character submission question

[Silvanne]

I have a question I been mauling over the last few weeks and am unsure where to post it. So I figure I can post it here and purrhaps if I am lucky darkstorme will roll around and drop it into the right forums location.

 I was not wanting to come off lame, so the question will be posted in two parts the first a story, the second more a statement. Yet entirely a question, when viewed.

  A teacher asks her students to write a three page essa on " Pinktopians and why they love cookies " She provides each student with the same research material. Half a paragraph. She says " I will exspect those tomorrow. The final due date is friday, for those of you who are slower then most. " Come the next day, she picks over the different essa's. Pointing out serval different creative idea's used by her students to fill in the gaps. Handing them all back and saying, sorry. Its close, but re-do it. She checks 25 of her 27 students work. Two did not hand anything in, as the report is not due til friday. Day after day the students try to make their pinktopian story better and with more flare. Each day the teacher returns an edited essa and says, not quite there yet. By Friday, 25 students are frustrated. The other two still did not hand in an essa when she asks them why they did not do the essa. They reply, there was not enough information given to finish the assisment. Those two passed, the rest all failed.

The Lore provides only 3% of the Bio and yet the approvers want us new players to provide them with information we do not know and do not have access to. We try to provide an interesting read, by trying to fill in huge gaps of missing information, with flare. Only to be edited and told to re-submit. In college when given an assisment where very little information is provided, to complete the work. They exspect the students to add flare and fill in the gaps with interesting reading material. Thats what determins pass or fail. Not the real information, never provided. But what they come up with, each original. The Bio's, we are asked to create are the same way, very little information is provided, so we write them up, using flare and intersting reading to fill in what we do not know. To have the approvers, say not yet, almost, and such ideal's as not quite yet, but close. What is it that the approvers want, because its not a good reading background bio. Its not all lore information and its not layonara current, as thats not provided either. When left with little or no information and people devote real life limited time to compose something worthy to be called flare. Should they not just be accepted with a few notes, since the Bio's really have, no bearing to the in game at all. If its to help the approver determin how well a new player understands the lore. Well, would it shock you, if you knew my first character was edited by 0ne of your long time members, whom I would bet knows the lore and yet the submission was put to re-submit. So we know thats not what they want, so I am just curious. What do they want, in a character submission.

 Seeking any and all constructive replies, on the subject.

[geloooo]

I'm not really an authority on the character submission process but here's my two cents on the matter since my first and only character involved a rather complex biography due to the fact that it was a Monstrous Race submission.

I knew a lot about Drow and the Underdark in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting but I didn't know much about Dark Elves and the Deep in Layonara. The LORE page back then had a basic gist of how Dark Elves were and so I worked with what little information I had and made my own unique version that still adhered to the general idea.

The LORE page said that Dark Elves ruled various city-states scattered across the Deep. It did not supply any cities for my character to come from, so I made my own city. I didn't know about the in-game cities back then, had I known, I would have placed Ni'haer in any of those two cities, but it's not really a big deal. What matters most is how your character develops after the submission, but I digress.

What I've noticed is that the approval team will always seek to find these things in a character submission:

1. Family history - Surely the character was born so a gist of it is needed to begin.

2. Location and race relevance - Where was the character born? If he/she was born in a specific location on the surface, would it be relevant to his/her race? For example: If I'm correct, the Sun Kingdom is very prejudiced against elves so it's mostly populated with humans.

3. Religion, if any - Does the character follow a deity? If so, how does that character venerate the deity? Most characters can worship in a more flexible manner as opposed to clergy that tend to strive to become physical manifestations of their chosen deity. For example: If I'm correct, a priest of Baraeon Ca'Duz must be made with the alignment of Baraeon Ca'Duz which is Neutral Evil whereas a Dark Elf sorcerer can be made as Lawful Evil/True Neutral/Chaotic Neutral.

In terms of the dogma of the gods, the character approval team wants the character to follow the dogma for logical reasons. If a follower of Baraeon Ca'Duz slays a spider out of a need to release some frustration and not out of a need for poison glands, that is considered blasphemous. If a follower of Aeridin summons forth an undead minion, that would be blasphemous. If a follower of Sulterio practices the manipulation of the Al'Noth, it is considered blasphemous. So it would be prudent to stick to the dogma of the god and try not to sway from it. It can help in terms of character development since the dogma basically creates boundaries for the character, thus generating role-play.

4. Alignment coherence - They want a character to stick to his/her alignment. A Lawful Good character cannot commit acts that a Neutral Evil would do. In the event of an alignment incoherence in the submission, the team is keen to help the player get a firm grasp on the proposed alignment.

5. Class coherence - Though I'm a firm believer that class should not be a basis for the character's development, i.e. a person does not need bard levels to be able to sing songs, tell stories, and play musical instruments (although mechanically, a character does). This point dwells on how you depict the character's class. When I wrote Ni'haer's submission, I wrote him as a level one Sorcerer that had access to basic cantrips and a few spells of the first circle. If you wrote a rogue, how will you write down that character's lock-picking, hiding, and sneaking skills?

Ultimately the character approval team just wants to make sure that our characters adhere to the lore which can be accessed from the LORE. While it does not have much information at the moment, you can still use your imagination and develop something that will adhere to the lore. If in doubt, you can always ask for help. My two cents. *bows*

[Silvanne]

Thank you very much geloooo this is what I was looking for, any and all information to shorter the cycle is always helpiful. Exspeically from players that have been around a while and know the in's and out's of the character submission system. Plus reading your new rogue submission was enlightening. I just thought 40 pages might be to much, where now 40 pages might just be a cliffnote. ~ smirks ~ * I thought Rajaral's submission was long, compared to yours, its short. Next time in stead of editing it down, I will just submit the entire written novel. ~ laughes evilly ~ Once again, thank you, your information is quite useful over all.

[geloooo]

You are most welcome!

Hehehe I would have given more detail in the submission but I decided to watch the Sorcerer's Apprentice instead.

And to think I said to myself that I was gonna make the submission short. I'll bite my tongue the next time I submit a character.

[RollinsCat]

Novels are not required for a character submission.  Some of us write a lot based on our inclination to do so - a number of us have unlocked muses from our experiences here, and like to play with that inspiration in the written form.  However, character bios can be short and have room for all kinds of development.  My own submission for a pure-class bard is here and is pretty basic.  There are plenty of other examples of short bios that suffice to get the point across.

The complexity of the submission is proportional to the complexity of the character.  If you're trying to produce an unusual race/class/deity combination, it takes more work to explain it.  They don't want the specifics of everything the character has done and gelooo has that covered most eloquently in his post below.  They want to know that you understand where your character starts in the world Lore, and have solid footing for roleplay.  It doesn't have to be that complex, or the complexity can be developed in the character's interactions and not created from the start.  And if you don't know the Lore, asking politely is a great way to get started with the Team*.  I will emphasize "politely".

Another suggestion is to play the character you have in the world a little before jumping into another one, so you get the rhythm of things.  This place has unprecedented possibilities for players, like no other game I've played that wasn't pen and paper table-top, but because it is open to all the rules are tight and should be.  Follow them.  The forums and the Team are not the place to play low-charisma Chaotic Neutral.  Save that for the game.

Edit for full disclosure: I made up lore without checking because nothing specific existed beyond a few paragraphs, and that caused problems with both gms and players.  Some of my roleplaying was retconned because of it.  In the end it was dealt with without rancor in private messages between myself and a gm, and lore was written to provide guidance for what I wanted to do with my character.  If I had asked and been patient (a virtue I do not possess, I fully admit) then the entire misunderstanding could have been avoided.  So I speak with some authority on the subject of asking politely.

[superdoofus]

Castors Sub was 5 short paragraphs.  Now I could write a whole novel based on his experiences.

[miltonyorkcastle]

Should they not just be accepted with a few notes, since the Bio's really have, no bearing to the in game at all.

I just want to comment on this one statement.

Your bio has every bearing "in-game", as the game we play is steeped in the role-play of history, politics, and philosophy. Where your character comes from and who they are as defined by your character submission should (at least help) shape all of your play in Layonara. The submission is not set aside once you are in-game, but rather is expanded upon through play and further writing. In a sense, you can consider your bio the first chapter, or perhaps the introduction, to the novel that is your character's life. The rest of the game is finishing the story you started there. So yes, character submission is taken seriously, and we want to help you flesh it out in such a way that you won't have to go back at a later date (if it can be helped at all) and make significant/character-altering changes to your character's introduction, his/her foundation.

Play on Layonara is about story creation more than anything else. Yes, we like to base our stories around medieval adventure, and we use a video-game interface to add some powerful interactive elements to the game, but we want to help you make an awesome story about a character you really care for, that you want to tell your kids about. And it's a collaborative effort, each player, GM, and even the character approvers helping create the full story about the character.

Where we have lacking information in our world lore, you can in fact write up new places and people and things, they just have to be reviewed and made to fit into the existing world; this may not have been made very clear when you first submitted, but I know Dorg mentioned it in another reply to you. However, the CAs are trying to get your character into the game world as fast as possible. If you choose to write new content for the game world, add "flare" as you put it, then you'll have to expect to wait until the new content can be reviewed and adjusted to fit the world. The CA will offer you an alternative that will get your character into the game world faster, but it may require some revamping of the character concept. It just depends on how tied to the story you are, and how long you are willing to wait.