Character Creation Guide
Introduction
Character Creation is a very important aspect of Roleplay, and one that comes with some unspoken 'rules' that are easy to break. This page should serve to help you through the process, to avoid falling into some common pitfalls. It will cover things you should not do, things you should think about for your character, and other general advice. It will also touch briefly on mechanical aspects of character creation in Starlight, such as the height and width sliders, custom species, name rules, and the Flavor Text System.
It's important to remember; We Play to Lift. Roleplay is unique because it is cooperative storytelling. If you can take pleasure in the role you play in other people's stories, you will struggle far less with motivating yourself to Roleplay. You work together, you communicate, and you tell good stories together. If it weren't for the other players around you, you would just be playing make believe in your room alone. Other players is what makes the stories special. If everyone enhances each other's experience, everyone benefits greatly.
Other pages that might interest you after this are: PSO Cloning, Server Rules, History, and the Lore Portal.
Balance
The big thing that everyone tends to do with their first character, in any roleplay, is make them unbalanced. But what this means goes a bit further than what people assume at the surface level. A character can be unbalanced because they are too physically strong, or too good at something, or know too much, or have wealth or connections that go beyond the scope of what is reasonable for the setting or their place within it. Generally what makes an interesting character is not what they can do, but what they can not do. Being able to do something lets you solve a problem, not being able to do something lets you struggle to find a solution to the problem. It is good to have characters be good at some things, but usually the more specialized they are at one thing, the worse they should be at others to compensate.
In relation to Starlight RP specifically, there are a few easy 'Do Not Do This' things that can be listed out to make things easier;
- Do not be a member of NanoTrasen or any other major corporation outside of Central Command, unless your job specifies otherwise. You can have this in your backstory (excluding NanoTrasen and Syndicate roles), but you shouldn't have been high ranking, just a normal employee.
- Do not be related to anyone of importance in the wider galaxy. This means no cousins on the Trasen family, or sons of the Trans-Solar Federation's President, etc.
- Do not be absurdly rich. You are a normal person working a job, ranging from minimum wage to slightly over minimum wage depending on your job in the round.
- Do not be a secret Syndicate member in your backstory. The game decides if you are or are not a Syndicate every round. Adhere to that system.
While Space Station 14 is a mechanical game, where you can basically do anything so long as you know how OOC, and have the right items on you IC, it is important to consider "What can my character do? And what can they not do?" Does your Chemist really have a reason to understand wiring enough to rewire a damaged room? Should your Engineer know what Chems are good for which damage types? Should your botanist know how to fly a shuttle? Does your Head of Personnel even know how to aim a gun?
There are no rules preventing you from doing these things anyway, but it may lead to more interesting roleplay if you intentionally act like your character does not know things when reasonable. Fumble with the wiring, OD themselves slightly on chems in a panic, miss their shots on purpose if they've never used a gun in their life. What a character can't do is more interesting than what they can do. At the end of the day, we are expecting our characters to die often, that is why we have the PSO system and Continuity Rules.
Characterization
When making a character, there is an impulse to make them interesting. Making them mysterious, have weird traits and quirks, etc. While there is nothing wrong with this, you should know that it is very overdone and overplayed in every Roleplay community on the planet to have the "Edgy mysterious silent character with a tragic backstory who constantly alludes to it vaguely but never tells anyone what happened." Anyone who has roleplayed for more than a year will just roll their eyes and not care and your backstory at all.
When making a character, just try to think about what you will have fun playing. If there is a concept you want to play, do so. You don't need to try to make people interested in your character by withholding, or infodumping, their backstory. Just talk about things as they naturally arise.
While you do not need an answer to every one of these things, some interesting things to consider when making a character to help you get in their head and understand how they act are;
- What traits do they poses? Are they a hoarder? A roamer? Have bad posture? These are somewhat surface level things that if you remember to use them when relevant, can help emphasis their character. They may also be mechanically enforced, if they happen to already exist as Traits in the game.
- What are their fears? What is the source of their fear and how does it impact their behavior?
- What are their flaws? Things that actually negatively impact their lives or other people would dislike about them.
- What motivates them to do what they do? Why do they work here? Why do they do the jobs they do?
- How do they feel about their family?
- What is their biggest insecurity?
- What are they the most proud about themselves?
- What secrets do they keep? Are they their own, or someone else's?
Mechanics
When creating a character in the Lobby, you have a lot of options of species, gender, height, width, markings, etc. While most of these are aesthetic, and totally up to you, there are some basics that can be explained as to how they work.
First in the list is the Custom Species Name. When you select your species, you have the option to give them a custom species name, to denote a subspecies or a wholly unique species in theory. The galaxy is large after all. We ask that these names be serious and this field not be used for jokes. It's contents are moderated, as is your character name. Please refer to the rules for more on this.
The height and width sliders have no mechanical impact on the game, they are purely aesthetic. Your hitbox remains the same fixed default size, to avoid people being small for an advantage in a gunfight. The width slider is also proportional to the height slider, meaning it will stay relatively the same width compared to your height by default. You can adjust this to be wider or thinner however.
Traits exist to give your character mechanical differences that reflect their character. Examples include gaining or removing accents, languages, getting drunk faster, etc.
Background
Background is a system that allows any characters to know specific pieces of ordinarily Metashielded knowledge. Every character may only have one Background, which is picked during Character Creation as a Trait and can not be changed mid-round or frequently at all. Your Background should reflect the life your character has lives, and act in complement to their characterization and backstory. These are additive Roleplay features, and do not impact gameplay directly.
You may read more about Backgrounds on the Metashield page here.
Flavor Text System
Starlight makes use of a system called Flavor Text which allows you to define things in fields that specific players can or can not see. These should be used to enhance roleplay for everyone, yourself included.
IC Information
Physical Description
Used to describe how your character looks, in ways that might not be evident from the sprites in game. You can add notes about them having a limp, their face, nose, and eye shape, missing teeth, etc. Whatever would be physically noticeable when looking at them.
Personality Description
Used to describe your character's behavior and personality, as far as would be observable. Can includes notes on how they talk with a gruff voice, how they constantly sway side to side or walk like they're marching, and anything else that would be noticeable when looking at them.
Exploitable Info
Exploitable Info, or Exploitables, are things about your character that can be seen by certain antagonists like Traitors, Changelings, etc. This section exists for you to give other players something to use against you intentionally, for better roleplay. Some examples could be;
- Your character served in an armed conflict as a mercenary, and their corp took part in a massacre with very few survivors. An antagonist might take this as their personal motivation for killing your character if they already had a kill objective on you, tying the action into your backstory.
- Your character's family has medical debt with Interdyne, and you are working on this station to try and pay off those debts. An antagonist might use this information to bribe you into aiding them with part of their objective.
- Your character defected from the USSP and fled into the Trans-Solar Federation with a forged identity. An antagonist might use this to blackmail you, or a Revolutionary might use this information to target you as a defector for conversion.
Secrets
This is used for any information that only your character would know, a brief tl;dr of their life and some other information relevant to them. Changelings and Paradox Clones can use this information to try and act more like your character when taking your form, for better infiltration and paranoia roleplay.
OOC Info
Personal Notes
Information you write down for yourself that only you can see, to make roleplaying easier for you. Writing down notes on family members, your planet of origin, etc so you do not blank mid-RP when asked.
OOC Notes
Out of Character information that anyone can see, useful for noting down things like phobias and roleplay topics you do not want to be exposed to. Rarely comes up, but useful to use regardless to establish your comfort zone.
