Character Creation Guide

Build a character with a recognizable life, something worth pursuing, and reasons to encounter other people. Their work, relationships, responsibilities, and unanswered questions can all provide beginnings for collaborative stories.

Describe who the character is when another person first meets them. Establish their main activity, a familiar location, an immediate concern, and something they can offer.

• What brings them back to the same place or community?

• What do they want to accomplish?

• What responsibility would they struggle to abandon?

• What can they contribute to someone else’s situation?

• When would they seek help, negotiate, or accept an unfamiliar companion?

For example, a courier hoping to reopen a neglected delivery route could need customers, a mechanic, and someone familiar with its destinations. Each connection offers a different first encounter. Whether the business succeeds remains a question for play.

Choose experiences that explain the character’s present life. Education might explain a skill; relocation might explain an unfamiliar custom; an earlier promise might explain why they remain somewhere they would otherwise leave.

Consult Current Setting when the concept depends on contemporary conditions. It contains major spoilers through StarForgeRP’s adopted SWTOR story boundary. Use Timeline to explore earlier events and their consequences.

A connection to history need not place the character at its center. Consider what an event changed for their family, employment, home, or opportunities.

Dates, Ages & Sequence

Check that upbringing, training, service, travel, and changes of affiliation fit into the available years. Include ages beside significant dated experiences when supported birth information makes them useful. Use an approximation when birthday timing is uncertain.

You may develop missing personal dates for your own character, but distinguish those proposals from previously established history during review. Check the resulting ages and preserve dates already shared with other participants. Leave deliberate mysteries unresolved.

Species, Upbringing & Culture

Explore Species for biological and cultural context and Galaxy for the places that shaped the character. A credible Old Republic concept can extend beyond the species available in SWTOR’s character creator.

Consider who raised the character, which languages they use, what education they received, and which customs appear in daily life. Ancestry, birthplace, and upbringing may connect them to different communities.

Decide which traditions they cherish, reinterpret, question, or barely know. Background provides influences; individual choices shape personality and allegiance. Names, aliases, and forms of address can help express those connections.

Droids & Artificial Characters

For an artificial character, begin with its original purpose and the experiences that made it an individual. Consider activation, service, memory, programming, repairs, modifications, and practical support.

Give the character values that influence decisions and habits that make ordinary scenes distinctive. Consider how they handle embarrassment, accept praise, express affection, disagree with colleagues, or recover after a mistake.

A useful tension can arise between two things they value. A meticulous researcher may care both about confirming an answer and helping someone who cannot wait. Neither concern needs to disappear for the choice to matter.

Include interests and pleasures alongside fears and obligations. A favorite pastime, familiar meal, collecting habit, or regular social visit can reveal the person beyond their profession.

Appearance & Presentation

Choose a few recognizable details: posture, voice, clothing, movement, markings, or visible modifications. Consider what changes between work, travel, and private life.

Identify the people and institutions involved in the character’s ordinary responsibilities. A crew, household, business, unit, academy, or neighborhood can provide recurring interaction.

Factions & Powers explains broader political connections. Organizations covers institutions through which characters work, train, serve, and acquire obligations.

• How did the character become involved?

• What do they contribute, and what do they receive?

• Who assigns work or expects an account of their decisions?

• Which colleagues, dependents, customers, or rivals matter?

• What remains of former memberships and employment?

SWTOR’s Origin Story determines the selected class storyline; Combat Style determines combat gameplay. Appearance and equipment help communicate the character visually.

Decide which parts of that representation belong to the roleplay character. Completing a game narrative does not automatically give them its protagonist’s achievements, companion relationships, or exceptional position in shared history. Game statistics and available abilities likewise need an in-universe basis when they matter to roleplay.

For a character with Force involvement, establish what they experience, how they understand it, and what they have learned. Discovery, belief, instruction, and practical competence may develop at different times.

Use Force Traditions to explore teachings and practices. Consult the Jedi Order or Sith Order when institutional membership, education, or standing matters.

• Who or what shaped their understanding?

• Which disciplines have they practiced?

• What instruction and experience support their capabilities?

• Where do they remain inexperienced or uncertain?

• How do their beliefs influence decisions involving other people?

Force sensitivity does not establish rank or comprehensive training. Give specialized knowledge an appropriate history, and preserve unresolved questions where discovery or mentorship could become part of play.

Describe competence in practical terms. Explain the tasks the character handles confidently, the preparation difficult work requires, and the situations in which they rely on others.

Experienced characters can begin with substantial responsibilities. Their background should make the scope of that experience understandable.

• What training and practice support their expertise?

• Which tools, supplies, or facilities do they need?

• What belongs to them, and what is borrowed or entrusted?

• Who recognizes their authority, and where does it apply?

• What happens when support is unavailable or an attempt fails?

Browse the Character Directory for possible connections through location, occupation, interests, or affiliation. RP Hooks explains how to turn a situation into an opening for interaction and provides a place to check for listed opportunities.

Give others both a reason to care and a believable way to discover the situation. A request posted where workers gather, an introduction through a mutual contact, or a witnessed disagreement can make an opportunity accessible.

Let the opening accommodate different responses. Another character might bargain, compete, misunderstand, decline, or offer an unexpected solution.

Agree on Shared History

Coordinate proposed family ties, mentorships, employment, rivalries, and significant past encounters with the players involved. Read relevant dossiers and story records before adding to an existing connection.

Agreement about the past leaves future feelings and decisions with the participants. Roleplay Guidelines explains the broader expectations for agency, boundaries, conflict, and consequences.

Knowledge, Secrets & Discovery

Ask how the character learned information they rely upon. Personal experience, education, testimony, rumor, and restricted records provide different grounds for confidence.

Publicly readable material may remain concealed within the fiction. A character needs a credible route to a secret, location, or discovery before acting upon it.

Identify the qualities and experiences that define the character, then examine the history inherited from their previous setting. Check dates, affiliations, titles, resources, accomplishments, and significant relationships against StarForgeRP continuity.

Develop a coherent adaptation while preserving the contributions of other participants. A change to your character’s biography may also affect a shared event or someone else’s history.

Read the concept from another player’s perspective. They should be able to recognize the character, understand what matters to them, and imagine a first interaction.

• Their present life and immediate concerns are clear.

• Background, dates, and capabilities fit together.

• Personality provides reasons for meaningful choices.

• Important relationships reflect established history or coordination.

• Knowledge and access have believable origins.

• At least one opportunity gives someone else a useful contribution.

• Future decisions and outcomes remain open.

Use Character Dossier Guidelines to decide what belongs in the continuing record, then use the Blank Character Dossier to organize it. Write enough to preserve useful context, and follow the template’s guidance on relevant fields and sections.

Ordinary undocumented details can be developed within your authority over the character. Preserve deliberate unknowns and other participants’ agency. Include player information only when the person concerned intends it for publication.

Create Character provides the broader character-entry overview. Getting Started explains how to move toward a first scene.