/erp/ - Erotic Roleplay

>>60699

As soon as I'm home I'll share my tricks for unique personalities. I've done this a lot over the years and have found a few things to look out for.

>>60699

One way I've found to do it nicely, other than practice of course, is to put yourself in an average, every-day situation. Think about how the character would act, progress. Live out a simple day as that character with one or two events that might make you think about their reaction.

It can be a bit weird, I do the same since I tend to play sociopathic characters when I do hard sadism/rape, but once you get used to it it becomes much more comfortable to put yourself in their shoes.

>>60701

The problem is not creating the personalities, the problem is portraying them well under pressure.

>>60699

Alright, home now. Text wall incoming.

The way I tend to create characters is by finding an image or two and making the character based on what I see in that image. Personality, habits, and so on are all derived from those images. I like to start with a little conversation in one of F-Chat's smaller rooms and get a grasp on the character's MO there.

Speaking with others is how I start fleshing out the personality. One of my characters is ESL, and still rather new to English. When I talk as her, "I try for more easy words, and do not understand, how do you say, slang?". There's a few other quirks to her, but that's really the basics. Another character I have is essentially Baphomet, so "I speak with authority and power, avoiding the various contractions mortals today favor."

Body language comes from the personality, so Baph is most often standing tall or looming over someone, and my wolf is usually fussing about with something that needs to be more tidy. They're both still driven by me, but the characters are so vastly different most people have no idea that I control both.

Could you explain more about your character's double personality? She sounds interesting.

>>60706

>text wall

I'll show you a text wall.

So with making a character, I take a lot of time going over the basics. The basics being, of course, name, age, appearance, personality, personality traits, etc.. We'll get more into that in a bit.

1. The character

So if you're looking to make a character, you've got to figure out what you want. This can include a variety of things, like setting, appearance, age, etc.. So after you've figured out on a basic level what you'd like to make, you can then move on to

2. The personality

You've made something with little more than a name. In order for people to be interested, you've got to put a character in that character. You can take the very simple and make it much more complex in one step. You can make someone go from a blank slate, to a car mechanic that likes to read, build, and travel. It's not the best, but it's a start.

3. Physical traits

Now, in all honesty, 2 and 3 can be switched. You can design your character physically first, and then mentally, and in some cases that makes more sense. The proper way is to find a balance between the two. It doesn't quite make sense for a body-builder to be a Olympic speed-skater, and it doesn't quite make sense for a gamin to be highly-educated. Now, of course subversion of these archetypes and stereotypes can make for something interesting, unique,and well-written, but that can be difficult.

But physical traits are the things that make up a character's appearance. Big surprise. But these play an important role beside just looks. Appearance can, and does, determine multiple things. It can show setting, creed, job, and class. Hell, it can even show caste if you're doing that. If you've a CEO of an important company, chances are it won't be the youngest of fellows, unless it's something like a silicon-valley-startup gone big, or a company trying to 'modernize' itself. And you can take this a cultural way, too. If you've got a wealthy Chinaman, chances are he's going to be fat.

>>60858

4. Background

Before you delve too deeply into the mental aspects of a character, you should write a background. What kinds of things happened to him, what kinds of things has he done? These can be big things, like being beaten as a child, or small things, like buying half-a-pound of Havarti cheese every week. And all of these seek to flesh out the personality of the character, even if the background is never explicitly stated. Being beaten might make the character more gentle, kind, or it might make them more angry, hate-filled. Buying the Havarti might be because he is Danish, and was raised on Havarti, or it might just be that he likes the sweet taste. Now that's all black-and-white, and of course there's tons of grey area to travel through with it. Background includes everything that has happened before you start playing it. What job or jobs did he have? What car, if any, does he drive? Of course, these are simple examples, but details in the personality can come out of things like this. And this can, and should, make sweeping changes about the character, depending on what happens. He might have been in the War of 1812 and now hates the Brits with the same fervor his father, a Whig, did. He might have worked for years in a dead-end job before deciding to just move to Thailand for that boipussy. Because in the RP sense, you're only playing the character after the background, surprisingly. But that's not a steady rule, and there's no one saying you can't do flashbacks or origin stories.

But remember one thing: not everything you do affects who you are. If I have a slice of toast in the morning rather than cereal, that could just be because I was feeling too lazy to make cereal, not that I'm paranoid and have a complex about the milk being a week-old, and me thinking it would be spoiled.

5. Mental traits

You've gotten the background down, so what does it all mean? Mental traits include specifics about them, like the way they speak, the mannerisms, their tastes. This is also known as a personality. A lot of people have one, and I recommend you spend some time on making one. A good personality can make all the difference in the world, as it affects someone so completely and makes them 'someone.' Even the town bicycle has hopes and dreams.

What in their background made big changes to them? Like with how a childhood of beatings might lead to a bitter and angry person, or a bad car crash might lead to a fear of automobiles. Their upbringing would change their opinions on things, make them think differently. If they grew up with all their needs satisfied, they might be spoiled. If they were poor, they might be grateful for everything they get. Of course stereotypes can be subverted, etc..

Make a character with wants, wishes, dreams. Make one with fears, likes, and dislikes. But the key thing is to keep it realistic. Don't fucking make a Mary Sue. You can have a good back story, fleshed-out character, and interesting personality even without tragedies in their past. Run it through that Mary Sue limitus test or whatever if you really need to.

6. Refine

You're never finished making a character. Thing that happen later in their life, after the RP starting point, can make differences in later ones. They could move somewhere and begin to learn the customs of that place, causing changes to vocabulary and mannerisms.

But the most important part is: have fucking fun. This whole multi-paragraph essay is pretentious and autistic, so ignore it if you want. And the whole thing can be done in reverse, or in any order you see fit. This is just generally what I do, and hence why I've only got two characters. Because of this autism.

>>60705

Even though my essay won't help you too much, maybe it'll help someone else. But here's my advice on what to do with keeping in character.

It's tough doing that. Especially if the character you're playing is very different from yourself. Now, this could just be me, but I tend to underplay the personalities and mannerisms of my characters, so I just overact. That works kind of fine.

Or another thing I'll do is write out sort of a guideline to the character. Brief bullet points I can refer back to in an instant should I be stuck.

I think that the biggest part is just time. The more you play and learn your character, the better you'll be able to do that. Acting's not just picking up a script, it's getting in the head of the character. Some people take this to an extreme, like Robert Di Nero, and other do it more subtly.

And remember, you're most critical of it because you know how its supposed to be. The artist is always the biggest critic.

Other posters have made good cases for big detailed back grounds. On the other hand there's something to be said for the way I do things, creating a personality and description and a background that can be fleshed out as I go.

Sweet, shy, virginal Catholic school girl Karen has a mother. That's who raised her to be ashamed of her own sexual urges and who forces her to dress in conservative clothing that hides the shape of her body even when out of uniform.

Does Karen have a father at home? Don't know. Want to play him? Then sure. Does she have brothers? Maybe. That could be why she didn't realize the girl covering her notebook with scrawls of Mrs. Swallows was crushing on HER. Or maybe you want to be her big brother.

You can also update as you play the character. If some new facet of their personality or history comes up as an extension of an RP and it seems really interesting add it. That's why Karen turned out to have a great fashion sense despite the way her mother makes her dress. It came up when her girlfriend in an RP took her shopping. That's also the scene where I discovered that under the right circumstances shy submissive Karen can discover a lot of assertiveness and passion.

It's also why Brandi has a stuffed bear in her room that she ripped the head off of. Her ripping it's head off later in life seemed a logical consequence of that scene.

Another thing. If you have multiple characters try to find a different voice for each. For example, when I'm playing slutty Brandi she swears like a sailor and body parts are usually cocks, cunts, dicks, pussies, assholes, etc. even if I'm narrating parts in third person omniscient.

If I'm playing innocent Karen the strongest "swears" might be "Holy smokes!" or "Jeez!" unless something really serious has happened and body parts are described with terminology more at home in romance novels.

>>61038

>I discovered that under the right circumstances shy submissive Karen can discover a lot of assertiveness and passion.

Changes like these seem a bit lazy to be honest, because I see it as you not being able to stick to the personality you gave her. I generally tend to stay out of RPs until I have a good grasp on a characters personality, and while I can add more details later, I'll never change a "is really submissive" to a "sometimes can be assertive", just because I was really feeling like doming one day and I used that character to do it. If I want to play a different character I'll make a different character, it's as simple as that.

I don't think the way a character speaks shouldn't be tied to how they behave, or important at all in the context of an RP, and I think people give the way dialogue is written way too much importance. Language is a really touchy subject, and I never liked the idea of someone writing broken english just because a character has an accent.

>>61098

As a rare exception to a typical rule it can be realistic. A lot of real people have made similar discoveries about themselves. And it's not something that's going to come up for her in a lot of circumstances. It would never happen with a man or a boy for example, she's kind of scared of them and was raised to be subservient to men.

With a girl who's been kind to her though, one who has something of a submissive side of her own, well that's a different story. If they're both feeling cautious about going to the next level and Karen's recently overcome the inhibitions that have kept her from acting on her desires for so long, it's not really that big a surprise to find she actually CAN take the initiative.

Basically it was a realization that she isn't "Always Submissive" by F-list standards, she's "Usually Submissive". Not really that big a change. And the other person in the RP seemed to enjoy it a lot when Karen found her immensely repressed libido.

>>61098

As a rare exception to a typical rule it can be realistic. A lot of real people have made similar discoveries about themselves. And it's not something that's going to come up for her in a lot of circumstances. It would never happen with a man or a boy for example, she's kind of scared of them and was raised to be subservient to men.

With a girl who's been kind to her though, one who has something of a submissive side of her own, well that's a different story. If they're both feeling cautious about going to the next level and Karen's recently overcome the inhibitions that have kept her from acting on her desires for so long, it's not really that big a surprise to find she actually CAN take the initiative.

Basically it was a realization that she isn't "Always Submissive" by F-list standards, she's "Usually Submissive". Not really that big a change. And the other person in the RP seemed to enjoy it a lot when Karen found her immensely repressed libido. And in the end that's what really matters.

Sorry for the double post. It gave an error message and then appeared to not have successfully posted.