[JAP's Storyline Tutorial] Part 2: Characters

JAP's STORYLINE TUTORIAL
Part One: Naming Your Game - A Tutorial for Giving Titles - Here
Part Two: Characters
A Tutorial for Building Characters and Their Characteristic

Prepare your Notepad or some papers nearby if necessary.

First Topic: WHY?
If you don't create characters for your RPG, how do you play it? 
Interesting characters always be a PLUS point in RPGs. Will you play a game with PLAIN hero, BLANK heroine, and EMPTY villain? I don't think you will.
Characters gives you many capability to expand your story. In example, take this prologue (in paragraph style):

Darkness rules over the world for many years, but a savior come to the rescue. This savior, Lumero, wields a magic sword that can destroy evil. Of course, The Time Demon, who conquered the world with his mighty power, tried to stop him. Yet, good always win, and he was sealed, with Lumero's life as the price.
15,000 years after that, the Time Demon opened his eyes, and tried to conquer the world for once again...
However, another hero, namely Cross, was born...

(Pretty cliche, hun? >_>)
See, that's only a plot summary. But then, when you create other characters, in example:
Silva - an archer who travels for fun, joining Cross because he saved her from the tree monster
You can make scenes like this one (in game script style):

Cross: Are you okay?
Silva: Yes, I'm fine.
Cross: It's dangerous here. Let's go out.
(The screen changed to Inn)
Silva: Thank you for saving me, warrior.
Cross: Your welcome.

Look! You've a new scene!!
That's why you make characters.

Second Topic: HOW?
Almost the same with Part 1, you need to think, imagine, and write.
But writing is more important now.
Open your Notepad or take some papers. I'll give you an easy outline to make your character's LAYOUT.

Name: give your character a good name, and try to make it unique.
Age: your character's age
Gender: male or female
Race: the character's race
Attribute: good or evil
Class: your character's class/job
Relationship: your character's relationship with others
Personality: your character's personality
Bio: more description about your character

Now, let's make one! This is my example (sorry, I'm filling it simply):

Name: Cross
Age: 19
Gender: Male
Race: the Human
Attribute: Good
Class: Adventurer
Relationship:
Silva - love
Time Demon - enemy
Lion - friend
Personality: kind, courageous, yet a bit blind of his surroundings
Bio: Cross is the new hero chosen by the magic sword to seal the Time Demon.

Because it's only an example, you don't have to make it that way. You can add more details, like in relationship ("friend and rival", "brother, hate", etc), or maybe add new labels (skills, abilities, likes, dislikes, appearance, etc).
All you need to do is make the outline, fill it in, and make them real in your game!

Third Topic: YES-YES
Characters need to be:
1. lively
2. logical (i.e: Maria (Elf) hates humans because humans hurt nature)
3. unique

Fourth Topic: NO-NO
Characters MUST NOT be:
1. unreasonable (i.e: Maria (Elf) hates humans because humans are ugly)
2. redundant (i.e: Maria and Silva has similar personality)
3. plain

Fifth Topic: HMM...
Characters CAN be:
1. complicated (i.e: Caim from Drakengard)
2. extraordinary (i.e: bisexual, homosexual, brother complex, etc)
3. surprising (i.e: looks like an innocent girl but actually serial killer)

Hope it helps.

YAY! Another cool JAP Storyline Tutorial.. XD

Yet again very good this might even help better than the title tut
  Gratz

I think this is much better than the title one. Not because of quality. Both are good. But, that titles are usually more easily made than characters. That's my opinion, though.

Thank you everybody. I think I'll go deeper with the characters later (thinking about In Depth Character Tutorial after Storyline Tutorial).

Again nice short tutorial, this one being far superior to the title one of course. It's also good for newbs because you break things down into really simple steps.

Thank you
I'll submit part 3 soon.

your the best
thx 4 the sweet tuts