Where do you get inspiration from?

Draekor

As the title suggest, I'm wondering where all you roleplayers get inspiration from. Is it from that book you read, perhaps that movie you watched or do you simply get inspired by anything around you? I'd like this thread to be a way for those who'd like to start roleplaying a bit more to get a view of how those who roleplay go about when they come up with their stuff. Aaaand I'm also curious.

It's mainly movies for me and probably the anime I watch that gives me ideas of what I could do in game. For example a character I see that I can imagine my own character could be a like. Really simple stuff.

I also found this guide when I googled around a bit, which I thought was pretty handy when creating a character and I bet more of you can have some use of to get some more depth to your character. 

Bathan

I'm (as Eldreth can attest to) prone to influencing my characters based on movies, books and TV shows.

A lot of my inspiration right now is coming from the anime Fate/Zero which I watched with my roommates, as well as a book I picked up on Ancient Chinese civilization for a dollar as a book sale put on by the Humanities program at UCF.

Sarciossis

Mostly books and TV, and conversations with other players. I have an obsession with Lovecraft that comes through on a lot of my characters. Also, I like writing down six ideas for character development and rolling a single dice to determine which one I choose (It also works handily when I decide I feel like I want to switch circles. :P)

Kaveri

Mostly from books and history. A lot from history. I've based several of Kav's recent decisions on some of my personal heroes, like William Wilberforce.

Juran

I use myself as inspiration, because I'm basically the best role model for me available out of anyone.

Jorachim

Jorachim's my inspiration.

After that, there's me.

Apoloc

What little rp I actually do, I attribute to my love studying cult leaders and serial killers.  I attempt and typically succeed in being the exact opposite of what I really am.

Edit: Though I am somewhat of a prick, so the above statement may be partially false depending on the context it is taken in/who.

Jazzster

I'm going to school for acting so a lot of my inspiration comes from making choices that are bold and completely different from what I would do. Each character I play is different and I approach the style of that character in a very different way as well. I look at the area he is in as well as the people around him. Would this character join this council/city and be different to the effects of the area? Then I decide why he made that choice and kind of go from there. Whether said character is good at combat, fishing, relationships, or whatever, his choices are based solely on his background.

Naois

When creating a character, first I choose a place that is fairly hospitable to role play that I like. Then, I take an aspect of myself and assert that as a primary character trait in the character. With Naois, I chose my pride and scholastic nature. With Ossilr, I chose my quick temper. After that, I let the characters that I role play with help to refine and define the character. I've actually had several occasions where I was dreading family RP with Naois because I was afraid that his character would do something rash, but then he surprised me. (That doesn't sound like I have multiple personality disorder at all....) 

So, aside from myself, a lot of my inspiration comes from old RP characters that are long dead (back when the way to RP was on AIM with a few buddies in a chat room), and a touch of random mythologies - Norse and Celtic being the primary ones. Those old RP characters were inspired from animes that I had seen.

Dot

I get my inspiration from within the game.  Before I created Dot, I read about the cities and councils and all the professions and was drawn to a Cleric in Antioch.  Based on that, I decided Dot would be the preaching kind, looking to convert through talking rather than killing.  She also needed to be kind, nurturing, helpful and a bit soft. She has now moved to Ithaqua and as such is developing a more "Ithaquan" side to herself.  Toughening up and getting a bit less soft.  All the inspiration has come from the game itself though, and the people around me.  I have both struggled and enjoyed the Gods dying as it has challenged me to look at a new avenue for Dot to take.

Sebaste

I am not sure how to say this, but  I just lose who I am and my character comes to life within me.

Jeremy Saunders

When working, I used to watch the dvds for the 'Making of the Lord of the Rings'. Just listening to how hard Peter Jackson and crew worked on creating those movies, where he got his inspiration, and so on, really motivates me to make Imperian awesome. In fact, I need to pull them out again now that I am on Imperian again.

Sarciossis

@Jeremy Are you going to go see the Hobbit? :P

Jeremy Saunders

Yeah, probably not until next week. I hate the crazy crowds.

Katarsh

I get to go see The Hobbit tomorrow night, week-late birthday present from my wife =D

Lemuela

I don't really have an inspiration except for the game itself when I make a character. I pick a circle/city/council/guild based purely on what interests me or sounds like fun, but from there I mold my character based on toe-ing the line between creating something original and not being obnoxiously annoying. One of the best characters I've pulled off was a kid who couldn't talk. Aetherius is magick. Things like being blind, deaf, no voice, all that can be cured by magick. How do I make this person believable? Picked an assassin guild for the sign language. Then I custom designed a long-posted tongue ring with the appearance of an anti-magick God. Made an emote of opening up the mouth and showing how the post was driven through the tongue into the jaw itself. Add that to a story of cruel followers of an anti-magick God and there we go! Got a reason for not being able to talk, a touch of sympathy at the brutality of anti-magickers, and worked around the whole here let me cure you with magick argument. It's believable, original, and stays away from being obnoxious by tying in the history of how Antioch has been cruel to magick sympathizers in the past. It works.

Khizan

No, that doesn't stay away from being obnoxious at all. Rather the opposite, in fact. It starts at obnoxious and then runs screaming across the border into the lands of Utterly Unbearable.

How is it stupid? Well, to start with, it's easily repairable. You can gimme a pair of wire cutters and I'll unstick that tongue in about 30 seconds. And then you have a minor physical injury of the kind we heal trivially every single day in Aetherius. 

That aside, it's the same whiny "pay attention to me, I'm special!" RP crutch that's been done countless times, except that this one put slightly more effort into being obnoxiously terrible.

Lemuela

Khizan said:

No, that doesn't stay away from being obnoxious at all. Rather the opposite, in fact. It starts at obnoxious and then runs screaming across the border into the lands of Utterly Unbearable.

I'm not sure which has been more utterly unbearable in the nearly a decade I've been playing this game - actually putting up with true, put in time out, shrub-able, obnoxiousness from characters and their players while in the game....or putting up with years of Khizan's player insult, degrade, derail, and drag forum threads through swamps of depressing darkness with the sole purpose of sucking the life out of postings that show an interest in the actual topic. If you're not a team player, then stop trying to join the team. Your comment had absolutely nothing to do with the topic other than to try and degrade someone yet again.

You are your own "pay attention to me, I'm special" poster child.

Delrayne

I don't really draw inspiration from anywhere outside the game. I mean I sort of flubbed the dub with Delrayne's rp, but thats why I started a new character, and with the knowledge I already have of Imperian, it makes it a lot easier to set up a background and direction to take the character.

Abigail

Abigail is, more or less, a self-insert. Yes, I know that's bad in literary terms, but at least I can admit that and not lean on the "BUT IT'S RP" excuse to defend crappy character interactions. What some people fail to realize is that the point of roleplaying is to have fun, and I don't have fun forcing myself to pretend to be someone else; if I wanted to write a story with unique character personalities, I'd just write a story.

Kanna, on the other hand, has a couple gimmicks to spice her up, namely the insanity and being intersex. The latter, of course, not being something brought up willy-nilly in public but nonetheless a defining feature of the character. Her inspiration is mainly Malkavian, Discordian, Subgenius style thinking. She takes a very Zen approach to madness, having the occasional burst of comprehensible intelligence. 

Emeren

Past inspiration came from reading Wheel of Time series cause I read a few of them saw an ad for Imperian, and tried it out, which to me I found similarities between the Game and the series. Nowadays I focus on Imperian' s game history and develop my Character around that. I need to scrap Emeren, and start fresh. I've been developing a new Character while been unable to get on Imperian, but I hope to get back into it with a better mindset on the Game.

 

Iluv

Right now, I'm getting a lot of inspiration from various Roman Polanski movies.

Abigail

Kanna's RP was a sort of mish-mash of Discordian, Malkavian (the V:TM kind) and Sub-Genius. I think she was best summed up as thus:

"What you call "sanity" is a thing I wear like a set of clothes. One I wear better than you because I know how to take it off."

But I guess that interfered with everyone's grimdark and super serious RP and thus it wasn't very well-received.

Khizan

In that other thread, when Lionas was talking about how you have a persecution complex? This. This is what he was talking about.

The global dislike for Kanna's RP has nothing to do with the grimdark grim darkness of the year 40,000 AM, where the God-Emperor Selthis sits atop his heap of golden vitality collars while his countless legions troll the universe in his name.

It has nothing to do with super-serious' RP.

People hate it because it's nothing but selfish, masturbatory, attention-whoring RP. It has no subtlety. It has no art. It's just you walking up to people who are talking or participating in something else and screaming "PAAAAY ATTTEEEENTION TO MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!"

I was going to say, here, that Kanna was the Aetherian equivalent of those homeless guys that wander up to you while you're pumping gas and rave at you about chemtrails. Except she's totally not. Because those guys are made out of equal parts giant bushy hobo beard and twitchy paranoia, and they exude a palpable sense of not-quite-rightness.

Kanna, on the other hand, appears to be comprised of equal parts "Hot Topic" and "CRAAWWWLLLINNG IIIIINN MYYYY SKIIIIIN", and emits that awkward/needy "negative attention is better than no attention" vibe.

THAT is why nobody likes Kanna's 'madness RP'.

Selthis

They will be my finest warriors, these men who give themselves to me. Like clay shall I mould them, and in the furnace of war shall I forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great sarcasm shall I clad them and with the mightiest pens shall they be armed. They will be untouched by plague, or disease, no sickness shall blight them. They will have tactics, strategies, and trolls such that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Pubbies. They are the Defenders of Good Posting. They are my Forum Posse, and they shall know no fear.

Aleutia

Selthis said:

 They are my bulwark against the Pubbies..

You can't sit on that throne forever...

Bathan

Selthis said:

They will be my finest warriors, these men who give themselves to me. Like clay shall I mould them, and in the furnace of war shall I forge them. They will be of iron will and steely muscle. In great sarcasm shall I clad them and with the mightiest pens shall they be armed. They will be untouched by plague, or disease, no sickness shall blight them. They will have tactics, strategies, and trolls such that no foe can best them in battle. They are my bulwark against the Pubbies. They are the Defenders of Good Posting. They are my Forum Posse, and they shall know no fear.

I'd like to point out that if ever a series of books or a show was made around this concept, I'd definitely read/watch it.

Ahkan

The only novel that is infested with NSFW links that earned it an M rating.

Abigail

Malkavian RP is about thinking outside the box and doing things that challenge people's perception of the world. The problem is that most Imperian players don't RP beyond the absolute bare minimum necessary to get things done -- when I first started playing here, I got made fun of for RPing in short paragraph-length emotes.

So, yeah, everyone tend to brush it off as attention whoring/slapstick ****, which, to an extent, it is, but there's a bit more depth to it that is unfortunately lost when you're in a PK-centric text game.

In any case, Khizan's experience with Kanna (and the experiences of the people who agreed with his post) came from a time in which I was trying to figure out what direction her RP would go. Yeah, there was a lot of melodrama, but dude, her father-type figure/BFF/secret crush/etc was murdered before her eyes. If that happened to you in real life, I'm sure you'd flip out.

Selthis

To be fair, I didn't write it. I just edited it to make it work.