[Ty.]

Situation:-

Right now, I'm up to my elbows in some half-witted AGS project. Since the major coding is done, I've been turning my attention to fleshing out a lot of the backgrounds used. One of the issue's I've had is that I'd like to avoid the prospect of copy-pasted background extras and give the minor characters (even those without lines) a bit more personality.

a couple of months while suffering artists block I raided some old drawings I had to flesh-out the bar background, since the effect worked pretty well, the characters have since re-appeared in other backgrounds \ roles. What I'd like to do is repeat this with other areas of the game, fleshing out crowds and adding a nice level of extra detail to the cities population.

For example, the following background has a rotating cast (ignore the left most player sprite). The other 2 characters (shop-keepers) switch depending on when you enter. However it still leaves it a little barren, so a couple of extras would give a better impression.



....and that's where everyone else comes in.

Since this worked pretty well with my old WoW rp server guild, I thought I'd try and see if there's any of the old creative sparks around in the screening room (and in a couple of other places I haunt). Ideally what I'd like is character descriptions, personalities, doodles, etc that people may have dreamed up as a result of playing rpgs (Computer or PnP). From that I'll try to generate the the character sprites and slot them into the game itself. Actually, even if you don't play rpgs but just feel like coming up with a background character design, I'm interested in giving it a go.

Obviously there's limits, if the character won't fit the existing style I can't include it. You can't pretty much rule out talking, bipedal versions of quadrapeds, or anything generally furry-leaning, mines, clowns, hobbits, gnomes and dwarves. At the most, the cast are about 64-70 pixels in height, so some detail is going to be lost in the conversion process.

Now, if you're really bored (or feeling creative), you can just draw over the outline model I use for developing humaniods:-


Open to the floor.

[Ninja Duck]

That screenshot looks really good. So you're basically asking for peoples' old D&D characters? I haven't played any RPGs like that in a long time but I'll try to come up with something.

[Gobbler]

I used to go around as Roff Ironboots back in ye olde days.

He was a pretty tall and massive guy, not exactly towering above others but still big enough to make people think "This room somehow just got fuller. A lot." He could take quite a few punches and in turn deal out some fearsome blows as well - once he built up enough momentum, of course. Which rarely happened, as he firmly believed that whatever the spirits had meant for him to encounter would just have to wait until he got there, in his own time. He's not really fat, his belly doesn't extent, but the contours of his muscles aren't too pronounced either.

He's the sort of guy who will shift around a bit when he sits down, but hardly budges as soon as he feels comfortable. He could use heavy weapons, but decided that carrying them around was too much of a bother. Ever went for a march of forty kilometers, carrying one of those big hammers? Even the toughest guy will feel every gram of it like a tiny nail being pushed through his muscles once he lays down to rest at the end of the day. And that doesn't even take the weight of the rest of your baggage and provisions into account. So he would just use his fists, shoulders and feet to get rid of most obstacles. Carrying heavy armor isn't his sort of thing either, he prefers thick leather, studded with only some iron knobs to take the edge off incoming blows. The only exception to that are his heavy steel boots, something he came to appreciate after kicking a number of involuntary rock-goblin projectiles at an overgrown lizard. To this day, he swears that it hurt him more than the beast. And since the now deceased lizard never rebuked those claims, it must be true. Which also demonstrates how Roff prefers his arguments to pass, if he ever enters into one.

"So you say you can tell the difference between a kick from an iron and a steel boot?" is what he asks back when people question him about why he proceeds to call himself Ironboots when they're actually made of steel. Thus, it is a well known fact that his footwear is made of iron and nothing but iron. At least while he's in hearing range.

He's got short black hair and shaves every third day, no matter what the situation. Anything else will have to wait. He isn't exactly religious, he just believes that each and everything is managed by a myriad of spirits and lesser gods, who came into existence when the former "big old one", fell over and sort of released all those minor parts of him in a big splash upon impact. He'll often make references to the spirits in the things around him, but for some odd reason only mentions the big old one when some kind of jelly is involved. He's also almost certain that some of the mischievous spirits even started to follow him around, seeing as how there always seems to be a rock to trip over when he could have sworn that the path was clear just a second ago. If he does mind, then he doesn't show it - you don't mess with the spirits or act disrespectful towards them. It's just bad conduct.

His best accomplishment was drinking a whole barrel of ale in less than three minutes. As was his worst.

[Gobbler]

Is that the sort of thing that you wanted?

I tried to dig out the drawing that one of my friends did for another character back in the days, but I can't remember where I left it for the life of me. Guess the description will have to do.

We liked to bring in a woman named Fiore every once in a while, sometimes even as a non-player character because her ability promised fun.
She was born a slave in a desert region where a very very small percentage of people found that they had a natural affinity to animals of all sorts and could control them to some extent - and Fiore belonged to them. If she hadn't been a slave to start with, that fact definitely would have made her one, because the local oligarchy preferred to stay in control of all kinds of powers that could be turned against them. As such, they tattooed a crescentic mark around and under her right eye, to alert and remind everyone she dealt with to not let her get in reach of bigger animals. She lived a secluded life in the households of her owners, far away from the bustling towns and their markets. Her name remained just Fiore, as no slave was given the honor of an additional surname.

She wasn't clumsy, so they used her for entertainment, allowing her to train and control a number of small, gentle creatures to put on exceptionally well choreographed shows for her owners. She even gained some sort of fame for her skillful control over a flock of hundreds of parakeets among the figureheads of the oligarchy, but that didn't mean she was treated well and like most slaves she was more than just a little discomforted with her overall situation. Her owners understood her powers well enough to keep her away from big animals, but luckily for her, they never understood the true effect of her ability.

As the years passed, the region increased its wealth and bigger shows were put on for the oligarchy, now using more than just one single entertainer at the same time. It was at one of those shows where they brought in two captured demons, burning with flames that seemed to emerge from bodies made of shadow. Fiore's owners knew well that demons were no animals, and considered themselves safe. What they didn't know was that her ability didn't quite work with restrictions like that. Rather, she could sense instincts, far below the conscious level of thinking that most humans preferred. Once detected, she could just reach out to those instincts and shape them to her liking, creating absolute imperatives at the core of the being she dealt with.
Her owner found out first when he decided that his precious slave girl was ripe for providing another kind of entertainment. Horrified, he found his lust being turned into a strong desire for suicide. When the guards found their master stabbed to death, they still felt comfortably secure, knowing that no animals were about and thinking that the dagger that the girl picked from the hands of her victim didn't pose much of a threat to them. They soon found out that to the captured demons, there was no instinct as powerful as the burning rage that they felt upon being humiliated in front of humans, of all things.

Today, Fiore's a free spirit. Her secluded upbringing shows in how she tries to mostly keep to herself. She can easily control all sorts of instincts in a skillful manner and considers it a high art. As such, she still doesn't make a lot of use of bigger animals like bears or hounds, but instead sticks to smaller ones and uses them to accomplish all sorts of complicated tasks without making much of a fuss. She despises using them for their brute strength alone, just like she despises brutes altogether. She doesn't dirty her hands with fighting herself. Her permanent companion is a small, but very deadly snake that feels most comfortable wrapped around her right arm like a piece of jewelry. Fiore's greatest talent is to control the snake in a way that lets her effect the poison it dispenses. Depending on her mood, the poison might just induce hallucinations, sickness, but very often also death in quick and long-drawn variations.

Fiore has long brown hair, and she prefers to cover up her slave marking by letting strands of hair fall over the right part of her face. You'd do well to avoid that part of her past in conversation. Her long robe of light silk covers all of her back and reaches down to her knees, but is very open in the front to put her curves, bodice and legs on display - which, she found, is the easiest way to bring men (and sometimes even women) under her control in the blink of an eye. The silk robe is white and red and usually sleeveless, but she sometimes chooses to wear a single long sleeve as well to cover her right arm and the snake, which makes assassinations that much easier. The sleeve is of a light green color. Her skin is a mild bronze.

Her temper resembles that of her snake, mostly patient but quick to strike once angered. She travels the land in search of good name to gain the honor that she was once denied as a slave.

[Lenoarrofisse]

Let me start off by saying that I was an avid Cho Chang-supporter post Order of the Phoenix. No, I did not want Harry and Cho to be romantically involved, but I felt that Harry wouldnt want to be on such bad terms with Cho afterwards. Most of fandom really hated Cho and loved that she used up her usefulness and wouldnt be mentioned again in the series. Well, after 2 years of debating the character of Cho Chang and telling people that JK left too many small subtle hints behind her character to just throw her away, it seems that JK did just that.

To me, although I loved HBP, I cant say that I wasnt disappointed in the fact that JK seemed to make clear that Cho Chang used her purpose in the series and has gone back to just being a part of the regular non-important Hogwarts population.

So I was wondering if any of you have invested into a minor character so much that you really believed in them and took part in many character debates just to have them not be as significant in the future as you thought they would have? And if you have, do you feel like you wasted your time giving those characters such consideration or you still harbor some hope that they will have something in store for them in the 7th one?

[Gobbler]

Hrm, reading your posts, I can't help but play the Time Warp somewhere in the back of my mind. It's almost as if I never left Mecklenburg-Pommerania, where everything happens a hundred years later, even doomsday.