Viewpoint Playing OCs at different ages

[ApfelSeine]

Have you ever played the same OC at a younger or older age than you originally conceived them? If so, do you tend to make them similar or significantly different from their original personality? Do you make changes based on setting, or based on the maturity of different ages? Or are they essentially the same as the original version?

Most people seem to keep their characters the same age if they reuse them, so I'm curious how people might modify (or not) their character, be it as time goes by or within different contexts. Or, if you've never reused a character, how do you think you might hypothetically play them at a different age.

 

[Spoiled Bread]

I once played my 500 years old vampire as a 25 years old woman. Their appearance are same but their core theme is different. The 25 years old version is more about having a family in a medieval fantasy world, while the 500 years old version is a half-joke former evil overlord vampire that swings a 200kg metal coffin as weapon. Other than this one, I think I keep my other OCs' age samey.

 

[rae2nerdy]

So look to real life examples for this. How have you and the people around you changed over the years? What where you like as a child and how does that differ from what your like now as an adult (or even older teen)

How does your view of life differ from your parents ?

Basically look at the characters life experience and think of how that will alter the core personality you assigned them and how they interact with other characters.

 

[ApfelSeine]

So look to real life examples for this. How have you and the people around you changed over the years? What where you like as a child and how does that differ from what your like now as an adult (or even older teen)

How does your view of life differ from your parents ?

Basically look at the characters life experience and think of how that will alter the core personality you assigned them and how they interact with other characters.

For me, characters often become either more confident or more cynical depending on their life circumstances, so I find this to be good advice.

As an example, I have a character Ryurik whose ideals of justice and life essentially take a steep downward turn, barely kept in check by his idealistic foster daughter who is the only one keeping him connected to his past self (despite his becoming a money focused alcoholic rather than a passionate detective). Those two make good foils to each other.

And then in contrast I have a character Vijay who moves in the opposite direction, shifting from spending his time caring for others towards becoming entirely career focused.

My characters make more drastic shifts than what you describe, but having gone through a great traumatic incident myself, it feels normal. And seeing the number of friends with anxiety and depression that I never noticed back in high school but whose symptoms I see clearly now, I realize how fragile personality can be.

I mean, personality is often situational, but I'm still very curious what types of characters people construct when they shift ages, either for fun or to meet an age requirement. I also do wonder what the difference is from shifting from older to younger vs younger to older.

 

[rae2nerdy]

For me, characters often become either more confident or more cynical depending on their life circumstances, so I find this to be good advice.

As an example, I have a character Ryurik whose ideals of justice and life essentially take a steep downward turn, barely kept in check by his idealistic foster daughter who is the only one keeping him connected to his past self (despite his becoming a money focused alcoholic rather than a passionate detective). Those two make good foils to each other.

And then in contrast I have a character Vijay who moves in the opposite direction, shifting from spending his time caring for others towards becoming entirely career focused.

My characters make more drastic shifts than what you describe, but having gone through a great traumatic incident myself, it feels normal. And seeing the number of friends with anxiety and depression that I never noticed back in high school but whose symptoms I see clearly now, I realize how fragile personality can be.

I mean, personality is often situational, but I'm still very curious what types of characters people construct when they shift ages, either for fun or to meet an age requirement. I also do wonder what the difference is from shifting from older to younger vs younger to older.

I was merely saying that your understanding of the world alters as you get older and that in turn will alter your personality. This can absolutely include things like traumatic events or even mental disorders. As often times even your understanding of an event/disorder alters as you get older and you gain more experience with it.

And because that is true in real life it is the same with written characters. You have to look at how the character's circumstances have changed over the progression of time to see how they will be different at different points of their life. Now whether that's a small change or a large one is going to depend on the background you give them.

 

[Dutch]

My OC Montgomery canon age is 45, but I've done an AU where he is 30, and a roleplay set in the past where he's canon 23 starting his military career.

Created him when I was 27 played him for just over 2 years. Been about 3 since I've actively played him. Don't think I would necessarily play him much differently from his original version unless doing an AU or him older than canon.

 

[Shuusuke]

While I haven't actually played those out yet, I did imagine some of my main OCs in different ages. I also place them on different scenarios/stories, and even alternate paths within those scenarios, which are the main turning points for their personalities. That makes it a bit complicated to explain them in detail, so I'll just give a converging overview on one of them instead. Given how some of my characters were created around 10 years ago...I'd like to think that's enough time for some maturity to be gained, so I tried to use that knowledge to develop my characters further too.

One of those characters was originally in his early teens, but I've thought of up to his mid 30s, which is his "historical" lifespan, as well as on alternate scenarios in which he survives beyond that, I'd say to up to his late 50s so far.

Spoiler: brief overview here

He usually starts off as a member of an organization/clan that doesn't entirely follow the law, but since the deal is profitable for him, he remains loyal to its paycheck. In his mid teens, he decides to sabotage the organization and collude with some of its victims, due to (initially) a desire for revenge. In his late teens, he openly rebels against the organization and a adopts the children of one of its deceased members (who was more like another victim really). In his early-to-mid 20s, he finishes defeating/exiling most of the members of the organization (including his own father, wasn't terribly against how things worked back then), claiming control of it and using its money to make reparations. Up to his mid 30s, he contacts other organizations/clans to cooperate with them (most notably, acting as an instructor for an academy) and let them know things changed. Finally, he is betrayed by a "friend" who was tempted by survivors of the organization to restore their former power and wanted to start his own conquest, and chooses to fight to his death to let some good people escape. Alternate scenarios involve him never betraying the organization in the first place, choosing to ally with his "friend" instead of fighting him, escaping his "friend's" betrayal while the aforementioned good people get killed instead, and many more, in which he could probably survive up to his late 50s. I see potential in these alternate paths but since they're alternate, I haven't thought too much about them yet.

That's the one I've put the most thought into, he's the one as my avatar and signature images (at different times). I may have just listed turning points but I'd like to think people can see the maturing and changing process that happened behind them. The tl;dr version is that he starts off as a stereotypical "nothing personal" character, then acts based on his own desire for revenge, then develops a sense of morals, then changes his behavior from attacker (from his days in the old organization) to defender (helping with reparations to the victims and protecting them from retaliation), then to trying his hand at diplomacy/politics which he'd grown to hate back in the organization, then to being (ironically) the target of a rebellion. Not to mention alternate timelines. Got plenty of different ages to pick to RP as him, if I do say so myself. And frankly, I'd prefer doing that than to make a new character just to fit some IC age requirement, since this one has much more development and I'd know how to play as him better. The core aspects personality remains (hard to tell with just that overview though), but depending on the time you pick, some parameters can have changed, as well as how they demonstrate their personality.

Might have gotten a bit carried away, but it's pretty fun to think of timelines for me.

 

[BackSet]

I've changed characters ages before but the change rarely amounts to anything more than a year or two more. Like bumping a 20 year okd character up to 21 because I felt it was better.

 

[N9noBrawn]

It's one of my favorite things to do as I tend to have characters make reappearances in stories related to the one they originated in. Sometimes their role changes because of that. A character who was a veteran detective in one story might be just starting out in a story set years earlier, and he might be basically a different person.

 

[Nenawa]

I don't think I've done a significant amount of playing a character at two different ages, but for most of my characters I definitely try and think about how any major experiences in their past might have changed them and led to them being the way they are now. This makes it easier to envision them in the past before some or all of those experiences changed the course of their life, and then I can play them act or think differently as a result. Jumping ahead to make them older works much the same, but I start out by trying to imagine what my character's future might actually look like like as well as how they would end up changing compared to the present.

For both past and future, these changes could be either gradual shifts (a character starts out reckless and careless when young but gets wiser and more cautious in time) or rather sudden ones (a character starts out trusting a friend but is then betrayed and loses faith not only in the friend but in others as well). It can be fun to see a major defining feature of a character change drastically from one part of their life to another! But no matter what happens to them, I try to make sure that there are at least a few core aspects of that character that stay relatively unchanged over time, even if they wax and wane based on circumstances. I feel like there should always be some common threads between a character's younger and older selves, because if there weren't any then they may as well be separate characters!

 

[Crayons]

In a Naruto universe RP, my friend and I played our OCs as genin when they were on a team together, and then later we played them as senseis for their own genin teams, roughly ten years later. To age them up we each briefly imagined how their life had gone in the meanwhile. I think that's pretty much the only time I've played a character at two very different ages. As genin, they had a bit of an enmity with each other. He had a bit of an inferiority complex and wanted to prove himself, she was pretty arrogant, always been told she was the best, and looked down on him. When they were adults they had more mutual respect, and also ended up ... in a romance... predictably. XD

 

[ashwynne]

I typically never reuse characters as I prefer crafting them uniquely for whatever setting they're a part of. That said... I do REALLY like exploring different periods of time in their lives. This usually manifests as either flashbacks or me doing little vignettes with them to see what they were like at a different age.

Usually this is limited to their past as their future will be shaped by the events in the RP--so I can't predict how they'll act in the future. I strive really hard for my characters to grow and change throughout the course of an rp, just as people do in real life. Each personality trait that informs their current actions has to be rooted in something, so I'll do little one-shots to see what they were like 10/20/whatever years ago.

It's honestly really fun, seeing my rough, tough, gruff characters all sparkly and bright-eyed as children while they play hide and seek with their parents. Or conversely a child who is incredibly withdrawn and morose who goes through some positive experience that improves their outlook on life. It's a great creative activity in my opinion... you really do learn so much more about what makes them tick!