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[WIP] Your Facet and You - The Mootking's Guide to Making a Good Facet

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[WIP] Your Facet and You - The Mootking's Guide to Making a Good Facet Empty [WIP] Your Facet and You - The Mootking's Guide to Making a Good Facet

Post by TheMootking Thu Jul 30, 2015 2:10 pm

Alright, so the time has come for you to create a Facet, great! You're very close to roleplaying with the others here at Missing Pages. There's only one more obstacle in your way: getting your Facet approved. Some can do this without a hitch, many struggle. Be prepared for my fellow admins and I to point out flaws, it's almost an inevitability. In fact, usually profiles that have been rigorously changed and critiqued end up being better than the ones who simply passed. The admins are here to help, after all.

Naturally, many of our users will find themselves puzzled and completely stumped upon character creation, how detailed do you have to be? The simple answer is if you can think of it, write it down. We like the profiles to be as thorough and complete as possible. One of the most important rules of the forum is that you CANNOT simply magic up some event (unless they are very minor) from a character's past in order to change the present. For example, one of our infamous examples of this naughty, naughty behavior was a character suddenly was an expert welder and revealed roughly a year after character was created that their father was a welder. Now, you can imagine the pandemonium that would be caused by people talking themselves out of a situation because "their father was x" or they "spent x years doing y". It simply would not do. Thus, this rule is a very important one while roleplaying here at Missing Pages.

So, in order to help you guys out with creating your character, I've put together this guide. I'll be detailing the process, creating the profile of Jimmy No-Boots as we go along. Text marked in bold italics will be examples of a profile.

Coming Up With a Character

Many of you will arrive at the forum with a character in mind already, which is great! If that's the case, skip this section and continue with the guide.

For those of you that don't, this will arguably be the hardest part of the creative process. Before you even start, you've got to think of an actual character. This can prove to be tough. What kind of role do you want to fill? A student? A mage? A cybernetic killing machine? This will have a profound effect on the rest of the profile, and you need to start with a clear idea before you dive in. Firsto ff, you're going to want to decide which area of the forum you want this particular facet to be living in. You have a wide range of choices:
World PRIME: a world that is identical to Earth, taking place in an Academy for disabled children situated in Toronto. This will be a classic "slice of life" character. The focus on this section of the forum will be aimed at interaction between characters and developing a truly well-rounded and unique character.  There will be no overarching plot, but we, as admins, will provide events to spark ideas and roleplay when your creative juices begin to dwindle.
World POWERS: a comic-book world that has suddenly found itself home to a generation of children that have developed superpowers. Expect big fights and epic storylines here. Think of it as a little like Marvel: very story-driven with a lot of crossing over of plotlines and big, world-changing events happening quite often.
The Void: a mish-mash of several small-scale ideas for worlds that will cycle in and out periodically. You should check what worlds are currently in play when coming up with a character, as all are very different. This forum is mostly just for fun, the rules aren't as tight and it will be the location of most of the less-serious roleplay. There will still be standards though: no unicorns running around a barren cyborg wasteland.

If you're stumped for ideas, why not refer to our Facet Ideas thread and choose a role from there, it's a handy databanks of the sorts of roles you can fill within any area of the forum.

So, for my example, I've come up with the idea of an assassin posing as a bard from Findera who lost his ability to wear shoes in a game of poker against a powerful mage. He will be played on World FAYWYN.

What's In a Name?

The first step in the Facet profile template is the character's name. If you're like me, this might take you HOURS. I've spent many-an-hour sitting in front of a computer screen coming up with the name for a character in an RPG, and this is no different. In fact, it's very important in a roleplaying setting. You need to think of something that both sounds good, and is appropriate for the setting. We don't particularly want Giggorosh the Maleficar stomping around The Tachibana Academy. Names should fit your character, not just the setting. In World PRIME, names will just be regulard names that you would see in the real world, while in POWERS you would both have a real name but you'll also need to come up with a Superhero alias, like "Firestorm" or "Medic-Man". (If I see a single "Medic-Man" in the Soul Profile subforum I think I will ban you permanantly, just saying)

Make sure you're 100% happy with the name, you might decide in a week's time that John Johanson is a little grating and regret it , wondering why you didn't call your Facet Johan Johnson.

Name: Jimmy No-Boots; born Jimmy Fletcher

Age

Age is important. It should be appropriate. Students should be between 6 and 18, while a grizzled war veteran surviving in the apocalyptic wasteland of World CYBORG should be in his 50s. Keep in mind that as you roleplay and progress with your character, they will age in real-time. You'll also need to ensure you roleplay effectively for that age range - your average 50 year old will not be able to keep up with a 14 year old.

Age: 24

Position

This will be a basic description of your Facet's role in their specific World. It can be something simple as "baker" or something and grand as "Warrior-King of Faywyn" - as long as it fits with the character's backstory. If your character is in school, write their grade in here. You should provide any other relevant information, such as a soldier's rank and battalion, or which pub a landlord owns in which town.

Position: Travelling bard & hired assassin

Appearance

This is an important section, too! This is where you get to describe how your character looks to the other roleplayers, so they have an accurate image within their mind's eye. First things first, you should find a picture that is as accurate as possible for your character. I'd heartily suggest simply using google search, for example for Jimmy No-Boots I searched "fantasy human bard" and looked for an image closest to how I imagined him.

You'll also need to provide a written description, as the picture will not be sufficient in truly describing how they will look like in day-to-day activity. Make sure you cover everything relevant: their hair colour, the style it's usually in, their height, their skin tone, what clothes they tend to wear as well as any distinctive traits like freckles or a scar. Ideally, your description of the Facet should be enough to visualise an accurate representation of them without the picture.

[WIP] Your Facet and You - The Mootking's Guide to Making a Good Facet 9e8ce610

Jimmy No-Boots is a human. He's fairly tall, standing at 6ft with an slim build with minor muscle tone. He is a native of Findera, so is naturally quite pale, but a life on the road has turned his skin to a darker tone. He sports a dark brown hairdo, slicked back behind his ears. He also has a small mustache coupled with a close-cut beard on his chin. One of the things many people notice about him is his eyes: he is constantly alert and quite often his dark brown eyes make people feel like he's scrutinising them for every tiny detail. You'll also likely never find him without his lute, and you will definitely never find him wearing shoes.
While entertaining, he usually wears a simple linen shirt, dyed purple, as well as black cotton trousers, and is always barefoot. On his fingers, he wears several rings with inexpensive jewels in them. His lute is fairly nondescript, the classic wooden variety with several scuffs on it from his wandering lifestyle. While he is out and about, however, he wears a leather jerkin with hide shoulderpads and gloves. He wears no boots, and as such his feet are calloused and crisscrossed with scars. At his hip can usually be found a small dagger.


Backstory

Here is where most people struggle, but it is by far the most important aspect of your character. This is the section that you should be spending the majority of your time on. In a nutshell, this section is chronicling your Facet's life until the present day, where you begin to roleplay them within the forum. This cannot simply be a three line description of "Tim went to school but had no friends and now is an angsty teenager". It should be a story within itself, we want to know exactly how your character came to be where they are today. As I've mentioned before, if it isn't written here you can't bring up any major events from a Facet's past life that would affect their skills and actions in the present.
Some of the best backstories are well over 1000 words, with the crème de la crème reaching several thousand words and detailing events that happened even before the Facet was born. Really show off here, this section will pretty much determine if your Facet is approved or not.
If you want to keep certain aspects of a character's backstory secret, simply put it within spoilers. Hopefully, other members will respect your decision and wait for the twist to be revealed in roleplay. If not, shame on them! Unfortunately, the admins will have to know to make sure it won't impede the forum, or even your character, in any way and makes sense within the setting and lore of the world of Missing Pages.
A few ideas to get the ball rolling: Where was the character born? What were their parents like? Were they treated well as a child? Where, or were, they educated? Did they make many friends as a child? Did they suffer any traumatic events? What were their hobbies or skills as they grew into who they are today? Any other notable people in their life? Best friends, enemies, inspiring teachers, abusive family members? These are the kinds of things you should be including in your backstory. If it's over within 150 words, your character is nowhere near up to scratch and will be boring for other roleplayers.

Backstory: Jimmy No-Boots began life in the small village of Bellvale in Findera. He was born under a full moon - an omen among the townsfolk in Bellvale that foretold a life of hardship - to a single mother, Magda Fletcher. Jimmy was never told of his father until very late into his life when his mother revealed to him in a state of delirium while on her death bed. He was the product of a drunken one night stand, but his mother told the rest of the village she was raped for fear of being shunned by her deeply religious neighbors for conceiving out of wedlock.
Growing up in Bellvale was difficult for Jimmy, rumors that his mother was a witch would constantly circulate the village, resulting in many parents banning their children from playing with him. Personally, he was of the opinion that his mother was a witch, he couldn't think of any other explanation for the multitude of herbs and animal parts in the basement underneath their small hut on the outskirts of Bellvale.
Jimmy attended the local school and coasted through it for the majority of his life; he never really excelled in anything other than daydreaming. Sure, he was a competent athlete but didn't see the point in competition. He thought that he'd be best off keeping his talents close to his chest, letting the other kids believe he was an average athlete so they didn't become jealous and target him with the malicious behavior they so often displayed to those that were threats to them. During playtime he'd sit in the shadow of an apple tree in the small meadow behind the schoolhouse and sing songs to himself. Music was one of his passions: his mother taught him many songs as he grew and he loved nothing more than to sing along to them.
TheMootking
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