How do you come up with idea's for new characters?

[Valkyria]

Set a lot of small, short-term and achievable goals then let things develop towards something bigger and greater as time goes on.

[Plutonium]

Think about what you want your character to be involved in terms of their career and general hobbies, a good place to look for this is both LFM and IFM official factions as they will be a good point of reference. There's obviously a limited amount of things you can get involved with in comparison to real life.

 

Personally I enjoy creating things like factions/businesses, so the majority of my main characters will revolve around that. For example after my current character eventually dies I'm going to be attempting starting a large-scale legal organization.

There's infinite things that you can do and portray, it's really just up to what you enjoy doing and what you think you can portray well. People will talk a lot about whatever it is, however as long as you know you can realistically portray that character and the things he does? Go for it. 

 

You should ask yourself what you want his sociological place to be; is a working civilian or is he unemployed? Is he a criminal or is he law-abiding? Etc.

Ask yourself questions and from those answers, ask more questions. "Okay he's an unemployed civilian, what are his hobbies? What are his goals in life? What good traits does he have? What bad traits does he have?" Create as many questions as you can, those answers will either be a call for more depth or will give you what you're looking for.

 

[Wasloos]

I usually do the usual stuff, like race, nationality, looks, gender, etc etc.

 

Then I come up with the age-range, the older the character, the bigger the backstory.

 

I actually rarely start a character to solely RP a certain type of way, as I feel like that'd lock me down too much in one direction. So I create a character, create the backstory and mannerisms, and then I just kinda throw him out there, see what happens and who he'll get in touch with.

[Yoak]

Step 1 - Find a faction / Group

Step 2 - Research

Step 3 - Make character

 

[cruelhoney]

i make a very basic character and let everything happen ic. making friends/enemies etc. going in with a plan always seens boring.

[Chaishi]

Look through the clothes, see if anything other than my char's style interests me.

[R E V]

the voices 

[Tangsta]

Sometimes after watching a movie.

[Fudge]

I go to the highest point of elevation in the nearest seven hour radius of north Florida. I bring a Mongolian throat singer to authenticate my spirit journey. When I make it to the top I have him throat sing for upwards of four to five hours. At the end of that I usually end up having a good idea of where to go. 

Then I take my medicine. 

[sparky]

I watch an episode of GangLands and pick someone