Hi there, Wyrmrest Accord!
When I make a new character, one of the things I look forward to the most is writing up their in-game profile in my add-on of choice (TRP3, currently). Though I have several different characters with (hopefully) equally unique descriptions, I realized I have a few habits, so to speak: stuff I like to put in or not to put in, or the amount of detail I like to use.
What’s cool is that everyone has their own way of going about it, so no two profiles are the same, even if the characters themselves are similar: it’s especially interesting to look at them and learn new ways to write engaging, helpful character descriptions and summaries that I never thought of before.
So, the gist of this topic is this: how do you usually go about writing a TRP/MRP/XRP/etc. profile for your characters? What’s your thought process? Are there certain things you like to do, or things you don’t like to do? What kind of stuff do you like to see in other people’s profiles?
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I try to keep to the one-page rule, bearing in mind that an RP profile is meant to give other players an idea of who and what they are dealing with, not show off your writing ability. So I aim to make one that doesn’t require a reader to scroll down. I don’t always hit that mark, but it’s my goal.
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To be honest, thanks to TRP’s personality-sliders I rarely actually -write- anything in there anymore. My characters rarely look out of the ordinary, so it’s hard for me to justify it as anything more than just a writing exercise that’ll inevitably get deleted when I do something stupid and TRP wipes.
At a glance, personality-sliders… perfect for me. xD.
The only thing I’d ever consider really putting in there anymore is ‘you may know her if’ bullet points, but lets be honest all of my characters are so boring nobody wants to know them anyway ![:smiley:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/smiley.png?v=6" ":smiley:")
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I typically fill out the “at a glance” stuff and do the personality sliders and that is about it.
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I personally just go all out with my character descriptions. I try to write all the character’s history. I figure if someone wants to know her they can look through her robust history.
I’m very bad at facial descriptions though, which sucks when i get commissions. So i tend to put my at a glances and character model to look the most like i imagine them to be as i can.
TL;DR (Why tho you’re an RPer?)
About is history with flavor text, at a glance is anything i think you should know when you first see them.
I avoid writing anything about my character’s personality and history, for the most part, unless it can be easily observed. I just go by purely what is visible about my character, when I’m writing my profile. And, honestly, that ends up being more than enough. I get pretty in-depth about my characters’ appearance, usually starting off with talking about the body shape, musculature, ect. Then going on to colors, then identifying features like tattoos or scars, then clothing, weapons, and so on. A lot of the history and personality can be understood well enough by just the physical description anyway, so I figure that’s well enough.
Otherwise, at the very end of a profile I may put down facts that could potentially be widely known. But, yeah, that’s about it. XD
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I just fill out the glance description and the personality traits. I find that it messes with my immersion in the game when people have their whole character’s history on their profile. I mean, how am I supposed to know their whole backstory by just a glance? Seems a bit unrealistic so I just stick to the barebones.
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I do the personality sliders and fill in the at a glance for all of my toons, but for the ones I really put thought into, I write a lot. I split the page into 4 sections- history, appearance, personality, and trivia, and fill it out accordingly. The trivia panel is just like… little tidbits that don’t fit in anywhere else- like this character is fluent in these languages, or her faceclaim is so-and-so, stuff like that. I like to go all out! I also put a larger “ooc” section under the at a glance, so its accessible and doesn’t take up much space.
I like to read long trps, so I want to do the same for mine! ![:slight_smile:](https://d38bqls1q93fod.cloudfront.net/en/wow/images/emoji/twitter/slight_smile.png?v=6" ":slight_smile:")
I prefer brevity in my profiles. I generally stick to information I think readers absolutely should know, and when I do include extraneous info I try to point out that it’s extraneous.
I start with general aesthetic details including face and hair, body and body modifications (in that order) along with any further relevant details in that area. If I have thought towards a character’s voice or commonly used accessories I include them last. Sometimes I may include personality notes in the relevant section template 3 provides, though this is rare.
I don’t include backstories anymore as I prefer to save that as something to be learned in action. Instead I include tidbits about the character which link to/hint at their personality and history in an effort to provide hooks. I somewhat dislike when others who don’t wish to passively tell their character’s backstory don’t offer anything like this in its place. In the same section as these hooks I’ll usually provides notes on my dispositions and preferences towards rp combat.
I also prefer to be straightforward with general info, such as race and class. In addition to that I tend to stick with titles that would befit job descriptions. I rather dislike profiles that have title lists that are so long and or numerable they bloat the profile at a glance.
For TRP3 I prefer template 3 as I feel it helps divide the information provided best, making its consumption more efficient.
I have various other peeves with profiles in general though some of the more prominent ones are specific to TRP. In particular they include using the At a Glance tabs for all relevant information, the changing of default font colors and the inclusion of pictures:
Putting paragraphs worth of text in At a Glance tabs I find makes the information offered more difficult to read compared to About, where I believe that stuff should be. I’ve often assumed people who do that do so for convenience but, at least for me, it has the opposite effect due to scale alone.
The case of font colors has more to do with the color chosen than anything else. A lot of times people make this alteration end up with a shade that makes the text needlessly more difficult to read which in some cases discourages me from even trying. The pictures thing is just a minor annoyance as they take up space and distract from what I’m supposed to be looking at.
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My profiles are written to be silly to convey that if you RP with me it’s gonna be just as silly. For example the personality section in Juspion’s profile is me OOC making fun of the character so there’s that.
I just try to keep things brief and simple because honestly I don’t always read those super long detailed profiles. So if I can’t do it, I don’t expect anyone would want to read a wall of text from me either.
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Personality slider would be pretty cool, but …I like XRP too much to want to change xD I think I’ve seen them on screenshots friends who use TRP have sent me though, showing the info I can’t see because of XRP.
Nokeena’s personality sliders would be …kind of chaotic in a way I think. Or maybe all neutral since her mood can kind of swing at times. Hm.
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I like to play with perception and rumor: Only partial tellings of history that give other players an easy jumping point if they’d like to engage in RP with me.
What’s written about my character in my TRP or in story forums may not necessarily be true, but it is at least something that’s been said about her.
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I usually do Appearance, Personality, and History. Sometimes an OOC section on my main characters. It really depends on the char. Ghaoithe has a lot more in her profile than Serph or my other characters since she has more to her than they do.
When I was younger, I used to like to write really long, winding, quirky descriptions of my characters that almost felt like they were something out of Roald Dahl. Then I started recognizing that, if someone had two to four paragraphs in their own profile, I wouldn’t even start reading unless I already liked RPing with the person. And what a shame that is, since part of the profile should be selling the reader on your character. So now I try to keep things somewhat short and sweet, but with enough of a hook to hopefully convince the person reading my profile that I’m worth engaging with.
I just realized right now that I’m describing a commercial.
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Profiles basically -are- advertisements for your characters. For better or for worse.
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One thing I try to do on my main characters is, at the end of their description panel, write a small subsection to help with walk ups. Just some basic bullet points of general information. “Maybe You’ve Seen Him Around? -If You’re Local Law Enforcement: he has a reputation for blah blah blah… -If You’re a Dwarf: a frequent visitor at Ironforge, yadda yadda yadda” just little stuff like that to help kick start rp with strangers!
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Just an FYI. The TRP3 personality sliders are one of the features that doesn’t have parity across addons.
XRP and MRP users cannot see them.
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Yeah, I’ve never heard of personality sliders before. If it’s what it sounds like, I don’t think I’d enjoy a feature like that, honestly. Reducing a personality to a series of arbitrary sliding scales sounds to me like a good way to not understand someone.
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I’m aware they’re not visible - I wish they were, but honestly it’s just there to save me time on writing when I don’t feel like it. It’s either that or nothing and I’m very specific about where I leave them set, so. Is what it is.
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“Hooks not Books” - the key question for me is what somebody would know if they saw the character walking by. or somewhere else by chance. My profiles are meant to encourage roleplaying rather than reading. Too many profiles are so long that the person is gone before I have a chance to walkup.
The “About” section is mostly fuller descriptions of the “At A Glance” & a brief explanation of the custom sliders. Jihui v. Sha - for example - is hardly reductive. If anything it’s obscure enough that other Pandaren ask about it.
If you want to try that out but aren’t sure where to start: A lot of clothing & trinkets have some symbolic meaning. A Dwarf might have gems v. metal or gold v. iron, for example. Using those signs to design custom traits reinforces the At A Glance descriptions & (hopefully) intrigues others enough to prompt an IC encounter.
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