While I've drifted away from the habit in recent years, I've always enjoyed the creative process of role-playing characters. I've had great fun role-playing, but even something as simple as writing a backstory or imagining a personality for my toons has always been a habit for me. Given the RP potential of Bethesda games, I figured it'd be a pleasant discussion to engage in: What sort of things do you look to for inspiration when creating your characters? What sort of characters have you come up with.

Personally, I tend to favor songs. Hafni, my dwarf in Warcraft, was inspired largely by the Pogues' "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Everyday." Back in The Burning Crusade, when I rolled him, he was a young and adventurous noble of the Bronzebeard clan, outgoing and arrogant, optimistic and bright-eyed. His progression has largely been based around becoming more and more jaded and disillusioned as he ages, now being a cynical, crippled, and tired drunk, old long before his time, after only a few years of constant war. That progression was largely influenced by Eric Bogle's "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda." It's gotten to the point where I'm strongly thinking of retiring him and letting him live out his days killing his liver alone in Thelsamar.

Jesus that's depressing. I need to go RP something cheerful. So what y'all got?

Most of my RP's are heavily influenced by myself, thus no evil or killing for the joy of it characters. It is really hard for me to be mean to others. They have to piss me off pretty well to get that mad.

That being said, my ideas come from many sources. Like music is a big one. One of my first RP characters came from Rush's song "By Tor and the Snow Dog." Snow Dog was the good guy and thus my first character was named Snow Dog. I played a lot of MMORPGs back in the day and I was amazed at how often all forms of that name was taken!

Books and movies are other sources of RP ideas for me. Paksennarion is my go-to Paladin type roleplay.

Many times, my RP ideas come from lore in the game and what I want to do there. Needless to say, my first few characters have no RP to them

What I need to do is start writing down their backstories, like you do. That works better than "in my head."

Same for me, I was never able to play an evil character for too long. By evil I don't even mean "killing for the pleasure of it", even well thought out characters were retired early because it just felt artificial after a while. I can roleplay opinions that heavily differentiate from mine, but nothing plain evil.

Anyway, I don't usually have an inspiration, I make a general decision of what I wanna make and then go from there. I make the first name, and then change it as I change the story. TES gives us the most freedom to make up the entire background, but I also like to adjust the name and at least a little bit of the background even in games where part of the race/class I'm playing has a lot of the background made up. Names are particularly important for me, and they have to fit the universe where possible. In TES I usually just go for a good sounding name that fits the race. In games where there's little RP opportunities I tend to be less creative with names and just give them some mundane name related to their role or class in the game. For example, last two characters in Diablo 3: since our character begins the game by searching for the fallen star I called my barbarian Steren Amador, which could be roughly translated as star lover. Female witch doctor, with lore and skills inspired by several voodoo different cultures (they connect to the spirit world, summon zombies, etc.) I called her Mambo Asogwe, which is just a higher rank of vodou pristess. No one really ever connects these things, but I enjoy little stuff like that.

I enjoy Role Playing as much as I do the actual game. Depending on what I play depends on how involved the RP is.

I find Skyrim to be a lot more open in its abilities to RP, so much that even with the vanilla version of it, I was able to make a Legacy system where I could create a character that was a grown-up version of a character's kid. I also madea character who was part of a secret order who would advance their abilities from a physical weapon into a spellbound weapon upon mastery of their physical weapons.

Fallout was a bit more fun to create builds in, and the universe was fun to make a backstory in. The factions are massive and varied, and each game adds a bit more to the lore, so writing more in-depth characters as the world and factions change gets a more flsehed-out background. That said, there are some things that I, the player, have the character do to take advantage of the game's features. Even If I don't use Power Armor on a character, it helps to have the training as a tactical option.

I like to play characters with strong veangeance or redemption arcs. The latter is what I'm doing in my latest Skyrim playthrough.

We have a great RP community here on the http://www.gamesas.com/forum/42-fallout-artwork-and-fan-fiction/ (and I know Elder Scrolls has one, too, but for some reason I'm more drawn to the FO RPs). And yes, I know you mean RPing in game. I just figured I throw that in here, because we can always use some more RPers around the FO forums hehe.

Anyway, a lot of my inspiration comes from Dark Age Britain for games like the Elder Scrolls or Dragon Age. I also use my personal moral in most of the games I play. So, I try to help the weak and innocent and slay the wicked (I don't do any slaying in real life though LOL). My latest Skyrim character was very inspired by Ulfric Stormcloak's passionate speech, about why he fights and so she immediately signed up to fight for the rebellion, and plus she's a Nord.

On the other hand, I like to create a character that is just an Assassin and so only joins the Dark Brotherhood (but I don't assassinate random NPCs, only follow quests lol).

For post apo games, I pretty much go with myself. I'm a pretty tough cookie and I am not easily scared. So, I try to imagine that I could survive the hostile wastelands by being smart, brave and cautious, by using my wit, my charm and my ability to get along with people. I'm pretty observant, so I guess that adds to my Perception skill.

I tried to play other characters, like a ruthless raider type or a mean bandit, but I completely failed and couldn't do it. I couldn't even bring myself to play a male character to join Ceasar's Legion in Fallout NV... that's a double negative! LOL I like to play a character that has my gender, otherwise I have a hard time identifying with them. Now, I had to play a guy in the Half Life games and Wolfenstein The New Order, and I really like those games, but they are both rather linear FPS games, so I guess I didn't mind so much and wasn't really all that invested in the character. lol

Nice character and background. Love the grim reality behind it which reflects life in many ways. Maybe he will eventually get a hold of his happier side again and shake it awake with a i dont care what pain the world has thrown my way i will enjoy the things that make me happy and strive to be the good person once more additude.

My characters are mainly inspired by 1970s fantasy art such as Frank Frazetta and big time by modern artists like Simon Bisley especially the Melting Pot comic books who revel in extreme violence with plenty of carnal pleasure on the side. When going for many of my villain archetypes am inspired by horror movies that have over the top killing machines such as Rawhead Rex and Nightbreed. It is like creating an emotional storm of pure destructive energy wrapped up in flesh and muscle. I also like them to have a bit of a brainy side yet not creative more of taking what already exist or has existed to make themselves more stronger. Sometimes it's just a matter of knowing enough to get instinctive hints of the grand picture to guide one.

That's the thing, he isn't all that depressed. Still has a great sense of humor, still loves going hunting and fishing. He's seen some [censored], and drinks to drive it away, and he'll certainly take the chance to scare some young kid away from going off to chase glory and justice, but he's fully capable of enjoying himself. That's what I like about RPing him. There's too much grimdark emo RP out there without depth. I tried to go for realism balanced by fun. The only problem is, just like real life, the bad [censored] has a habit of catching up to you.

Nah, man, any kind of RP. Heck, most of the stuff I do is simply writing backstories for my characters no one ever will see and that will never be used in game. Sadly, I'll have to turn that invite down, since I've never been that fond of the Fallout setting. But hey, anyone else could be into it!

YES. Best Paladin character ever written.

Couldn't really get into the Forum RP's, but I did see one from the Skyrim Threads get turned into a full-fledged Mod. Looked really good and kind of cool.

I usually start with a very vague idea (usually to describe appearance, which is a big part of my characters) and go from there.

For example, my main Skyrm characters were originally conceptualized as "Sheamus the wrestler and https://www.google.com/search?q=mana&espv=2&biw=1920&bih=979&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAmoVChMI-veruOGOyAIVx6A-Ch1d_gT5#tbm=isch&q=mana+malice+mizer the fashion designer/musician fight dragons by yelling at them." The "Mana" of the group was originally very similar to his inspiration, which is a bit ironic if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mana_(musician). (For one, he would never actually speak aloud--my character went from speaking a foreign language to speaking very quietly for example,and he would play the violin) The "Sheamus" one never really stuck, aside from basic appearance (large, stocky, red-haired). Now in its current incarnation I guess you can call it "Paradise Lost, but Lucifer is a cat and also in a coma? Also he dresses like Mana." ESO can be described as the adventures of Sticky-Fingered Daughter, Soup-Can Dad and Basemant Library-Dweller Son; they cry a lot and make the best of things. (Alternatively: the adventures of Fury, Patience, and a Conversation) My plans for TES VI are Jeanne D'arc, Faust and his shadow Mephistopheles save the world. Yeah.

On that note, after playing around with 2 or more characters I tend to develop an overarching theme that (usually) plays of both the game's story and the character arcs. For example, Skyrim's is Power/Strength (mental, emotional, physical, etc.), while my ESO characters have a theme of Identity going on. Love, in all is forms (familial, romantic, between friends, etc) also tends to be a big theme, at least in the recent TES games (since I tend to have a bigger cast of characters).

I guess you could also say that JRPGs--especially ones like the Tales series--are a big influence. Particularly having a group of people involved in a single world instead of a single hero. I also really the interactions between the characters and the little "skits" they have, which is something similar to what Dragon Age: Origins had so that'll usually be a big part of it too. Just lighthearted slice-of-life stuff to balance out the more grim and serious "save the world" gunk.