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Pre-made or made-to-order?

Carpe Diem

Carpe Diem

"my journey may be short and sweet"
Joined
Sep 7, 2020
Location
Hongyuan
Hello, this is my first time posting a discussion thread, so forgive me if I mess something up.

When it comes to roleplaying, do you prefer to make the character for that roleplay, or do you have OCs that you use throughout different roleplays, given they are fit for the kind of roleplay that you are using them for? This is discounting canon characters from fandoms, of course.

I have found throughout my time roleplaying that a lot of people like to create their characters based on the plot, or on the fly while planning for an RP, while others seem to have OCs that they have created beforehand and just require a tweak or two to fit the setting and/or plot. This is more common on certain sites where you actually make the character before plotting any kind of RP, but I'd say BMR has a fair mix of the two, or at least that's what I've seen over the years that I've been around.

So yeah, do you have an OC(s) that you like to use, or do you make the character once the plot and general idea has been figured out? Show your work below.
 
When I approach an RP, I always make an OC for that story. While I may unconsciously make one character similar to another character between different stories, I don't have a bank of characters that I choose from and think "yes, that person will fit that story".

So, yes - I'm a made-to-order writer.
 
I am 'made-to-order' kind of writer as well. I think I have never gotten any action for my ready-made characters after I stopped roleplaying on F-list.

I have a few OCs that I do roleplay sometimes with, but I have yet to advertise them here. If I get a huge craving to use one I might, but the approach of creating characters tailored to the story at hand has worked better.
 
Made-to-order, definitely. Part of the fun of RP for me is finding things out about the character as I'm making them up, for the story I'm putting them into. I guess that can happen with pre-made characters, like subtle differences in a cyberpunk universe vs. a high fantasy universe (kind of a multiverse approach?), but generally I prefer the former style of characterization.
 
Back when playing in MMOs, pre-made characters were definitely the natural choice. Here's the character I created, here's her backstory, and here's some hooks we can use to start an RP with her. It makes it really easy for spontaneous short-term things, and for possibly longer-term stories within a group.

Nowadays, however, my RPs are not in MMOs, far from spontaneous, arguably not short-term and never in a group. Though I often reuse tropes or bits of backstory, my characters are always born from the prompt me and my partner settle on, instead of the other way around. When I see RTs that detail pre-made characters with tons of backstory, faceclaims, etcetera, I often find their possible hooks far too restrictive, and frankly . . . I ain't gonna read all that.
 
I just realized I forgot to put myself on one of either fields.

I'd say I'm a made-to-order RPer as well. It used to be that I had a host of characters I would play over and over, but that was mostly because I used to play the same RPs most of the time, which was fandom RPs where a little bit of tweaking to my OCs made them good to go.

Nowadays, I feel like building up a story from the ground is more common for me, which means my characters are built to fit that world specifically, and would be very difficult to extract and put into a different story, even if the setting is extremely similar.

I feel like this is the more common of the two alternatives when not talking about canon characters specifically.
 
I sorta have a mix of both! It really depends what I'm doing though, I prefer to do made-to-order sort of characters.

The premade OCs I do have though? They've never been used in any stories and sorta just wait there. Most of them are entirely blank slates just with a basic concept in mind. I also just hoard too many designs for my own good :p

In some cases depending on the person I'm with they may like an OC I have that's in another story enough to agree to have them as a side character in our story which can be pretty fun sometimes.
 
Both!

I have a roster of characters that I like playing. I stick them in different stories if I have a hankering to play one of them, or if something fits.

And if not? I make a new one. And if I like them, they join the roster of characters I might pull out again in the future.
 
made to order, and it's all vibes and a couple bullet points. i probably get to know my character as much as my writing partner does LMAO.
 
I usually prefer to make the main characters made to order, though there are few times where I love certain characters so much that they end up entering another RP premade as a side character as long as the setting fits for them (Sci Fi characters for sci fi settings, fantasy characters for fantasy settings). For me, it helps me explore their characters beyond what I could do in other RPs, also giving influence to stories from my past to stories of my future to give a sense of extended longevity to some of the creativity I had in my past without it taking center stage!
 
So I do not have any of my oc sheets saved. I often will like create them from scratch though sometimes they might have similar draws to ocs I've made in the past but otherwise no I don't go into with a pre-made character on the agenda. I rarely do ocs with original features though these days as my thing is using the likeness of canon characters for originals or I just rp canon characters. In the past I did do a lot of oc sheets and like original builds but that was also through sheer absence of access to images at the time and a site that didn't do images so if it were an oc it is just working through it. I primarily rp on Discord so while I do come up with oc sheets the appearance portion is just the image of the character.
 
I sit on the fence. If someone has extended a hand because they are interested in some of my listed characters then they're already set to go.

Otherwise I rarely use the same character more than once; I often make new ones. Sure they might be an amalgamation of previous ones but, for the most part, they're fresh and brand new onto the scene with something unique about them. There is a happy middle ground, at least for me; but I enjoy trying new things more often than not.
 
Well I think it's all about context personally. Food wise I always go with made to order because it's just better. But I tend to do a lot of fandom roleplays so I create OCs but I create them not based on the story but around the character they are paired with. I make mirror souls or I try to. The stories can change and I love when stories change. But I don't base my characters off of stories if that makes sense? The best example I can give is say....I'm playing a Dragonball Z rp. I'm not into Goku but I will use him as an example lol I would make a character based off of Goku that will play off his strengths and weaknesses and build the story around that. Now going into original stories I do make characters based on the story because I kind of need that context and foundation to make a character in that world. Not everyone does things the same way and I'm here for it. I prefer to plan for like romances and stuff. Just so I can know what I'm doing where I'm going what my character should be feeling and start to build that dynamic that I build with canon/oc rps. I'm not much of a spontanious roleplayer.
 
95% of the time if I'm not playing a canon character I make a story for that story. I dunno, I find it much easier to work with and much more fun to create a particular character. That being said there are rare instances of me reusing or remaking a character for some stories but I tend to feel that's a pretty strong disservice to any potential partners.
 
A majority of the time, I make characters for that specific roleplay. Now if said roleplay does not work out, and I'm able to fit my character(with some adjustments) into another roleplay, I will definitely do that too. No point in letting a character collect dust if I can recycle them.
 
A bit of both really. I have a roster of characters I've come up with, or dabbled in playing before, that I might use if they seem perfectly fitting a specific idea (and my partner likes them too) but otherwise I'll come up with something new as need be. I see benefits to both avenues, though I will say that I'm generally not interested in playing with partners that only play a specific character, or small handful of potential characters, as I can be pretty picky.

I will say that if I do use a 'pre-made' character for a roleplay it's usually less of a fully fleshed out character and more of a general concept with a name; the details are always shifted and tweaked to fit the plot in question. Some exceptions apply of course but if I'm re-using an OC completely then the plot probably already revolves around them to some degree which is a bit different in circumstance.
 
The vast majority of my characters are made-to-order, baby! I like to make sure my character fits in the world crafted with my partner. This allows more flexibility with their backstory, personality, and literally anything related to the character. I also think part of the fun of roleplaying is writing and creating a completely new character.
 
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