast' in Vampire The Masquerade.
As Halete faces her departure from the ranks of the mortal class and aware of her slowly sliding grip on reality, she tries to hold herself to an impossibly high standard of behavior so as to not become something horrible. But the mental rules and justifications she creates for and surrounding the acts she commits grow increasingly contrived.
It's this aspect that I enjoy playing about Halete. It's like one constant, demented balancing act and continuous re-assessment of her outlook. And whenever she finds herself having done something that completely and utterly awful that it makes her profoundly disgusted with herself, after some initial stress she will usually find some way of reasoning to herself that she didn't do anything wrong and that she still has a grip on herself.
Halete isn't clean by any standards, she enjoys doing terrible, amoral things. But she also has a very powerful conscience and feels strongly compelled to do 'good'. To this end most of the interest for me is entertaining Halete's own suspension of disbelief and maintaining just the right levels of cognitive dissonance.
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Sliding grip on reality. There's another aspect I can identify with :D
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All right, I'll bite. :P
When I first logged onto EVE Online (when Apocrypha was new enough) and created a character, I had absolutely NO idea I'd ever role play in this game. I sat at the 'pick a race' screen for a while, asking my hubby what to choose. He wasn't much help, but a friend of mine from a chatroom suggested that I go Amarr, because they have lasers. The idea of shooting lasers is what sold me on Amarr, and to me at the time, the Khanid was the best looking bloodline of the bunch.
A few months into the game, after looking a bit at the lore, I kind of frowned. Yes, I totally had skipped over the part in the begining where it tells you that the Amarr Empire enslaved people. "What the?! I'm a race that enslaves people?!" It didn't really sit well with me at the time, and in my head I just chose, "well, whatever. She's out in Gallente space anyway, so maybe she's against it?" I just stuck with that in my mind for a while, a small story in my head as I really didn't realize there was an RP scene in EVE yet.
Months pass, and tada! It's a year and a half later after I first started. Just coming back from a 6 month hiatus from the game, I got in touch with a friend from the last corp I was in (Esna). Saw where he was currently, asked about it, and then asked him about EVE RP. See, by then, my regular venue for role playing had dried up (as in, hardly anyone in that chatroom was RPing anymore), so I was looking elsewhere for RP. That's about the time where I seriously started putting some thought into Rin for the first time. Must have spent about a week, maybe week and a half, discussing over MSN with Esna about it, and putting together a believable story as to why my anti-slavery Amarr toon would join Amarr FW.
Once I actually got a foot in door with RPing in EVE, I started talking to a few others in the Amarr bloc their thoughts on things. One thing, namely, what a Cyber Knight was like (don't groan, that's Rin's background :P). I think a couple told me "think Street Samurai." Familiar enough with that was, in addition to having a soft spot for samurai culture, I ran with it some. I fleshed it out a bit in my mind more after many discussions with Aldrith about it, too. So now I had this character, with a tragic background, cyber knight implants in addition to the capsuleer ones, small bitter hatred for slavery, a believer in the Amarr God still, some sense of nobility/honor, and ... well, worse, at the time having just come out of a very harsh Amarr prison as well as harboring the Amarr social status of 'slave' (at the time, but that's long since changed). :s
I know, some of this sounds rather crazy, maybe even silly. However, that's how things started off in the begining for Rin. She's not always an easy character to play, because she's asocial and introverted (makes it hard for her to just walk into any place to 'socialise' ). However, anyone who's had enough interaction with her can tell you, there's more to her then just her quiet, asocial side. She's got some simplicities with a bit of complex stuff mixed in, which make it worth continuing playing her.
Btw, forgive all the spelling errors. Writing so late at night when I should be sleeping does this sort of thing. :P
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Couple of reasons.
A) Samira is a type of character concept I've played in multiple iterations across multiple universes over the last decade. I endlessly refine the concept to try and smooth out mistakes, deconstructing and reconstructing it. Like most of the characters I play, she follows my style of taking a few RL traits of mine, exaggerating them, and building a character around them. In Samira's case, the traits are submissiveness, isolation, and fear. I play those traits specifically because they are something so rarely seen in RP. When most characters are badasses who don't afraid of anything, the coward who runs and hides when threatened stands out.
B) Why Amarr? Immediately before coming to EVE, the RP universe I was playing was a Forgotten Realms server on Neverwinter Nights 2. I played another version of the Samira concept there, as a Red Wizard of Thay. When I came to EVE, I found the Amarr Empire felt very similar to Thay, due to pseudo-evil slave culture with Middle Eastern aesthetics. Most specifically was the two-race hierarchy of the superior overlord race and the inferior race of spiritual tribals (Mulan/True Amarr and Rashemi/Minmatar) of which many are enslaved and others are converted into the culture and free. Ironically, in that case it was the overlords with the tattoos, and mankind was seen as greater than the gods (thus, Thay would actually be closer to the Khanid Kingdom. Hell, the pre-pact relationship between Empire and Kingdom is extremely similar to the relationship between Mulhorand and Thay...).
In general, I often get drawn to the darker, hyperpatriotic factions. In Star Wars I favor the Galactic and Sith Empires, in FR I liked Thay as mentioned, so in EVE I'm attracted to the zealous Amarr Empire and the dystopian Caldari State. On the other hand, in WoW I played draenei. This opened me up to how interesting religious RP can be, which is another reason why I find playing Amarr fascinating. I love playing strongly religious characters. In WoW I also played a human noble, so Amarr's very feudal culture also appeals to me since I've done a lot of research into that already. Basically, the Amarr Empire is many things I like in one single faction. Dark, religious, and feudal.
C) Why a slave? Over the decade I've RP'ed, I've seen a lot of slave characters. Especially in Star Wars. The vast majority of the ones I've witnessed have always been the same things: typically the "sex slave" and the violent "FREEDOM!" emancipationist ex-slave. I personally am the type of RPer who loves to deconstruct things (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Deconstruction), taking common tropes and then applying a more realistic spin with more realistic consequences, so in this case I wanted to deconstruct the Born into Slavery (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BornIntoSlavery) trope by focusing on the psychological damage and not the "quest for freedom". I wanted to play the slave who has been conditioned and indoctrinated and knows nothing but life as a slave, the slave who blames herself when she gets punished because she's been brainwashed to think of herself as naturally inferior to her masters. And to explore, as many people have pointed out IC, Stockholm Syndrome. Essentially, I wanted to show just how messed up a slave-born character would be. Without going into the sexual dynamic. I wanted Samira to be a proper "labor" slave. I made her Custodian a woman specifically to avoid any potential implications.
But there's also the more local deconstruction of the portrayal of Amarrian slavery itself. With Samira I wanted to go against the grain of the typical pro-Republic ex-slave and instead show an example of what is actually the more common kind of ex-slave: the one who is fully converted and assimilated. Samira is one of the many ex-slaves who, after release, chose to stay in the Empire and continue to believe in God and be good Amarr citizens, who have been taught to be faithful, loyal, obedient, polite, selfless, and domesticated. So in that sense, despite the psychological damage, she is a Reclaiming "success story".
Essentially, the main thing I enjoying trying to present with Samira's slavery background is this: To pro-slavery characters, she is a shining example of the good of the Reclaiming. To anti-slavery characters, she is terrifying proof of the horrors of slavery. The question then becomes: Do the positive conditioned behavioral traits outweigh the negative psychological damage? The answer in western morality will typically be no. The answer in Amarrian morality will typically be yes.
D) Conflict. My main rule on creating characters is that they must have conflict, both internally and externally. This forces character development as it gives the character something to act against. There is no story if there is no conflict.
Thus, Samira has been built with many. For example, she's not perfectly religious. She is excellent at sounding faithful, typically one of the most fanatical speakers on the topic on IGS, but struggles to really believe what she preaches (in WoD terms, she has faith, but not True Faith). I also wanted the conflict present in being dual-culture. She's not one of those Amarrian Matari that completely and utterly shun everything Minmatar. Samira might often say she does, but deep down she respects a lot of Matari culture and spirituality and tries to incorporate it into her Amarrian world view, which creates conflict (her tattoos being a recent one). Third and most important is the character's indoctrination itself. It forces her to have to constantly struggle to learn how to be independent, struggle to face her fears, struggle to stand up for herself. None of these come easy, and so it makes everything she does, particularly her interactions with other characters, a challenge. This is fun to play.
E) How all of the above suddenly comes into sharp relief once the issue of being a capsuleer gets thrown into the mix.
So yeah, that's why.
To elaborate, one example I often give when talking about some of Halete's dynamics comes from the concept of 'The Beast' in Vampire The Masquerade.
Heh. Speaking of Vampire the Masquerade. I've often said that I view playing an Amarrian like following a Path of Enlightenment (http://whitewolf.wikia.com/wiki/Path_of_Enlightenment). The Empire's morals and ethics are completely different from the path of normal "humanity". An Amarr will not be affected by appeals to standard human morality, because they do not follow standard human morality. They have Conviction instead of Conscience. Which is why most attempts at convincing Samira that the Empire is evil fail, because they are going by the sin hierarchy of the "Path of Humanity" while Samira follows the sin hierarchy of the the Amarrian Path of Enlightenment, which is completely different! To convince Samira that the Empire is evil, one has to break her Conviction, instead of trying to appeal to her Conscience. This is easier said than done.
That's why playing Amarr is so fun. Non-western moralities are much more interesting!
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Actually Samira touched on something close to my heart with how I've built on Halete conceptually, too.
As an ex-slave, there are specific elements I focus on with Halete. Especially as a character who wasn't born into slavery but instead put into slavery at the height of her childhood, the main features I play on are;
- Lost youth (and a yearning to somehow recover it. Mostly demonstrated when Halete completely 'regresses' mentally in times of extreme stress)
- the jarring effects of going from being a child slave to a free adult with absolutely no direction first tasting her freedom in rogue refugee camps rife with corruption and crime
- the equally jarring transition of going from this lifestyle to unimaginable wealth whilst lacking any real concepts of currency or a firm foundation of life experiences outside of servitude
I too wanted to avoid the 'sex slave' or 'vengeful slave' tropes due to my own familiarity with their propagation.
That said, I admit I've done the sex slave trope in the past - both genders - and one of those was by and large one of my most fulfilling and well fleshed out characters in over a decade of roleplaying. That said, in the time I've spent roleplaying I've tried my hand at just about every imaginable archetype. I don't want to come across as saying that, for instance, any slave background is more valid than another.
Also Samira, I wish I could +1 what you said about the Path of Enlightenment. :) I think making comparisons to VtM is useful in EVE because it's a great setting for observing and playing unusual moralities.
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And great for the alienation of your humanity in the face of immortality and easy power.
I find it interesting that so many others have gone for the 'self-insert' base. Usually it comes off as lazy, but just like VtM here it allows for interesting development.
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- Lost youth (and a yearning to somehow recover it. Mostly demonstrated when Halete completely 'regresses' mentally in times of extreme stress)
Ooh yeah. Have pulled this one out a few times. Samira's regressed a few times when pressed on topics she really doesn't want to think about--almost to the level of multiple personality disorder in the way she dissociates (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociation_%28psychology%29) herself from the memory.
Of course, big difference is that Halete wants to recover her youth, while Samira is trying to lock hers away in its own little compartment where she doesn't have to think about it.
- the jarring effects of going from being a child slave to a free adult with absolutely no direction first tasting her freedom in rogue refugee camps rife with corruption and crime
- the equally jarring transition of going from this lifestyle to unimaginable wealth whilst lacking any real concepts of currency or a firm foundation of life experiences outside of servitude
Yep. Samira's had trouble/still has trouble dealing with these as well.
Halete and Samira need to talk more.
And great for the alienation of your humanity in the face of immortality and easy power.
I find it interesting that so many others have gone for the 'self-insert' base. Usually it comes off as lazy, but just like VtM here it allows for interesting development.
It's not lazy at all. To the contrary, writing what you know is one of the biggest tips for improving your writing. Trick is to not go overboard into 'wish fulfillment' territory and to instead draw on both your strengths and your flaws as inspiration.
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[spoiler](http://bestgamewallpapers.com/files/eve-online/caldari.jpg)[/spoiler]
That made me roll Caldari back then. When I came back to the game properly, with RP in mind, I had this 10M or what character that seemed at that point like a waste to sacrifice. Incidentially I saw the picture again and made the same decision. Reading up on lore bits confirmed the general vibe the character creation offers, and lo, here I am, still adoring the shit out of that image.
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[spoiler](http://bestgamewallpapers.com/files/eve-online/caldari.jpg)[/spoiler]
That made me roll Caldari back then. When I came back to the game properly, with RP in mind, I had this 10M or what character that seemed at that point like a waste to sacrifice. Incidentially I saw the picture again and made the same decision. Reading up on lore bits confirmed the general vibe the character creation offers, and lo, here I am, still adoring the shit out of that image.
I have to admit, the "eff you, we've got martial disciple and man-portable railguns" factor of that very image was the big initial draw for me as well.
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Mithfindel was originally created to look as closely to look like a specific Elven character I used to play. Then at one point I figured that lasers were cool, so I biomassed the mostly-undeveloped character and rolled the Amarr Mithfindel. And then at some point I biomassed the Amarr Mithfindel and returned to Intaki.
My first actual "playing" character was Gallente, can't remember the faux-French name any more. I discovered that I really did not like Gallente ships, so biomassed and rolled an Amarr. Actually, Khanid with a Latin name. Guess what I did with this character when I did learn more about the fiction? (Hint: Starts with a 'b')
For a few years, played exclusively Amarr. Serious altitis, somewhat many accounts, eventually burned out as a few friends started to drop playing the game. A few of us had Caldari alts, to try something else. Alt to main turn. Axel is a kind of a play on being a Civire cog in the machine forced out of the machine.
Providing the backbone to the Caldari Empire the Civire are cool, levelheaded, and relentless in their approach to either trading or fighting. Civire can handle pressure extremely well, an invaluable aid in combat or other stressful situations.
This ties to what Aseyakone is and what Axel's role in the corporation is. Even while I readily admit that it was crap and unbalanced, I liked the RMR era character creator (http://wium.dk/nw/evetool/) for its depth. Axel's ancestry and schooling would be Civire - Mercenary - STI - Business - Management - CFO.
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For me, Aria is a look in the mirror darkly. Through her, I explore and experiment with ideas, possibilities, and tactics without fear of personal consequence. In her, I can see reflected the same evils of which I, myself, am capable-- and the outlines of those of which I am not.
She is not "me," but she is of me, somewhere between a shadow and a conscience, both the angel and the demon on my shoulder.
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Basic idea about Gaven is the question of what would it take for a person who is well educated and reasonably intelligent to outright believe in the Amarrian agenda and be taken in by it hook, line, and sinker. I wanted someone who was fundamentally sound of mind but from a habitus in which the only rational choice was service to the Empire. I wanted him to come across as effectively alien to a modern world view, but completely self assured in his own understanding of the world.
He has evolved from there, of course, nine years of events will do that to a character, but that is the basic concept.
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When I decided to start using Kala to RP, I had a specific role in mind for her. I didn't want her to be a blood crazed Amarr hater, an embittered, vengeful ex-slave or and ardent supporter of the Republic.
I just wanted her to be normal. One of trillions of Minmatar who just live normally in cities, farms, villages, stations etc. To do this I gave her a background in agriculture where she lived with her extended family and had little contact with the :space: side of Eve.
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This is a really good topic... haven't seen this question asked often, if at all.
I started playing Havo as an anti-hero. I've always loved characters who were trying to do good, but were relatably flawed in a realistic sense. For example, Vic Mackie on FX's The Shield. When I started digging into Eve's PF and really reading about the history between the Empire and the Republic, the Amarrians and the Minmatar, I thought, "Wow, there's a lot of room for a hard-edged good guy in this!"
Then, when I started to dip my toes in the RP arena ingame, and more on the IGS, I saw folks like Ushra'Khan and Electus Matari pretty much had things sewn up as far as the "good fight" to free the slaves, but there wasn't much of the anti-hero about what they were doing at that time... so joining up didn't really come into all too much. I think I made an inquiry about putting my corp into -EM- around the time Eva was their HMIC, but for a number of reasons that didn't happen. Which was better for me and the direction I eventually took Havohej.
As I got more involved and more engaged with the RP thing, I wanted something to differentiate Havo from the rest of the Minnie-bloc. I found that something in opposing the political line of the Republic (which U'K were also doing to some extent). This is before Sanmatar Shakor, of course. I decided that, while her choices were most pragmatic given the Empire's military superiority to the Republic which was largely fractured by inter-tribal tensions, Havo would see her as vacillating and perhaps weak, lacking in conviction. Someone who's not ever going to 'die' might have precious little sympathy for the baseline soldiers/crewmen involved in space warfare or planetary conquest.
So that part was sorted out. Then I had to decide how he would conduct his opposition to the status quo. Who he'd be, how he'd act. Finally, I decided to go more anti than hero... a mix of Michael Corleone's cold, calculating ruthlessness in achieving an objective (which, to him, were always 'the right thing' or otherwise somehow justified) - actually, not a mix at first. At first, Havo was just the Thukker Tribe's answer to Michael Corleone.
Over time, as I found myself/him embracing worse and worse outlets to express his worldview, and taking a more piratical path to ingame pvp, his outlook started evolving quietly into a less altruistic and more violent one. Here came the mix-in of Heath Ledger's Joker, as explained by Alfred... "Some men just want to watch the world burn." His reason here, if one could call it this, is bitterness and rage. Being a capsuleer ain't all it's cracked up to be. He's lost touch with what it was to be a baseline human in his years of murder and rampage, sometimes for a good cause, sometimes for ISK, sometimes because he just doesn't know anything else anymore.
There's certainly a 'human-ish' thing inside off his psyche, but it's small, battered, abused and neglected. He's a much deeper character than I really let on through his RP, which is somewhat as intended. I've said often that he really doesn't care about the slaves or the Minmatar people, and he doesn't. When he started, he did, but now... it just doesn't matter anymore. Combat is the only time he really feels alive, and he'll do almost anything to get it. When the 'almost' drops out of that phrase will be the time I consider selling him and buying a comparable toon with the ISK, because that will be the point in which he is basically unplayable as a PC for me.
Fortunately, that's a ways off, yet.
I could go into more of the IC background that pushed him in this direction, but my blog will be back up Soon™, so anyone who cares will just have to read about it then. ;)
EDIT: After reading Aria's comment, let me add this little bit...
"Little angel, go away
Come again some other day
Devil has my ear today
I'll never hear a word you say
You promised I would find
A little solace and some peace of mind
Whatever, just as long as I don't feel so
Desperate and ravenous
So weak and powerless..."
There's a bit of that in why I play Havo the way I do, let him develop the way I did... He's kept me from venting my aggressions in a more destructive way. When I was 19, I vented through fist fights and armed robbery. Now, at 31, I vent through violencing space boats. It's better this way. :yar:
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Steffanie actually developed a lot differently than I had intended.
When I finally gave in and agreed to join EVE, I really had no knowledge of setting, the history, or much else other than I knew it involved flying spaceships. Now, Steff wasn't exactly my first character. I made a Minmatar, hopped into the game and went through the tutorials. My friend directed me to OOC and The Summit, joined those channels and lurked in there for about three to four days, just observing.
I hadn't come up with much of anything with the Minmatar, so playing around with the character gen, and finding the ideals of the Federation appealed to me. Thinking that I'd try doing a hedonistic, vain pirate with 0 $#%* to give type of character, I built Steff.
That's when things went differently. Since I was still testing the waters RP-wise, Steff went from being extroverted to being a lot less self-confident and outgoing. Then I started coming up with why? Why was she like this and started going through her back story. After getting some prompts from my buddy and suggestions from other people in the game, Steff morphed to what she is now.
Along the way, after reading more on Gallente's past, combined with Arthurian impression I had gotten, decided to try doing a space-knight instead of space-pirate. Going to be hard, but I'm having a blast with it, and at the end of the day, I am far more happier with the way Steffanie went. I think I might have been able to handle a somewhat shallow character for only so long before I moved onto something else.
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Oh God, that is a big question. I don't think any of my answers will be in any way adequate, but I will attempt to get as close as possible.
Zark
Zark did not start out as a RP character. Hence the Gallentean in an Amarr FW corp (and Fweddit, no less!) and the name chosen to be reminiscent of that sort of campy sci-fi faire a la Buck Rodgers or Flash Gordon. I quite literally stumbled into Summit. I think I saw a link to Backstage on a list of unofficial Eve sites, and joined the channel on a lark to get a measure of what I'm dealing with. I can't RP with bad writers, and most MMOs are filled with them, but thankfully the Summit community has proven to be a refreshing exception.
So I chose Gallente for mostly aesthetic and personal reasons, and realized right away that I didn't want to play the average Amarrian religious convert or the type of hard-ass that would work as a mercenary for the Amarr for any length of time. So I took five or ten minutes to work out an acronym, and Z-ARK was born. And then promptly crashed and burned. My bad.
So it was back to the drawing board. Almost immediately, I latched onto this idea of the writing I had done as Z-ARK being a product of conspiratorial machinations, that way I wouldn't have to just straight retcon (I hate retconning) or play a character that was either batshit crazy or an idiot or both. I'm very relieved that I did make this change, honestly, because it allows me to explore the idea of being "Gallentean" while still maintaining this whole cyborg-story and believably retaining a faith in God while not being automatically super pro-slavery and socially conservative. Maybe one of those things will progress naturally, but it won't be a requirement to believably play a convert as it normally would be. I like that, I like freedom. Mainly because I never know what my characters are going to do or say, most of my writing is fairly automatic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_writing).
Felix
Felix was actually the first character I built for Eve RP, even if he is the most recent character to have been created in game. As much as I find the sort of high-tech society with distinct governments in the way that the Federation and State possess compelling, the idea of more ancient social structures somehow surviving to space flight in these pseudo-civilizations has always been the biggest draw to the Eve lore for me. Even though my heart is always with the Federation and its probably the empire I would personally want to be a citizen of, the Amarr/Minmatar dynamic is just so unique for a hard sci-fi setting.
As far as the choice of Amarr, I've always always always been fascinating by spirituality, in all its forms. And even though I find the concept of ancestor spirits to be filled with a lot of potential, the idea of not only a monotheistic God but a kind of mean monotheistic God was just too good to pass up.
I was actually extremely trepidatious about my decision to make my first RP character nobility (or alleged nobility, for all you constant-skeptics out there). One of the more fascinating aspects of Amarr culture to me was their government, this feudal court system spanning regions of space. I wanted to have been involved in that in some point, even if in just a minor capacity. And by the time I had gotten that far, Felix had been formed in my mind enough that the anti-slavery viewpoint just naturally progressed. It wasn't until I was almost finished with conceptualizing him that I realized "Oh my God, I've made a Mary Sue."
I don't think Felix is a Mary Sue, but I kind of suspected that I thought that because he was flawed in ways that I was aware of, but hadn't really gotten the chance to communicate to others just through Summit. So I realized something was missing, and when I finally started playing Dust 514 it kind of clicked. Playing a pacifistic noble under constant house arrest would probably have gotten boring, nothing to do but pontificate in channel. So the idea that his form of quiet punishment by his family would be forced enlistment in the mercenary program just made sense the first time I thought about it.
So here he is, an Amarrian with heretic-sensibilities, forced to kill Minmatar and Gallente forever. I'm hoping that dispels the odor of the Sue sufficiently.
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Silas was my 2nd character, the first was a Caldari gentlemen I played for a few weeks getting to know the game, spending some time with a small industry corp. Decided to re-roll Amarr due to aesthetics and (lasers). If I remember correctly this was during one of the times Amarr ships were undisputed -awful- at everything, and were looked upon as extremely SP intensive for little return on time investment.
But... laz0rz.
Silas was not created for RP, and I had no RP experience or knowledge that there was a community for this in EVE. I was roaming around doing my solo NPC corp thing with 0 in game friends and was recruited in Khanid Local by a loyalist RPer Hitomi Ayame, who was the leader of the Royal Knights of Khanid, one of the first Khanid RP groups. Got hooked, started creating backstory which changed a few times, and was a proud Kingdom Loyalist for many years.
I really enjoyed the idea of playing as one of these tyranical, awfully racist, haughty, superiority complex, ultra-conservative Kingdom Loyalists. The Kingdom PF just was incredibly interesting for me. I enjoyed the idea of having a lot of friction with the Imperials, who were still dealing with two disastrous emperors in a row ending poorly, and a power vacuum at the top of the chain. Being a conservative IC let me be a rabble-rouser for countless "lapses" in judgement displayed by other 'loyalists' from fraternization with enemies, unbecoming conduct, etc.
I attended my first big RP event, one of Revan Neferis' big parties during these early times, and things progressed from there towards the heretic side. Many of you know it was a very shallow Sabik closet towards the end, but it was an extremely deep closet for a good long stint of my RP career.
I didn't know which way I would eventually go, but I made sure to leave enough breadcrumbs over the years that I could point back to for justification if I did convert, which worked out well.
If I look back honestly at it I think it was because I just had much more fun RPing with the more criminal RPers. I think I saw a lack of conservative Amarr groups to latch onto that were really carrying that torch, most of the Amarr RPers (IMO) around back then were not acting like I imagined Amarr characters would be (soo many liberals!), and I didn't want to be associated with that basically.
Anyway RPing this sort of character is a fun escape. I've done well in the game and I've used it as fuel for the character's attitude.
There is very little of this pretty reprehensible and awful character in me as a person, although who wouldn't want to run a secular power cult of personality with thousands of worshipers now and then? :P
But that's the fun; I can run off and occasionally pretend to be a mass murdering psycopath who is steadily losing touch as the years go by and she becomes more isolated with power, and then log off and hang out with the wifey and friends and play records :)
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I've played a few characters over the years, but only two really stand out: Shin and Dakki.
Shin's my original character, back from when I first bought the game (in a box, no less!). The manual mentioned smuggling, and I thought that sounded cool, so I rolled Shin to be a smuggler, with no real intention to RP her. I made her Gallente because the manual also talked about attributes and how they apply to skills, and that smugglers rely on charisma-heavy skills. The pure Gallente bloodline had the best charisma, so I thought "Score! This will give me a leg up on things!" :lol:
10 years later she continues to be relatively skill light because of that initial mistake. 72 million SP is a nice number for a non-cap pilot, but most 10 year old characters typically have twice as many.
In any case, I started playing around with RP when the Lame Ducks started publicly shooting Gallente miners. I thought "Shin's Gallente, would she stand for this? No! She would not!". There were a lot of really vitriolic threads on IGS reflecting the various wars and conflicts. I was starting to envision Shin to be sort of a Joan Jett in space (yeah, I know... :roll:), so I wrote up those initial fights in a very tongue-in-cheek, humorous way - we didn't have a lot of information about Gallentean culture, but there was a short story with a very suave, "Ha-ha, only serious!" Gallente trader that I drew upon.
During character creation I'd given Shin an Immigrant background, because I liked the starting skills and attributes. Combined with the lack of Gallentean backstory, I decided to make Shin come from a pocket culture. Sort of the Eve version of someone from Guam or Sicily. With the Immigrant background in the Federation, I assumed there'd be a lot of those (luckily I was right!). That gave me a lot of leeway for creating her backstory. I drew pretty heavily on some of Bruce Sterling and C.J. Cherryh's writings, and came up with a backstory of her being from this relatively recently discovered asteroid colony, left overs from an earlier genetic engineering program.
While I have made a couple of OOC choices for her (joining O-SYN, etc), most of what she's done since then has been largely driven by her. I'm often surprised by the choices she makes. It's a little like writing fiction, where the writer will sometimes be surprised at what their characters end up doing.
Now Dakki, on the other hand, is a more recent character. I'd known quite a bit more about Eve's backstory (though there still wasn't much of it at the time), and I wanted to try out playing an Intaki from the Syndicate. I made him an exchange student, to justify the fact that he started out in the Federation, and an artist. The main thing I wanted with Dakki was to portray what I realistically thought a Syndicate Intaki would be like - combining the traditional Intaki culture with a hard "playing for keeps" attitude. Unfortunately, while I did RP him heavily for a couple of months, he's pretty inactive now. I have a hard time playing alts, plus his lack of SP really limits what I can do with him.
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I want to reply fully to this topic later, but I really really just want to say right now that I got an immense amount of enjoyment out of figuring out that Silas was "in the closet" just by reading between the lines of the character's posts on the IGS and filling in the dots, even before he came to me to ask about having Morwen perform at Silas' "coming out" party.
Being able to figure that out entirely through IC means was an absolute blast, so, many thanks for that.
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I want to reply fully to this topic later, but I really really just want to say right now that I got an immense amount of enjoyment out of figuring out that Silas was "in the closet" just by reading between the lines of the character's posts on the IGS and filling in the dots, even before he came to me to ask about having Morwen perform at Silas' "coming out" party.
Being able to figure that out entirely through IC means was an absolute blast, so, many thanks for that.
(http://cdn.meme.li/instances/400x/19828634.jpg)
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I started Eve in late 2006 with a handful of SWG friends - and we were all omg why did we start so late ?/o\. I would really like to say that Lyn - my only true RP character, even if my alt does a decent RP hidden NPC behind her - was fleshed out seriously and coherently with a first premise and strong idea behind, like most of my characters tend to be usually. Of course, it is quite the contrary. I started playing mostly as a trial more than anything else, and was not really sure what I was going to do ingame. We sure thought to start looking for RP fast enough, but when I created the character I did not have that in mind. I had to make a choice between two things : cosmetics and playstyle on one hand, and gameplay attributes on the other hand. I strongly hesitated between Amarr and Minmatar ships when I started - and I started to really appreciated all the other designs later. So I eventually created an Amarr test character but I really hated energy management. I decided to roll up Minmatar instead, even if their frigs and cruisers (in the first engine) were fugly, except maybe the rifter. Because yes, we started with 900k SP and they were all specialized for the chosen bloodline and race.
When it came to choose the bloodline, and since I wanted to do a combat character, people told me to go for max perception and willpower, which I discovered later that it is not true at all for combat, you just need all except charisma. So, the only choice really was Brutor. I was not pleased at all by the lore behind, but what the hell, I took it. Grave mistake or not ? I don't know. But it eventually made me go look at the Ammatar side. So, we started in a little laid back corp where I learned the basics, and then we decided to launch into RP, at least in actions. I had absolutely no clue of the universe besides the general facts 101 about every faction and the timeline. The first thing we saw were the two biggest RP alliances of that time fighting in Providence against each other, Ushra'Khan and CVA. Since we were sligthly more inclined toward Amarr (for similar reasons than Samira) except myself with my dirty Minmatar, we picked the (right :bear:) side, CVA, but it could really have been UK as well... So in the end, we went to live in Providence and eventually joined Aegis Militia.
It is mostly in my time in AM that I learned most of the things I learned in Eve. We were not even 1 year old and already part of the leading body of a nullsec vassal alliance of CVA, so we had to learn pretty fast, and we were really motivated. We saw the end of the fight against UK and took part, and then settled our own constellation. The first hints at what my character would be started at that time. Reading lore articles after lore articles and chronicles, I stumbled on the Ammatar quite easily. It was the perfect solution for my character, and rolled up with it. That's the only thing my character was at that time.
Near the end of our corp and our time in AM, we had to restructure and rethink our corp in emergency not to collapse completely. Being essentially a corp with a strong intelligence flavour, we looked deeper into the lore (almost went loreception) and found the SoCT. Direct hit, and we started to live in Kitzes and talk with enigmas. Or not. Anyway...
That's where all the troubles began for me. Lyn started to get so many conflicting layers of different factions that I got a headache that lasted for several years before being able to eventually sort all of this out. I had to play a Brutor character with that damn slave child ancestry (max perception and willpower -_-), and I am so glad that this ancestry thing is not shown anywhere publicly, or I would be pretty screwed. Adding to that the Amarr loyalist side. Then the SoCT allegiance lying behind. Anyway, my character remained extremely quiet in the first years, learning, listening, like I was, while I was also trying to figure out what to make of her.
It's mostly when I went to Solitude in the gallente loyalist fragmented side - they were pro Blaque, and I can tell you that the guy was slightly different before TEA - and that's where I mostly fleshed out the whole base behind Lyn : the little bookworm princess that didnt care at all for her demented mother of a Holder. The rest was done after in FW, and then in KotMC when I started to seriously get into actual social RP rather than just action RP (at last, I told myself after a few years).
Eventually that is the reasoning behind :
- I eventually noticed that a single faction was too much a constraint for my character with so many contrasting influences. So I eventually made her more detached. The Amarr were only the logical step for her after graduating as a capsuleer. It has then turned out to be a big strength as well as a terrible flaw. A strength because it frustrates the hell out of people to debate or discuss with people they have a hard time to put a label on. A flaw because you rarely get completely included in any group, and often lack a true loyalty to defend and have to find justifications. At first people have never really been able to tell that she was anything else than an Amarr loyalist (liberal), but I started to drop little hints of her true affiliation, especially while in KotMC.
- Why Amarr otherwise ? Because the feudal modern Amarr is something I find fascinating. I have always tried to emphasize on the modern side, where the Amarr do not live in a medieval society anymore, but a contemporary one like all other factions.
- Usually I play various characters coming from all corners, very different from each other, and this time it happened that Lyn got closer to me than the usual lot. Maybe due to the realistic side of the game, or politics. Or maybe for various coincidences. Playing an innocent naive bookworm was the original concept and it never really changed over time: it remained the thing red line that I always followed. A good amount of layers were added above what basically was her childhood and the core of her persona, starting with the Ammatar noble uptight upbringing, the SoCT HyCon completely fucking her education up, resulting in most her deficiencies and strengths to be totally reinforced to the point it became a hyperbole. Then the capsuleer history made the rest, the upper layer that you just have to scratch to see what lies under. The CVA PaxAmarria-CONCORD loyalties, the anti pirate stuff, etc. Things that have faded a lot since she left FW, and especially since the last events where CONCORD look like incompetent fools. Not a bad thing, provides drama, RP, and makes me get rid of one of her numerous personas.
- Why a noble ? To the point of becoming an Ammatar "holder" (<- please CCP, find a word for those someday...) when her mother dies ? The Holder thing was a big bet, since we had no clue at all on what nobles the Ammatar had. Actually I am pretty surprised that my bold move on that one managed to stay true to the Canon when CCP added the concept of Ammatar slave owners. I got lucky I guess, considering half of the other Amarrian vassal bloodlines. The Holder side basically strenghtened her vulnerability and her upbringing at the time, though now maybe I would have done differently. It also offered my a levy to deal with against Amarrian ultra conservatives, because honestly, I did not want to spend my time constantly playing the underdog while playing a scholar concept.
- I also wanted conflict all along. I wanted a tortured soul, that was inherently weak, and not inherently evil nor good. Lyn started like a sensible, promising young child with huge curious eyes that craved to learn about pretty much everything. I had to add something to make her actually want that, and make all of this believable, so I rolled up with the ultra conservative family not caring the slightest about her and a demented mother that only cared for her legacy, on a remote planet where nothing of interest happens. And I played so much with the idea that her entourage had to be only a shadow of itself, derelict, in Derelik (hurrdurr). It gave her incentives. All in all, it was a good start for a paragon character and I often toy with the idea of what Lyn would have become without the SoCT intercession. Probably a model of a liberal Holder like the spiritual child of Heideran and Midular or something. Then she went Macaper, or almost. Because it's funnier that way, of course, and the HyCon was the perfect answer to turn all this bright side into a completely fucked up grim personality: her genuine inspired curiosity turned into a hollow addiction to knowledge, her creativity turned into agitated random thoughts (like a torrent of incoherent ideas making sense only to her), her strong and endearing timidity turned into a complete asocial marginality, her naivety turned into jaded cynism, and being aware of her difference and the gap between her and normal people made her all bitter in the inside. Eventually, HyCon turned the natural balance that was inside into a twisted, chaotic unbalance.
- My idea was to not have a character fallen out of grace, but actually in a more or less state of grace at the contrary, with underlying tones of fake and insecurity. Lyn is hard to discuss with when reason is involved, but Lyn is also full of cracks that provide a glimpse of her true emotional self dating back to her childhood that she tries hard to hide under a shell of cold logic. Somehow, I eventually looked for a character that has turned into a total waste of potential, who could have become someone great, and has instead become something hollow, albeit sharp and keen for the sake of SoCT.
- Besides letting breadcrumbs about her true affiliation in the past, a bit like Silas did, I also usually try to let here and there hooks for people to actually pierce through the impenetrable shell surrounding her. That's something that often motivates me to play her.
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This is a really good topic... haven't seen this question asked often, if at all.
Thank you. \o/
I'm loving the various answers.
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I play Ché because he provides me with entertaining RP. I never quite know what will happen next, or where he's going, even though he never went through radical shifts. That keeps him interesting for me.
His characteristics are based on mine, some are distorted, magnified or decreased, or have evolved over the years.
A theme that appeals to me is that Ché (or his dominant side at least) is pretty much out of place in the grimdark cluster of New Eden.
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A difficult question. I'll start with the easiest character to answer it for:
Hilion Narath was created because I wanted an alt to try piracy with. I play him the way I do because it appeals to the part of me which enjoys playing a slightly absurd, unabashedly ridiculous character. I find him prettty entertaining, at least when I'm in the right frame of mind.
To answer some of the questions from the op, I saw the 'Cyberknight' background when they added the Khanid bloodline, and had a vision, a vision of a geriatric cyberknight pirate of gnome-like proportions with a serious substance abuse problem and an unshakable conviction that he was in fact a Brutor. I felt that Eve would be a better place with him in it, so I selflessly bought a power of two account and created him.
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I like this topic, too.
Katla is my second character, after playing for a coupple of weeks with a couple of RL friends only to decide that if I was going to both stay friends with one of them and play the game in a way I found enjoyable, I would have to make a fresh start and not play with him. I am greatly relieved at what Shin wrote above, because I picked Katla's race and background precisely in order to get a high Charisma, which I had been led to believe was essential in order to become a decent mission runner. It's great to finally know that I was not alone in making that mistake. Misery loves company. ;)
Similarly, I made her Fed Navy, because back in 04, it let you start with racial frigate at level 4, which by itself made for a high starting SP total compared to most of the other choices.
She was a RP character from the get-go, but since I was still learning the ropes of EVE lore, she wasn't particularly well-developed. Her first missions consisted of hauling garbage (literally) from one station to another, and I ended up rationalizing this fact by deciding that she graduated near the bottom of her class and was seen as a bit of a failure by her peers and superiors. This also provided her with a good excuse for buggering off into Amarrian space rather quickly, although I've forgotten why this seemed like a good idea at the time. In any case, once there, I got involved with a small RP-lite corp started by two "veterans" (a veteran was anyone who owned and could fly a battleship, back then), and hung around with them for a few months, long enough to get a Megathron of my own, which I really had no business flying. Then RL stuff forced me off EVE for more than a year.
When I came back, the old corp was dead, my Megathron died soon after because I still didn't know how to tank, and I decided to take a trip back to Fed space, where I got acquainted with the "real" EVE RP community for the first time. In particular, Placid Reborn seemed to offer an exciting concept, but they were a bit too martial for my tastes, as I was very PVP-shy at the time. So when two of their members left PR to found the industrial corp Krysalis, I joined up almost immediately. I had a good time there, and while I didn't get rid of my PVP aversion during the time I was there, I did get more comfortable poking around in low-sec, and I got thoroughly immersed in the RP scene.
Eventually Krysalis ended as well, not long after an incredibly embarrassing war that mostly consisted of us hiding in stations and crying bitter IC and OOC tears because we were harassed by the new-on-the-scene corp INTAKI UNION, a bunch of Intaki separatist terrorists with ties to Amarr. Although we were under orders not to undock, I was very glad for those orders, and I still sometimes wish I could travel back in time and slap the past myself silly over that fact. While the war itself ended, the feeling of having a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads did not, and I believe that played a big part in the subsequent dissolution of Krysalis.
After that I put Katla on the back-burner for a while as I got my second account, where I decided to try my hand at playing an Achura, who I decided was going to be a follower of the Amarrian faith. Being more familiar with the EVE lore by then, I put considerably more initian thought into Lilya's background than Katla's. While she was born and raised on Saisio, I also decided that she had lived all her life in a remote and isolated Amarrian mission (on a tiny island, no less), and so would have had close to no contact with "regular" Achuran society before she left.
(I also decided that the mission was as remote as it was because Achuran authorities really didn't want Amarrian missionaries on the planet at all, but felt pressured into allowing it for diplomatic reasons, and decided to give the Amarrians an island instead of allowing them the opportunity to find a site on their own. The inaccessibility of the location meant the missionaries would only be able to exert their foreign influences of a very small number of people, who would in almost all cases have to seek them out on their own initiative, rather than the other way around. This potential insult was then deftly camouflaged by said authorities pointing out, very pleasantly, that the location's remoteness made it ideally suited for the Amarrians' purposes, as it was an excellent location for a monastery - which it reasonably would be, from a traditional Achuran point of view.)
I had fun playing Lilya for a while. She got swept up by Ashar, and became one of the few traditionalists in the otherwise very innovative Order of the Blessed Sisters of Amarr. Eventually, she and the other traditionalists left and formed Opus Imperium.
By that time my interest in Katla had been rekindling, however. She was over in Caldari space at that time running missions for them for who knows what reason, and I decided to take a good hard look at her seemingly wishy-washy personality and loyalties, and see if I could impose a bit of sense and structure onto it, while still allowing for her previous in-space actions to not seem completely out of character. And in a fit of inspiration, Astropolitanism, and with it, Astropolitan Front, was born. Since it was a stroke of inspiration on my own part which led me down that path, I decided to make it the case with her as well - she visited Yulai, walked around a station there for the first time, and experienced an epiphany which suddenly helped her making sense of her own identity in a way which she'd never been able to do before. Almost overnight, the alcoholic Navy washout and lackluster industrialist became a political demagogue with dreams of CONCORD's eventual supremacy and a culturally pasteurized (and politically totalitarian) society of space-dwelling people. Katla as she exists today owes a lot of her personality and quirks to this period.
AST-F was a lot of fun, despite all the setbacks and eventual dissolution of the corp. What I do regret is pulling Lilya into it once I found out that I wouldn't have time to both be a CEO and play an alt outside of the corp. While pulling her in was a sensible choice in a strictly OOC sense, it largely ruined her as a roleplay character. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been much better to just let her fade into the background and perhaps pick her back up at a later date.
Once FW hit and AST-F got the final nail hammered into its coffin, going Sansha was a pretty easy choice. Without going into too much detail as to the philosophical whys (although I could), I had actually kept a pretty sympathetic view toward the Nation during AST-F's existence, with peace between CONCORD and the Nation being one political goal. As a result, Katla had quite a few friends among the Nation RPers at the time, and when Izzy headhunted her for Naqam, she wasn't hard to ask. This led to some awesome times.
Since the return of Sansha himself, however, and the escalation of the war between the Nation and CONCORD, Katla has felt pretty sidelined in the middle of it all. From her own personal perspective, she's caught in the middle of not one, but two civil wars (Faction Warfare and the resurgent CONCORD-Nation war). She doesn't really know what to do with herself anymore, and so often ends up doing not very much at all, besides impotently wishing that this whole bloody mess would just stop. Both IC and OOC, she remains in Naqam partly because there's not really any better available alternative, and partly because of personal loyalty to other characters and the players behind them.
Although the feeling of having painted myself into a corner while playing her is frustrating sometimes, it does still allow for good roleplay. On the plus side, she's beginning to lower her shoulders and relax for a bit for the first time in years, and although this development is in significant part rooted in resignation, it does allow for the resurgence of a more pleasant and human side to her. She's beginning to make friends again outside of her alliance, which is a development I am enjoying greatly.
Now, to Ruby. Why do I play Ruby?
First off, I don't play her enough, and I know it. But I absolutely, completely love her as a character. She's my own special snowflake vanity project, and I'm not the least bit ashamed to admit it. I conceived of her during the end days of AST-F, as I recall, as I became increasingly fascinated with Sansha's Nation, and the wonderful region description of Esoteria was something that really caught my interest. Adding a touch of complexity to the Nation by promoting the idea of Esoteria serving as a cultural counterpoint of sorts to Stain was something that really appealed to me. As was the idea of playing a character who, despite being essentially good-hearted, had grown up in a society which was sufficiently alien that some of the things she'd do with the best of intentions would still come off as horrendously creepy to the average outsider.
In a way it touches on Samira's reference to Vampire: the Masquerade's alternate paths of Morality, above. While the Vampire games themselves never served as inspiration for Ruby, Changeling: the Lost (by far the gem of the nWoD games) certainly did. Tomorrowland Orphanage is a strange, surreal cybernetic wonderland where lost and abandoned children, with careful coaching and cybernetic upgrades, are transformed into beautiful, talented creatures capable of realizing their true creative potential - or horrible, inhuman abominations, all in the eye of the beholder.
I chose to make her Ni-Kunni mainly for two reasons. First, and most importantly, Ni-Kunni women had access to an all-over-the-place hairstyle and a spooky veil-like tattoo that covered the entire upper half of their face, both of which I thought seemed perfect for Ruby. Second, I wanted to have a valid explanation for why she was trained as a capsuleer in Empire space, and decided that giving her the Ni-Kunni "Border Runner" background would have served as a good, hard-to-verify cover story (along with a few hefty bribes) to get her through the training without triggering the Sansha alarm. While the school representatives taking the bribes would definitely know there was something shady in her past, they'd have no reason to assume it was significantly more shady than that of your average actual Border Runner.
I definitely need to play her more. Hm.
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To answer some of the questions from the op, I saw the 'Cyberknight' background when they added the Khanid bloodline, and had a vision, a vision of a geriatric cyberknight pirate of gnome-like proportions with a serious substance abuse problem and an unshakable conviction that he was in fact a Brutor. I felt that Eve would be a better place with him in it, so I selflessly bought a power of two account and created him.
I always knew Hilion was awesome, but it never struck me just how awesome until I read this.
Thank you for making him. :D
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Fun fact: I originally rolled Caldari.
This was a loooooooooooooooooooong time ago. Trial account, messed around a bit, got bored. Quit. The character's still around somewhere.
Then the crowd I played Freelancer with (mostly my IC bitter enemies there, amusingly enough) decided to get together to play Eve, invited me along, and said to roll Amarr. Because lasers. There might've been something else there, but I think that was the core of it. So I made Mortis because Khanid looked interesting, and thus was born the Man with the Helmet.
Fast forward a couple of years, and that original group was disintegrating a little. People were leaving the game or going their own way, so I dove headfirst into recruitment section of the Eve forums. Slightly surprised at my daring, actually, I'm actually kind of shy, but I'd just come out of a short stint with a nullsec alliance, and was evidently feeling up for dealing with new folks. So I hunted around for lowsec PvP gubbins, and found an ad for a little group called Ghost Festival.
Then I was like 'wait... there's actual serious RP stuff going on here?'
That led to the interesting problem of working out why a Khanid pilot would muck about in highsec, go rat in Providence as a CVA pet for ages, turn pirate, become a U'K pet to rat sec up, then turn pirate again...
Suffice to say, I managed to fit a backstory together. Mortis is pretty much me taken to absurd extremes, so he was easy to play; he's quiet, cynical, distinctly creepy and practically emotionless. I was nervous and very cautious at first, and a fair amount of stuff has been quietly retconned along the way as I realised that no, actually, pretty much everyone's a bit of a psycho in this universe, you fit right in.
The rest of my altswarm evolved around him. Mostly they were passed off as parts of his network, which worked well enough. Reppy, though... that's a story for another time.
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Let’s see…
First character (Khanid) was basically just me. I discovered RP, I was intrigued, I read the IGS and almost vomited, ended up RPing anyways. But the character was essentially me at the time – too smart, zero accomplishment, and a bit bitter and angsty about life. I quit RPing much with him and just let him afk his way through lvl 4s in a domi.
Stecker was created to be a pvp alt and was a violent psychopath from the start. Over time she evolved into a more interesting character. Later discovered that she was oblivious Sabik – her personal philosophy already matched that of the Sabik without ever having heard of them. This lead to a mixed response – “Hey, we think the same sorta thing! Cool!” and “What do I need you for? I already know everything you just said.” Stecker had a chance to finally turn Sabik that didn’t quite work out, so she’s just been wandering around, aimlessly.
Why I play the character… I can echo a lot of what Silas said – But that's the fun; I can run off and occasionally pretend to be a mass murdering psycopath who is steadily losing touch as the years go by and she becomes more isolated with power, and then log off and hang out with the wifey and friends and play records :)
On a semi-related note – [spoiler] I had picked up on some the Sabik leaning stuff from Silas while she was still leading KPV in nullsec and Stecker was getting closer to converting fully to Sabik and remember the IC thought, “Hey, I’ll bet Silas could be converted and would make an awesome Sabik.” In hindsight, lol. [/spoiler]
The difficulty with this being that it’s tough to play a character that’s hot shit when literally everything that character ever touched failed miserably. Derp.
Other characters… I had a Serp loyalist who was born out of an RP scene gone wrong. I was recruited to play someone’s asshole father (I’m not sure it was a compliment that they asked me, but I took it as one anyways) for a scene which the father wasn’t supposed to survive. Do to some serious DERP on the part of the other players, he did, and I decided to see what I could do with this new, morally lacking, self-interested businessman. I ended up enjoying the character, although I had to put in a little bit of potential redemption and heart – I am capable of playing truly soulless characters, but really don’t enjoy it.
And then I had another character, mercenary, who I played a lot like myself, but a year or so after the Khanid, so slightly less depressed and miserable. He was kinda fun. I wish I'd given him more attention.
Having so many characters is part of why I had to quit EVE, and part of why I don’t want to go back. I couldn’t be satisfied with just one toon. I wanted to play the blooder and I wanted to play the serp and I wanted to dable with the Cartel and maybe the guristas (although they didn’t appeal too much) and I wanted to do this and that and the other thing… and then I realized I wasn’t having enough fun to justify four accounts, but couldn’t narrow it down to just one. Splitting my focus probably contributed to the repeated failure of anything I tried to accomplish, while trying to focus on just one character lead to boredom. Catch-22.
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True story: I started playing Eve to be a miner.
I'll just give you all a moment to let the laughter settle down a bit - but really. What convinced me to give Eve a try was the stuff about 'choose your own career path - be a pirate or a trader or an industrialist' and I have always like the building/resource gathering side of games. I picked Intaki for Intel/Mem/Charisma because I thought 'well, I'm going to be doing science and trading and stuff, not flying ships'. Of course, after a very short period I discovered that you needed to be in an established industrial corp to do all that stuff, because blueprints and lab slots and so on. It didn't occur to me to reroll (I'd invested three weeks of training time!) so I slogged through training Cia up to run missions with the worst stats possible.
The first thing I did when I started playing was check out the IGS and do a bit of googling, which led me to Chatsubo and thence to the Summit and OOC (I knew from the get-go that I wanted to RP, although Eve was the first MMO I'd played since Ultima Online). I vaguely remember having an initial character idea that was quite a bit grimmer and more determined - a Ciarente who would have fit in to the cast of Winter's Bone - but I quickly realized, given that everyone Cia encountered were slavers, pirates, sansha, evil manipulative geniuses or just plain ape-shit crazy, if she was guarded and wary or indeed had even an ounce of self-preservation or a brain in her head, she'd never talk to anyone, ever.
And so the Cia you know was born. I shaved as much off her age as I reasonably could (perhaps too much), slapped a pair of rose-colored glasses on her so she saw the best in everyone (even when it wasn't there) and took advantage of the fact she had rock-bottom perception and will-power in the basement. She would talk to anyone, because *everyone* was really, basically, good, just misunderstood or terribly unhappy; and she would go along with anything, because she had no backbone at all.
A lot of the details of Cia's family background got tweaked around about then because I needed to make her personality credible, at least to myself. I even roped in a friend who's a shrink to get an opinion on what might make her like she was.
Ultimately, after some traumatic experiences (and a hell of a lot of therapy) she got her head screwed on much better - apart from anything else, I was pushing the bounds of my own suspension of disbelief that she would still trust Celes Tenebrae after ... well, spoilers.
I'm still kinda sad that I no longer get to take her to, say, Blood Raider parties and watch her try and 'respect the cultural traditions', but everyone, even Cia, needs to grow up.
Camille was born as a fully-fledged alt (she'd already appeared in fiction) with my first power-of-two account. She has always been pretty much exactly as she is: she's based on a real child I know who is slightly older than she is so she's grown up a step behind her RL model (who is just as scary but fortunately has far less access to high-powered munitions). She's a lot of fun to play but also slightly exhausting (and, true story, two keyboards have been replaced due to the ! key crapping out since I created her). She does what she wants and she does it as hard as she can, and she has taken to heart the maxim that it is better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. It's been interesting to watch her gradually mature (and I do feel as if I am watching her, a lot of the time, because she's so closely based on my god-daughter).
I won't go through all the rest, but I will mention my 'accidental main', Noli. Originally an unskilled alt on Cia's account designed for a single RP event - a supporting character in a story that was really about someone else - she became a regular supporting character, and got moved to another account so she and Cia could attend the same events :P . Noli was inspired by the Caldari POW item you can find in-game - the prisoners of the Gallente who have been horrifically abused. Because I try not to make my character's back-stories Clusterwide godmodding, I made her specific imprisonment something that happened on a backwater low-sec station with the tacit consent of station, but not Corporate, authorities. I read everything I could on long-term POWs and long-term hostages to work out how she'd act (and think) after being freed. I also decided almost at random that she'd be a blind mathematician with kinasthesia and it's been a tremendously enjoyable challenge to work out how to consistently RP the way Noli 'sees' the world. Again, people change (and get better, at least if they get help) and while it's been a long trip back, Noli is now largely over what happened to her, and I'm enjoying RPing her as content - even happy - and ... but spoilers.