Character Creation 101

Welcome to character creation 101 for sonic fan characters. You are about to
embark on the wonderful journey that is the character creation process. This
guide will help you through this to make a well balanced character that will be
fun for you to play and for others to interact with. But most importantly, it
should prevent you from creating characters that annoy the snot out of other
people.



Sections:

Golden Rules
Picking a Species
Appearances
Personalities
Powers
Canon vs Fanon

I hope you all take time to read this, but I will warn you. Its a lot of information.

Golden Rules:


There are several very common errors that a lot of young or starting roleplayers make that will cause instant annoyance with older or more experienced roleplayers. Let’s have a look at the most important does and don’ts before we start.


Relations to Original Characters


Perhaps one of the most irritating things you can do when creating a fancharacter is making them a love child of some of the original characters, Make them related to the original characters or making them the boyfriend or girlfriend of an original character straight of the bat.


1.    Love children of original characters; No, just no.. also, your character seem to have a crapton of sisters, half sisters, brothers and half brothers if you do. Gee someone has been buuuusy. To top that off, most canon characters are 16 and under. Please do tell me none of you actually plan
to have babies at such an age?


2.    Related to canon character; Best way to break canon. Sure it might be possible in some alternate zone in some dark corner of the universe, but again, your characters seem to have gazillion siblings and half siblings out there? You’re not being very original.

Then there is something called ‘the ARK effect’. People have the tendancy to make ARK projects, or projects similar to shadow by eggman as some means to defeat blah blah blah STOP RIGHT THERE!

Yes there is the possibility that there might be more projects then shadow on the ARK and yes they were most likely prototypes of shadow. But again, over done, there seem to be 10000 prototypes or ‘real ultimate lifeforms’ running around. Stop it, rewind, get original. It’s  been overdone, you’re being an obnoxious sue.

As for Eggman making bio weapons/ clones? Why on gods green earth would he create something with a personality and its own free will and almost no means of controlling it when he has a giant army of robots and can build things like metal sonic or just throw normal mobians into a robotizer?

No,
just no.

3.    Girlfriends and Boyfriends of canon characters. Now here is when things get tricky. To write them as such is a definite no. To write your characters already being friends/rivals/etc with them straight of the bat is a definite no. But fan characters can meet canon characters if they are being played on a site. They can become friends with them and they can even fall in love so;

Writing characters to be friends/rivals/lovers to a canon character before having rp’d
them?; NO

Roleplaying the canon character themselves to make them fall in love with your
character?  NO

Having someone you know well play a canon character horribly out of character to make a relationship with your character work? HELL NO

Taking relationships your character developed with a canon character from one
community to another? Tricky, you might want to discuss things with the players of the canon characters in that community

Developinga relationship with canon characters naturally through roleplaying? Yes this is fine, though not everyone might agree on the lovers part on this.


The all powerful


Another thing that occurs a lot is overpowered  characters. Everyone needs be harder, faster, better, stronger than the original characters. No, no and no!  No one is faster than sonic, no one controls chaos energy like shadow and no one is stronger than sonic in his super form, period!.


So if you were going to go dragonball z on us with giant energy balls and fusion forms and ten thousand forms that make your characters more powerful with each transformation. Stop riiiiight there partner! Scratch all that and balance your character, but we will discuss powers later on in this guide.


Just don’t, no dragonball Z forms and powers.. kapish?


Royalty


Run away princesses, queens and kings of heaven or hell. Princess of such. They tend to be an instant annoyance and an instant sue indicator. I’m not saying that it is nesceserily a bad thing to create a royal. But I am saying that it is very tricky to make a GOOD royal.


But seriously the runaway princess, the lost prince or princess who later finds out they where royalty and so on and so forth is largely over rated and over used. There are ways to make a royal interesting but what happens a lot of the time is that the fact that they are royalty is the end all be all of the characters existence. They aren’t just royalty.. they ARE royalty.


In other words, rather then it being an adition to your characters background your character is basically a stereo type or trope. So be careful with Royalty. For a first ‘real’ character. I wouldn’t recommend it.


Self inserts and Sonification


Now this is one of the most common things I see with young or fairly new roleplayers. The self insertion and sonification syndrome. It shows a rather blatand lack of creativity. As I will explain;


1.    Selfinsertion: Is when you make a character to be YOU  in the sonic world. They might even share your name and they’ll behave similarly to your personality. Or you might have given them a different name and made them everything you ever wanted to be or do in the sonic universe. Usualy self inserts go hand in hand with the relationships no’s and are most commonly used by rabid shadow fangirls 8D yay!


2.    Sonification: Surprisingly a patern that occurs mostly with male roleplayers (based on my observations). It is when you take a character from a different series or anime. Or a person in real life or a movie character and basically turn it in to a sonic character. A lesser degree of this is when you combine personality traits and ‘cool poworz’ of such characters and combine them in one character.

Alright stop right there! You are not creating a character, you are making a furry carbon copy of an existing character or person! Get your ass back to the drawing board stat!


The Supernatural


Ok let’s face it, I am a sucker for supernatural creatures myself. But they aren’t always the best thing to create in the sonicverse. I mean sure there is nothing wrong in making an angel or a demon or an elemental or a vampire.. but a lot of people tend to overdo it.. queue the Poworz rule.


Another thing I see often is that people try to be all special snowflakey and make a half angel/half demon. No people.. staph.. its overdone and you’re not being special snowflakey at all.


The biggest issue that most of these characters have is that they are vastly overpowered on the simple basis of being what they are.15 year old demons who wield huge amounts of powers and lay waste to entire cities and villages and


NO STOP! BAD! –wacks with a newpaper-


1. I don’t think anyone of their kind would appreciate such blatand exposure of what they are.


2. Such power at such age would likely cause your character to implode on itself


3. The powerz rule.


4. If there is one thing common people have its strength in numbers and trust me, the military wouldn’t let your character live long..period.

I know roleplaying is all about fantasy and stuff, but there is a fine line between what one can believe and what one can’t believe. This is called the suspension of disbelief. A character that is completely impossible just makes the whole thing ridiculous.

Extremely powerful angels or demons probably have better things to do then simply walking around setting things on fire and going on random rampages. Just keep that in mind.

Fantasy vs The Impossible

A common argument against most of these ‘don’ts’ that I get is that ‘it’s all fantasy so anything should be possible’. No… even fantasy adheres to certain rules. As I mentioned before there is a fine line between what is believable and the sheer ridiculous.

For example, a 7 year old, no matter how powerful (or because they have so much powerzzzz and no one to teach them) could never survive on their own, period. Let alone in a highly unstable and dangerous environment such as let’s say a post apocalyptic world. Just to name an example.

Nor is it very probably that someone could detroy the world with just a click of their fingers.

Another thing would be to have a 12 year old character with a child that is nearly as old as the mother? Or already 5?. Yes I understand you wanting to have your character have kids. Yes I understand that you don’t want those kids to remain babies forever and yes I understand that you might not want you character to age but here’s a few issues.

At 12… would you want to have kids? If the answer is yes.. then I see myself forced to seriously smack you, the same goes for if you are 16 or the character is 16.. just no. There is no way your character has the mental maturity to care for a child.


Also a 12 year old mother with a child that’s already past toddler stage? Are you starting to see how ridiculous this is getting? Yet its very common in the sonic community and no one even blinks at it.


Then there is the fact that characters have amassed a huge fortune for some reason, without inheriting anything, or working a job that could earn them that much money. They just seem to have it? Poof out of nowhere? No guys, this is not fantasy, this my friends, is impossibilities.


In  order to make a good character you have to reflect on how things would work in the real world. If the character was abandoned by its parents at age 7 and survived, how did they do it? Did they have others to help them? Where they raised by wild
animals? (unlikely but not impossible, this is where you cross back into fantasy rather than impossibility).


If they have a lot of money, how did they get it?. And no guys, you can’t be 16 and be a super awesomerz spy and agent and have been taking the moneyz and shizz from the bases and cities your character has burned down (while realliez they are not evil charactorz they just have a demon side that makez them do evil things( Please don’t take offense if this applies to you but it’s a huge friggin cliché that has been done throughout the history of sonic fandom and I myself have been guilty of it as well in my first few years as a roleplayer)).


The bottom line is.. don’t just go ‘it’s that way cause MAGICZ and shit. Try to find a logical reason behind these things.

Hey can you help me out with my sonic FC? I wanna make him better but I don't how to.

Certainly :> did you put their bio up on the forum?

Not yet but I will soon