Baby's First Identity Crisis: A Guide to Character Design

[LtGerbal]

Odds are, you've already made a character and played a few rounds on the station. While surface level characters work for gameplay purposes, they're not the best for RP and don't give you the full Paradise Station SS13 experience. Worry not. Here's a guide on where to start and some personal experiences that might help in your character building endeavors.

Where to start?

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First things first. Your race. Unfortunately, you are not sponsored by Ritz. Not that kind of race. Your species can have a HUGE impact on how you play the game, how others react to you, how to properly design your character, and how to play them while being lore friendly. Here's a comprehensive list of all of the races.

Regular Species:

-Humans: They're humans.

-Skrell: Very similar to humans visually aside from the head tentacles.

-Unathi: Humanoid lizard folks. Objectively the coolest race. (No bias, I promise.)

-Vulpakinin: A humanoid canine looking creature. I know "vulp" refers to foxes. Calm down.

-Tajaran: Humanoid tajaran. No, they are not cat girls. Stop thinking about it. I said stop. 

-Diona: Think of Diona as three racoons in a trench coat. Diona are effectively a humanoid hivemind. They are comprised of many smaller creatures called Diona nymphs. You have to watch your speech when playing Diona. Diona humanoids do not posses any individuality, as they are a hivemind. Make sure to avoid saying things such as "I" or "me" when referring to yourself.

There are also a number of species that can be unlocked with karma points. What are karma points? Karma points are points awarded to you by other players because they liked something you did in the round, be it good RP, or absolutely juking the HoS.

Karma Species:

-Machine People (5 Karma Points): Also referred to as IPCs, these characters are well... machines. They are unlike borgs in that they are actually sentient beings and can operate independently. IPCs do not require a pressurized environment to sustain themselves and cannot be healed by traditional medical means. Wires and welders are used to fix them up. IPCs don't have to eat, but instead charge themselves using an attachment that allows them to drain power from APCs. Despite being machines, APCs can be quite fragile at times. Not for the extremely unrobust and newer players in general.

-Kidan (30 Karma Points): Kidan are bug like humanoids. Their naming conventions are unique in that their full name requires their actual name, their clan, and their roll in the clan (i.e. farmer or warrior). They are very weak to pest spray. No surprise there. 

-Grey (30 Karma Points): Grey appear to be your stereotypical alien. Grey skin, big eyes, big head... The works. They have telepathic powers that allows them to communicate without having to actually speak. They're pretty standard, but water is like acid to them and will severely injure them if they come into contact with it.

-Drask (30 Karma Points): Drask are... humanoid... They have an affinity for cold environments. So much so, they can heal in extremely cold temperatures like, say, space. They can also eat soap like food.

-Vox (45 Karma Points): Oh boy. Everyone's favorite species. Vox are an extremely RP heavy species. Vox are required to speak broken Galactic Common (English) in order to be lore friendly. They are very fragile and O2 is extremely toxic to them. Even trace amounts of it can put them in critical. Also cannot be cloned.

-Slime People (45 Karma Points): Pretty self explanatory. Slime people use slime in the place of blood, so a bald medical team can be deadly for you. Also cannot be cloned.

-Plasmamen (45 Karma Points): Plasmamen are basically living skeletons that thrive in a plasma environment. They are required to wear specially tailored envirosuits in order to stay alive. If they take the suit off, they will immediately become engulfed in flames. Breathe plasma. Also impervious to radiation.

NOTE: It is HIGHLY recommended that you read the lore page of the wiki before doing too much with your character. Non lore friendly characters are often bwoinked if their design is too inaccurate. Example: Your super cool unathi should not be named: Bill Joe. That will earn you a talking to by the admins.

Character Design

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After you have selected your species (and gender), now you decide how you want them to look and some other details.

Looks. Long hair or short hair? Horns or no horns? Artificial  organs/body parts or no artificial organs/body parts? There is a lot of freedom to this design process. You can make your character look however you'd like, so take your time to make them look the way you would like them to look.

You must also chose your character's blood type. This will determine which blood you can receive in medical when you inevitably run out of blood.

Auto accent will also sometimes be an option. Some species have an auto accent feature used to enhance roleplay. For unathi, any s's in a sentence will have a few other s's behind it. If I type, " HELP MAINTS", the game will spit out, "HELP MAINTSSSSS."

You can also make your character disabled in some way. Colorblind, has a lisp, mute, deaf, and Swedish are just a few examples.

Your character's opinion of Nanotrasen is also something that can be edited. Do they love the mega corporation? Do they hate the mega corporation? You decide. Not very relevant to gameplay. Just an RP thing.

Another customizable number is your character's age. Age is also irrelevant to any game functions. It's mainly just an RP thing.

There are many languages that can be spoken. Each species gets their own species unique language and can also have one additional language from a pool of 4, or not speak one at all. These four include Clownish, Neo-Russkiya, Gutter, and Tradeband. Each language has a description about their origins and primary speakers. Be sure to read these descriptions and select one based on your character's background, or design your character's background around a language. 

Flavor Text

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Your flavor text is your next crucial step. While not required, a flavor text goes a long way when helping others visualize your character the way you would like them to.

Flavor text is only to be used for VISUAL details. Describe your character's height, body shape, eye color, scars, prosthetics, posture, any notable accessories and other details are to be covered in this.

Here's a rather basic example of one of mine:

Approximately a 5'9 unathi male. 
His head holds two black horns on each side and his outer back is green with a yellow underside. 
He has a seemingly average build, but with broad shoulders. 
A silver ring with three names on it, as well as a silver gilded computer chip hang on a chain around his neck. 
Work appears to be on his mind.

Art of your character is also permissible and encouraged. All art must be SFW though. No horni here.

Note that flavor texts can be changed at any time when not in a round. They are not set in stone and can be updated if you decide to change your character.

Crew Records

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While crew records are not required, filling them out makes for a very interesting and three dimensional character.

There are three types of records:

-Security: Can be viewed by all members of security.

-Medical: Can be viewed by all medical personnel.

-Employment: Can be viewed by the captain, Head of Personnel, and the Internal Affairs Agent/Human Resources Agent.

Don't feel the need to fill this out immediately. I have found that these are much better after you've played your character for a while and gotten a feel for how their tragic backstory (TM) might unfold.

D R I P

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Everyone knows that you're nothing if you're not dressed for success. Next, you should decide what you want your character to wear. 

There are two kinds of clothing. Your undergarments (i.e. socks, underwear, and shirt) and your overwear (i.e. jumpsuits, jackets, and hats).

Undergarments can be edited in the primary character customization screen. There are many different options to chose from. Want a man thong? Go for it. Are you a femboy  programmer? Get some programmer socks. Don't like feeling restrained? Go commando.

Overwear can be edited in the loadout tab of the character customization screen. There are way too many options to list, so I'll leave you to experiment with that yourself. Keep in mind that you have only 5 loadout points by default. Want more? Consider becoming a patron to the server. This will unlock 5 more loadout points and some new fancy clothing options. (I am not sponsored .)

Once you have your drip sorted out, you're ready to rock and roll. Or smooth jazz, if that's your thing.

Before You Go

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Remember to read over the lore of the station before committing fully to a character to make sure it's lore accurate, but also don't feel bound by lore. Feel free to step out of the boundaries of lore a little bit to make your character unique. A rigid character is no fun and blends in with the crowd. You don't want to be a nameless character, do you?

Know that a character's background does not have to be set in stone before you start playing the game. Character lore is best when developed over a long period of time. Playing your character and interacting with people will help you get a feel for your lovely little creation and how they react to the world around them. And, while character lore is best developed over time, it also helps to have a framework going in and people always appreciate a well designed character.

Are you really proud of your child or still not sure if you're done?

Here's a template created by the admins that you can use to fill in some blanks you might have missed or to get your name out there and introduce yourself.

 

[necaladun]

This is great, thanks for this. One tiny thing I'll add as a thing I try to do for my characters is give them a favourite food. It's minor but it helps keep my characters mentality in mind - eg, my greytider loves junk food, my unathi sec officer wants proper fresh meat, my grey is happy with nutriment because it's just sustenance. Little preferences like that start to add up to fully flesh someone out.

[Viz]

Solid guide, good stater for anyone not used to writing and basic character design. Concise, understandable, good information. 

Extremely minor nitpicks but they might contain some useful tips noone knows actually:

• I think IPCs might actually be 15 karma :p, 
• You actually CAN change flavor text in game, with the Set Flavor Text verb. IC tab I think? You can do this as something like a borg, even, if you want to customize your "appearance" a little, 
• Security records consoles actually DO access your employment records I believe. So if you wanna read someone's lore or you're wondering if anyone will see it, that's one way aside from skillHUD. 

Edited November 3, 2021 by Woje
Phone formatting makes me wanna aliven't