Hello !

So. There is a question that is bugging me for awhile.

What do you do when everyone hates one of your characters ( including yourself ) but that character is crucial to the plot of the RP and cannot be killed / removed ?

Hates in what manner, @Ashevelendar?

Hate as in all the characters hate the character, or hate as in the roleplayers find that character a piece of crap that is the result of some twist of illiteracy?

I'm assuming this is a good guy?

The best thing you can do is prevent yourself from running into this mistake by making characters this crucial tried and true. There's nothing wrong with experimentation, but it's wise not to take too many chances with a character that's carrying your RP.

The next best thing you can do is rework the character. Figure out what makes him/her so despicable and find creative ways to change it. If the character is too strong, make something weaken them. If their personality sucks, make something happen that changes the character's view of life or themselves. It's hard to say exactly what will fix your character, and you may need several events to get desirable results.

The third thing you could do is just suck it up and kill/remove the character. Make the legend actually refer to a different chosen one, make their soul bound weapon bindable to his soul mate, or whatever sort of BS that needs to happen, just do it! If the character is so bad that even you hate them, maybe your fellow players will be able to overlook whatever strings you have to pull to remove "it" from their world.

Probably need to expand on the question a bit so we can provide a more accurate answer. Are we talking about OOC or IC dislike? How are they disliked? How are they crucial to the plot? Are they a a character you can modify?

So I had this one character ages ago that I created who had a bubbly personality in a post apocalypse world. After a while I really disliked the character so I ended up dropping them into a tragic incident and stepped away from the RP. Months later the RP was rebooted and I was asked to return. I came back, created a new character and was asked, "what about this one you had before?" because technically she was still alive.

And this is when the real fun began...

I chopped off her arm and took out her eye, replacing them with cybernetic alternatives. Destroyed her bubbly personality, replacing it with depression and sadness. Then finslly gave her PTSD as well as a psychosis problem, all thanks to an introduced plot element as well.

Basically, killing a character isn't always the only option. What you might need to do is find that trait or attribute that you don't like and see why its conflicting in the story or the character development.

Your plot also doesn't have to be so rigid as well. Its hard to tell without knowing, but things do fuck up sometimes in their adventures. Protecting them can be classified under the term of plot armour. Its not a bad term as a lot of characters in movies like Marvel have heavy plot armour, but you compare that to game of thones where main characters are killed, and you'll see how a lack of plot armour can be a good thing.

@NuttsnBolts

I tend to find, that. motherfucking. normal people trying to do great things, instead of like. be great things. Is a good way to make your motherfucking. abstract actor more fun to play due to character growth pathing. You know. If you have an evil shitter who wants to plant lego and spill splinters, it's a lot cooler to make him just an normal guy. Maybe like...got social anxiety and maybe had shitty love life.

Then when you throw that guy in. Even if he has some kind of powers that numbed down. It's like. Whoah. How is this going to get out of this. As long as you properly make him respect and react to other players powers and make him slowly face his obvious flaws as he moves along. You know..falling and hoping to love a character who just flirts a little. Because it already gets tense and cool for the plot. Because instead of just some schemer being scheming, it's now. Look at this fucker, will his personality get in the way of his personality.
Can he fuck life before life fucks him. you know.

It tends to make in theory unlikable characters, likable.

@ScreenAcne
Err... That reply, I'm sorry to say, isn't really legible and I'm not sure what you're conveying. You're dropping in random swear words and your grammar is all messed up.

@ScreenAcne
Err... That reply, I'm sorry to say, isn't really legible and I'm not sure what you're conveying. You're dropping in random swear words and your grammar is all messed up.

Make your characters look human, perhaps? Bad as they are, they still suffer human issues that can be related to?

@NuttsnBolts

Motherfucking. sorry, brother. I like. swear and mix up because its my brain trying to not let all my thought jumble into the dishwasher of my ticket taker. I got some sort of thought disorder that means I have "thought crashes" so that's like. My traffic light.

{Translation}

Characters tend to become much more likable when they are more defective to their own goals. Typically the more of a bad(unskilled or lack of assured power defining bad here) start a character has the more fantastical the bar lowers for this effect to take place. The more powerful or weird or whatever you make a character the bar has to keep raising, to the point that it's no real surprise that they achieve the goal anyway or that even with sporting opposing rivals the ways they do it can become predictable. Normal people are good drivers if you can apply human limits onto them and humans, generally. As a rule. Suck at shit.

They suck at seeing how they suck, they suck at seeing when the right time to do something. They suck at reacting on the spot. That's what makes human triumph so empowering to look at, because how they suck is relatable. A lot of characters in my experience that tend to be unlikable are fixed characters...EG: "lawful paladin who is always lawful and good cop" when in reality, no one is 100% confident of being in the right, of the laws and they are DEFINITELY not 100% confident in themselves. Cops aren't even confident in all the laws. Now you're fucked, you got to eat but yesterday despite all your training, all your experience you had to shoot a guy who just wanted to see his kid and was stopped from doing so by an abusive ex wife.

How do your live with that and still be a good guy.

Basically: if you want to make a character more likable. Give your characters mirror image devil horns...to himself. Then make him have to learn to grab 'em and try to tackle 'em or keep getting gored and wonder why they keep doing worse shit or leaving destruction in their wake.

Maybe, like. This dosen't have anything to do with your posts. Fuck, brother. Sorry. I'm of like. Flipping my brains more than a acrobatic burger vendor lately. So, I'm all in the maze.

we can (mostly) sum your entire post into a few words, @ScreenAcne:

Sufficiently suitable character flaws.

I like the abridged version.

@Ellri

You could but don't be surprised when almost everyone who reads it have vastly different ideas of suitable, flaws and sufficiently to the point that any message intended was lost.

Use too few words and the message becomes open ended and up for interpretation.

Use too many words and the message becomes bloated and difficult to understand.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Another thing you can do if a character is impossible to kill off is simply re-plan the direction of the story. If everyone hates a character, it's probably wise to lift the burden of carrying the story off of their shoulders.

Oh, yes. Not everyone will agree on what flaws are "best" and all that. But that's simply because people ain't the same.