I am curious where people get their inspiration for RP. I personally like philosophy and historical figures. For example, if I were a player, these are possible role models I've thought would be interesting to choose from.

Serenwilde:
* The Unabomber - An *extremely* militant nature advocate; someone willing to slaughter the lives of all Celestines and Magnagorans if it brought mortaldom back to living the primitive natural life, perhaps reflected by that scene in the history where the leader of the Serenwilde lets Celest get slaughtered "for the good of nature". Too bad there's no rogue archetype yet as that's what would be best.
* David Henry Thoreau - A peaceful anarchist in the Hartstone or Moondancers that advocates living in harmony with nature, perhaps believes that the guild and commune political structures threaten the future health of the community and thus also seeks democratic overthrow of his own government (a hard line to walk without getting booted out, but it can be done).
* The Amish - A religious hard-liner that strongly promotes devout worship of the god he follows; opposes civilization because of religious reasons. Leader of the zealot wing of the commune.
* Jane Goodall - An activist that focuses on chasing after overharvesters and people who attack faelings and forest animals. Probably a Serenguard to give her a more violent twist.

Celest:
* The crusades - A Paladin advocate of violently, militaristically imposition of morality upon the world.
* John Locke's "2nd Treatise on Government" - A democratic politician advocating civilized morality and individualism by "consent of the governed" rather than the more imposing type of the above. An excessively religious person, he would be a Celestine and a zealot for his deity despite not being militaristic.

Magnagora:
* Nicolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" - Any noble, upper class Viscanti politician that relies more on political backstabbing and subterfuge than on violence to maintain power. Since there are no rogues yet, could go in any of the current guilds.
* Hitler - A Taurian (they are intended to be racist) that would amplify the hatred and bigotry of the city to scapegoat races and privately push for Taurian rule to weed out the city of its inferior non-taurian races.
* For one of the more sadistic and gruesome citizens, very likely mentally disturbed, just tune in to the lyrics from heavy metal bands such like Slayer, Grave, and Cradle of Filth

Other:
John Stuart Mill or, if it's an angry character, Ayn Rand - A Lucidian intellectual with nearly no emotion.

So where do you find your RP inspiration? Do you have any historical or philosophic sources of RP? Bonus question: anyone figured out my RP for Roark? He borrows bits and pieces mostly from two incompatible philosophies; it should be obvious which ones for those familiar with them.

Well, I know the obvious one for you. Actually my character in Imperian leaned heavily toward some of her philosophies, at least in the beginning, before it got boring to try and get people roused up. Most of my long term RP usually comes from how I am naturally or whatever I happen to be reading at the moment. Short term is more varied but I find it hard to stay in role if it goes too hard against my nature. For example, IRL I generally do follow AR's philosophy, or as much of it as a mortal is capable of... I would say the major flaws with her philosophy is that they expect almost as much idealism as communism and you're fighting against centuries of humans training each other to be "nice". (shudder, gag...) But hey, at least I've got the tendancy to ramble down pat... I think I'll stop now.

Oh and thank goodness someone besides me mentioned Hitler. I've been dying to bring it up in the thread about kicking Viscanti out of Celest, but I was too scared that people would jump on me. Sure, Hitler was Bad, but so are raving psychos who run around killing people and we have plenty of those...

My personal favourite in that list is the Unabomber since people would probably initially put him in Magnagora. But for those hoping the Serenwilde doesn't become another Oakstone, he's one of many pro-nature people that totally break the stereotypical mould of the treehugger. The Animal Liberation Front is another fun one for nature advocates. (Though unlike the Unabomber they have moral values in that they do not do bodily harm to other people.)

My two main RP inspirations are from fantasy books.

Huma from Dragonlance Heroes because he is the compassionate, deep thinker, uncompromisingly principled/zealot version of what I think a Knight should be.

and

Sparhawk from The Elenium and Tamuli by David Eddings because he is the break your jaw in an instant type Knight that balances out the one above with the proper now is the time for action edge.

hmm, too new for the bonus question, but i'll be back.

Ulath

Well, since I enjoy my RP from Aetolia so much, I'll explain who I was copying for a long time: Hitler, except.. spanned over many years till I get to the point.

For Silvanus RP, I aimed to be a less blunt version of Otto von Bismarck.

If I had to make a direct choice? I'd say Bricriu is a mix of Loki, from Norse mythology, Sybil (the one with all the split personalities), and myself, being played to Sweating Bullets (Megadeath). It's fairly hard to explain, but if you know the references above, and know Bricriu a little bit, I think you can see it.

She's an agent of chaos, a big trickster, really, and has proven so far to be fairly crafty, but that she also isn't one of those annoyingly infallible characters. I don't play her as good, or bad, she's just trying to get her needs met, even if that just means a good laugh.

She's also a little like Sybil was, but doesn't have seperate beings that act up, it's more like distinct facets of her personality fight for control - resulting in having severe 'mood swings' - she's not stable by any means.

As for well, me, I'm the extra bits and pieces to her, her emotions, feelings, etc. I have to say, it's a relief to have a character that can randomly decide to be an uber-bitch on the spur of the moment, because I feel that way. Last character I played, didn't have such a luxury, she was on permanent 'ungloomy' mode, and I grew to hate playing her, but did anyhow. I'm much happier now, to say the least.

I really try to stray from basing my character on something else. In Imperian, I think my take on the Dwarf was at least partially refreshing despite the fact that there WAS a Dwarf druid in one of the Forgotten Realms books *I can't remember his name* and he had a green beard but his beard wasn't painted, mine was. In Imperian, I am not sure, I try to play the lofty Viscanti but really I just come off as a quiet loner, obsessed with his knowledge of the past and the like. Whatever you would consider that based from, so be it. As for me, I'll go back to my dusty tomes now.

---

A creature of habit, all my IRE characters, bar one, were pre-defined tributes to the roles played to perfection by Bette Davis and/or Joan Crawford in Robert Aldritch's masterpiece 'Whatever happened to Baby Jane?'

An amazing film.

--Mammalaa

I can't really merit anything for the creation of Ellara. If I had to to take a guess, however, I'd say I'm partially inspired by Tamora Pierce's "Lioness Quartet". For those of you that don't know, it's about a girl who disguises herself for eight years to become a knight and goes through very rigorous training. Of course, Ellara's not exactly in the 'paladin' mold, but that makes little difference.

Pikel RULED. Specially when he smashed Ivan or whatever his name was in the face with his club in the last book. That whole series rocked, actually. I thought it was better than the Drizzt books..."Oo oi!" Sad ending though. Didn't want Cadderly to do the miracle thing =/

Pikel *snap* That's his name. Good job there guy

While I am really attempting to get a grasp on exactly what I want my character to be, I am very, VERY loosely basing my RP upon Gollum from the animated version of the Hobbit. His description is pretty much similar complete with the little growl *I used this instead of a hacking/coughing noise*

I'm still figuring out Briseis. Right now all I've worked on has been gaining levels, and working on guild requirements, which doesn't leave a whole lot of time, with the limited amount of playtime that I have, to talk to folks and make friends.

But I do try to play her to be as unassuming as possible.

I added this elsewhere but since post count doesn't count here and because people may not look there. Here we go:


If I recall correctly, I set the age from which he left from the Portals at 25. I am going to try and attempt to set his situation in a Hallifax/Gaudiguch situation but I am just trying to figure out how to work it right. I am going to say that he came from a cave in the Balach Swamp and I was wanting to say that his group/clan/tribe/family was frozen or kinda' sent ahead in time as a result of the actions of the village Shaman or something and that he was 16 at the time and now he is 25 but maintains the mentality of a 16 year old. His intelligence however, is hopefully going to be rather high but his speech and his anxiety make it difficult to express it? Thoughts or comments maybe? Oh! And I forgot that he is blind. Not like blind with the affliction but I am RP'ing him as blind and as such, he lacks prejudice over anything because he can't see anyone accepting them only as what he gathers from their personality.

I've always based my charachter on what RP archetype I wanted to play... Thief, Priest, Warrior, Merchant... then I read through the guilds and races to which seems most interesting to me. Then I try to RP my charachter based on the history given to me by the game. For my Tae'dae Daganev, I was thinking about an evil whinnie the pooh, but I don't think I'm doing that very well. Instead I looked at help Tae'dae and decide to be amiable, proud and self proclaimed wise and protective of my furrikin.

However, In Aetolia the one excpetion I did, I tried to play Ayola Karamazov. I even had the same number of brothers. I ended up playing him as a complete pacifist, but it did amaze me, how many events in the story of the brother's karamazov ended up happening to Daganev in areas not of my control. It was earie to say the least.

This may sound f'ed up, but here goes.


alot of my characters are influenced by historical killers. Mainly, people such as Hitler, Charles Manson, Ted Bundy, jon Wayne Gacy and Jack The Ripper. Throw in a love for nature and for the occult ( I have practiced the druidic religeon, but i am now a devout satanist), and many modern day people, such as Peter Steele, Ozzy Osbourne, Marilyn Manson, James Hetfield, Rob Zombie, President Bush, and Anthony Hopkins.
Then, i add in a bit of literature, such as the works of Edgar Allen Poe, Stepehn King, and R.L. Stein.
Now, ill often add in animal traits to my characters, mostly large felines, canines, and insects.
now, ill throw in a bit of medival rp or Post apocolyptic rp.

the result we get is some sort of highly intelligent, well versed, clynically insane killer that hides himself out in the open. a chameleon, if you will.

I did so love Pikel and his talk about "droods".

For myself, as some know, I used Raistlin Majere as a character base. He's one of the most interesting characters ever created for a book. I would have used someone like, Drizzt Do'Urden perhaps, if I had been a good guy.

For those that do not know about Raistlin, he has been twisted and humbled, reminded of his own mortality daily, yet knows that some day he will be able to challenge the gods themselves. He actually does try to take on Takhisis. Now, I didn't actually mean it to happen like this, but Richter was twisted by an encounter at the Megalith, and some old family stuff (with work, I've been to busy to post anything about it), and also, he's starting to have an unnatural obsession with vernal gods...

Raistlin is awesome. Mostly, I try to steer away from influences from other sources - I prefer to make a character myself. My first character was basically me, but that was messed up as you can imagine. If I had to admit any influences for the other characters though...possibly Vivi from FF9. He wasn't just cute, he was a pretty interesting character too. Introspective, philosophical, and I even try to do the kind-hearted thing (believe it or not )

Raistlin to me is the single greatest "bad guy" ever created in a fantasy book.