Baldur's Gate : The Sword Coast Chronicles : NWN2 Persistent World

As someone with a lot of toons here. (Too many) Each and every one of them was inspired by something: a song, character, actor, or what have you. I wanted to start a thread on what inspired you to creating your character.

Personally a lot of things go into character creation for myself, but I admit there are some shared inspirations.

Tyressen Arfaeniel
inspired partly by: Nicholas Wolfwood (trigun)
Music: MIA - (avenged sevenfold)

Most of my inspirations come from my own head. The only ones that don't, that I can immediately put a finger on, are from The Way of Shadows.

Cranston was inspired by my first 'real' pen and paper character from my teenage years (I say real because my 'first' PC was a paladin, but I was in 5th grade and new nothing of DnD, for some reason I recall trying to pick pocket with him to which the DM cocked an eyebrow before making me fall, getting caught and summarily sentenced, losing a hand and...yeah the PC didn't last long).

His first name is actually the name of the street where my family lived from when I was 2 until I was 6, last name is based on part of his back story where his father was a brewer of...you guest it! Birch beer. Similar to root beer, but made from birch tree sap.

Chord is similar to the first Bard I made (again, in PnP) but modified as that was 2nd edition... Other characters I play are either for a specific concept I want to try or for a specific line of RP I'm going for.

I've gone through so many PCs I've lost count. But my most memorable was my Elven Bard. Nothing too inspirational, I tried to emulate the good I like to see in people and portray him that way, mixed with a little of what I'm like in RL and I got chaotic good lol He was my longest played PC and what I liked the most about him, besides the friends I made in the guild, was that the character was a Bard, and the creative outlet it let me have in his RP was quite fun and freeing. That, and the fact that he is helpful to an entire party made him memorable to me.

Now I'm breezing through quite a few builds and RP concepts/ideas to see what would stick and alas, nothing has caught me yet quite like he did.

My character is from a character I had in Ultima online, basically a good man making all the wrong decisions slowly succumbing to evil but always excusing or making a reason to himself why he made the choices he did.

Some of my favorite characters from fantasy books are Jon Snow, Aragorn son of Arathorn, and King Arthur from Merlin. I try to play my paladin with a personality similar to these characters.

Heinrich Hellmann after "Mathias Thulmann" (warhammer universe) and classic demon hunter tropes from christianity, van helsing etc.

Skadi Blackhand after "Flemeth" (dragonage universe) and "Kreia" (knights of the old republic)

Grimm oathbreaker after an old NWN character, but mostly the stoic sadness of a dwarf warrior, particularly a shield dwarf. So the race inspires me more than a single hero.

Medune Norman is a whole bundle of different inspirations all chucked into a blender, firstly there was a character on a server I used to play on called Shep, the character was wild and unpredictable, saw things differently and pointed out not just the obvious but the unimportant stuff. So I made Medune that brand of crazy, I'm not entirely sure where I drew inspiration from for his backstory.

His attitude and persona on how he went about things and his belief was developed on the fly by looking at what was absent in the server and what I felt was needed to rope me into major RP so the absence of something inspired and motivated me to create that.

At some point I burnt out a bit getting tired of Medune being weak and made of cardboard in a world of power builds and super heroes. More inspiration came from the anime One Punch Man as Mumen Rider a C rank hero who took on a monster that not even S class heroes could beat, because he felt it was his responsibility as a hero regardless of knowing he didn't stand a chance even when A rank heroes turned and ran or pretended not to be heroes to survive.

Inspiration for Maxwell the halfdwarven

Evannie is the Half sister of Dah Kogan, if you read his back story you will understand.

Ritoki Over hill AKA Lynx, is based of Killua from Hunter X Hunter.

Vera the hell fire warlock is based of my love for the lore of the 9 hells.

Takeo Yamada is based a bit off Iroh from Avatar and a mix of samurai from other anime or basic lore.

Dah Kogan was more of an extention of myself sadly. While he was a brute he was caring and faithful. Sadly he died.

Final note, I have yet to find a PC I fully enjoy in both build and RP. I personally am not the smartest apple and have a hard time playing high INT toons. However I love the idea of a well balance dwaven fighter, or human with sword and shield or greatsword.

Manah is an old character (NPC) I created in my games I host on Vampire - The Masqurade Redemption every game I used to do videos to sumarize the game:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kfCsf3 ... jcrIyj9ZdA

I took the name from another game, but the character I built around the name; in my games (as a DM) she was an NPC assassin; who found a magical sword which slowly turned her into the loveable character she is now - I took this story and heavily modified it; in my games the 'evil' her is her sister; Lucy - who is also an NPC in my game (but not related), but I took the name and put that personailty into the character.

Urick was made as an NPC aswell; an undead risen from the grave (knights templar) to find his lost daughters - though in my game they are unrelated.

Riol was made on the spot, and Grey Bear was heavily inspired by Kimhari from FFX.

All my characters are from my game in Vampire - Redemption; which is basically like NWN2 (it has storytelling tools, or a toolset) and I use it to create my own games - whenever I play other games I always pull out characters from my chronicle 'London By Night' and alter them slightly to fit the game.

I also wrote a Wiki (not finished) so players could read up on London By Night - if you find Manah on the page; you'll see how different they are but retain the same personailty:

http://londonbynight.wikia.com/wiki/LondonByNight_Wikia

I think Izzrar is a combination of Jarlaxle, Jim DiGriz (aka the Stainless Steel Rat), Mayweed (duncton) and myself. Go figure, a futuristic drow mole-rat, with my ugly mug on the front!

I typically play characters from archetypes (that is, I have a small list of characters I enjoy playing, and create different variations of these types depending on the world/setting I am currently playing on), so it's difficult to say where their inspiration comes from when I've been playing most for years now. For the most part, my characters are based off of previous variants of their type, but with extra attention on a particular area that I want to focus on in the current iteration.

I do take inspiration from other things though, and I do a lot of research in order to try to portray the characters as best as I can.


For Tarina, the thing I've been wanting to explore is the spiritual focus. Mysticism, occultism, animism, religion, these are all things that really resonate with the character. The concept is someone who is disenfranchised with a limited, ordinary life, who feels lost and without purpose, and so always needs to reach out for something greater than she is. The spiritualism is something fairly new to me though, as I've typically shied away from tribal/shaman stuff in RP in the past. I usually play educated, civilized characters. So for the character I've been doing a lot of research on RL animism. I've also taken a lot of inspiration from (new) World of Darkness, as it has a very evocative telling of its spirit world. I also like to use some anime like Avatar/Korra and games like Ori and the Blind Forest to get inspiration for portraying the feel of spirit magic. The physical and mystical traits for spirits especially is something that I like using eastern sources for. I still need to get to watching Spirited Away...

Another inspiration I use for Tarina is Dragon Age II. One of the other big aspects of Tarina is that she is a counter to the typical 'hero' of most stories and shows. She's the commoner, the person put into things much greater than she understands, someone that isn't ready to just leap up and find the courage to save the world. I like DAII because it's one of the few RPGs where you're not trying to save the world, you're just trying to get by while getting wrapped up in events larger than yourself. When I play through the game, the Hawke I use is very Tarina-like. Also on the DAII note, Merrill is a bit of an inspiration for Tarina as well.

Other inspirations I use include Ori and the Blind Forest (for the spirit magic vibe),


For my new Red Wizard, she's based off of a WarCraft character I played for several years. Her archetype is the alien and exile, who has had to develop a thick skin in order to cope with a world that fails or refuses to understand her. As such, inspirations I use for the character include Tyrion Lannister from Game of Thrones and Dorian Pavus from Dragon Age Inquisition. Both examples are outcasts or at least poorly regarded in their own homes, and have developed a witty, selfish demeanor and dismissive outlook on everything around them as a way of coping.

Part of what inspired me to make Sparrow (then Rook) was noticing that over the time I've roleplayed across different avenues, characters who have disabilities tend to downplay the complications of those disabilities. For example, a mute character "communicates" via sign language that is somehow a type everybody knows instinctively and imparts the exact meaning into everyone's heads, or the character somehow always has a paper and pen handy to write instantly if something is asked of them. Rook was a project of curiosity to see how a mute character would handle a world that is unaware of her quibbles and how she would interact without the crutches of sign language or writing (she was illiterate at the time I made her), and with constraints on her ability to communicate if she did eventually learn sign language or writing (e.g. Rook does not always have a writing avenue handy, it takes time for her to write something of length, and she may not always be willing to write even if she is able to).

I am also inspired by flawed characters, or characters who, by their very nature, are doomed to failure. I find that such characters, when written well, are easier to relate to, and makes their achievements more significant because of the extra effort they have to make compared with "normal" characters, and that nobody expects those characters to actually accomplish something.

These books also provided some inspiration for me:

The idea of Eliphas comes from my fascination with heroes who falls from grace because a tragedy hits them.

Alistair was based on the arch-typical witty rogue, but I worked in some anti-hero/anti-villain personality trait to make him more unique and compelling.