Poll: How do you go about creating a character in an RPG?

[Lovesfool]

I guess there are a lot of ways to go about it. Given the pallet and freedom to choose, how do you go about creating your fictional character in RPGs that allow it?

 

[Grayjack]

I always use presets, because I'm not creative enough to make up a character.

 

[chronicfc]

an assassin me, who looks like me with an awesome beard

 

[ChupathingyX]

Whichever character might seem interesting.

I always make more than one character in RPGs and try to make their play style completely different from one another.

I migth create a homosexual pyromaniac who uses big guns to deal with problems, wears striking armour to inspire fear and prefers to skip straight to the point.

Maybe I want to create a straight female who knows how to handle her men and prefers to talk her way out of a sticky situation, relying on her melee skills to dispatch enemies quickly an is enuienly interested in hearing people's stories.

Maybe I want to be a bisexul male who isn't exacty the sharpest knife in the drawer but knows how to blow someone's head off with a sniper rifle from long range and doesn't exactly like them political types...and he's a cannibal.

If a RPG is good and gives you heaps of options then I will try out as many combinations as I can to experience the game.

 

[Not-here-anymore]

First time round, I'll usually try to make something that looks as much like me as possible.
Every other playthrough I just try to make an attractive face I won't mind looking at it cut-scenes
One of my housemates walked in whilst I was creating my character for RIFT and pointed out that I'd basically recreated my girlfriend's face on screen. That was actually before I'd done anything to it - the game's random facial preset thing gave me it. It seemed weird to have a real person's face that wasn't mine, so I changed it a little.

Personality-wise, again, the first playthrough tends to be me. Lots of "I'm a nice person" options with the occasionaly brutal practicality. Others, I roleplay a little.
Dragon Age: Origins, for example, saw me as a female elf who hated everyone. Especially men, and especially especially humans. Alastair and Leliana helped remind her that not all humans were completely unredeemable scum over the course of the game, and she mellowed out a little. Still, she was almost viciously pragmatic, choosing Bhelen despite his assholery because he was more prepared to deal with the surface, and keeping the anvil intact because golems seemed useful for darkspawn fucking.
It was an odd feeling when I realised that the character was making these choices, not me.

 

[ms_sunlight]

Other. I quite like to think up a little backstory in my head and build a character accordingly, or base them on the backstory I want to use. So, my last FemShep had the Earthborn and Sole Survivor backgrounds; I imagined her as being from Singapore and made her look tough, elegant (as she is consciously trying to distance herself from her street gang background) and Chinese Malaysian.

 

[manythings]

I just pick something and then go with the story. I usually play straight down the middle for the first character, then (if the game is interesting) have a super hero and super jerk game.

 

[sheah1]

You've been reading up on your Gamesradar haven't you?
It depends on the game, in Fallout, I usually try to make a representation of myself, although I don't mentally put myself in the same situation as my wanderer. In Dragon Age II or Mass Effect 2, where a customised character speaks horribly out of sync with his lips, I just go for the default character. In games with basic options I just make something I don't mind using.

 

[Mr Thin]

I just fiddle with each option until I find the one I like most.

I suppose that means I pick the one I'd most like to look like. Which is strange, because I don't mind the way I look, but the characters I make usually look nothing like me.

 

[Haelium]

I create a character, not me, not the opposite of me. Sometimes a grizzled war veteran, sometimes a pretty-boy, depends.

 

[Evilcarrot]

I always just set all the bars to their highest setting, creating a really chunky guy with a massive beard and whatever the biggest hair is. Then I just do whatever gets me the most experience/moolah.

 

[Zhukov]

None of the above.

My characters have no relation to me whatsoever. Hell, at least half of them are female. I just mess around with the settings until I come up with something reasonable.

I do have a couple of 'archtypes' I tend to fall back on though.

 

[ToxicOranges]

Depends on the game, really.

Oblivion and similiar are characters based on the steroeype I have in mind - if I want a mage, it'll be a skinny Elf, probably fairly good looking. If I want a thief / stealth, I make a grubby urchin.

And in games where I can SEE my charcter (So every third person RPG - Like World of Warcraft, Mass Effect), I just make some ridiculously petite, sexy woman, so that I dont have to stare at rippling back muscles or Mass Effects tight bodysuits on a male figure.

 

[LordOmnit]

I usually don't create any kind of representation of myself when creating a character or any kind of opposite. I'll just choose whichever face I like first and then build out from there with whatever I like/matches the characteristics already chosen.

 

[felbot]

like i always do, make character whit as good stats as possible in the beginning, then when i know how th game works ill make an character adapted from that.

 

[Stall]

I just make the character look cool (if male) or attractive (if female) in my eyes. I don't really aim to make it look like myself, so I usually end up fiddling until I find something I like.

I re-use the same set of names for most games. Sometimes my characters have motifs that connect their appearances through games (one is a redhead with grey eyes, another is is blond, yet another has long black hair and a full beard, etc.), so at times I might go into the creator knowing kind of what the character might look like. This isn't as constant as I make it sound though, so most of the time it just goes out the window and I end up just messing around until I get something that looks good.

There doesn't seem to be an option in the poll for my general tactic, so meh.

 

[Richardplex]

I make an RP around a character, and build a character that looks good yet fits around that RP. generally taking a preset, and fiddling with small details; hair length, colour, shape, eye colour. My profile picture should explain why making the character look like moi is absurd to me. I guess I'll go with the bizarre option, simply because I almost always go for female characters.

 

[Richardplex]

I make an RP around a character, and build a character that looks good yet fits around that RP. generally taking a preset, and fiddling with small details; hair length, colour, shape, eye colour. My profile picture should explain why making the character look like moi is absurd to me. I guess I'll go with the bizarre option, simply because I almost always go for female characters.

Edit: a couple of other people, like the gentleman above me, seem to follow this basic "make him/or her look good" tactic, would love that option to be there.