Character help

[Fuzzy Alliance]

Working on a character design for a game that I've been working on for the past year. Recently, a playtester said that the main character was dull and didn't seem like a real person. Was to "perfect". I've rebuilt her and am looking to see if anyone was willing to take a look and give me their two cents on ways to improve her.

Her name is Cara Arc. The last name is still up for debate as long as it's historical.

Backstory: I'll abridge this.
Cara lives on a small farm with her mother. Her father died in a famous war when she was a child. The story starts with Cara around 16 years old. Living as a simple child on the farm. with her mothers failing health and her being the only child, she has grown up fairly independent and proud. Refusing help from her mother as she does what she can to make her mother's life easier.

During this prolog, there is a sandstorm that hits the town while she's away from home. She rushes out into the storm to make sure her mother is safe. She finds her mother on the road and is unable to drag her to safety. Eventually, Cara passes out and is rescued. Her mother passes in the sandstorm(maybe?) This event makes her obsessive about getting stronger and she joins up with some mercs that she met in town. Time jump five or so years and the prolog is done.

These events have made her obsessive about getting stronger, but her pride and stubbornness still get in the way of her asking for help when it is needed. She get's fixated on anything that can make her stronger, and is fiercely competitive. She's reckless and impatient as she will rush into battle with no regard for her well being as she is arrogant and too sure of her abilities. She also isn't the most tactful person as her time with the mercs hasn't taught her many manners. However, she's not a flirt and is mostly oblivious when people make passes at her, or maybe she should a bit of flirt. Being with a bunch of Mercs for several years would probably rub off on her. Or I'll probably just ignore this whole aspect.
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So those are my plans for her. Any advice or ideas on how to expand on her as a character are appreciated. Don't worry about hurting my feelings if you have criticism. If you have thoughts on the mater I'd rather you be blunt and get to the point. Also if you have any interest in the full story of what I have made so far and what the plot is, or more on the setting, let me know and I'll make a separate post.

[Shoreward]

This is a tough nut to crack without seeing what it looked like before and how you executed it.

A backstory and bio alone are only half the presentation of a character. A backstory isn't the defining element of whether or not a character appears flawed. For instance, if you say your character is arrogant but it rarely comes up to bite her in-game, then a person might not see it as anything more than a quirk. This could lead to a perception of “perfection”. Another common cause is how others treat the character. If everyone respects them and everyone who disrespects them is shown to be wrong and also evil, then that can cause it too. Again, though, without seeing what you’ve changed or how you handled it in the first place I can’t be certain what the original problem was.

As it stands, it’s workable, but backstories and bios are far less telling or important than how the character presents in the fiction itself. A storyteller could make anything work with the right gravitas and some spooky hand gestures.

I don’t know if any of these traits cause any actual trouble or if they’re perfectly suited toward tackling the problems of the game’s story. Her goal “get stronger” is broad, too, without any obvious steps. Get stronger physically? By doing what? What does she want to get stronger to do? What gets in the way?

Let’s analyse a similar goal: “Get rich”. We can agree most of us have this goal, but how we intend to do this changes from person to person. There are three main factors for any goal; the means, the ends, and the why.

Bob is sucking up to his bosses in the hopes of earning promotions and pay-rises, because he grew up poor and wants to make sure his kids don’t suffer the same fate. He’s willing to kiss boots and sell out peers if it means he can do that.

Steph, meanwhile, is planning on hitting a casino with her new card-counting tricks and then making one good score before they kick her out, because she gets a thrill out of cheating the big-wigs in the system using only her own intelligence.

So I suppose my major confusion, aside from the means, is how her ends connects to her why. I may be off-base, but it seem to me “Get stronger because I wasn’t able to help my mother in a sandstorm” is a different trouble to what she actually had – namely that she tried to do it alone like everything else when she was too young and sure of herself. I’m not sure if you intended that link to her core flaw, but it’s there.

For that matter, I’m not sure I understand why she is arrogant about her abilities if her defining incident was a moment which shook her confidence in her independent abilities. It seems to me that the logical step would be becoming plagued with self-doubt over that incident. Is it compensation to hide vulnerability, or am I misunderstanding?

The rest of the entry – whether or not she is a flirt and her lack of manners – is an interesting point. It’s good that you’re considering her upbringing and surroundings in how she might act. The answer is up to you, here. Do you want to emphasise her focus on her goal (a more professional soldier type) or do you want to emphasise the ruder, mercenary lifestyle? If you choose one or the other, how does her goal create conflicts with that?

In the end, though, bios are theorycraft. As I said in the beginning, it depends on how you portray it in-game.

Hope this helps.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I'm agreeing with that. The backstory is very "protagonisty". Strong independent woman with not one but two dead parents one of which she tried to save, stuff like that, but I wouldn't say it's perfect. There are quite a bunch of places for the character to go.

[The Fury]

Cards on the table, while I consume way too much media than is good for me, I'm no writer. But facts have never prevented me from giving awful advice before, so here goes:

I generally agree with Shoreward's point about a character's behavior in the fiction itself being more telling than a backstory. As it is, I wouldn't worry too much about having an amazing, uniquely compelling backstory. I'd argue that a backstory is largely there to inform the character as they behave in present day, not so much as the be-all end-all for the character. It's even possible to reveal backstory elements as they become relevant to current events in the story to cut down on front-loaded exposition. Such as when it's revealed that the normally fearless Cara is terrified of sandstorms, it's now relevant for characters in the story to address why she's afraid of sandstorms. Or maybe she's not afraid of them at all, I'm just using it as an example.

While we're on the subject, are sandstorms a normal occurrence in the region she grew up in?

If they are, then I suppose the sandstorm is another example of an implacable force of nature having its way with humanity. How Cara reacts to this can say something about her as a character as well. If she is obsessed with becoming stronger but comes to realize that she will never be strong enough to do anything but run and take cover during a storm, it shows a certain level-headedness. If Cara is obessed with becoming stronger and believes that she might one day be strong enough that even a storm won't be able to knock her down, it shows that she's either foolhardy, incredibly determined, or possibly a Shounen protagonist.

If sandstorms aren't normal... then that implies that something more sinister might be at work. If that's the case, how Cara reacts can also communicate a lot about her character. If she notes that seeing a sandstorm there is odd and tries to figure out why it happened, it suggests that she's analytical and maybe a little shrewd. If she doesn't or if someone else needs to outright tell her that sandstorms are strange for the region, it shows that maybe she doesn't have a great eye for details, thinks in incredibly straightforward way, maybe she hasn't considered that angle, or maybe she's not that smart.

I'm not sure the overall tone your going for in this game, but hopefully that gives you some ideas to play with.

[BeerMug Paladin]

First thing's first, where is the character going to end up? That alone should probably dictate more of the initial presentation than early story beats, but I do have one fairly simple initial suggestion that may help to make the character feel less "perfect".

Have Cara go out into the sandstorm against being warned not to. Give her plenty of warning about it being dangerous and having her blatantly disregard the danger, thinking that she's strong enough to not have to worry about the sandstorm. Because bad things only happen to people who aren't clever and resourceful.

Make it so her mother's actions are directly responsible for preventing her from dying. For example, have some sort of beacon lit on the residence that helps cut through the grit so Cara find her way to shelter. (Probably best if this action is implied and not overly focused upon.) Otherwise, Cara would have been hopelessly lost out there. Cara then finds her mother and tries to save her, but she fails and ends up the only survivor.

This way it can be clearly demonstrated that her bravado is the cause of her mother's death, and not just an unfortunate coincidence. She'll (wrongly) conclude she simply wasn't strong enough (in opposition to being foolish) to pull through the situation how she expected to. This can explain her obsession with training or growing stronger while also making it a potentially interesting character fault.

If possible, it might be a little more effective as a backstory if it were given after the point in which she's already been introduced. Either recounted by another character, or given as a flashback of some sort. ("She's a little odd, that one, what's the deal with her, anyway?")

Also, the father's story can probably be completely dropped. Instead, have some random npc mention that "hereabout x years ago, a lot of folk died in dat big ol' war thang". Let it be something implied for the audience to figure out later, and not explicitly stated. That way the event with the mother has a bit more impact.

[The Fury]

If possible, it might be a little more effective as a backstory if it were given after the point in which she's already been introduced. Either recounted by another character, or given as a flashback of some sort. ("She's a little odd, that one, what's the deal with her, anyway?")

Also, the father's story can probably be completely dropped. Instead, have some random npc mention that "hereabout x years ago, a lot of folk died in dat big ol' war thang". Let it be something implied for the audience to figure out later, and not explicitly stated. That way the event with the mother has a bit more impact.

Alternatively, depending on how loud and boisterous Cara is, she might volunteer this kind of information about herself to other characters when she feels it's relevant. I gather that the OP wants her to come off as maybe a little rough around the edges, and an openness to talking about things like death and violence might sell that point.

That is, if discussing one's personal history with death and violence is abnormal in this setting. It might not be. Though even if discussing this kind of thing is normal, there's a lot that can be done with it character wise, like disparate characters realizing that their pasts have something in common and coming together because of it, ("Your dad died in that war, Cara? Mine did too.")

Speaking of, I'm thinking that maybe I should read the unabridged version of what you've got, Fuzzy Alliance. I'm probably the worst writer on this thread, but I feel like I could give better advice if I had a clearer idea of what you want the tone of this story to be. I might strain myself trying to come up with something good, but I'll try my best.