EDIT: Sorry for the spelling mistake, Thanks Deputy Dingo. Just shows I don't use the word much lol

So I don't normally have Canon characters on my site really but with my new site there has to be a number of important figures in society and stuff who could be played like the king and some of his subjects. This led me to making a forum for "canon" character which people can play.

I was just wondering how you all go about doing this on your sites. Me I just stat the following fact about a character and don't stat to much about the characters appearance and personality so a people has the freedom to make the character their own, other wise I feel people won’t be to interested in playing these characters.

I like my cannons big, and black with a nice short fuse so the BOOM comes sooner. Teehee. I think you mean 'canons' mate.

I think the best thing (from a members point of view) to do with canons is to give the people adopting them as much leverage as possible with what they can do with them. There will be some people who won't mind being told a lot about their character, but I know quite a few who wouldn't like it.

I think what you've got there is good - please don't ever do the annoying thing of designating a PB. It has to be the most frustrating experience ever if you are trying to RP a canon and you have a certain picture in your head but are being forced to use another.

I think as the characters become less and less important you'd do well to take out even some of the history and allow that to be fleshed out by the writers as well. Best of luck!

Cool good to see I'm doing things okay for the moment and thank you for the comment about the spelling of Canons, shows I don't use the word and don't worry I won't stat which PB must be used. That basicly why I won't normally play Canon characters lol

Indulge me.... >.<


Bio: His mother died in childbirth* and his father, the former** King was lately found to have died of natural causes*** at the age of 35. His father's death was said to be caused by heart failure. Unlike the masses he was unaware of the poisoning of his father and simply grieving his fathers father's late death.

etc. (Later on you have 'Churches' instead of 'Church's,' but I don't want to go through the whole thing...)

*one word
**formER, not 'forma'
*** natural CAUSES, not 'courses'


Fix things like that, and you'll be good. It looks fine to me otherwise; you don't hem them in with too much specification regarding personality, looks, etc., and that is GOOD. A good idea for a character.

Thanks for the aid, really need my fellow admin to look over my work, they should know my grammers crap lol and thank you

LOL! Thanks, Smathna. I was gonna do that! I'm a total Nazi when it comes to English and grammar and whatnot. Now I do have my moments, but still. It bugs me. Anyway.

That looks pretty good to me. You don't have to follow anyone's rules but your own. Whatever works for you, works. There isn't like a rulebook or manual when it comes to having your own RPG. It would be handy, but there isn't. :lol:

I have w few different options, though. I have characters that are fully formed for those who want to RP but aren't too creative or are stuck on making a character because they've made about a thousand of them already. Been there. I also have a few that have the bones and a little flesh; name, basic history and a face. And then i have the ones I need like an Ice Cream Parlour owner who's got the very basics; a name, a very brief history (how the shop started, his wife, their species) and that's it. Or sometimes I"ll just say "Okay, guys, I need a bartender who's more than just an NPC at Night Passage. Show me what you've got!" You'd be surprised how well this goes over. Or I'll say I'm low on vampires and I've got a vampire plot coming up. Anyone who wants to can create two vampire characters. And poof! I've got my vampires tha I don't have to play on my own.

Thats for the idea's SilverWolf, might do the "Okay, guys, I need a bartender who's more than just an NPC at Night Passage. Show me what you've got!" idea :D

lol no problem. by all means. it works for me. and for members who randomly have the time to do another character for a short period of time but then have to give it up after a while. like summer break or something. then i can just get rid of the character or something.

While Deputy Dingo gets cookies for pointing out the spelling error, the term you are referring to is not accurate for what you're talking about.

This is not a canon. This is a pre-made. If you are confused as to the term canon in the literary sense, wiki has a good run down on it. Canon is not an evolved term, it's a mistake.

Now, back to the pre-made template at hand, I personally appreciate the history run-down because it makes me feel like this pre-made has a purpose. Not all premades have to have a purpose--sometimes we chuck them up because we think, 'oh, this'd be cool!' --but most of the time, they ought to have something going for them and if you can provide that nugget, then I think it makes the character more appealing.

This is why:

People are too quick to get bogged down in 'personal' storylines. AKA mediocre drama, because they feel like that's the maximum amount of leash they have. People are afraid to step outside the box, explore the game potential and will happily sit on their lorrels waiting for the admin to spoon feed them delicious helpings of plot.

This often leads to boredom on the part of the player and, generally speaking, a depleting interest in the game as a whole.

I think this is vague enough to be successful. I would definitely take on a premade with this level of detail.

It's 'laurels.' Wow, what is it with word misuse, huh?

As for 'canon,' I think it's absolutely fine to call it a 'canon' list. It's become accepted RP terminology, and decently intelligent people can figure it out. Seriously, Panda, I think you're the only one who insists upon using the (rather ugly) term 'premades'; even I don't use that term.

If you turn "pre-made" into "pre-fab" (fabricated, obviously), then I'm afraid Panda's not the only one. I do think that, yes, chances are the terminology will evolve, although admittedly I've only ever seen this discussion in regards to forum RPGs. Still, in my own happy little world "canon" are characters who were created with the fandom/genre's source material rather than the people who run or play the game.

So yeah, I'll be sitting on the yada-retentive "argh, use the term correctly!" bench with Panda.

EDIT: (And I love that the term yada retentive has been edited out for language. Yay filters!)

lol well on the my site I uses none of those words. I called them important Figures that people can play :D Makes more scene to me, I'm not even sure I'm saying Canon correctly, because I've never spoken to anyone about it verbally before lol

I like to rest upon Lorrel.

She is comfortable and my favourite Emmerdale character, even if she has been crying too much lately but then hey, all the more reason to rest on her.

Company on the bench is awesome, though I know full well I'm not the only one, from previous discussions on the topic. I am all for the changing ways of the RPG world, but the term screams 'idiot' in those instances when it is grossly misused. Now, the OP's example is not such a case but as it stands it is wrong. The term breeds dolts when it doesn't at least attempt to connect itself to the original term. AKA lists of pointless names and faces that are so vague that they may as well be gotten rid of because there are good chances original characters will match the profile.

I don't call them canons because it's too mainstream. Well, kind of. That and because canon conjures up pictures of immature little 14 year olds to me. Don't ask.

At any rate, I'll post a list of "characters we'd like to see" or something of the sort and put the minimum amount of information necessary. On my last site, I just listed

+ Police officer (2)
+ Teacher (1)
+ Lawyer (1)

Etc.

All canons are, in some sense, pre-mades. But not all pre-mades are canons. There. Pass the gatorade down to this end of the bench, please. Thanks. ;)

Anyway. I run a canon-only game. And, because it's based on the X-Men movies, yes, there are required pbs for certain characters. If I were doing X-Men comic canon, that would be another matter. Does it mean some players won't play there? Sure. On the other hand, can't please everyone, anyway (and it means I don't have to deal with applications for the love child of Apocalpyse and Mystique anymore).

Within the canon-only framework, though, I allow and encourage a lot of creativity. Characters who are only mentioned and not seen, such as Remy LeBeau, can be any pb who looks remotely right (much as I may picture him as Lorenzo Lamas). Backgrounds can have all kinds of things, since practically nothing is established for anybody by our starting point at the end of X1. I have a fantastic Quicksilver (whose player included all kinds of fascinating detail on Sinti gypsies) and a likewise wonderful Logan (whose player did the same with Canadian First Nations). I'm hoping to find a similar Storm (but that's a post for another forum).

If I need a particular character for a plot and that character doesn't have a player yet, I'll usually NPC him/her. Another plus of limiting the characters to movie canon only I've found is I don't have PCs scattered all over the geographical and faction map. I don't have to worry about keeping a couple of HFC players amused, while also giving X-Force something to do, while also writing for the whole freaking government of Genosha ... and playing the cop being picked on by Apocalypse and Mystique's love child.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to put down OCs-allowed or OCs-only games. I've played in them and I've run them and they're a lot of fun. But what I'm running now works for me and for my players. YMMV.

Out of the four PCs I'm playing at StC, three of them are OCs and one is canon, as in canon not premade; there's a whole series of books and a TV series where he's the main character.

I'm with Greymalkin: if a character is needed, yet we don't have a player, we'll NPC him/her between us. We did this for my canon character's sidekick, who we now have a player for (though she's very new to RPing and thus incredibly shy and took ages to make her first IC post, but that's another story) and I would do it again.

Though I'm pretty lucky; I have a whole fandom I can (hopefully!) tempt over to the Dark Side RPing.

In a recent thread, which involved the court-martial of a PC, we created a couple of characters on the fly as NPC's and RP them between the three players in that thread. Interestingly enough, the character on trial was originally created because we needed a PC for another thread.

I don't think there's any one system that's better than any other. You just need to find something that works for you at the time. You might need something done slightly differently later; don't be afraid to be flexible.

Completely unrelated, but that line killed me. I can see it 100%, but I'm also delighted that someone else knows who Lorenzo Lamas is. :D

Anywho, back on topic for me.