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[FuzzyZergling]

Well, how about Forgath the dwarf from Goblins?
Lawful Good Cleric.

[Shadowgandor]

Yay, I got accepted!
Also, I think this also shows the mood going on around the character.

[LordBucket]

AussieGuy
Gimli

Accepted.

Shadowgandor
I think this also shows the mood going on around the character.

Maybe, but "mood going around the character" doesn't help establish personality of the character. The video you linked shows us the world he's in. But that doesn't matter here, because he's not going to be in that world, he's going to be in Pool of Radiance. All the stuff about the zombies and patrols doesn't apply, because we're transporting characters out of their source environment. The monologue he gives explains how he came to be who he is, and that he's out for revenge, but again...none of that applies in the world he's going to be in.

Now watch the video I linked, which shows him:

1) Trying to act all tough, claiming to be a homocidal maniac, and then acting all whiny because somebody spits gum that he steps in. And then, after a moment he steps back into "I'm the tough guy" and blows the whole incident out of proportion and acts like the guy spitting gum is a horrible, awful thing, and exacting revenge for such an atrocity as spitting gum demands immediate justice.

2) Doing basically the same thing with the guy who honks at him. "Nobody honks at Alex Mercer! Vengeance will be mine!!!"

3) After both incidents, being momentarily disoriented, and having to consciously work himself back into focus for "the mission at hand."

4) Having to stop he bloodthirsty reign of vengeance because...it's his brother's birthday and he needs to go buy him a teddy bear.


All of this is establishing, not powers, not environment, but personality. Alex perceives himself as an Axe Crazy Anti Hero on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, but he's actually an Idiot Hero / Knight Templar, Jerk With A Heart Of Gold who's prone to Disproportionate Retribution against acts of Murder, Arson and Jaywalking.

"What you do" and "where you are" and "how you got to be there" is not who you are. "My name is Joe, I'm a hero, I use a sword, I kill bad people and some other character name Sue is very important to me" is absolutely useless in terms of characterization.

That tiny little two minute clip shows more character and personality than all the other links and materials provided by everyone else in this thread for their characters combined.

To everyone who's still looking for a character, see what I did up there with Alex, writing out a sentence or two showing a bunch of tropes at work with a character? See if you can do that with the character you're proposing. If you can't...if all you can do is explain his powers, or what his goals are in his source material, I can't write dialogue for that.

Burnt Pies
Here's the first comic Brunch mentioned in.

Ok. So, going to your link, I see a grand total of three strips that he's in, followed by at least a couple dozen strips that he's not in. This is so totally a minor character, you might as well ask to play "background extra #4 from episode 30 of Star Trek." And maybe he does become important at some point, but understand that I'm not going to read through several hundred pages of comics to find the 5 or 10 more that he appears in.

Beyond that, let's look at the character as he's protrayed in those whole three strips you've linked for us. He does only two things of signifiance:

1) He insults his parter and they agree about which is the main character and which is the sidekick. This doesn't help us because you only get one character. Just like Sam & Max mentioned previously, characters who are defined by their interaction with their partner won't work here. Imagine if somebody asked to bring in Tom from Tom & Jerry. What does Tom do apart from Jerry? Umm...nothing?

2) He self-importantly overreacts to someone who points out that neither of them are important. The overreaction itself is characterization, but there's just not enough to work with here.

Again, look at that tvtropes link-list sentence I made for Alex mercer. Try to do that with Brunch based on the material you've given me. Umm..."Brunch Wants To Be Special."  That's pretty much all I get from your link.

flimsy attempt to give him some backstory other than being a weird drunk.

...so he had no backstory and the backstory he was given was flimsy? Do you see how this does not make for an interesting well-developed character?

FuzzyZergling
Well, how about Forgath the dwarf from Goblins?

New rule:
No minor characters from obscure web comics that nobody has heard of, or other materials that require me to read through 40+ pages of material to get a handful of one-line text bubbles that provide almost no characterization at all.

Rejected

[Heron TSG]

Forgath is one of the main characters, and Goblins isn't actually very obscure.

[LordBucket]

Forgath is one of the main characters, and Goblins isn't actually very obscure.

First rule on the list specified: "Preferably something that I'm familiar with. I need to write dialogue, so if you ask for something I've never heard of, I'm probably going to veto."

[3]

I propose Terry Bogard. Neutral Good Fighter (ideally he'd be a monk, but there aren't any monks*).

Spoiler: Portrait (click to show/hide)

The submission's more for the potential hilarity involved in having him around than for his depth of character (or lack thereof). You could play him straight (in which case the linked wiki article would be accurate and he'd be relatively boring) or you could take the Memetic Mutation route and make everything he says virtually incomprehensible. The latter, of course, depends on whether you can nail his trademark Gratuitous English, which might require some research if you're not familliar with such. ARE YOU OKAY? GO DOWN! KICK BACK!

In any case, he's an amiable-yet-determined Engrish-infested hick with self-styled mystical martial arts and an eye for girls. Even if nobody knows what he's shouting about.

_{* I guess you could make a feasible bizarro-fighter with no/only basic equipment by hacking his stats but that'd be hell to balance.}

[LordBucket]

play him straight (in which case
he'd be relatively boring) or
take the Memetic Mutation route and
make everything he says virtually incomprehensible.

...wait, so you're saying that being viturally incomprehensible is going to be more entertaining?

The submission's more for the potential hilarity involved in having
him around than for his depth of character (or lack thereof).

I'm all for hilarity, but how is having a character you describe as lacking depth and whose trademark, apparently, is being incomprehensible...how is that going to be entertaining?

nail his trademark Gratuitous English,
ARE YOU OKAY? GO DOWN! KICK BACK!

To quote from the original post: "Be prepared to participate in the thread, in-character. Break the Fourth Wall all you want. For example, if you want the party to level up more before advancing to the next area, don't post to explain it. Instead, have your character post to explain it."

The premise here is that everyone with a character will be participating in-character in the thread. So, are you planning to post random, meaningless statements from time to time? I'm having a difficult time coming up with a scenario in which that would be especially fun or interesting to read.

he'd be relatively boring

might require some research

This thread was not supposed to be a competition for who could come up with the most difficult, boring or obscure characters.

Would it be so terrible if people tried choosing characters who are, oh I don't know...interesting? Sufficiently mainstream that I don't have to spend hours doing research on them? Sufficiently mainstream that people reading the thread can recognize them without doing hours of research on them?

[3]

...wait, so you're saying that being viturally incomprehensible is going to be more entertaining?

I'm all for hilarity, but how is having a character you describe as lacking depth and whose trademark, apparently, is being incomprehensible...how is that going to be entertaining?

The premise here is that everyone with a character will be participating in-character in the thread. So, are you planning to post random, meaningless statements from time to time?

The said "statements" aren't meaningless, nor would I be posting them randomly. They're ridiculous and absurdly hammy. This is what makes them amusing. As I said, the character could potentially be played either way, or of any degree(s) between straight and inane, and a balance'd obviously have to be struck somewhere. You offer that people suggest characters; you offer that (at least partially) you write for them. How you write for them is your prerogative.

This thread was not supposed to be a competition for who could come up with the most difficult, boring or obscure characters.

Yes, and I'm not sure where you got the impression that I was making out the above-quoted text to be a description of positive qualities. The ball is entirely in your court. I give you the facts and you make a desicion. I made no attempt to disguise that there might be difficulties here. I thought you might have a sliver of interest in something... different.

Sufficiently mainstream that I don't have to spend hours doing research on them? Sufficiently mainstream that people reading the thread can recognize them without doing hours of research on them?

I'm sorry if you can't recognise the mascot of a principal gaming company, although I was afraid that might be the case given the precedent set by other posters. I accounted for such in my above post.

The issue I'm seeing here is that you're clearly predisposed towards specific... things but you're not admitting as such for fear of stifling the application attempts. Either you need to broaden your horizons, or you need to stop jumping down the throat of anyone who doesn't know exactly what you want.

[LordBucket]

I'm sorry if you can't recognise the mascot of a principal gaming company,

Do you realize that according to your link. That company went out of business ten years ago? I have a difficult time considering a company that ceased to exist a decade ago a "principal gaming company." I'm pretty confidant I could go to my local gamestop or computer parlour, pick out a dozen people at random and ask them all to name every gaming company they can think of, and not one of them would blurt out SNK Playmore.

you're clearly predisposed towards specific... things

Yes, and I listed those predispotions in the original post. I said straight away that:

1) "I need to write dialogue, so if you ask for something I've never heard of, I'm probably going to veto"

2) "characters must be reasonably able to fit into both the Let's Play format, as well as the game world itself"

Terry Bogard fails both of those. Amusingly, I think I've actually played some of the Fatal Fury arcade games, but Terry is such an unmemorable character that I didn't even recognize his name. And as far as fitting into the format, I just don't see a way to write entertaining dialogue for a character who, so far as I can tell from the youtube videos I watched, has four different stock phrases and does nothing but repeat them when he punches or kicks people.

Look at some of the submissions that have been rejected. Consider Captain Bunch: do a google search for "captain brunch" and nothing resembling the character shows up on the first page of results, nor does he show up in the image search. If even google doesn't know who this character is, I think it's reasonable to call him fairly obscure.

Compare to some of the examples I gave in the OP: James Bond, Jean Gray, Wolverine, Superman. These are characters who've all been major characters in multiple movies that at least tens of millions of people have seen. Fox Mulder and Naruto are primary protagonist television characters from series' with hundreds of episodes. Ask any random passerby on the street if they know who "the guy from x-files" is, and odds are pretty good they're going to say yes.

Even the least well known examples I gave, Groo and Galactus, have their own wiki page for themselves personally, and if you had no idea who the characters are and did an image search for their names, you'd know immediately which one was them. Comparitively, some of the submissions in this thread...not only do the characters being submitted have no entry, the entire source material they come from has no entry.

Not all of them are totally obscure. Tom Bombadil is not totally obscure. But he wouldn't work in this environment any more than Galactus would, and it comes as no surprise that when the Lord of the Rings trilogy was made into movies, he was omitted from those movies.

Here we're going on an adventure, and yet people are submitting character like Tom Bombadil who was pretty much defined by his non-interest in going adventuring, or for that matter having much of anything to do with the story he was in at all. Here I've asked for characters that I can write dialogue for, yet people are submitting characters like Terry Bogard who apparently has only about four stock phrases that he repeats over and over. Here I've stated that I want characters I'm familiar with, and yet we're getting characters from webcomics that are so obscure that even google apparently doesn't know who they are.

Do you understand my frustration?

you need to stop jumping down the throat of anyone who doesn't know exactly what you want.

Read the original post. It's pretty obvious what I want. Characters who:

 * I'm familiar with
 * It's practical to write dialogue for
 * Can be written for both by me and the person submitting them in the form of in-character posts in this thread
 * Can reasonably be imagined as going on an adventure in a D&D-esque environment without flagrantly breaking their own character.

The last one is slightly vague, which is why I gave examples. You could drop a Star Trek medical doctor into D&D and it would be in character for her to try her best to heal people and insist that she's not a God or magic. Whereas it would be completely out of character for Galactus, who spends most of his time flying around the galaxy eating planets, to hang out with some level 1 adventurers and beat on orcs with swords.

As for the first one, I realize that people can't magically know which characters I know...but the very first rule on the list specified that I wanted characters I'm familiar with, and nowhere do I say anything about webcomics. Why are people submitting characters from webcomics that again...I can type their name into a google search, and no matching results come up....what about that inspires people to think that I'll probably be familiar with that character? I specifically gave Galactus as an example of what not to do. Why exactly was Tom Bombadil submitted? I said no characters who were heroic mimes or so generic that they might as well be, and I made it perfectly clear that I would be writing dialogue for these characters. What about that inspired you to submit a character who says only the same four lines over and over?

I feel like people are competing for who can come up with the most obscure, least developed and most difficult characters to write for.

[3]

(First off, note that this post and my previous response are... philosophical, so to speak. I don't really care about Terry's inclusion; I thought it'd be amusing to throw a curveball of sorts, as I implied earlier. If you think I'm wasting your time/space, then just say and I'll shut up)

Do you realize that according to your link. That company went out of business ten years ago? I have a difficult time considering a company that ceased to exist a decade ago a "principal gaming company."

The original company did, in technicality and spirit. The actual company continues to exist. Besides, even if they're not relevant today (which isn't entirely true) they at least had some significant impact both in technological and economic terms.

Yes, and I listed those predispotions in the original post. I said straight away that:

1) "I need to write dialogue, so if you ask for something I've never heard of, I'm probably going to veto"

2) "characters must be reasonably able to fit into both the Let's Play format, as well as the game world itself"

Right, which wasn't exactly what I was referring to, but regardless...

The first point is entirely moot since nobody has any idea what you've heard of or not besides the most obvious of characters; you establish this later yourself, quite rightly. We can get some idea as to what you've heard of via the slant of your OP (which was what I was actually talking about, but it doesn't matter now) and from how you recieve people's applications. In any case, trial and error is a necessary factor for the applicant, and this is a potential problem for reasons I'll get to later.

I just don't see a way to write entertaining dialogue for a character who, so far as I can tell from the youtube videos I watched, has four different stock phrases and does nothing but repeat them when he punches or kicks people.

I said no characters who were heroic mimes or so generic that they might as well be, and I made it perfectly clear that I would be writing dialogue for these characters. What about that inspired you to submit a character who says only the same four lines over and over?

I'd disagree entirely, but I think we have a difference in approach. Obviously Terry, specifically, is a pretty one-dimensional character on the surface, but that's not to say he lacks personality: There's personality in his movement, stances, his actions. You say the character's past and motives have no relevance; I disagree, and say the motives make the man. You're going to be making assumptions about how all of these characters are to behave in a given situation anyway, so there's no saying that you don't have anything to run on. What's the alternative, lift existing lines and tweak them? Surely you can be more creative than that; more interpretive?

Spoiler: Further tangent (click to show/hide)

There's something about well-made game sprites - or just good animation in general - that's just... enigmatic. There doesn't need to be much dialogue; there doesn't need to be any dialogue at all: Personalities can be read purely through motion. Attitude. There's a beauty there in games like the ones SNK were well-known for that transcends the vast majority of game characters even today, despite how old some of this stuff may be, often regardless of how well-written said modern characters are. It's just like great acting, or instrumental music; you feel it without being told it (the same as great writing, but that generally doesn't exist in the games industry). I don't think it'd be unwise to say it's based on experience with the subject at hand so it's not really relevant in this instance...

Do you understand my frustration?

I understand to an extent but frankly I think part of the issue lies in your own planning and presentation.

I feel like people are competing for who can come up with the most obscure, least developed and most difficult characters to write for.

People are coming up with characters they like, or think would be amusing. Perhaps Bombadil was submitted precisely because he wouldn't make a great deal of sense in the situation; obviously the game mechanics'd get in the way when it came to the practicality of it all, but in theory he could sit on the sidelines and bounce about the trees or whatever it is he does. He'd be a... zany choice. Some people like that stuff; maybe some people think it qualifies even if you don't. Not like that means anything.

Maybe some people think you're expressing an interest in what they like, since you're the one asking the question, and want to share. To be hyperbolic, I could say that that people are explicitly discouraged from talking about things that are mainstream (to your apparent chagrin) because they know you know about those things because you reference them. I mean, if you wanted Superman, why would you invite other people to suggest him? Why not just fill the post on your own? Nobody's going to come in and make the most obvious suggestion; that's dull, and more importantly, it's impersonal (while the application process is taken as explicitly personal; the freedom to make an individual choice).

Read the original post. It's pretty obvious what I want. Characters who:

 * I'm familiar with
 * It's practical to write dialogue for
 * Can be written for both by me and the person submitting them in the form of in-character posts in this thread
 * Can reasonably be imagined as going on an adventure in a D&D-esque environment without flagrantly breaking their own character.

I was complaining about your confrontational attitude and the fact that it might be drawing people off, nothing more. If you honestly expect enough people to get it right first try - without being discouraged by argument, because people will say "fuck this" when challenged - then... well, I don't know how far this'll get. As I've expressed, I for one appear to think about this sort of thing a little differently to the way you do, and somebody who's perfectly "innocent" in their own mind may not be in yours.

[FuzzyZergling]

Jim Raynor from StarCraft.
Neutral Good Fighter.



(So far, all the accepted characters have been fighters. This could be a problem.)

[Heron TSG]

Go, go, fighter legion!

[Patchy]

Sounds interesting, and if it actually gets off the ground, I may actually read this lp.

But it might be easier if you just list the chars you are willing to write for and/or know well enough. It is hard to guess what fictional chars someone(you) knows or heard about in rl, and far, far, FAR harder to do it from a block of text on a message board. I know you said you would research the ones you weren't familiar with, but oftentimes the one wiki page of info is all there will be to go on unless you are actually willing to play the game, read the comic/novel, watch the movie, etc. that the char is from to figure out his/her/its personality and quirks firsthand.

Anyways, thats my 2 dorfbucks. Good luck with this and I'll be following it.

[LordBucket]

FuzzyZergling
Jim Raynor from StarCraft.
Neutral Good Fighter.

Accepted

(So far, all the accepted characters have been fighters. This could be a problem.)

Not much of one. The game only allows 6 PCs at a time, but there are two slots to recruit henchmen. Thieves are only useful in a couple places in the game, mages are situationally very convenient, but nothing that can't be overcome, and Alex is a double class fighter/mage, so we do have one. The only real handicap we have at present is the complete lack of clerics, but there are potions, npc healers and two henchmen slots, so even if we don't get any the game will still be playable.

3
I think part of the issue lies in your own planning and presentation.

That may be. In retrospect if I were to do it over again, I'd have gone into more detail, but as it was the OP was longer than I really expected most people to read.

Patchy
it might be easier if you just list the chars you are
willing to write for and/or know well enough.

Honestly I was surprised that so many submissions were from materials I wasn't familiar with. I think of myself as being unusually well versed with a wide variety of fiction. I notice however, that most of the characters that have been rejected have all been webcomic characters, and I may be weak on webcomics in general. I've read all of Order of the Stick, Yet Another Fantasy Gamer Comic, Valkyrie Yuuki, XKCD, and 1/0, plus a hundred or so strips from 8-bit theatre, and bits and pieces of a few others, but there are quite a few hundreds of webcomics out there, and it's probably not realistic to expect me to have read most of them.

I suspect part of it might be that the bay12 community is especially familiar with a different cross section of fiction that I expected. I mean...14 submissions and only one was from a movie? Not a single one from television? Not a single anime character? Not one from real world paper comics or manga? Other than Sturm, Gimli and Liver Eatin' Johnson, every single submission has been from either a webcomic or a game.

That's not quite what I expected. Which should be apparent, given that every single example I gave in the OP was a character from either movies, television, paper comics, or anime.

In any case, two more and we're good to go.

[FuzzyZergling]

I think the problem is with people's expectations about how much work you would put into this.
With a movie, game, anime etc. character, all the information you could get without watching or reading the source material is a wiki page or two. So, it would be natural for you to reject them.
For a webcomic character, the entire thing is right there for you to read through, and thus you can familiarize yourself with the character by reading the source material for free. So, there's a better chance for you to select a character from something you can read anytime.

I'm not saying there's something wrong with your criteria, just that my personal expectations were off.

(Also, 1/0? You have good taste.)