Cracked Mirrors -- 3 Steps to Fixing That

What's he look like? Eh, ugly, over-weight middle-aged and balding male character, whose weapon of choice is a loud voice, an itchy ass, a bottle of Ex-lax and a TV remote with batteries clad in his bathrobe, slippers, boxers and a hot-sauce stained stripped shirt. Best sword master in the world too! Wait...Are you telling me that...thing...is the best sword master in the universe? Isn't he supposed to be a tall man with board shoulders and a long shock of silver hair that cascades over those shoulders, with a hawkish nose and deep hazel eyes, with small, slim hands and a slight build? Naw, we don't want another pretty boy being our sword master.

Appearance is a funny thing. We all want to be the most beautiful things out there. Nobody is really a gritty sort of man, with bags under the sunken eyes and a hallow look to the face, or a woman with wrinkles or a plain face with a too-wide mouth. When we talk about the appearance of our characters, we talk about their looks, how attractive they are to the opposite sex. It's a bad habit for pretty much all role players, myself included, to make our character's the most beautiful things to walk the catwalk. But I want to see a new wave of characters that emanate both power and ability, but some sense of reality to them. To no longer be a pretty-boy (or girl), but be realistic. To have strange features that set them all about.

Female characters are (almost) always independent, powerful and sexy. Some aren't, but we don't see those too often. Male characters are (almost) always badass pretty-boys. It's like there is no opposite side to the spectrum, but I want to see it today--no yesterday. But of course, chances of that aren't likely. Anime and video games heavily influence new role-players to the scene, and of course the characters there are always handsome and wonderful and cunning and all things marvelous.

So, how do we go about fixing that? Well, as the entry says, I've got three sure-fire (I hope) steps to get away.

1) Make the character more realistic in looks. Give the guy a beer belly, even a slight one. Give the chick frizzled hair. Give them facial defections, like too-wide eyes, or hawkish/hooked noses. Big hands, small hands, big feet, small feet. Anything and everything can be done, and the end result will give your character more life.

2) Don't stick to that slim, muscular and exceptionally fit body-type. Space it out a bit. Be scrawny, wiry, over-weight or big-boned. Be petite or somewhat flabby or any kind of type in-between. To see the whole spectrum of human body-types would make things so much more interesting.

3) Be dull. What do I mean? Dull hair, dull eyes, dull expressions, bored and annoyed, with plain faces.

It's probably not the best advice, but it would create characters more original and full of life characters than the ones that currently populate the role plays and duels with their angsting pretty-boy (or girl) -ness. But maybe I'm asking too much? In the end, though, it's you who decide the appearance, so make it a good one. Remember, not everyone is, or has to be, a gorgeous character.

 

- W. Visarett

Race Against Myself

Races. They are varied and plentiful. We can either start with stock humans or move on to the often used and clichéd celestial angels and demons, winged creatures and wingless creatures, or even go so far as to use other creatures we've seen before. Reptiles, mammals, avian or insect, the races we come up with for our character are many. There are the often seen or the custom created.

I, myself, prefer custom races. I have several: Aouyen, Baajin, Fri'di'nar, Fehrahzii, Galandrian, Grak, Hagasian, Jan'ri, Jyet Nyural, Je'Kenkari, Jorgani, Kaus, Krykor, Lai'git, Lan-Weih and Vadasian. That's sixteen various races I've come up with. Kinda overkill, if you ask me (of course, I was trying to come up with a universe all its own, so all those races are explainable to an extent).

Most people when creating a custom race generally take a stock human and modify it. Add wings, add claws, add extra reflexes, maintain a human form, or humanoid form, and just slap on a name. The simplest approach and probably one of the best, too, since it gives you a wide variety of things you can add and subtract from a given custom race while maintaining a specific bodily form you want. The flipside of the coin, though, is that people add to much and make the custom race just another god-modded creation. Add something, but don't add too much.

Another look at it is the wings department--I've seen WAY too many winged people going around, so I'd say stay away from those unless you feel you absolutely need to have some kind of winged creature. Seriously, though, another pretty-boy with wings makes me thing you're another Final-Fantasy-Fanboy on a Sephiroth binge in need of a slap upside the head. Think about it before you commit that kind of atrocious crime, will you?

A lot of people lean either toward lupine (dog/wolf-like), reptile-like (as in dragons and their ilk) or feline (cat-like). The avian in and of itself is generally covered within the realm of a celestial or winged creature of some sort. It's rare that you see insectoid races done by role players, as then they're a bug, and what can a bug do? Quite a bit, like lifting more than its own weight by dozens of factors. Don't discount the bug just because they're grotesque looking. Maybe that's what you want all along.

I myself lean more toward lupine or reptile-like, although my reptile-like races take on more characteristics of a lizard than the more well-known dragon counter part.

When it comes to creating even a custom race, anything is possible, and you can do anything you want with it. I'll give an example, using one of the species I've come up with, the Aouyen:

Aouyen:

Aouyen are naturally green-scaled, like a reptilian species, with small short barbs or horns along their entire body. They are bald, and sport a set of red eyes set in a flat, nose-less and narrow face with pointed jaw. They have simian-like hands and feet (three digits with an opposable thumb) with retractable claws--their palms and feet also have soft pads to soften the noise they might make in movement. Thin, tall and lithe, these creatures are built for short bursts of speed.

The things that make them dangerous though are these: The Aouyen are capable of changing their skin color to hide within their environs. Their chameleon skills are in fact astounding, allowing the Aouyen to run at a good pace and not appear to the eye. The second dangerous aspect about the Aouyen have is that they have a set of glands in the back of their throat. The Aouyen can control the molecular makeup of whatever is produced within these glands. They can secrete anything from sedatives to poisons to balms. They can also spit an effective range of twenty meters.

Rather simplistic, isn't it? Yet it gets the job done of saying what the creature is, what it looks like, and what its skills are. While the creatures are described as reptile-like, there are also characteristics of a cat-like abilities.

In reality, picking a race is completely set upon both your style as a role-player and your preference. Some people like celestials, some like stock humans, some like custom races and creatures, or even mutants. You can do nearly anything with a race to make it unique in its own right. It's all up to you and what you want out of it.

 

- W. Visarett

Honey, It's a, AH!-- What In The Hell IS THAT!?

It's a boy! And what a boy! Honey, that's the umbilical cord--it's a girl. Damn, and you thought your little "boy" would be the ultimate son right there. Too bad, eh? Oh well, maybe she'll be a tomboy, and you can teach her all the sports and make her into a highly aggressive child to stand-in for the boy you hope to get some day. Or maybe she'll be your darling princess. Either way, when choosing a gender for a character, it can sometimes be a bit of a trial. Guys and girls both probably know that getting into the mind of the opposite sex isn't the easiest thing, so choosing a gender for a character probably is a tad harder still.

Now, I won't say that one sex is better than the other. That's just plain stupid--plus I like girls, me being a guy, and saying guys are better than girls wouldn't exactly help my life out, now would it? Of course, if guys aren't better than girls, the reverse holds true as well, that girls aren't better than guys (although this might be a dismaying thought to some women out there).

So, you choose a gender appropriate for your character. I see numerous guy characters, usually pretty-boys, angelic with wings and fire users--cliched, badass, but apparently works for a number of people. The opposite is that when I generally see female characters, they're sexy, seductive, demon-like babes from hell that use of all things ice. Ah, stereotyping, where would the role playing world be without you?

You rarely, if ever, see anything that could be classed as asexual (meaning both genders or sexless). Would be interesting to find such characters that couldn't be classed as a particular sex. Few, if anybody, plays this kind of character. I don't even know why, since I think it might be easier as you wouldn't have to deal with the generic, stereotyped male emotions or their female counter-parts (emotions-wise).

But, for the most part, we're going to be stuck with boy and girl and no it. Not to say that this is a bad thing. After all--when something gets overused, like an asexual character, they're no longer original. Just another cliche we're told to stay away from.

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For those that don't know, today is Remembrance Day in Canada; solemn day where we honor the dead who fought in WWI and WWII for freedom. Probably too late to say that we pause nation-wide on the eleventh hour (AM) to reflect on it, but that's what we do. Anyway, just a random Canadian fact for the non-Canadian's out there who read this (although I think today is Veteran's Day in the US, similar to Remembrance Day in Canada or something).

 

- W. Visarett