Membership Do you write new characters for sites or reroll them to suit?

[Rune 1,099]

Obviously not every character can work on every site (not that this stops some from trying!) But many of them can be tweaked and made to fit. Sometimes, a new canvas is better! It's all personal preference!

 

Do you prefer rolling entirely new characters for a new site? Or do you have a handful that you reroll for every board you join?

[Penny 27]

I have a main character who I keep in some form on any site I join! But beyond that I love to make new characters as the setting gives me inspiration. Some characters just work better on some sites over others, and some just give me more ideas and more to work with! But I love the comfort of having my first character be my favorite. 😊

[Shades 676]

My usual go-to is archetypes, not exactly characters, so this makes my life a lot easier. I have a handful of archetypes (example: the self-made man who came from the streets) I love, and use those as a foundation for a character for each site I join. Very rarely have I tried to revamp an already existing character to fit into a site, and the results have rarely been good ones, so I stick with my list of main archetypes and create the characters from scratch now.

[StormWolfe 557]

In the beginning, so long ago the time has been lost to the mists of millennia...

 

When I started roleplay, I made a completely new pair of characters for every site I joined (excluding fandom Canons). I usually write one male and one female character at a minimum. Over time, I found that I liked the challenge of revising some old favorites to fit new sites. This was also convenient time-wise while I was working 60 hour weeks. It let me keep the core ingredients that I hated trying to think of new information for (personality and physical descriptions are my bears) and just add new information where needed.

 

Now that I'm retired and more involved in the RPG world, I tend to recycle old favorites plus try to create new and interesting characters based on a site's needs.

[Icewolf 258]

It depends on the genre or fandom. If I was joining a site of the same fandom I'd played in before, then I'd try to reuse the character, but if it's not, I'd do something different. Some characters will fit into the setting of another site, (though the background might need changing a little to get them to fit, for instance you could have a Star Wars character that was written with the intention of fitting into the Legends canon, but not in the new Disney canon, so if I took the same character from Legends and slotted it into Disney, changes would have to be made to fit it.) If you had a vampire or a werewolf, you might be able to fit them into a Buffy site at one time, and the next time you play them, you could fit them into an original urban fantasy setting, but you'd have to make sure that your character follows the rules of the new world, as it were. Sometimes though the setting can be different to the original setting that your character was in and it makes sense in that instance to create a whole new character because there are times when the events of a world do a lot to shape your character. I don't think I'd ever be able to take my Middle-Earth dwarves and stick them in another high fantasy setting for example because their backstory is tied up too much in that world.

[Huskerdust 625]

Pretty much, yeah. Usually I get ideas for characters when reading lore but occasionally I have a character idea I'm trying to slot into a site. The latter is usually a lot harder to do though. 

[Sage 289]

It totally depends on the setting for me. If it's a real life site, then yeah I'll totally recycle characters. I've got my good-guy-cop-facing-moral-dilemmas that has been a part of almost every real life site I've joined. He's easy to fit in places and I don't have to try too hard. If the setting is easy and low fantasy, I'm less likely to start from a blank canvas.

 

Super involved, high fantasy or sci-fi settings, though? I prefer to start from scratch - or as @Shades said, from an archetype! I may cannibalize my good-guy-cop-facing-moral-dilemmas to fit this new and exciting setting, but he's not the same. He has a different name, different characteristics, and is pretty much entirely unrecognizable - a completely new character. But this new guy and my old guy will definitely share some traits, and a similar archetype. 

 

For me, it just really comes down to the amount of effort I'm willing to put in. In an easy setting I'm familiar with, I've already got these characters that I've put work into to get to know. I don't want to start over with somebody new unless I'm super duper motivated. But if I'm getting into some super involved setting, I'm already doing the work and want to immerse myself in it as much as possible without tainting my characters from a previous incarnation. I don't want to add more effort into trying to tweak some existing character to fit in this world when I know, in my mind at least, they probably won't be totally immersive.

[Elena 546]

I usually first bring characters from elsewhere, then I make new characters for the site if it inspires me. Now it depends which character of mine fits to be refitted 🙂

[Kazetatsu 263]

my first character on a site tends to be someone I made before, though I don't re-roll them, just choose one that fits. After I get a feel for whats needed on a site or in various stories I am more likely to make other characters custom-tailored for the setting and story going on.

[Morrigan 1,826]

I have a core set of characters that I normally bring everywhere. I'll adapt them for the site and sometimes I'll fully change their histories but their core personality is always the same. In fact in my PB folder they are at the top of the list because I got tired of looking for them in the 100+ playbys in my folder.

 

@Dragon

[Arceus 1,082]

A bit of both, honestly, but only sort of.

 

I have dozens of characters by now. My high point on a single site was around 150 characters at once. Nine times out of ten, I've got one somewhere that can be tweaked and made to fit the site. Primarily, I have about three or four that people are likely to see from me at some point (Suyis, Sati/Sahura, Kassand(er/ros), and I also tend to lug Bjorn around, but my first is usually either Suyis or Kass - I was actually dangling on the edge of joining a site for months a week or so ago and then dropped the idea when I noticed someone else had nabbed Kass' PB while I was waffling).

 

I have so many different characters that it's hard to find a site that one of them doesn't already fit into with some minor adjustments, so it's rare that I make a completely new character, albeit it's happened before (usually more in response to a wanted ad, rather than the site itself).

 

Even when I do make new characters, though, this is only vague a definition. As each 'new' character tends to have basis or root in another, existing character, somewhat as if the trunk of a great tree, and each specific character spin is but a branch on that tree. So maybe they express a bit differently, but, ultimately, they are one and the same. It may take me a bit to figure out which tree this specific branch came from, but, eventually, I find it. Sometimes they really throw me for a loop and cross-breed (lol).

[Sanghelios 12]

I'm definitely a mix of both. On my sites I have some overlap but also some that are exclusive to one site. 

 

Ive mostly done canon stuff and personified sites lately, so often even if I'm playing the same canon, I play them differently on different sites, and often count them as different characters when I'm talking about my roster. I've also been known during small group RPs, to repurpose my writing OCs, or at least the archetypes they're based on. 

[clipsed 231]

New. Always new.

[Jacob 58]

My characters are always young boys or youths.  The two I've tried developing stem back to the late 2000s to early 2010s.  If I permanently leave a game, I cast aside the particular versions.  For me, those become staff "property."  Any extracted elements return to their Oliver Twist kernel.

[ChrisOwl 59]

Little of both, though I have primarily mixed in the fantasy genre and can sort of move characters around. My favorite thing so far has been one character who I started as a 25 year old... then I wrote up a bunch of her backstory as a 7 year old. Joined another site and wrote her as relatively the same, but living in a different area of the world. Then I did a caste-swap and write the same character (though different appearance/name) as a 7 year old NPC attached to a different character, who is growing up wealthy instead of dirt poor... then on my new site I've aged the original character so she's now 40.... honestly I've loved playing with this character. She has been one of my favorites for nearly 10 years now since I first thought her up.

 

Then again I love crafting new characters as well. I've had some characters hanging on for hm.... maybe close to 15 years one of them in different forms, and other times I just craft someone completely new. Just love making characters and building on them over time.