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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14215
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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 Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 12:20 am Post subject: Defining appearance for your characters |
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Who here lets their players just pick what their characters look like. Who here doesn't really have it matter.
Who has them roll certain aspects of that on some chart (such as height/weight/eye color and so on)..
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Whill
Dark Lord of the Jedi (Owner/Admin)
Joined: 14 Apr 2008
Posts: 10438
Location: Columbus, Ohio, USA, Earth, The Solar System, The Milky Way Galaxy
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 1:08 am Post subject: Re: Defining appearance for your characters |
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| garhkal wrote: | Who here lets their players just pick what their characters look like. Who here doesn't really have it matter.
Who has them roll certain aspects of that on some chart (such as height/weight/eye color and so on).. |
A GM letting players choose their own characters' appearances has been RAW in every published version of the game, so that's default. Your question would be better worded as, who has house rules that change that?
I don't have any charts to roll on. This isn't D&D, and I despise the RPG concept of enforced randomness being applied to character creation in any way. A player should be able to create any character they want to within the confines of the rules and fine tune everything, including character appearance. But a player could chooses randomness for some aspect, if they really wanted it. But the results would still have to make sense.
All PCs in my game are subject to final GM approval. I would only intervene in character appearance and make a player change something if it just didn't make sense for the character, like a 2D strength human that is 2.1m and 150kg, or a human with a unicorn horn and a tail. IIRC correctly, I never had to veto something like that. The only minor case I can remember was that a player wanted his character to be a double-jointed human with a 4D+1 Dexterity and crayola-red skin from a planet unheard of. I said to change the species to "unidentified near-human" and approved it. He eventually did define his planet and near-human species name.
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RyanDarkstar
Commander
Joined: 04 Dec 2014
Posts: 351
Location: Chambersburg, PA, USA, Earth
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:26 am Post subject: |
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My players typically find an image online that matches or comes close to how they want their character to appear. Same with miniatures (since I'm a sucker for them anyway). If they can't find something exactly, I go to Photoshop to cut-and-paste or draw it. I've also used Star Wars Galaxy and Star Wars The Old Republic's character creator and taken a screenshot.
I'm not opposed to randomness, though. Some funky AD&D characters came out of roll tables way back in the day.
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DougRed4
Rear Admiral
Joined: 18 Jan 2013
Posts: 2286
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 6:24 pm Post subject: |
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I let my players pick how their PCs look. We usually find an image for them as well, as I use cardstock counters to represent where they are on a battle mat (usually).
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Xain Arke
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Joined: 19 Sep 2010
Posts: 989
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 7:35 pm Post subject: |
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I always let Players define their character's appearance within reasonable boundaries of the Species they choose.
They can play a huge bulky Rodian outside of the standard size range maximum, but it's still has to recognisable
as a Rodian, for example. |
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MrNexx
Rear Admiral
Joined: 25 Mar 2016
Posts: 2248
Location: San Antonio
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:35 pm Post subject: Re: Defining appearance for your characters |
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| garhkal wrote: | Who here lets their players just pick what their characters look like. Who here doesn't really have it matter.
Who has them roll certain aspects of that on some chart (such as height/weight/eye color and so on).. |
For the most part, I let them pick. The Galaxy is big enough that I don't even keep to "reasonable bounds of the species", either. You want to be a bulky, purple, Rodian? No problem. You're of a subspecies from a colony that got separated for a while. Or a subculture that uses biopigments to alter their skin color as children. Bulky? Most are skinny, you are muscle-bound. Or you USED to have a 1D Strength, but got an experimental drug treatment that boosted your strength to 4D+1 and made you built like a durasteel refresher.
If you stay within the statistical range of the species, and want to be of that species, I assume most people say "Huh, that's a weird looking Rodian" and move on with their lives.
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
Posts: 16320
Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2021 11:56 pm Post subject: Re: Defining appearance for your characters |
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| garhkal wrote: | Who here lets their players just pick what their characters look like. Who here doesn't really have it matter.
Who has them roll certain aspects of that on some chart (such as height/weight/eye color and so on).. |
Depends on the campaign. An Imperial campaign isn't going to allow for a lot of freedom of expression when it comes to grooming standards; TIE pilots with beards and ponytails aren't going to cut it. Same with other genre-specific campaigns, like a Mandalorian campaign; there can't certainly be variations in the armor itself, but in the end, Mando armor is going to have certain characteristics that distinguish it as Mando armor. Substituting out some other form of armor, like the Noval Garaint's Krail 210 personal armor from GG9, should also not be permitted.
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Dredwulf60
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Joined: 07 Jan 2016
Posts: 911
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 12:50 am Post subject: |
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| RyanDarkstar wrote: | | My players typically find an image online that matches or comes close to how they want their character to appear. . |
This is similar to what I do.
Usually the only ones I veto is if they choose a celebrity that I feel has too much out-of-game pop cultural bagage...unless the the character is somehow meant to play off of that.
For example, I had a player whose swoop-racer he wanted to look like Vin Diesel's character from the 'Fast and the Furious'. I allowed it because he was playing a character kind of based on what that guy would be in the Star Wars galaxy.
But otherwise, I prefer the players select images of what would be 'unknown' actors, so they are more of a blank slate that they can paint their own character traits and personalities onto.
Of course, I also sometimes use 'knowns' for NPCs. I'll use images from non-star wars movies for certain NP characters BECAUSE of the automatic associations that might be made. It's kind of short-hand storytelling. The same reason hollywood has a whole bunch of people who make a living playing the same type of character over and over again. They call them character-actors. You might not know their name...but you know he usually plays roles like 'Henchman #2'.
When the players come across a mercenary adversary who looks like Arnold Scwarzenneger's 'Dutch' from Predator, they are immediately going to get some first impressions about the character. |
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14215
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 1:47 am Post subject: |
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I like that idea.. Using known actors of film/tv, to portray npcs..
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Mamatried
Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017
Posts: 1861
Location: Norway
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 9:34 am Post subject: |
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For the most part I allow the player to decide freely, though wihin "common sense"
I would not allow blue skin on a player's character who is human, but I would allow green hair.
I found once (will see if I still have it) a little sheet with various appearence features, like scars and tattoos and the like you could roll a 1D100 on.
I used that for the players that wanted to randomize stuff without "thinking too hard" |
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MrNexx
Rear Admiral
Joined: 25 Mar 2016
Posts: 2248
Location: San Antonio
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 10:42 am Post subject: |
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| Mamatried wrote: | For the most part I allow the player to decide freely, though wihin "common sense"
I would not allow blue skin on a player's character who is human, but I would allow green hair.
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What about a Near Human, statistically identical to a human, who happens to have blue skin?
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garhkal
Sovereign Protector
Joined: 17 Jul 2005
Posts: 14215
Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 3:32 pm Post subject: |
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Then be a near human..
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Dredwulf60
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Joined: 07 Jan 2016
Posts: 911
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| Posted: Fri Jun 04, 2021 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | I like that idea.. Using known actors of film/tv, to portray npcs.. |
For example...
https://www.swagonline.net/blog/dredwulf60/mandalorian-characters
We sometimes also meta-game that we aren't actually even doing an RPG...rather we are sort of working on a Star Wars movie or TV show, complete with behind-the scenes ideas which are usually out-of-character 'around the table' jokes.
When a certain NPC shows up and they look like a known actor...well that actor just got cast in that role for this production. 
I had fun with this when I put together a faux magazine article or two about our game 'seasons' as a kind of retrospective/ review when getting back into it after a hiatus. |
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Mamatried
Commodore
Joined: 16 Dec 2017
Posts: 1861
Location: Norway
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| Posted: Sat Jun 05, 2021 1:39 am Post subject: |
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| MrNexx wrote: | | Mamatried wrote: | For the most part I allow the player to decide freely, though wihin "common sense"
I would not allow blue skin on a player's character who is human, but I would allow green hair.
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What about a Near Human, statistically identical to a human, who happens to have blue skin? |
Near human is fine, they are by the "near" if you will thaose differences.
Naturally a chiss player will play a chiss, and a near human, with blue skin and red eyes.
he will not play a Human with blue skin and red eyes , or are we talking "paint"? |
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