Character Dossier Guidelines

A character dossier helps readers understand a character’s life, recognize possible connections, and follow the history that continues to shape them. It brings together their identity, circumstances, relationships, capabilities, and opportunities for future roleplay.

• Understanding the character: Explain who they are, what occupies them, where they belong, and what matters to them.

• Preserving continuity: Record experiences, relationships, decisions, and consequences that later stories may need.

• Finding opportunities: Give other players believable reasons to encounter the character or become involved in their circumstances.

Open with the character’s occupation or principal activity, home or recurring base, important connections, and immediate concerns. Let the history explain how they reached those circumstances.

Use the Character Creation Guide when developing the underlying concept. Consult Current Setting when the character’s circumstances depend on the shared present; that page contains major story spoilers. Use the Timeline to investigate relevant historical context.

Use the Template Flexibly

The Blank Character Dossier provides the section and field reference. For an ordinary dossier, adapt its optional coverage to the character and the purpose of the record. Prefer its established headings where they describe the information clearly.

When a complete dossier development or revision is expressly requested, address every standard and optional field and subsection. Keep answers concise where appropriate. Only the two conditional profiles may be omitted because they do not apply.

• Droid / Synthetic Profile: Include when applicable to the character.

• Force Profile: Include when sensitivity, Force use, training, or an established unresolved question about sensitivity makes it relevant. Do not introduce sensitivity simply to fill the section.

Complete the constituent fields of an applicable conditional profile. Where an affirmative answer would mislead, use an accurate statement of uncertainty or inapplicability.

Remove bracketed prompts, author instructions, and “Optional” or “Conditional” from completed headings. When two fields concern the same development, explain it fully in the most suitable section and use a brief reference elsewhere.

Connect the Character to Their Surroundings

Explain the significance of their household, workplace, community, affiliations, and familiar places. Describe what those connections mean for this individual.

Use Lore to find relevant setting subjects and Galaxy to find physical places. The Character Directory helps locate other dossiers. Link the specific subject when a suitable page exists, while retaining enough explanation for readers to understand the relationship locally.

Before adding history, check the existing dossier and relevant character, organization, location, and story records. An experience absent from one page may already be established elsewhere.

Within your authority over the character, ordinary undocumented details can be developed: appearance, habits, interests, motivations, education, routines, and personal background. Build on existing characterization and keep abilities, resources, and accomplishments proportionate to the character’s experience.

Distinguish New Details from Established History

Identify substantive additions as proposed character material during review. Explain their basis and any effects on chronology or connected records. A plausible addition remains newly created material; supporting lore does not prove that it previously happened.

Preserve information deliberately established as unknown, concealed, disputed, or unresolved. Do not resolve another participant’s mystery, assign their character involvement in a new event, or determine a future story outcome to complete a field.

Make the character understandable without requiring readers to interpret an elaborate fictional filing system. Reports, correspondence, testimony, and other in-character documents can add perspective, but their contents reflect what their authors know, believe, or wish others to believe.

Separate objective information from allegations, rumors, personal beliefs, and incomplete accounts. Explain meaningful uncertainty without manufacturing an answer.

Keep Character Knowledge Distinct

A public dossier may describe something that remains private within the fiction. Where it matters, explain who could know a detail and how: direct observation, conversation, research, professional access, or established experience.

Marking information “classified” does not conceal it from readers. If a reveal depends on players remaining unaware, leave the revealing details off the public page. Preserve disclosure boundaries established by other participants.

Represent Relationships Accurately

Describe established connections and their continuing significance. Check related records for shared experiences, obligations, or consequences that belong in the dossier, confirming that names and aliases identify the same person.

Coordinate new shared history with the participants concerned. Do not assign another character feelings, decisions, family ties, agreements, injuries, or participation that their player has not established. An interesting possible connection can remain a roleplay hook.

Explain History Through Its Consequences

Select experiences that help explain the character’s present choices, skills, beliefs, relationships, or difficulties. Preserve meaningful former affiliations and earlier circumstances without presenting them as current.

Use Continuity & Canon when assessing consequential claims, conflicting accounts, or intentional revisions. Investigate unfamiliar community history before treating it as an error. Its absence from official SWTOR material does not invalidate established StarForgeRP continuity.

Check that external lore fits the Old Republic period. Gameplay options and statistics do not independently establish a character’s biography, training, authority, or accomplishments.

Check Dates and Ages

Keep significant dates when they help explain the character’s life. Use approximate periods when exact timing is unsupported or unnecessary.

For dated events, include an age when birth or activation information supports it and the age adds context. If birthday timing is uncertain, use an approximation or range. A birth entry normally needs no accompanying age.

Check the sequence of upbringing, training, employment, travel, and changing affiliations. Newly developed dates should remain identifiable as proposals during review; ages calculated from them depend on those same proposals.

Use Current Setting for the current campaign date rather than repeating that changing baseline throughout the dossier. When records conflict, examine chronology, perspective, explicit corrections, and intentional revisions. Preserve unresolved discrepancies rather than silently selecting an account.

Explain Capability, Authority & Resources

Describe the experience behind important abilities and the circumstances in which they can be used reliably. Include meaningful limits and dependence on preparation, equipment, institutions, or other people.

Give readers concrete situations arising from the character’s circumstances. Explain what another character could contribute and how they might reasonably discover the opportunity.

• Work: A service offered, contract sought, professional problem, or need for specialist assistance.

• Place: A familiar venue, shared workplace, recurring journey, or community responsibility.

• Relationships: An established mutual contact, prior dealing, or unresolved obligation.

• Personal stakes: A goal, investigation, disagreement, or practical difficulty that invites involvement.

Leave participants room to refuse, negotiate, misunderstand, compete, or suggest another approach. A hook provides an opening without deciding another character’s involvement or the eventual result.

Review the dossier when roleplay changes information that future participants will need. Update the overview, summary fields, current circumstances, relationships, and relevant history together.

Preserve lasting consequences without recording every routine exchange. Find associated campaigns, missions, and events through Roleplay, then link the specific record where available. Summarize this character’s involvement and its consequences locally; leave the full event account with the story.

When a change affects another character, organization, or place, check the connected record and coordinate any necessary correction or revision.

Keep Status Information Separate

• Current Status: The character’s condition within the fiction.

• Archive Status: The dossier’s actual archive classification, where specified.

• RP Availability: Information supplied by the player about arranging roleplay.

Dossiers are public. Include a player’s handle, attribution name, contact method, or availability only when that person intends the information to be publicly associated with the character. Permission to describe a fictional character does not authorize disclosure of the player’s private information.

Contribute writing and images only when you are entitled to supply them for publication. Preserve applicable credits; attribution does not replace permission.

Consult Terms of Use for contributions, editorial handling, corrections, updates, removal requests, and rights matters. Use Privacy Policy for the treatment of player information.

Make the Page Readable and Accessible

Use images that help readers recognize or understand the character. Check visible features, clothing, equipment, and surroundings against the character’s description and the relevant era.

Give meaningful images concise alt text describing useful visible information. Keep essential character details in the prose. Use readable paragraphs, descriptive links, and lists where they make information easier to find.

• Does the opening establish the character’s present life and important connections?

• Does the history explain meaningful influences and consequences?

• Does the coverage match the assignment, including all required fields for a complete dossier?

• Are conditional profiles applicable, with author instructions and heading qualifiers removed?

• Are new character additions distinguishable from established continuity during review?

• Do dates, ages, abilities, affiliations, authority, and resources fit together?

• Have relevant relationships and developments documented elsewhere been considered?

• Are beliefs, rumors, uncertainty, and limits on character knowledge clear?

• Are other participants’ agency, secrets, and unresolved outcomes preserved?

• Do hooks offer believable access and leave room for different responses?

• Are useful destinations linked and checked?

• Have lasting changes been reflected consistently without unnecessary repetition?

• Is player information intended for publication, and is contributed material appropriate to share?

• Are images, credits, alt text, headings, and mobile reading order suitable?