Developing your character is an important part of roleplay. Without developing your character it’s difficult to really feel who you are within the roleplay and you may find yourself wanting to change species and/or class regularly and not really knowing where you fit in to the roleplay stories at Centauria.
One of the ways that can help you to develop your character is to create and write your character’s backstory. Backstories will be kept in the library as an archive and also published here on the website. Writing your character’s backstory is one of the tasks required to become level 1.
So how do you create and write a backstory? This is something you should take care over – this is your character. Your character is going to be with you throughout your time here at the AOC and it’s important that you connect with your character which will allow you to immerse yourself into your character’s personality.
Maybe include pictures, even videos if you like, be creative in helping us to get to know your character while all the time getting deeper into your character’s role yourself.
Creating your backstory takes time and care. Don’t rush it – this is important – take time and put care into it.
As you develop your character’s backstory, it may help to create an outline with basic details, and then put yourself in your character’s place. Make it like a story or movie in your mind, where you ARE your character; how do you feel? What would you say?
These are some useful questions to ask yourself when creating a backstory for your character. It is not an exhaustive list and not a list that requires answers like some kind of test – these are merely questions that might help you to develop your backstory.
- Where and when was your character born? to whom? Who were your parents?
- How old are you? What species are you?
- Is there a story about your Mother’s lineage or life? What species was your Mother?
- Is there a story about your Father’s lineage or life? What species was your Father?
- Is there a story to how your Mother and Father met?
- If you don’t know who your parents are….who raised you? What do you remember of the people in your life growing up?
- Is there a memorable story about your childhood? Are there memorable stories about your youth, your adulthood?
- Did your parents die? How? How old were you and what happened to you? If not……
- If you have a family – who are they? where are they?
- If you have powers, how did you gain or learn them?
- If you are a healer who taught you to heal?
- If you’re a warrior, who taught you to fight? What battles have you seen? Who have you killed? Have you been killed yourself? How were you brought back to life? Do you have scars? injuries? Birth marks? Distinguishing marks?
- Do you worship a God or Gods? Which God(s)?
- How did your life journey bring you to Centauria?
- Is there a story about your finding Centauria? / the queen? / perhaps someone else?
- What skills does your character have that may be of use to others? Where did you learn these skills? (maybe you can teach others these skills at some point)
- How does your story bring you to the present time?
What if you struggle writing? Then find another way to display and tell your backstory. Maybe draw the story with captions, maybe make a small video, find others to help you, maybe speak the story and record it – or use a speech to text app. The point of creating your backstory and developing your character is to engage you more fully into the roleplay – this isn’t school – this exercise is for you as much as anyone else but it’s a very important part of taking part in roleplay. Embrace it and find a way that you can do it that fits your abilities and skills.