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[Seriphyn]

This discusses the syndrome of "Dark suit in a corner looking ominous" in EVE RP and RP in general.

What I notice, and this is just an observation for discussion rather than criticism for debate, is that a lot of characters have a forced archetype upon them. We take a look at other fictional figures, whether in books, movies or video games, and we force our character to behave like that. What I propose is that perhaps characters should be built from the bottom-up, as opposed from the top-down. Top-down archetypes include Amarr zealot, Caldari patriot, Minmatar freedom fighter and so on, but attempting to disseminate these archetypes yields nothing; simple drones for a cause.

Maybe even characters exhibit elements of both, or can be SEEN to be created from both altogether. I'll use my own character in both situations. Top-down tends to be one point or forced archetype, whereas bottom-up is a myriad of different things, from upbringing, life experiences and personal relationships.

TOP-DOWN
- Soldier and patriot of the Federation, exhibiting what would be seen as 'heroic' traits of Gallentean society (ie. infinite girlfriends)

BOTTOM-UP
- Living but absent parents for most/all of childhood. Deficient in this area; lacks appropiate emotional responses due to lack of parental guidance, ie. immature reactions and countermeasures, including aggression, dismissal, hostility, denial
- Low level of education, working class attitude. Similar to above, reactions to problems are more likely to include "base" traits of aggression and other physical means, as opposed to "educated" traits of verbal/emotional retaliation.
- Lifetime of cultural honing/indoctrination. Patriotism and nationalism is born purely from living in the nation. Sense of duty and discipline from long military career starting at 16. Incapable of "switching sides" due to 30 years of existing as a 'Gallentean'
- Oversexualization due to inability to cope with emotional problems, again lack/absent of parents for guidance. Laviscious sexual activity to escape and deny any issues that require dealing with. Distraction from versus direct solving of any personal problems that require solutions
- Loyalty manipulated by outside forces and environmental factors, ie. manipulative mother (FedNav rear admiral), cabal of Federal brass "engineering" character as a weapon for their own means. Life puppeteered by mother and associates.
- Cynicism of homeland derived from extended periods of seeing the "realities" of what said homeland actually does; sees "greater picture" at work, and propagates this publically, despite private cynicism and apprehension.

And so on and so forth. As you can see, bottom-up is FAR more interesting, and even though there are developed traits for Seriphyn in that area, you can easily apply "top-down" to him however. Which makes me think that even for the apparent 2D characters, you can easily construct a "bottom-up" resume. Have a shot at it, or discuss your thoughts about 3D v 2D characters.

[Inara Subaka]

I'm 110% in agreement. However, we run into a problem, and I'll use Inara as an example of this problem in action.

Inara as seen by a lot of people:
-Death monger, living on the thrill of killing those around her.
-Evil Mistress personality, no ability for love or emotional expression outside of RAEG.
-Pirate, who will go to many lengths to take your Kredits away.
-Blinded by her own short-sightedness, grasping in the dark trying to find her way.

Inara as she actually is (relative to the previous points):
-Is abhorred by death, and if possible will save those that are unable to wake up in a clone vat.
-Highly emotional, is infact a loving mother (of an adopted daughter) and will do anything in her power to protect 'her and hers'.
-Business woman, pirates simply kill/ransom, and while Inara may do that (a lot) she also has other things she's involved in.
-Sometimes gets lost planning and plotting the future that it seems that she's ignoring the present oft times.

A lot of bottom-up and top-down differences are based on perspective, what is seen in public RP circles. In regards to the Seriphyn example you listed... a lot of the Bottom-Up points will never be (and probably should never be) made public information, meaning the Top-Down view of him is what people are going to see and react to in public. The same thing happens to Inara, and you RP accordingly.

Seri may be *randomly picks a point* immature and use aggressive countermeasures to emotional situations due to absent parental figures... but the rest of the people Seri interacts with (that aren't close enough to him for his history to be known) are going to see him as a whiny Feddie when he reacts that way. Or his oversexualization may be due to his inability to properly articulate emotional responses, but to the majority of those that see it, it's going to appear he's just being a man-whore.

Note: Neither of these is wrong, it's very very good the way I see it. Perspective that paints the character in a different light than they are meant to be causes interesting RP. Inara being compared to an Empire Holder is far from accurate, but many claim she's "probably drugging her slaves, or whipping them into submission for fun". Things like this provide the dynamic interactions rather than cut and dry interactions.

If everyone's entire character history and motivations were known to everyone else's character... RP would be boring.

[Seriphyn]

Definitely, someone that "puts up" a front or appears a certain way to the public and general populace, but then being completely different behind-the-scenes is very good. "Multi-faceted", "wearing faces for different places".

[Lyn Farel]

A thing I have been thinking about for some time now too. I see the character creation process quite in a similar view.

I think top down process is very usefull, especially at the beginning of the creation for a character. Like in any artistical creation process, you need references, guidelines, and general ideas. The bad thing is to fall for the usual clichés, though it can be interesting if you turn it at your advantage and make something original with it. I find it more and more true when I look at my character, which has had almost no top-down creation process : she has a well developped background now, but it may lack of coherence sometimes.

Anyway, yes, the bottom-up situation is almost mandatory if you do not want to see your character staying tasteless.

[Punx Evangeline]

I guess I haven't thought of it, but for my character I usually just 'wing-it' and I ended up with a bottom-up character that is shaped by her past actions and associations along with a healthy pinch of insanity.

-Punx

[DosTuMai]

I guess I haven't thought of it, but for my character I usually just 'wing-it' and I ended up with a bottom-up character that is shaped by her past actions and associations along with a healthy pinch of insanity.

-Punx

Pretty much how I did Mei. It's not a name I normally use for RP so I kinda just went... "Ummmmmm... She's an alkofrollick and nuttier than a bag of sqerrlz" and went on from thar.
Dossie has always been the same basic background edited to fit the game setting. Yes, I am a lazy RP'er.

[Matsudaira Takuma]

To throw in my 2 pence and I'm sure it's covered somewhere on these boards for me to unlock eventually but I'm only just starting to actively try and get myself into the RP scene of EVE now after nearly 3 months of account ownership.

For a new player, with no previous to the lore and with the piss poor injection of the lore into the game as it stands (ran countless missions now, and I think I have only run about 40 tops unique mission stories) is where to start from?  When first creating this persona I find myself thinking into the top down approach, for instance Taku.  When first approaching the character, all in my head so far you have to understand, I knew a little that Gallente and Caldari didn't get along, don't exactly know why even to this day apart from it's some old dispute that's been going for a while now.  So I thought to myself, "Right, he is an ex-navy pilot who has earned his stripes and is now moving into private work, he will hate all the Gallentians and think of their technology as a disgrace".  I joined I-RED (great people btw) because they were a Caldari corporation defending the state and it's enterprises.  Once I was part of RDC I started to pick up that we weren't in fact haters of the Gallente, quite contradictory, Ishukone were all for co-operation and we were deeply involved in helping the Intaki and against the spread of hatred between our two empires.  This through a spanner in the works that's for sure and now I find myself totally on the backfoot, unable to really think coherently about where my character came from and what makes him who he is.  I have a few ideas behind certain things such as physical features brought on through events but find myself lost for a real direct idea of how to develope his character.

Without having even a rough idea or grounding for his character I find that I shy away from even attempting to join any of the RP channels or forums etc because I don't want to put my foot in my mouth (did that a fair few times in my WoW RP days about Belfs when they first came out and I was stillo relatively wet behind the ears to RP, and from my experience, RP'ers are probably the biggest bunch of elitists around even comparied to those PvP'ers who cry "fail fit" at every killmail they can though its usually done in a different way).

Which leaves me in a rather emo bitter cycle whereby I feel I cant create a character without knowing events and getting involved, but I feel I can't get involved because I don't want to make a faux pas.

Anyhoo, probably the wrong section to say this all I guess :>

TL:DR -  I don't know shit about the lore and there being so much of it I dont know where to start, as such I cant create a character and find myself screwed with both top down and vice versa character creation.

[Z.Sinraali]

I think the solutions to situations like yours is to fall back on the old improv standby of "Yes, and," though slightly repurposed. If you're unfamiliar with it, it's the action principle that you should build on what's present rather than contradicting it. Lots of good roleplay can come out of apparent or even accidental tensions within a character.

In your case, you have an anti-Gallente guy in a less-anti-Gallente corp/alliance. (In general, the liberal Caldari bloc isn't about being friends with anybody as such, they just see it as providing greater economic gain. The Intaki thing is done in part because it pokes the Gallente in the eye.) You're reasonably asking why he would be there. Maybe he's a spy for Tibus Heth, the head of the Caldari Providence Directorate, a singularly anti-Gallente organization. Maybe it's a personal connection, a relative or friend bringing him into the corp. Maybe he, like many capsuleers, was simply blinded by the potential wealth or opportunities for bloody combat on offer.

TL;DR Forget the prime fiction/lore. It's just a backdrop. Fall back to the basics of human relationships and behavior and go from there.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

When I first began my experience in EVE, I had a general archetype and personality for my character. As I began to interact with others and develop this character's experiences, their background and motivations changed to suit current agendas. And often, I will invent background events to justify my behavior in the present, because the present (playing the game) is more important than the past (fluff i made to give my character three-dimensionality).

To this day I continue to design characters into an archetype, and flesh them out deeper as other characters challenge their ideas or as inspiration strikes. I suppose you could call it the top-down model. Quite frankly, I've always felt that current events outweighed background story plot in the context of current character actions. I think its alright to justify your behavior with it when necessary, or utilize the past as a plot motivation, but its necessity for three dimensionality is a bit overrated.

Simply observing a character in a public environment may give a one-sided perspective on a character that may appear one-dimensional or superficial, but if someone takes the time to dig deeper at them their players tend to want to dig deeper as well. So I guess my point is, a character is only as deep as their surroundings...and the people around them.

[Silas Vitalia]

Definitely, someone that "puts up" a front or appears a certain way to the public and general populace, but then being completely different behind-the-scenes is very good. "Multi-faceted", "wearing faces for different places".

The unfortunate part about this is that only the people you interact with in the 'behind the scenes' get much of a flavor for the non 'front' depth of character.  There are quite a few wonderful characters that I know have a -lot- going on under the surface but it takes time an effort to find reasons to interact with them and get into it, to peel back the onion layers so to speak.

On my end Silas may be an ornery bitch on the public front but most characters who speak with her privately or in small groups of friends often find her quite cordial and and warm.

Oh and Seriphyn has actually come up quite randomly lately amongst several people that I interact with IC, I expect we'll have some interesting conversations in the future.

[Mathra Hiede]

Definitely, someone that "puts up" a front or appears a certain way to the public and general populace, but then being completely different behind-the-scenes is very good. "Multi-faceted", "wearing faces for different places".

The unfortunate part about this is that only the people you interact with in the 'behind the scenes' get much of a flavor for the non 'front' depth of character.  There are quite a few wonderful characters that I know have a -lot- going on under the surface but it takes time an effort to find reasons to interact with them and get into it, to peel back the onion layers so to speak.

On my end Silas may be an ornery bitch on the public front but most characters who speak with her privately or in small groups of friends often find her quite cordial and and warm.

Oh and Seriphyn has actually come up quite randomly lately amongst several people that I interact with IC, I expect we'll have some interesting conversations in the future.

With all due respect Silas - LIES AND BLOODY SLANDER!
Silas is JUST as evil to us as the rest of the cluster 

*ahem* now that the idea has been reinforced as Silas' image is no longer at risk...

Math'ra was designed in my mind largely in a similar way to what Kaleigh mentioned, where essentially I had a couple of founding principles and core points that I could draw from - but I developed the flesh and intricies of his character as RP presented itself and he was challenged and confronted with ideas and problems.

What essentially resulted was something of a split in his personality.
He is has a withdrawn personality, colder and harsher than normal - this facet of his self is drawn to the fore when he is forced into conflict, all his 'extraneous' things get pushed out and he reverts to a somewhat fundmental and result-driven conflict personality.

What he tries to portray when he is relaxed is more of a welcoming open and friendly aura, where he will go out of his way to help and forgive others whom may have wronged him or otherwise be hostile


This developed primarily from Math's background being a harsh military lifestyle, but also his continual drive to try and become a more human person and less of a 'Demi-God' of endless death and destruction, so while it initally was a top down development, once the initial framework was layed the elements of detail and fine tuning from a bottom up came into play.

TL;DR - A combination of both largely based on current circumstances results in a more dynamic and evolving character.

[Casiella]

I'd add here the concept of a hook: a characteristic that makes other folks want to RP with you.

With more detail: a hook is an in-character characteristic that makes other players want to interact with the character. This could be something like a life outlook (e.g. Ciarente's famous "rose-colored glasses", at least once upon a time) or it could be a particular area of expertise (boosters, Sleeper discoveries), or it could be a way of communicating (Vaari, maybe?).

Long ago in a galaxy far, far away, my most popular characters got plenty of RP either out of sheer attitude (brazen ballsiness) or incredible idealism (sort of a Nathan Hale). For the community in which I played, that worked, though I wouldn't presume those exact characteristics would translate very well to EVE RP.