kilerbite Posted October 8, 2018 Share Posted October 8, 2018 The start GTA World and roleplay is general, is a game that consists of a world where we all in some way escape from our lives for a new challenge that we wouldn't get in any other game. Roleplaying has a lot to do with being able to portrait a realistic character, like in theater, pretty much. Roleplaying usually envolved characters that have obstacles to outcome and keeps them from achieving their goals. Developing a Character I'm sure that you aware about this. Roleplaying a character, specially a new one, will consume you time because you need to have a big plan for it. For the start, you should consider thinking about a 2/3 paragraph story about the character, only focusing on the background this time. Something that will be the chore, of your character, all the personality that you will add to it, will be based on the background story that you done, because in the end, we act according to our past experiences, and that's what makes us who we are, the culture where we were raised on, the friends that we had over the time, the role-models that we look at, etc etc, you get the idea. When your background story is finished, you will start thinking about the personality of the character, because to be realistic, a character must have a personality that includes having strong points and flaws. So let's say, you decide to create a character, and you think that they'll grow up on a gang area. You gotta think, how's the culture surrounding a gang area, how easy it is for someone in community to get dragged into a gang, and if you want your character to not do that, the obstacles that he had to go through, to overcome that. Your character will most likely be raised on a poor family, they will give value to the things that they manage to buy, like a car, a house, a new TV, etc. Your character will have compassion for the poor people, most likely, because they know how hard it was in the past, to overcome the obstacles. That's the idea. This is what I like to call a stereotypical character, someone that is just like the rest of the society according to the background, and this is where you can make the difference in your character creation. You can include creativity, and add more background to think what made the character change from not being like the rest of those stereotypical people. So going back on background story, we must know that, incidents are very important in roleplaying. Your character is defined by the incidents that happened to them in the past, their background story. If you enjoy spending time creating a character and actually managed to read until here, then you'll most likely enjoy creating a character sheet and write there everything that you thought about, so you don't forget. There you write the description of your character, the eye color, date of birth, full name, parents name, etc. Although this won't work for your character development, since it's only for the general sum of ideas. There is two things that you really have to take into consideration when you're building a developed character. Variables: Variables affect the actions of your character. They can be positive, neutral or negative. With variables, you gotta focus on your character habits that have to do with outside appearance. Like, your character likes to dress well, or your character enjoys leather jackets and ripped jeans. They enjoy drinking a cup of coffee during every night shift. There's also other examples as, putting them as questions: Does your character speak with accent? Do they like to rub their face/nose when they are feeling nervous? Do they clear their throat before saying bad news? etc. Again, variables are the things that have to do with your character appearance, inside the psychology, if that makes sense. You should obviously, consider adding bad habits to your character, and making him fight to change that, or not. There's many and many bad habits that you can add, smoking, drinking, or even small things such as driving with only 1 hand, when the other is at the door. Simple stuff like this, must combine with the flaws that you chose, it's an addition for it. Psychology: Psychology is directly involved in your character personality and how they act. Psychology is much more detailed and can be more explained in depth. The psychology will affect your character decisions. The way they assign meanings to situations/actions and what are their point of view on things. Each of these things are developed in character through what happened during their background story, because they access moments of their lives where they see themselves fit with, or not, based on their experiences. When you write your character background story, you should only focus on the facts that shaped the character, not stuff like, going to high school or elementary, if that didn't have any impact in their life. Psychology is directly related with your character consistency, and it should have few to no changes during your development, otherwise your character won't have consistency. It is fine to change the traits as far as the development goes, if stuff happened that made them change, otherwise, it's just bad. Sometimes a situation makes your character see life on a whole different way, because situations can trigger emotions. Background Story To start with a background story again, and I'm gonna insist on this, since in my opinion, it's the chore of the development. You must create a sort of structure. Your fictional character starts here, and there's still much work to do! You must think about the relations between their qualities, flaws, things that happened in their life, etc. Everything must be connected to look real, hence it's so challenging to portray a realistic character, specially if you're new to roleplay. Your only goal during the background story, should be making it creative, while not breaking the realism. For a start you should think about the influence the background will have on your character's personality, and draw it from there. You can, and should, research about what you're creating. If you're creating someone that has been in army, you should search how army works, and what experiences the person could've got from it. If you're roleplaying someone that was a Police Officer in other country, you should start by picking a city and checking how their local Department work, so you have a better view of what you're going to create. This will definitely change your outcome, and make your character more real. You can also research stuff as, their culture, like, if you're roleplaying a Mexican character, you can search what kind of music they listen to, their food, the story of Mexico, things like that. With all this observations, you'll have more judgement to analyze your character traits. Possible Scenarios When you have created your character background, you must think about the present. You must chose what gives emphasis to your character. Is your character a person that only wants to become rich? Does your character want to only have a decent house/car and live a normal life? Does your character want to build a family? Does your character want to stop the violence in LS? Questions like these, will help you to put your character in a scenario and think about their goals in life. Goals will motivate your character to keep living on, and have something to fight for. You should ALWAYS, put players in these scenarios, otherwise the game will not be fun on the long run. This is the reason you join a faction, or hang out with a group of friends ICly. The surrounding environment is crucial for your character development, and for you to have fun. The Expectations When creating a character, you should make yourself the question. Why do I play GTA World? Why am I roleplaying? What's the goal of this mod? Unlike games like FPS or even MMORPG, where the goal is to be a top fragger, climb ranks, level up et cetera. Here your main and only goal, should be, creating and developing, slowly, a realistic character, which will provide you joy. Credits to: "Red Garland" gave me some motivation from another guide they wrote. 1 1 Link to comment
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