Character Creation Guide

Build a character with a believable place in the galaxy, useful connections to other people, and room to change through roleplay.

A strong StarForgeRP character does not need an exhaustive biography, a predetermined storyline, or a position at the center of galactic history. Begin with enough information to understand who the character is now, where they came from, what circumstances shape their life, and why they might become involved with other characters.

StarForgeRP is built around characters played on SWTOR's Star Forge server, but roleplay characters are not limited to the game's character-creation options or required to reproduce the biographies of SWTOR's player protagonists. Build the person first, then use the game to represent them as closely as practical.

Before writing a detailed history, establish the character's present situation. Another player should be able to understand reasonably quickly who this person is, what they do, what matters to them, and why their life might intersect with somebody else's.

• Who are they?

• Where and how were they raised?

• What do they do now?

• Where do they live, work, travel, or spend time?

• Who or what are they connected to?

• What matters to them?

• What do they want, need, protect, fear, or feel responsible for?

• What makes their present situation difficult?

• Why might they interact with another character?

The answers do not need to be dramatic. A medic trying to keep a clinic operating, a junior officer dealing with an unreliable superior, a merchant seeking customers, an archaeologist looking for support, a mechanic waiting on difficult-to-find parts, a former soldier building a civilian life, or a Sith apprentice navigating a dangerous relationship with their master can all provide strong foundations for roleplay.

The important question is not how impressive the biography sounds. It is whether the character's circumstances give them reasons to make choices and become involved with other people.

Give Them Direction and Pressure

Characters become easier to roleplay when something matters to them. They might want security, recognition, independence, knowledge, professional advancement, reconciliation, wealth, justice, revenge, belonging, political change, spiritual understanding, protection for somebody they care about, or simply a more stable life.

Then ask what makes that difficult. Obligations, debts, family expectations, limited resources, professional responsibilities, divided loyalties, secrets, injuries, rivalries, reputational problems, dangerous relationships, or changing circumstances can all create useful pressure.

A character's history should help explain the life they are living now. Before finalizing important dates or experiences, consult Current Setting for StarForgeRP's shared present and the Timeline when earlier events affect the character's age, upbringing, affiliations, education, military service, migration, or personal history.

Major galactic events do not need to become personal cameos. History can affect ordinary people through displacement, reconstruction, disrupted trade, military service, political pressure, institutional change, lost relatives, damaged communities, new opportunities, or stories inherited from an older generation.

Use history to establish circumstances around the character rather than importance for its own sake.

Species, Home, and Upbringing

Species may influence biology, language, family history, cultural circumstances, political relationships, reputation, and the assumptions other people make about a character. It should not determine their entire personality.

StarForgeRP characters are not restricted to species available through SWTOR's character creator. Other species may be appropriate when they have a believable place in the Old Republic era and shared setting. Use the Species archive when a roleplay-focused species reference is available.

Where a character grew up can matter just as much as their species. Consider their homeworld, settlement, household, economic circumstances, education, religion, faction, profession, migration, community, and exposure to other cultures. The Galaxy provides broader geographic context for established planets and locations.

Culture and Identity

Culture provides context rather than a personality template. A character may embrace what they were taught, reject it, reinterpret it, combine it with other influences, misunderstand it, or have little connection to it at all.

The same principle applies to nationality, faction, religion, profession, family, political community, and Force tradition. If a character differs substantially from expectations surrounding their upbringing, consider why. That explanation is usually more interesting than either forcing conformity or pretending those expectations never existed.

Names can reflect the same mixture of influences. When a species or culture has recognizable naming traditions, consider who named the character, where they were raised, and whether they use a birth name, family name, clan name, professional identity, title, alias, callsign, married name, or adopted name.

A character is more than their species, faction, occupation, abilities, and biography. Think about how they actually make decisions.

What do they admire in other people? What behavior is difficult for them to forgive? What do they believe they owe their family, comrades, government, community, faith, profession, or themselves? What are they proud of? What embarrasses them? What do they avoid admitting? When will they compromise, and when will they refuse?

A few beliefs and tendencies that meaningfully affect decisions are usually more useful than a long list of personality adjectives. Someone described as stubborn becomes easier to understand when you know what they refuse to compromise on. Someone described as generous becomes more interesting when you know whom they will help and where that generosity reaches its limit.

Let Strengths Have Complications

Positive qualities do not need to produce positive outcomes in every circumstance. Loyalty can make wrongdoing difficult to acknowledge. Confidence can become arrogance. Compassion may leave someone vulnerable to manipulation. Caution can become indecision. Independence can make accepting help difficult.

The reverse can also be true. Suspicion may make somebody difficult to deceive. Ambition can produce remarkable persistence. Anger may push a person to confront something everybody else has learned to tolerate.

Faction determines only part of somebody's place in the galaxy. A Republic citizen might be a soldier, civil servant, merchant, academic, technician, colonist, politician, criminal, activist, or ordinary civilian. An Imperial subject may serve a military, administrative, industrial, intelligence, or Sith institution while another has little direct involvement with any of them.

Independent characters may instead be connected to corporations, criminal networks, mercenary companies, Mandalorian clans, crews, local governments, religious institutions, families, professional communities, or personal networks.

Use Factions & Powers for major political allegiances and Organizations for more specific institutions and groups.

Ask What an Affiliation Actually Means

If the character belongs to a faction or organization, consider how that relationship began. Were they born into its society, recruited, educated, conscripted, sponsored, coerced, employed, inherited into a position, or attracted by opportunities they could not find elsewhere?

Then ask what membership actually requires.

Useful affiliations create colleagues, superiors, subordinates, rivals, responsibilities, restrictions, resources, contacts, expectations, and consequences. Membership should create relationships and obligations rather than function only as a label on a dossier.

Occupation Creates Everyday Roleplay

Work is one of the easiest ways to connect a character to the setting and to other people. Physicians need patients and colleagues. Pilots need passengers, employers, cargo, and ships. Investigators need cases and sources. Soldiers have units and orders. Academics need institutions, research, funding, and rivals. Mercenaries need contracts. Merchants need suppliers and customers. Criminals need contacts, opportunities, and people who want them caught.

SWTOR's Origin Stories and Combat Styles are useful tools for representing a roleplay character in the game, but they should not automatically become that character's complete in-universe résumé.

An Origin Story does not require a StarForgeRP character to inherit every occupation, relationship, title, accomplishment, discovery, or unique historical role associated with SWTOR's protagonist. A Combat Style describes how the game represents combat; it does not automatically establish employment, credentials, organizational membership, authority, or a particular biography.

Build the roleplay character first. Use SWTOR's available systems to represent them as closely as practical.

Force sensitivity is a circumstance, not a complete character concept.

Consider whether the character knows they are Force-sensitive, how their abilities became apparent, whether they received training, who taught them, what tradition influenced that training, and what responsibilities, opportunities, expectations, or dangers followed from it.

Force sensitivity does not automatically establish membership in the Jedi Order, Sith Order, or another tradition. Nor does it automatically provide knowledge of every Force technique, philosophy, historical secret, or lightsaber discipline.

Use Force Traditions when exploring traditions represented within StarForgeRP. Characters specifically connected to those institutions can also consult the Jedi Order or Sith Order where appropriate.

Training Matters

Ask what the character has actually been taught, by whom, for how long, and under what circumstances.

A formally trained member of an established order, an independent practitioner, somebody taught within another tradition, and a person only beginning to understand their abilities should not automatically possess the same experience or knowledge.

Competent characters are welcome. A character does not need to be inexperienced or powerless to create good roleplay.

What matters is that expertise has believable context and remains specific enough for uncertainty, cooperation, and consequences to matter. A veteran soldier may be exceptionally dangerous in combat while knowing little about diplomacy. A respected physician may be highly capable within one specialty and dependent upon another expert elsewhere. A skilled investigator may still exercise poor judgment around someone they care about.

Training, wealth, specialized knowledge, equipment, contacts, reputation, political influence, military rank, professional authority, and Force ability become more believable when the character's history explains where they came from.

• What can the character reliably do?

• Where did that ability, authority, or resource come from?

• What remains outside their expertise?

• What belongs to an employer or organization rather than to them personally?

• Whose cooperation do they still need?

• Who can overrule or challenge their authority?

• What circumstances reduce their advantages?

• What could they realistically lose?

Rank, wealth, political office, security clearance, military command, criminal influence, organizational leadership, or access to rare resources should have both a believable source and a believable scope.

Authority becomes more useful for roleplay when it creates responsibilities, relationships, and restrictions as well as privileges.

Exceptional Backgrounds Need Consequences

Rare, prestigious, highly connected, or otherwise exceptional concepts can work when their circumstances are established carefully.

The more a concept depends upon extraordinary authority, unusual training, enormous wealth, restricted information, rare technology, ancient artifacts, or significant relationships with established figures, the more important it becomes to explain how those circumstances fit the shared setting without replacing established SWTOR history or another player's agency.

Characters become part of StarForgeRP through connections. Those connections may exist before a character enters play or develop naturally afterward.

A new character benefits from at least one believable point of contact with the wider setting.

• A person they already know

• An organization, community, crew, household, or institution they belong to

• A place they regularly visit

• An employer, client, mentor, superior, subordinate, or professional contact

• A family or household connection

• A rival or competitor

• A debt, favor, promise, contract, or obligation

• A problem involving another person or organization

• A shared interest or responsibility

• An unresolved event from their past

• A reputation that gives other people a reason to notice them

A connection does not need to determine the eventual relationship. Colleagues can become friends, rivals, enemies, partners, or people who discover that they cannot stand working together. The purpose of the initial connection is simply to give roleplay somewhere believable to begin.

Browse the Character Directory when looking for existing characters whose occupations, affiliations, locations, interests, responsibilities, or circumstances might create natural points of contact.

The RP Hooks archive can provide open situations where a new character may have a believable reason to become involved.

Shared Connections Need Agreement

Do not establish another player-character's family relationship, friendship, rivalry, mentorship, romance, employment, debt, shared history, or other significant involvement without coordinating with that character's player.

The same principle applies when a concept would claim authority over another player's character or make their established history dependent upon events they have not agreed to.

For the broader expectations concerning agency, conflict, coordination, and shared continuity, use the Roleplay Guidelines.

Create Open Hooks

A roleplay hook is an opportunity for somebody else to become involved, not a predetermined outcome.

A character might need expertise they do not possess, owe somebody a favor, investigate a problem, seek information, compete for a contract, work somewhere other characters frequent, pursue a missing person or object, struggle between incompatible responsibilities, or face a problem they cannot solve alone.

A new character does not need their entire future decided before roleplay begins.

You can know their upbringing, beliefs, relationships, goals, and current problems without knowing whether those beliefs will survive future experiences, whether those relationships will last, or whether their current ambitions will remain important.

Leave some questions unanswered. A character may not yet know whether they will remain loyal to a faction. They may never have seriously examined something they were taught as a child. They may believe they understand somebody and be wrong. A professional ambition may become less important when achieving it carries an unexpected cost.

Friendships, romances, rivalries, promotions, betrayals, ideological changes, failures, discoveries, and personal revelations do not need to be scheduled in advance.

An existing SWTOR or roleplay character does not necessarily need to be rebuilt from the beginning.

Preserve the parts that already work, then compare the character's history with StarForgeRP's present setting and shared continuity. Pay particular attention to chronology, affiliations, political circumstances, ranks, major accomplishments, unusual technologies, important relationships, and events inherited from another continuity.

When something does not fit cleanly, adaptation is usually more useful than discarding the concept. A unique canonical accomplishment might become participation in the surrounding conflict. An incompatible position might become a comparable role serving the same character purpose. A relationship belonging to another continuity may remain part of the character's inspiration without automatically becoming established StarForgeRP history.

You do not need every detail completed before a character becomes usable. A character is usually ready to begin once you understand the following.

• Their identity, species, and approximate age or generation

• Where and how they were raised

• Their current occupation, responsibilities, or primary activity

• Their important family, professional, faction, organizational, or community connections

• Where they live, work, travel, or regularly spend time

• What currently matters to them or creates pressure in their life

• Their general level of training and capability

• The important limits on unusual authority, resources, expertise, or abilities

• At least one believable reason they might interact with somebody else

• Any major continuity-sensitive claims that should be checked before becoming established

Everything else can develop when it becomes relevant.

Once the character concept works, connect it to the parts of StarForgeRP that actually matter to that character.

Use Lore for relevant species, factions, organizations, cultures, Force traditions, technologies, and setting concepts. Use the Galaxy for homeworlds, residences, workplaces, and recurring locations. Consult the Timeline when chronology affects the character's history.

When you are ready to document the character, the Character Dossier Guidelines explain what information is most useful to preserve. The Blank Character Dossier provides the standard flexible starting structure.