Character Creation (Includes Template!) - Guide

[Statua]

1 - Establishing Environment

-------

Half Life 2 roleplay, one of the most popular modes of RP, yet it provides communities running it a paradoxical dilemma. You have an oppressive environment that is meant to stifle human creativity but yet you're roleplaying within it which is one of the most creative expressions of gaming. Many communities try to balance this and end up losing the experience of Half Life 2; some communities also go overboard and restrict it so much that the experience becomes oppressive to the player and spawns boredom, the enemy of any good roleplay server. It is a constant struggle to balance this and appease a variety of player's tastes, so that you can also have an active experience with a variety of role players. No community has been able to find the sweet spot and none ever will. The communities that do best are the ones that constantly debate and rebalance the HL2RP experience that succeed in the end.

If the environment is done justice, it can be an immensely rich environment to develop unique characters within that provides some of the best cinematic scenes and themes such as the human struggle against extinction and identity. However, you cannot properly role play the environment without having at least beaten the game to get the entire story. When I started here on CG, I didn't really go over my canon and haden't played Half-Life 2 (though I did play everything else like portal, HL1, EP2, etc.) Once I learned more about canon and played the game, it's easier to understand how a citizen would live in a combine ruled world.

What does HL2 provide as nutrients for seeding and developing characters?

- The genocide of a large portion of the human populace that happened literally over night.

- The uprooting and displacement of people around the world being transferred into tightly monitored urban ghettos.

- The invasion of privacy and human personal space on a 24/7 basis.

- The decay of human civilization quickly being transformed and overtaken by Combine architecture and commodity driven lust.

- Human civil war as some resign to their fates and willingly join the ranks of the human branch of the Combine Empire; Civil Protection. Maybe even your own character struggling to resist the lure of becoming an oppressor and a slightly better life.

- The development of various mental defects brought on by the Combine occupancy.

- Ten years before the return of Freeman where humanity had no hope.

- The internal struggle of questioning religion and/or humanities future.

- And whatever else you can transcribe from your own experience with the Half Life 2 canon. This list is just some of the possible foundations you could build an interesting character off of.

Remember these bullet points when beginning to craft your character in the next section.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2 - Character Template

-------


Character Name: Self explanatory. Do not use the name of anyone famous or well known. This breaks immersion in our environment and can be completely detrimental to the experience and a great distraction to other players.

Age: Also self explanatory except remember that we're currently playing in 2016 so take that into account for the potential and allowed age of your character.

Fatal Flaw/Defect: Pick one flaw or shortcoming that your character will have to either overcome in the long run or succumb to. No human is perfect, we all have our flaws, most of us can recognize at least one flaw that we feel shameful about in ourselves. For a character to be entertaining and interesting over time, he or she will have to have something to struggle and strife over on a day to day basis. Something that grounds the character in human nature. An example; a character who is glutinous, who feels compelled to eat under any emotional distress, now imagine him struggling to satiate that compulsion within the HL2 universe.

CID: This can be found by holding F1

Physical Description: You want to include descriptors such as...

- Height, weight, hair color, eye color.
- Physical frame, take into account eight years of rations and hard labor.
- Clothing, only standard issue but describe the condition of your fatigues.
- Body markings; birthmarks, scars, rashes, injuries, discolorations, etc.
- Grooming; fingernails, hair, body odor.

Try to be as descriptive as possible to establish the physical identity of your character. Use your real self as an example of all the possibilities, for example I have a distinguishing birthmark on my left hand in real life. Now apply that concept to your character. In the end you may use some of these as the basis for your in game titles.

Mental State: Describe their emotional and mental state. Be sure to describe their mental hurdles at this stage in their life. This is vital to ascertaining how you'll play the character.

Physical State: This one is slightly different than physical description. In this you describe their general internal health and well being. Describe any persistent injuries, how well fed, sleep levels, etc. It can be rather fun to play a character with a chronic internal disease.

Background: Vital to establishing who your character was before this mess and their years before they magically appeared in the server. You want to describe major iconic events through the persons life such as childhood, teenage years, adulthood, post invasion.

Strengths - Skills/Traits: Describe his abilities and skills. These can be innate strengths that he was born with or skills that he's picked up along the way. Be weary of clichéd descriptions such as "super strong" or "super smart". Flesh them out well so that you know his range of skills and abilities as well as his limits. Be realistic.

Weaknesses: These are minor weaknesses to keep your character grounded. These can be descriptors such as self-consciousness and vision problems (20/50).

Advanced Details
At first you don't have to utilize this portion but it can be helpful depending on how immersed you wish to become in your character.

Research Notes: Use this to research a character's background. This is particularly useful if you're playing a character from a country you're not from. It prevents and reduces cliché's from forming that we all have embedded in our minds from Hollywood. The more you research a character and make his background specific, you distinguish yourself from other less fleshed out characters. Good authors and writers do this all the time when writing a book. For instance I'm writing a character right now from Africa who lived during the Rwandan genocides. My history lessons on Rwanda and the situation were topical at best. So I've been reading up on a specific village, reading testimonials, researching the climate and weather conditions. Trying to ascertain what the experience could have been like as best I can.

Research References: Log your sources so you can refer to them at any time.

Accent: Establishing and portraying an accent through text alone can be very difficult. One I've only recently attempted to do with some of my characters. Shortening words and making liberal use of accent marks, commas, and apostrophes can change how a person reads your character's voice out loud. Researching specific regional and national words, slang, and how a non-native speaker pronounces English words can be fantastic ways to portray accent.

Mannerisms: This is how your character carries himself. These can be compulsive actions he portrays through regular /me's, how he carries himself, how he talks, and how he socially interacts with other characters. For example maybe your character has a problem keeping eye contact. To another person this can be considered rude and can lead to some interesting character interactions and dialog.

Character Log: Use this every time you play on the server to keep track of anything interesting or major that happens to your character. Overtime our own memory fades and it's sometimes hard to remember all of the interesting actions that could happen to our characters. Especially when we have a real life to remember.

Code: [Select]

[b]Character Name:[/b]

[b]Age:[/b] (Current Age) ((Birthdate))

[b]Fatal Flaw/Defect:[/b]
[i](Flaw/Defect):[/i]

[b]CID:[/b]

[b]Physical Description:[/b]
[spoiler=Image Referance][img]http://(place a link to an image relative to your character here OPTIONAL)[/img][/spoiler]

[b]Mental State:[/b]

[b]Physical State:[/b]

[b]Background:[/b] (short version)
[spoiler=Back Story Within]
(Story Content)
[/spoiler]

[b]Strengths - Skills/Traits:[/b]

[b]Weaknesses:[/b]

[b]Research Notes:[/b]

[b]Research References:[/b]
[LINKS]

[b]Accent:[/b]

[b]Mannerisms:[/b]

Sources: Eatdamuffin's character creation guide

[Norwegian Soldier]

Very nice guide with useful information, however i like to keep my description short and clean, looking like my model looks like. Basicly.

[Kevin]

Same here

[???Jesusfreak???]

Very useful guide. Like it. 

[YankeeSamurai]

Really useful guide; cardboard characters are very annoying in my opinion. This should've been stickied a long time ago.

[EmperorDisasster]

Thanks youze for teh guide... Helped a lot!

[Ragnar the Viking]

Helped me a lot, thank you !

[Statua]

Good think I backed up all my guides when I left. Replaced the missing thread.

[Paxton Fettel]

Thanks for some great ideas!

[Statua]

Placed a template into a code for all to use.

[Shaznable]

This is a nice template, but it takes long to make. It seems that this is more for an In-Depth knowledge for your character.

[{-=ECRP=-} ShvartZ]

Very nice guide, very useful information.

[Eatdamuffin]

Holy crap, where did you find this? I don't even think I have this backed up anymore. Forgot I wrote it.

[Statua]

Holy crap, where did you find this? I don't even think I have this backed up anymore. Forgot I wrote it.

Want it back in the original formatting? I got it from before the TnB wipe. (see date of post) I tried to PM you btw but you never responded and the forums got wiped so I saved it. Please don't be mad at me :3

[Eatdamuffin]

Holy crap, where did you find this? I don't even think I have this backed up anymore. Forgot I wrote it.

Want it back in the original formatting? I got it from before the TnB wipe. (see date of post) I tried to PM you btw but you never responded and the forums got wiped so I saved it. Please don't be mad at me :3

It's cool, don't worry about it. Not mad, I'd like to update it a bit though.