@Not Fishing – Not a bad concept but, in my opinion, it is lacking in execution. The appearance is simple and I don’t have a problem with that (Landsknechts be damned), aside from the grammatical mistakes which are not exclusive to appearance alone.
However, the personality is nonexistent, which feels somewhat like a cop-out to me even when done in good faith. It is obvious that character behavior changes as you get used to the character over time yourself and thus the personality isn’t always solid, but it’s still asked for a reason. I myself see it as a ‘preview’ of how the character would react to various situations, a predefined set of rules as to how the IC character will perform socially and psychologically.
Again, the biography is also rather basic. Now this is admittedly not a valid criticism in my opinion, as not everyone lives an interesting life, but I still like some color and unconventionality in the personality and the back story of a character. Aside from that the sheet also lacks the Secret Syllable of Royalty: MARNE. All in all, with revision, Darius would be a perfectly fine submission, but given the aim of having a rather small party size at this early point in the story, Darius unfortunately loses my approval.
@Greenie – I feel Meg’s archetype is rather basic. The appearance is that of a simple young woman and adventurer, depicting her clearly and well.
While I appreciate what you’ve done with Meg’s personality, it seems to me that it only depicts how she acts; it does not explore her inner side as much as I would like it to, or the mannerisms that make Meg herself. There isn’t anything wrong with it but I feel that it’s somewhat lacking in substance. I’ve likened it to a flurry of reactions in that I cannot see any introspection or anything that stands out in her personality.
The biography is well written but, well, the story itself is quite common in my opinion. While I don’t have a problem with it, it also does not stand out on anything interesting of its own – I personally prefer stories with a little bit more flair in them, even if solely for the sake of an interesting read. All in all, with Lady Marne entertaining her father, Meg is a solid submission, but ultimately lacking the citrus punch that I like so dearly. She would have my approval if it weren’t for the party limit.
@Hekazu – Vensor might be the pettiest character we’ve had, and I mean that in a good way. I feel that Lord (!)The ‘obsolete person’ trope, be it an old man, disgraced noble or wounded warrior is, as Hank has noted, one I like very much. Vensor’s appearance, with old age taking its toll on the once-hardened warrior, depicts the trope that defines him quite visually and I appreciate that.
I like how Vensor has both good and bad qualities, personality-wise. He is stubborn, shows a tinge of avoidance of truth with his ongoing grasp onto the obsolete Lord title, and he constantly believes himself to be correct, but he is also a loyal man and actively tries to save his comrades from grave danger. I personally like how his flaws are active and defining features in his personality, but also not strong and blatant enough to make him a completely dislikeable character, or worse, a needlessly bad character.
The biography itself integrates these flaws into a cohesive, if not heavily battle-oriented back story. Of course, not every person in the world is a wandering glass blower with a harelip and twelve toes, so I do not view combat-oriented jobs taking a good amount of the man’s biography as a bad thing. If anything I like how one flaw has been the catalyst for his story as warrior, while another effectively ended his active vampire hunting. I like to think that this also has a part to play in his tendency to try and save his allies from death, perhaps as a subconscious compensation for his avoidance of battle against the vampires at the Vigilant Hall. He has my approval.
@Altered Tundra – Kalthar, as Hank put it, feels somewhat disjointed, and this begins in his appearance. It sometimes repeats info and sometimes contradicts himself (an example, as petty as it might be, is his eye color – to my knowledge cerulean blue is much lighter than sapphire blue).
His personality similarly repeats itself and in some places I feel does not make much sense, especially when compared with his biography (his father is described as an honorable man – yet a heavily and violently abusive father and husband). Perhaps it is because we have different conceptions of honor but to me it feels self-contradictory.
The biography suffers from this flaw as well in my opinion. I like the somewhat saga-like manner in which his father and mother met, yet the fact that Kalthar’s mother was a hardened warrior who had defeated his father makes the fact that the man often abused him during marriage baseless. One would expect some sort of reaction from a woman; surely a pact has not devolved her to a shrinking violet. And the biggest flaw is, unless I’ve misread things, that one of timeline. The RP takes place in 4E 202, as the OOC post says, one year after the appearance of the Dragonborn. Yet somehow Kalthar leaves the Companions with the Dragonborn’s appearance and wanders Skyrim for ten years over the course of one year. Kalthar would require extensive reworking to have my approval and with the character limit, he loses my vote.
@Stormflyx – Amidst all the grim and conveniently dressed character submissions, I personally appreciate a taste of haute couture. Raelynn, with her love of good looks, feels like a classic upstart Breton, and this is quite cohesive with her personality.
I like how the little waifish woman, while helpful, is also manipulative, spoiled and snobbish internally. As I’ve said with Vensor’s review, I like petty characters who mix good and bad tendencies together, and I think Raelynn’s personality is quite believable in that matter. Not everyone you work with is completely pleasant to work with, and Raelynn, with how she is, fits in with my paranoid, confirmation-bias fueled view; that everyone secretly looks down on one another and that mutual dislike triumphs over the entirety of society.
Now admittedly there is one thing I could view as a flaw in the biography – that being the inclusion of the Mages’ Guild, which disbanded after the Oblivion Crisis, although I do not believe that the Synod and the College of Whispers jointly overtook every outpost of this former institution as omnipresent replacements, and thus I’m willing to believe that the Daggerfall Mages’ Guild is just an offshoot of the original one that’s an independent organization. Aside from this, the biography is solid and her upbringing is consistent with her personality. It is lacking in twists and simple in execution, but these are not bad things. Raelynn has my approval.
@Applo – The way dirt and twigs accentuate Tora’s appearance help to visually settle her as a hunter. While not detailed, it still gives enough information. I myself prefer appearance sections to have a paragraph dedicated to clothing, but its lack is not that much of a problem.
Tora’s personality is believably dim and simple. With how tactless and rude she is, I admittedly would expect her to be more loudly spoken. As believable as she is (not everyone has strong and unique character), she still lacks in detail. While there is nothing wrong with simplicity, it also means that you lack small quirks and details that could help the character have more of a presence and uniqueness. As everyone might have noticed by now, I have a tendency towards characters that stand out even in their simplicity and banality.
Similarly, Tora’s biography is also believably simple, which also gives it the flaw of being dim and lacking in detail. The life of peasantry in Skyrim is meant to be simple and I think the sheet conveys the impression of the pastoral life they lead well, thus it is not exactly a criticism, but this background also kind of limits you in the way you can spice it up. It’s simple, it works, but it’s also common. I like how she and others survived Helgen are not because of tragedy and willpower but simple coincidence, and I also appreciate how it ties with the events of the game itself. There is nothing wrong with Tora aside from a general lack of detail which could be fixed by simple revision. Because of the party limit she unfortunately loses my vote, but I have confidence that she could join the Party on another adventure in the future.
@Inkarnate – While Sjara’s description of appearance is ample and the formatting is also quite nice, I think the part where you describe how she ‘lacks any hesitation of being an elf in her attire’ is somewhat unnecessary, given how she is a Bosmer, who are bound by the Green Pact to wear only furs, leathers and other animal products. This also in my opinion weakens the ‘nord-elf’ sentiment somewhat. I would call these more personal nitpicks rather than actual criticism, however.
I like how Sjara is an internally conflicted character. I believe introspection is an important part of characterization and the personality conveys it quite well, even if her conflict is quite simple, through merit of introspection it is easy to empathize with; she has not personally developed well enough to properly identify her problems, but all this is conveyed in a way well enough to actually strengthen her as a character when viewed from the point of a reader, rather than to weaken it. The very last sentence of the personality section lacks some key words though, I think.
Her biography is also quite simple but descriptive enough as to not be lacking in detail. She is isolated from the bigger picture, and I think it fits well into the back story in the way you’ve conveyed it. While I think 14 is an early age to set out alone into the Northern wilderness, she *is* Bosmer after all, so again I would not consider this actual criticism. I like how she gets up slowly tangled in politics later into her life, and how this fact begins slowly creeping into the end of a paragraph just the same way her involvement increases, and starts taking up in earnest in another paragraph where she also has become involved. As George Lucas said, it’s like poetry, it rhymes. While I feared that her character presence could be lacking, not unlike that of an adept Archery trainer NPC in Skyrim, I have confidence that you will convey her well enough to avoid that pitfall common to her character archetype.
@Oak7ree – The Song of Roland is familiar indeed, from the previous incarnation. I personally like how to-the-point and militaristic his appearance is, but I would think that a man who is suited for constant heavy armor usage on foot would have a stronger physique.
Roland’s personality, however, I find quite short and lacking in substance. He’s a patriotic social climber with trauma, which is a strong trove of potential to work upon, but it stands untapped in my opinion. All we know of him is that he was an extroverted military man who isn’t as much so today.
His biography is simple and believable the same way Tora’s is; as I’ve said, not everyone needs to lead a unique life, but the way Roland is described makes him feel like a minor redshirt who’s simply lived long. Roland lives in the fronts, and one day has an encounter that’s a level (or twenty) too high for him that leaves him amongst the sole survivors of a horrifying attack. The premise is simple, but as I’ve said before, simple is not a problem; what matters is what you make out of that premise. While Roland has the potential to be a good character and could easily get accepted into the RP in the future, with the limited party limit, he falls short.
@Dervish – In a completely unexpected surprise, the Dervish has made a Khajiit; just as unbelievable as the rare occurrence when I make a Dunmer character for a TES RP. Vasora’s appearance has hints of both ‘untrustworthy’ and ‘regal’, just like a smug housecat, and I think this fits in well with the rest of her character.
I’ve voiced my preference for unique and nuanced characters many times through the reviews; Vasora is very much in the vein of what I like. She is a multi-faceted character, who is very easily dislikeable and likeable at the same time, with hidden depths of a glory hound (or in this case, cat) and she is greedy in many terms of the word, which give her the nuance of a well-developed character.
Vasora’s criminal tendencies grow because of compulsions left unchecked because of faults in parenting, and not because of tragedy that takes her away from her rich family, and I think that makes her both less of a cliché and more of a believable character at the same time. Rich person partaking in petty crime can be very corny when handled by others, but you’ve pulled it off, so kudos. Vasora manages to hit both ups and downs in her life and it all happens very fluidly and in unexpected ways. She begins spending time in a library and it only jumpstarts her greedy streak further. She works for an antiquarian. These are all unexplored avenues and paths in roleplaying characters in my opinion. With these oft-forgotten professions and less encountered possibilities (imagination fueling sheer greed and not say, a desire to become a mage or an adventurer) in her back story, Vasora manages to feel the part of a larger, living and breathing world, earning her uniqueness and historicity with flying colors. She has my approval.
@DearTrickster – I’ve thought of Judena as a slanted and odd character from the very beginning of her appearance section and she indeed has been one, and I think it’s obvious by now that for me these are positive traits. Your inclusion of ‘bearded dragon’ as reference in her appearance has helped me visualize her much more uniquely, and admittedly positively, in comparison to the two other possible avenues that often plague Argonians; ‘generic anthropomorphized lizard’ or ‘wet dream of scalies everywhere’.
I like how her personality mixes with that of a passionate professor and a forgetful old lady at the same time, although somehow I think it would not be that easy to make your peace with a condition as horrifying as memory loss. Even logbooks would be just a daily reminder of your failing state of mind; and foregoing them would mean just dooming your experiences and development as a person. Nonetheless, I appreciate her obsessive notes about daily things that she goes through.
Her background is quite detailed yet simple at the same time, although I feel it could be a polished a little bit further to both streamline it and make it more believable. For example, she and her siblings learn how to survive in the wilds of the Black Marsh, and thus she learns how to use a spear, and also picks up fishing. Considering how port cities are often more developed and cosmopolitan, I feel they wouldn’t teach people how to use weapons as to defend themselves; maybe you could simply write that she took up usage of spears as a way of fishing (spear fishing is a valid practice, if I recall correctly, and for an Argonian it would be likely twice if not thrice as convenient in my opinion). She is victim to a common, plausible accident that leaves her impaired. This is a very much authentic path in her evolution as person, and her interest in magic has pretty simple and believable beginnings. However, I’m not sure how effective the Arcane University would be as an institution of education, given how the Mages Guild has disbanded after the Oblivion Crisis – this kind of leaves the extent of her education in magic -especially Mysticism which has practically fallen out of usage in the Fourth Era- somewhat up in the air, in my opinion, doubly so with her memory loss. While I appreciate her collector-enthusiast approach to her findings, her simply stashing them also does not make much sense to me, and I feel that a person of that caliber would be able to oversee expeditions as opposed to taking part in muddy and possibly fruitless dungeon delving. There are also some grammar and syntax errors, but these are a simple do-over away from fixing. I very much like Judena, and perhaps it is for this reason that I’ll put my approval into another character; she can be made much better, in my opinion, and the concept you’ve caught is very much neat, I would like to see her at the apex of her potential as a complex character.
POOPHEAD189,
Naril
