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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hypersmurf" data-source="post: 1229480" data-attributes="member: 1656">Have you ever tried explaining to a non-roleplayer about having a character you're playing do or say something that surprises you?You get the weirdest looks...Anyway.The background for the most recent character I've started playing (a PbEM game) was interesting.I decided to revive a character I'd played a year earlier in another PbEM game with the same DM, that had eventually ground to a halt (as PbEMs are wont to do).  Since both games are set in a slightly-modified Realms, it was a reasonable choice.However, the two games were set fifty years apart, game time, and the character (an elf, fortunately) was coming in at the same level he had been in the first game.So I needed to account for why he hadn't levelled in fifty years.  Since he'd been just embarking on a romantic subplot when the first game folded, I figured that some time between then and now, she'd left him... and he'd subsequently spent thirty or forty years moping about it, until one of his best friends finally gave him a kick and made him sort himself out.So while the character is the same, he's a little older, a lot more bitter, and generally a little more jaded than he was first time around.I've also done the reverse - used the same character in a second game, only this time younger, and at a lower level.  Taking a character played at 5th, and playing her again at 1st.  Discovering along the way which parts of her personality resulted from nature or nurture, and which from her experiences as an adventurer after beginning her career.Second time around, the younger version, was a much more naive, excited, wide-eyed character than when I'd first played her.And both those characters were essentially the blank-slate method first time around... they began with very broadly-defined personalities and a one-paragraph back story, and evolved from there into very definite individuals.  Second time around, there's a lot more "to" them, since I already know "who they are".Both ways - nebulously defined, and very clearly laid out - are fun to play, in my experience.(I've also had characters change completely between drawing board and actual play.  I once put together a druid in preparation for joining a game that had alrady been running for some time.  She was originally a ditzy blonde valley girl... but once I saw the chaos and internal bickering that went on with the party in question, I figured throwing a ditz into the mix would be suicidal.  I did a 180 and made her a no-nonsense practical type before she hit the table...)-Hyp.</blockquote>

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