Biography Pitfalls

Description Issues

This section will describe various issues brought about while writing a character description, and the actual character bio is not the primary focus.

First Impressions

"You never get a second chance to make a good first impression."

You have probably heard this in real life many times, but it's true here on our games as well. Except rather than having to comb your hair and such, your first impression to players is the description. It is critical to your enjoyment that you have a well written, spellchecked, and grammatically correct description. If a description has poor grammar and/or spelling, it says negative things about you. If a good portion of the description says bad things about you, then your reaction is not going to be positive throughout most of your stay on our games. This applies to bios and other +staffrequests as well.

Remedy: Spellcheck if you're unsure about the spelling of several things in your description or bio. If you need help with a word, try www.dictionary.com.

Always moving

Things like, "Always moving." and "Always smiling" are not good in a description. If your description indicates that you're always moving and always smiling, what about when your character is bound and being tortured for information? Actions are situational, not constant.

Remedy: Only show us what we can see in the description. Think of the description as a point in time with things that won't change on the fly, things like hair color, eye color, size, and clothing.

Powerposing descriptions

"His eyes bore into your soul and you can't help but feel your knees shake." This isn't good either. A description like this effectively imposes an action on another character. Same goes for, "She is undeniably beautiful" and "He is the most muscular man you've ever seen."

Remedy: Be objective in your character descriptions. Show us what we can see, and allow us to judge for our characters if they're afraid of your character of find her beautiful.

Unthematic descriptions

We provide racial samples of character descriptions, and there are some racial pictures in the Wiki. Descriptions that fly directly in the face of these standards just don't work well. For example, a Zangali will not have skin and hair, but will have scales. Centaurans have tentacles, not hands. Not only do touches like this wreck another players sense of feeling in the world, but it hurts your sense of feeling as well.

Remedy: Read the sample racial descriptions, and apply them to your character.

Excessive description

When I type the look command and see what your character looks like, I don't want to read several pages of stunning prose, I want to know what your character looks like. Descriptions over about half a page or so tend to not be read by your fellow roleplayers, and might even annoy them if they're of little substance.

Remedy: Unless your character has a lot of important things to see, keep it to a couple paragraphs, please. Conventionally one paragraph describes the physical body of the character (height, eye color, hair color, etc) and the second describes clothing. If you really want to add more than this, make it more optional. Put a little blurb at the end of your character's description that says something like, "Type +inspect/list to view items that have more details." To set up +inspect, check out +help +inspect.

Bio Issues

This section is focused on issues involving the biography and application itself.

Conventionally non-thematic applications

Simply put, these are applications that directly violate the conventional theme. Alien-lovers from Earth or Mars, modern Vollistans who love technology, violent Centauri and such. While these won't achieve an immediate rejection, they will be rejected unless the explanation is extremely good. In other words, a new player should avoid the challenges that come with these "special cases."

Remedy: Either go with more conventional concepts, so you don't have to explain your characters strangeness and how they deal with it, or spend a lot of time exploring how their strangeness affected their lives.

First person biographies

Like non-conventional concepts, a first person written biography (use of words like "I" and "We" in a narration) is not something that will be automatically rejected. However, a bio written in such a manner makes it difficult to show familiarity with the character concept or the general theme of Otherspace in general.

Remedy: Try to keep the bio in third person. This not only makes it easier to read the biography for the one reviewing the application, but it shows that you understand the concept and themes of our games.

Orphans

Another offense that will not earn an immediate rejection, but we have seen a few too many of these kinds of applications in the past. Mostly because they make an easy shortcut. That isn't to say, "Don't make an orphan." However, if you do make one of these kinds of applications, explain its impact beyond just, "My character doesn't have parents."

Remedy: Consider if an orphan character enhances the character concept, rather than just making a biographical shortcut. Explain the impact that being an orphan has on the character, and describe those who have been parent-figures to your character. Having living friend and relative NPCs can be a handy way to explain future absences.

Theme-null applications

Theme-null applications are effectively bios that could work in any theme anywhere in existence. The places might be changed, even the technology or what their parents did for a living, but in the end these bios are pure vanilla. The cold-reading of the bio world. For example:

George was born 24 years ago in a small town. His parents were about average. One was a farmer, the other worked in the nearby town. George went to school, and did okay. Then he got a job after graduating. Finally, he quit his job and is now wandering about looking for adventure.

"What's thematically wrong with this bio?" you ask? Technically, nothing at all. That's because nothing about the theme of OtherSpace is mentioned. There's no mention of a planet, or even a date of birth. Sometimes this kind of bio is embellished a bit, with more detail to meet the minimum word requirement, but the point remains: There's no meat in this bio. Application readers look at this as a sign of laziness, not a good thing when your bio is being evaluated.

Remedy: Include some thematic references in your bio. The more you can fit in, the better. We aren't saying every event that's happened in the past 7 years must be mentioned, but a couple thematic mentions to say, "Hey, I know the theme's basics!" go a long way. A better short version of George's life could be:

George was born in 2982 in a small village on Waldheim. His parents were pretty average, his father was a farmer, and his mother worked as a receptionist in the nearby village. George went to school, and he didn't do all that badly at it either, but his grades did suffer a bit from the fact that after school he had to help out on the farm. In his second year of university, the Sivadians made contact with Waldheim, freeing it from its centuries long isolation. Then he heard about the demand from the galaxy for Waldheim engineers, since they specialized in nanotechnology. This led him to try and become an engineer, after hearing about the opportunities available for him. He's now just finished school, looking outward towards the world.

Notice now how George mentions basic theme, and while it doesn't mention too much, it mentions that the Sivadians made contact, and he now has a better reason for leaving the planet other than, "I want to explore." Which leads us to...

Goal: To explore

What's wrong with a character that wants to explore the galaxy and has never left home before? Two things:

1. It's a cheap way out of having to come up with more complex motivations for a character concept.
2. The concept is overdone.

This pet peeve will not warrant an instant rejection, but we do like to see the desire to explore mentioned in the bio other than a little blip at the end. There is nothing wrong with wanting to explore the universe, but it is annoying to see several bios with poorly explained exploration desires.

Remedy: Come up with another motivation in life for your character, or explain exploration so that it makes sense and fits the rest of the character.

Concept written to legendary

Some concepts are written where the character never screws up, everything has gone right, and they can overcome anything. Once you get on the grid though, you're set up to fail. You write your character to be able to penetrate any security system, or they never miss with their gun: I'm going to let you in on a secret now, your character will fail sometimes. Also, the more powerful you want your character to be from the outset, the better your bio must be.

Remedy: Tone down the concepts abilities a bit. If your character is a hacker, he can still be a good hacker, but don't pretend your character is totally unbeatable. Part of the fun of a character is earning really powerful skills. Also, keep in mind that, for most character concepts out there, there are a couple of "A-listers" that have had more time -- in some cases, several years -- to truly achieve legendary status in their field. Writing a concept solely based around "He's the best gunman in the galaxy" without taking into account such long-standing characters is not going to make you happy in the long run.

That said, character concepts that run along the lines of "he aims to become more (in)famous than one of these A-listers" not only give you in-character motivations, they also give you RP hooks should you ever meet them. Of course, make sure that you run such concepts past the players if you decide to give yourself a link to previously existing characters.

Overly Niched

Most character concepts will have a niche of some kind. Crafters will specialize in one kind of crafting, combatants will favor one weapon over all others. However, it is possible to write a character concept that fulfills a niche too obscure. An example would be making an assassin in a game that has relatively few underworld characters to begin with.

Remedy: The best defense against making a character too obscure of a niche is to ask on the newbie channel about what kinds of concepts are out there. Another excellent way to avoid this pitfall is to broaden the concept of the character enough. Instead of making an assassin, perhaps make a general 'rogue' figure with a variety of skills in addition to assassination, such as stealth skills to move about, lockpicking, and some social skills to be able to fast talk some of those suspicious NPCs that might come up. Consider giving your character a passing familiarity with a "useless" skill, as this may provide interesting color to an unexpected future RP situation.