Greetings and salutations! I come in peices!

Hi I'm new, duh! , anyways I've tried out all the Iron Realms MUDs and liked the content of Lusternia the best. So I want to make a more permanent character now, but I'm having some troubles. The problem is that I'm not sure what kind of stuff to write up.

In Achaea my character's were heavily based on things that had happened to them in the past, but in Lusternia you don't really have one that you remember... So I'm having trouble writing a bio/personality description for my character because if he doesn't remember anything about his past he's going to be no more than a blank slate of an Elfen with no history. Which would make for a very boring RP unless I can come up with something. I'm hoping to make a well documented personality for him, that way I don't have to rely on his history at all. Except in the event that he could discover it and realise it wasn't what he hoped.

So I'm going to assume that a persons personality stays intact even after they step through the Portal of Fate. But if I'd just been brain washed and lost my memories I'd probabley go postal on everything I saw. So my question is really what do you think would happen to some one's outlook and mindset after they had willingly lost their memory in exchange for the posbility to become powerful?

Would they question it(the choice)? Would they justify it as the right choice in the light of that they could now fight for and(maybe) accomplish their dreams? If only they could remember them? They might try to discover their past, or even regret the decision? Perhaps they took the plunge, so to speak, in the hope that they truly would forget their past and the nasty things it cantained? Would they become dark and hateful? Or happy and G... We'll just insert glad there. What do you think? How would a person's ideals, beliefs, and personality change to reflect such an action?

Sorry for the long post, I just want to get my ideas down on paper, or uhh web space, because I tend to restart continually if i don't care about my main persona. Hope this was the right section.

Cheers all.

You don't need to have complete amnesia - after a bit, some of the fog clears. I personally think that vague memories work best. I started out with, "Shorlen grew up in New Celest. He left for the Portal of Fate for a very good reason. While he was there, he chose to join the Serenwilde, for another good reason." As I learned more about the gameworld, I could fill in those reasons, and the general circumstances surrounding them. The best way to flesh out a character is to play him - you don't need much detail to start, that'll come as you play.

Yep, the main reason for the amnesia thing is for newbies who don't know much about the game world when they start out, the idea being that as they learn more their character will "remember" more about where they came from. So you can have a detailed history, and then RP your character thinking a lot and meditating etc. on their past and remembering all about it after they come through the Portal with vague recollections, or something. It's all pretty interpretive (Although history has shown that the other players don't like it too much if you pop through the Portal and immediately claim to know all about a certain subject, even though it is justifable from an RP perspective *shrug*).

But hey, anyone who cares so much about believable character development and motives and things is likely to be an asset to this place . Good luck!

Hope out as rogue, and join a city/commune, say youve already had time to remember you past. Oh, and start at least age 20 so you have a reason to knowthings. Is all good then.

You can start off blank. As you come up with more detailed ideas, work it in using the nice tool that the system gives you - background/history. You can have your character "remember" different things for different reasons, e.g. a smell or sound, a familiar sight or voice, or a good old blow to the head.

Hi! Thanks for the input, very helpful. I have another question now, are there any steriotypical character types in Lusternia? I mean to the Dwarves tend to hate Elfen and vise versa? Are the Elfen the wise, noble, and always goody goody tree hugger types, not to mention snobs?
I'm just wondering because I like to play characters in ways most of the people don't, so would it be unthinkable to have my Elfen soldier be from the tainted city (I can't remember how to spell the name.) and not give a dang about the forests? Or are there unspoken rules that are generaly accepted? Just asking cause I remember alot of people didn't like my city-oriented Tso-laa in Achaea, because thats just not the way they are.

Thanks again. Cheers

Well, if you read the race help files, you can get a general idea. City/commune help files help, depending on which one you're in.

People cared about racial RP in Achaea? News to me.

Quite a lot of cultural work has gone into a lot of the races, yes, but there are a few you'll be safe with. Igasho, Trill, Orclach, Taurian and Mugwump have a very low representation (next to none as far as NPCs go) so you won't be stepping on any toes. Generally for combat you want to stick with the city races though. I don't think I ever noticed anyone "stepping out of line" as far as that goes, so I don't think you're in danger of doing anything bad, but maybe the people that were were silenced quickly.

Read the histories, and while experimenting visit a few of the villages (Dairuchi is particularly good.)

EDIT: WTF. The posts above me and two above are timed at 12:47 and 12:48 AM today, and mine is timed at 12:44 AM today.

...

54, Shiribot. You need to get your camera lenses cleaned.

Ah, for the latter, it is just shiribot censoring your Intraveneous newsfeed.

For the former: There are people playing with racial RP. It is much more fun when you actually
build up some tension in your player because that makes him funnier to play. My primary
(not Gralf) is built around personality traits. Intravert/Extrovert, Calculating/Spontaneous,
Dominant/Submissive, Lawful/Chaotic, Intelligent/Dumb, Thinker/Feeler, Whiner/etc. You get
the point. I often use this orthogonally to the history of a character.

And by the way... Could we get those grim, horrific, snuggly and ugly emoticons sent to the
trashbin? They hurt my bandwidth so my Lusternia connection is lagging. Especially the
--CENSORED-- one would be nice to get rid of. Then we would actually be able to read some of
the posts, hehe.

Get broadband.

So I do.

Cough.

Wow I've finally found hijacker heavan! JK!

Thanks again, I've got another question. I was going to put it in the last post but forgot. Ok here it is, does anyone know where I can find any fantasy name generators/lists? I'm gonna do a Google on it but I was just wonderin' if you knew any good ones.

EDIT BTW When you talk about the histories do you mean the stuff on the main Page? It didn't have hardly anything about the races. Besides the Humans, and who wants to be one of those?

Thanks Shiri it works great!

Welcome.

Have a look at the helpfiles for all the races, that'll tell you pretty clearly where they stand more than the histories will (Although you should read the histories anyway).

It's no joke. It's true and

Viscantis and Merians are snobbish. Don't know about Elfen / Shadow Faeling, but odds are they are too.

The rules aren't really unspoken. They're written down / yelled pretty loudly . You can _still_ play a Elfen in the cities etc, but just remember that there may be penalties for doing it. Like if you join Magnagora as an Elfen, you won't be able to draw power from the megalith (which leaves you unable to use half your skills until you can get some from the astral plane), and you'll probably run afoul of Silvanus the racist, and probably you won't be able to hold important positions.

Same goes for joining Celest / Serenwilde as a Viscanti etc.

Elfen are snobbish insofar as they recognise themselves as the saviors of the Basin. So, yes, we are snobs; very few of us play that card, though I am trying to bring it slowly into my character.

Weel, I've reread all the race files and have hit a rut. I can't decide now! At first I thought I'd be Elfen but there seems to be a very large number of them. And then I thought I'd be a Merian but it seems like there lots and lots of them, and then there's Mugwump but they don't seem like their cut out to be soldiers. And I've never been good at RPing mage types.
Any suggestions? I need some help making up my mind.

EDIT: Oh oh I'm a genius! I'll just try them all out and see which I do best with.

Thanks again for the help. Cheers