Do your characters reflect you in real life at all or are they always different?

[Elly]

For some reason I was musing that my current avatar reflects me in real life more than it does in games. Also made me think of Ethawn- whose avatar is always blonde haired and blue eyed, when in real life he's black haired and brown eyed. Some people even choose a different sex for their character, it's very interesting to me why people choose what they do.

Physical: I'm a redhead but I never roll redheaded characters. This just occurred to me today. The character Elly (short for Elandrielle) is always white or silver haired, elven persuasion if possible. My second most chosen hair color is usually black- usually a pure DPS character of some sort.

Out of habit in my many years of gaming, my main is always a healer/support class, white hair, some name variant of Elly.

Personality: I've never made a character who is a copy of my personality, but characters with facets or exaggerations of it. I'm perhaps too lazy of a roleplayer to pick a character completely alien to my own experience. My characters either reflect shy/kind/loyal or a wry/sarcastic/jaded stance.


Do you see any patterns in your character creation? Does one character keep reincarnating in different games?

[Askari]

Do my characters reflect me in real life? The short answer is "no".

I'm a fat man with dark brown hair (going bald and grey now) and dark brown eyes. But I've played almost everything.

I tend to run LOTS of alts, so it's hard to narrow down a pattern for me. My choices usually come down to the combination of overall looks: physical, animations, how the gear sits.

I play males more than females, but even my choice of gender is more about which gender I think looks better, instead of relying on my own gender. For instance, I will sometimes play female characters of races if the females are beautiful, but the males are a bit too slender and "pretty" for my tastes (elves/fae).

I do sometimes pick characters that look the way I wish I looked in real life!
human, male, black hair, green/blue/gray eyes, short hair, muscular (but not bulky)

Arkturo in GW2 falls into that category (as did Nock in RIFT and Croaker in SWTOR). If I could magically transport myself into an MMORPG or change how I look in real life, I would want to look like this:



In WildStar, I'm starting to lean towards human... so my WildStar main may also end up a charcater like this (human, male, black hair, pale eyes). The Granok are a bit too big for me, and I found them blocking more of my vision that I liked. The Mordesh have that weird body proportion like Night Elves in WoW (their waist looks too tiny and their shoulders/hands look too big). The Aurin are a bit too cutesy for my tastes.

[Rumze]

Personality wise - for the most part yes - I try to stray from my personality at times to add spice but for the most part I am kinda ditzy.

Looks wise yes - I go for what I find attractive or I base the male off my partner. He never plays games and will not budge on it but he likes seeing me play when he walks by so I always go LOOK ITS YOU

[Alirrin]

My characters tend to have at least aspects of my personality.  Quince, not surprisingly, is the most "me" (being my first serious RP MMO character). Sunbeam is more "out there", but still maintains my gregarious, slightly naïve side. Alirrin is more serious, but reflects my basic ethics in his attitude.

Physically, I would never try to make myself.  I like non-humans, to start with, and it is very difficult to replicate my build and appearance in anything other than human (or some elves).  I play around a lot at character design time, getting things just right.  Often something will grab my attention and I'll build the whole character around that.  Mara in GW2 is a prime example - I randomly got a head shape and hair style that screamed Zooey Dechanel, and everything went from there.  Doctor Vortex, my main in Champions Online, is built around a nifty duster coat.

[Jezerai]

I sometimes play one or two alts  (for those who don't know me, I tend to play LOTS of alts).  They are all probably versions of myself.  I don't think you need to apologise for that though.  Writers are taught to write from experience for a reason.  It is very hard to play a personality that is too far away from your own.  It's hard to imagine how that character would react because you don't really have life experience to draw from.  It's also uncomfortable and exhausting!  An example is, I always have a very hard time playing evil.  I know some of you may find that difficult to believe, but it's true!  I get uncomfortable being mean and snarly all the time.  Not to say I can't have very difficult or prickly personalities in my characters, like Boudeccai or Gilleana.  I liked Schera from Vanguard, with her aloof attitude and trying to display her reactions through body movements.  My favorites are the funny ones, though.  Kudzoo is my absolute favorite!  Also Scantly Mabb from Vanguard.  And of course Jezerai, who first came on the scene in Vanguard and has existed in one form or another ever since. 

As for looks, Boudeccai is always a redhead because she is drawn from the historical Boudeca, who was a redhead.  I usually play a female, though I did make a male Lothario (Named Dagobaz after a character I liked from Far Pavilions) just for fun.  Jezerai normally has as close to silver or pale blonde as I can get, though with some exceptions if I don't like how that color looks.  Scantly Mabb was a goblin in Vanguard and a troll in EQ2.  Kudzoo is a Ratonga, my favorite race!

Sometimes my characters are based on a story idea in my head.  Sometimes I generate one because there is a race/class combination that appeals to me.  I usually try to make one of each race and class, particularly if there are different starting areas.  Sometimes the story exists before the character and other times the story evolves as I get to "know" my character.  Boudeccai is an example of the first and Jezerai is an example of the second.  Jezerai's basic personality and backstory grew out of the beginning storyline for half-elves in Vanguard. 

[Askari]

Personality-wise... many of my male characters are pretty much me. Sort of shy, quiet, and serious around strangers... but sort of a silly, sarcastic and smart-ass when in comfortable situations.

In D&D terms, I can't pull off Lawful or Evil for any length of time... and most of my characters are Chaotic Good. The closest I come to playing evil is usually a rogue-like Chaotic Neutrality with the self-centered greed of a thief-type character, but even then... I tend more towards Robin Hood.

One reason I occasionally play female characters is to try to get out of my head a bit. My first main was a female, high elf enchanter in EQ1. I played her very kind, caring, warm... and enchanting. Then some guy developed a crush on me and refused to believe I was a guy... and that was very awkward... so I stopped playing female characters for awhile.

I also played my EQ2 main as a female fae for awhile, and tried to play her as a strange mix of childlike wonder and naivete mixed with matronly wisdom. She was very old and very wise, but also very new to the world outside fae lands. It was exhausting for me trying to keep that character up though, and she has turned more stern and world-weary over time.

WildStar is my next main RPG and it will be difficult NOT to embrace the "smart-ass chaotic neutral rogues with hearts of gold" trope that are so like how I see myself (Han Solo, Captain Mal).

[Jezerai]

...t will be difficult NOT to embrace the "smart-ass chaotic neutral rogues with hearts of gold" trope that are so like how I see myself (Han Solo, Captain Mal).

Me too, Askari!  Me too!

[Jhared]

Sometimes. Just bringing a couple of examples here.

Jhared is a clear example of where I have put very little of myself into a character. Mostly everything except for his gender is just not like me. He's cold and callous in much of what he does and even though he knows the concepts of right and wrong it is not something that makes a lot of sense to him, thus he has difficulty applying it.

Holger carries some of my physical attributes. Namely he is blonde. He also got the same nationality (Danish), but I chose that nationality because that's the place I know best. I know my country quite well so it made it easier to roleplay him. On personality though Holger is an absolute zealot which I am not, so there the similarities end.

I do however have some recurring traits in my characters. Lone wolf, quiet and questionable morality(But never actually evil).

I'm not sure what do with my character in Wildstar, but I know that I will blast the quiet trait out of the water with my character in EQN.

[Titia]

I tend to *try* to build characters that are in one way or another on an exact opposit from me IRL in the attitude. Or at least at first but then I usually realize after a few weeks or months that they found their way back to *me*. I don't think it's easy to maintain something you're not, unless you're an actor, or have a multiple personnalities disorder like Jez 

I tend to keep variations of the same characters associated with look-alike classes across games. The thing is while they start as one type of char and with ther own mindset they tend to evolve back to me whatever I try so they do not.

Who remembers that Deneteth in EQ1 was a 'pure race only' elven bastard, full of grief for not making into a paladin and lessering into a wizard? Might have lasted a couple of month (until grouping only with high elven became difficult to keep I suppose) before getting back to my real personnality even when IC. Or that Titia has been started as a prank to lure would-have-cyber-s.x hot blooded guys in VG who were annoying the ladies of the guild, so after a couple of days I could tell them I was a man and see them wipe their characters for some reason ^^ Then she got fun to play and became basically a contract-killer, with sociopath option. Then came back to being who I am in RL to some extend... without my consent.

Pure evil classes are those I like to play most at first because whatever horror I make them say, it fits (Claudia, a good example for those who know her in EQ2).

Regarding look, the same character type often look different depending on the options a given game offers, except for Titia and Alicia who have a distincitve physical type in my mind. But in any cases none look like me.

[Corsair]

I think my answer to Elly's query is: Both.

I am sometimes similar, and sometimes quite different from my characters in RP conceptual terms. More or less of "my" personality may be present from one to another. What I tend to do is come into a new character with a little background, and some key traits or personality concepts, and then they sort of take on a life as I play them. For example, I very much enjoyed a couple of the concepts of how wolves communicated and behaved in the David Eddings Belgariad books. I also liked some of the earliest Robert Jordan wolf, "image based", concepts for communication from Wheel of Time. So when Vaguard came along with a properly wolfy race to play, I made a character there for whom I had soem personality concepts in mind, and then drew from the game's cultural design, and those ideas of communication as my foundation for my toon.

However, I would say that all my characters bleed through with "me", on some level, even if their personality is very much not similar to mine. I would sum up my experiences both of myself and other players over the years with an axiom I feel is nearly always true: A good role player can convince me of the real-ness of their character, but if I play with them long enough, eventually their core personality will always be revealed to a great extent.


By that I mean a really great character, played by a person with a short temper...will eventually almost always reveal that temper. A well role played character of vast evil, played by a person who in generally helpful in nature, will nearly always reveal that. In other words, the best evil dark elf cleric I ever knew...played evil wonderfully in a delightful way. But they would take a moment to rez an abandoned corpse of some high elf in the deeps of Mistmoore...because they were a kind person. Now, they would surely role play how their evil magics had brought said high elf through the realms of Innoruuk, and how their soul was forever tainted by said darkness and abyssal magics....but the res would still happen. This achieved the players RP centric goals, but still allowed them to be "nice". The same goes with the elven paladin who just happens to lead a group, and choose FFA loot...and loots juuuuust a bit more than they ought to. They may role play the character, but they cannot hide their core personality if you are around them for long.

The best role play often then factors this in. Take the legendary Kuladen for example....either po-Kuladen really was a bit unfocused at times, or the most consistent role player of all time. I liked playing my Ogre Oozag...because my typos can then be considered an excellent RP effort...ogres are after all stupid right? So if I know I have a trait, I can try to leverage some angle of said trait into my character..since it'll be there in some way anyhow. I don't always do that, but sometimes I do. I definitely let my argumentative arse portion of my personality out for Grishnak the Orc diplomat....

Visually, I tend to go with what I think looks cool. Male or female does not really matter much. In fact, I always just assume any female toon is a 50-50 chance male player behind it. So switching up sex of player vs character isn't really something I consider when I see a toon in game. I know back in the day female players started playing male toons sometimes more just to avoid getting harassed by annoyingly aggressive male players. I'd like to hope that has mostly gone by the wayside, but I am sure it still comes up more than I'd like to think. (The only couple of times I have been really aggressively pursued I was playing male toons, and I must assume the female toons acting out were played by guys looking to prank people.) Probably the only time my main has been female was Tavi in EQ-2 originally. (Ratonga...LOVE!) I also had a female main in a tabletop RPG years ago, who was very fun to play. More often than not, I make several characters for a new game, and settle on a main to really focus on fleshing out based on who else plays in my time window, and what classes are missing/needed.

Visually the only time I ever tried to make a toon that looked mostly like me was in The Secret World. I didn't play him though.

[Jasyn]

Q: Do your characters reflect you in real life at all or are they always different?
A: Yes.

For anyone who has ever met more than one of my personalities (or maybe even just one is enough), how's that for a disturbingly nourishing meal of ambiguity for the imagination?

With the exception of one notably long-lived character that has intentionally followed me everywhere for completely outrageous reasons, I have a long streak of trying to never create the same character twice when I migrate from world to world.  GW2 was truly the first time I reproduced previously formed and fondly held personalities simply because the circumstances were perfect for the occasion, and I wanted to recapture some of the nostalgia of playing those characters again--albeit in a different setting that required backstory/characterization tweaks to properly fit in a new world.

There was also one character that I mostly played in Rift, Wyeth, whom was actually born in the original FFXIV (A Realm Unborn, if you will), but since I never really settled into that game, never had much of an opportunity to roleplay (the chat system was a pain!), and never solidified a backstory or personality, I ended up treating him as a proof of concept character and rebooted him to much better effect in Rift.

Physically, my characters are often so varied that it would be disconcerting if I resembled a 3 foot tall, bald, sometimes floppy-eared, sometimes subterranean, sometimes sky dwelling mad scientist, but every morning I wake up and reassure myself because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it... oh where was I?  Jokes aside (or are they?), only one character was ever designed to parallel a story of genetic heritage more than it did the outright sharing of physical similarities.

Hopefully that was sufficient enough of a tease.  If you'll excuse me, I need to make sure I have a steady supply of character ideas to serve as satisfactory foil characters for alternate Boudeccais.  She's not really prickly.  She's uniquely loveable.

[Gith]

I think you are asking a far more personal question than you realize.


Some people build up characters around what they want to be. They try to remake themselves only better, which is admitting some insecurities.

Some people build a completely different character from themselves because they truly enjoy the fantasy of taking on a different persona because they need escape time from their lives.

Some people build a character exactly like themselves because they think they are awesome, which is good I suppose. Self confidence (or an inflated ego).

Some people build a character that is exactly the opposite of themselves to test out behaviour that they would not do in real life but that they want to do sometimes in their head.

Some people build their dream partner (opposite (or same) gender), gorgeous, and with all the personality traits they want in a (wo)man, because they are secretly not satisfied with people irl. Sometimes people try to recreate famous people in this vein.

I think there is a lot of psychology behind people's avatar decisions.


My character decision depends on the game.
I made a male trooper in SW:TOR because I really did not like the non-human options available (damn you no Kel Dor!)
I made a female Asura in GW2 (a necromancer I was trying to remake the creepy doll look with, which I did pretty well at (that completely white eyes necro mask was awesome!))
In The Secret World I recreated Harley Quinn (tied for my favourite animated woman with Major Motoko from Ghost in the Shell) because I was not super serious into the game so I was just messing around.


I will tend toward the non-humans because I am a human irl so why not play some sort of alien species when I am playing a game. The more outlandish the better.

I will tend toward female characters over males because if I am going to be spending time staring at the back side of a character animation running through a game world for hours on end I might as well look at a female shaped ass instead of a dude's ass.

If I make a female character I will tend toward a short option because I like short women (and harder to see in game for PvP). If I make a male I will usually make a normal proportioned person much like myself (183cm, 80kg). (ADMIN EDIT: 6', 176 lbs.)

I do not find that I make characters that resemble me. I am 183cm, 80kg, red/brown hair, can't grow a beard to save my life, brown eyes, pasty white ginger skin. Also, my characters change all the time depending on the game.


Personality wise I guess I remake myself a bit in that my characters are always easy going and eccentric. Usually have odd tastes and hobbies like me (none of you would think my hobbies are weird but "normal" people seem to think board games are boring and painting models is for old men with train sets). They are often duty bound and honest such as myself. Usually brutally honest actually and don't filter what the say (some people say that is part of my charm. I regard my lack of a filter as a filter for possible friends/partners).

So I recreate my own personality to some degree, often in a female body. Oh my god! What does this mean?! Am I confused about my gender identity? Am I secretly in love with myself so much so that my ideal female is myself with boobs? Or do I simply like playing digital dress up with a female doll? Who knows ... all I know is that all of the above are reasons for people to make characters the way they do.

[Tys]

I think all of my characters reflect some aspect of me, even when I try to make someone completely foreign to my experience. My favorite characters almost always have one aspect of my personality and from there I try to spiral out into a persona. I usually go as deep as "what is their favorite food?" or "what is their vision of a perfect day?" Thing like that get me thinking of the character as a real person. Someone I could have a conversation with and they would respond with their own thoughts and ideas. I like things to be organic with characters even when fitting them to a theme. I suppose I envision developing a character like a flower blossoming after the seed is planted. You know what kind of flower it is, but not exactly how the pattern of the petals will turn out once it is in full bloom.

Physically, it is always a tough situation for me. Being African-American I get upset when there are not a lot of options for non-brown skintones. It is literally disappointing to see how many develops still think one shade of brown is good enough. Over the last couple of years there has been some really good progress and still some crazy oversights. When creating a look for a character I always search for that first and foremost because it is important to me. So in that area, yes, I try to make them "look like me" from a certain standpoint. Sometimes though I will go with a completely different look if I think it fits the theme of the character more. Giant rock guy for a gritty, loyal warrior, etc.

[PinkRose]

My characters have been nothing like me. I would say my character became my online personality, actually. I'm not a grumpy person. But I come across as one on the boards.

I've played RPGs since '86. But I was rarely the player and usually the DM. My first character was a Female Human Paladin. Though I didn't really have much of a personality for her. Most D&D characters through High School were human. Not sure why.

Kanina, my first RPG character with a personality was nothing like me. Purely made because I read that Dwarves were the least used good race at the time for EQ. And females were less than males.
So I made a female dwarf. And I started with giving her the personality of Worf, except she drank. And I went from there.

[Jezerai]

ha ha Pink! 

I used Worf a bit for Schera in Vanguard.  She rarely spoke, and when she did it was dry and disapproving.  I lightened her up a bit by having her ears, whiskers, and tail move (she was a cat). 

[Pedekele]

"Pedekele" is supposed to be a troll with red skin, especially long nose and chin... the first time i made him was just for fun, he wasn't really a troll in the first games, i build it from a human model, only in EQ2 the troll had the features i needed. So i can say the character creation options matter more than my person.

However, i have a very athletic stature (born to be a climber) and i feel healthy and strong, so i can identify with that. Trolls are large creatures, and I'm only 170cm/5,6'' ~65kg/143lbs. I don't have much mass but my muscles are "forged into steelwire". I do feel like a featherweight though. And "Pedekele" used to be more like that, being a mage/assassin/archer/light warrior... my playstyle changed a lot as did the games i played, and so did the character.

Since i wanna keep the name "Pedekele" but i have to be on the good side, which i don't want as that troll. I decided to play an elf. And since i don't like the idea of an androgynous male elf, it will be a female elf. My first alt however will mostlikely be a troll outside of saga. If i like the cartoony troll model SOE is going with. If the elfs happen to look cheesy to me i might not play an elf as my main. - Again it's a question of character creation options for me.

I don't have that much experience with RP in videogames, So my characters usually don't have a backstory, It's just me playing with some sort of avatar. Depending on my playstile and what i wanna do in the game I'll RP around that and develop a story. My character is played by me as a person, so naturally there are some connections. But decisions a make in a game (like killing millions of chickens in a very brutal way in minecraft) cant really tell you much about my person other that i don't mix game and reality.
even if i play an evil character abusing animals is not the kind of evil i aim for, it's more the kind of evil that makes me laugh hard, like picking a good guy from a skyisland. I think its silly to assume evil people wouldn't help each other out, since it would be their demise if they would not. However good&evil is so surreal anyway, it's not worth to think about it - I guess that's a good reason for me to prefer the evil side, they are less serious about something as surreal.

All in all i can say that i just don't take a game very serious, i just play around. Anything i create has some connection to my person but not 1 to 1.

Giant rock guy for a gritty, loyal warrior, etc.

I have a different view, you can see him as loyal, i cannot see a personality (loyal) in particular. Seeing something like that in character is just an overinterpretation (i hope that's a word).


Edit: By the way with my steelblue eyes and athletic build, dark brown hear with a shining bronze touch in the sunlight i think i come very close to being askaris next character 

[Namae Nai]

I'm learning so much in this thread! I wish I knew about PinkRose channeling Worf for Kanina.. it would have helped when I was posing as her for a character arc we did in EQ2.

Val Gith is right that this is probably a much more personal question than you would think, especially if you're invested at all in your character. No matter how hard you try, some of the RL you is going to leak into your characters if you play them long enough, as is the case in reverse I'll bet.

As for me, before Fironia Vie server opened I had a few characters on the Tunare server that were more or less 'me in a fantasy videogame' but that didn't make me many friends, sadly. So when FV opened I decided to pull from my then favorite anime (Trigun) and recreate the pathos of a much more likeable character named Rem Seibrem. I threw in some possibly overcomplicated back story that I still like but never gets revealed or written down because I am lazy. Thus was Namae Nai born... I really like her because of the emotional feedback I get. She successfully makes me feel better about myself as a person just for playing her, which is the point of her in the first place.

Renei only came along in EQ2 because I wanted to try an EQ2 monk. She developed more organically... I let her story/personality reflect the stuff she did in game. She was a barbarian female because I thought those would probably be underrepresented in Qeynos. (Little did I know one of the best RPers out there would also land on that combination. ) She's probably more like me in RL personality, but still really different because of the vastly different history and influences.

Baers is more of a joke character, and Abrus is still in the experimental stages. They're not really complete people so I can't say I'm not/like them yet.

[Gith]

If I make a female character I will tend toward a short option because I like short women (and harder to see in game for PvP). If I make a male I will usually make a normal proportioned person much like myself (183cm, 80kg). (ADMIN EDIT: 6', 176 lbs.)

I knew someone would do that lol. Get with the metric system America!

[Corsair]

Eveerything I ever learned about Canada as a kid I learned from these guys:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bulMs80W6aQ

They taught me how to convert metric into proper measurements. All you have to do is take the metric number, and then double it and add 30. Easy.

So for example, if you are talking to a Canadian person, and they say it is like, 5 degrees outside, it's not really that cold eh? All you have to do to know the regular temperature is double it and add 30...so, like, it's really 40 outside, and not that cold.

Beauty eh? Good day.

[Jezerai]

Well you can double and add 30 if you like, but if we're talking weight I'll just stick with doing the reverse, thank you very much!