Creating character chemistry for RP

In a character-focused RP, the most important factor to consider when making a character sheet is whether they’ll have good chemistry with other player’s characters. Since social interaction is the focus, good chemistry makes for good RP, which itself is a result of characters having reasons to interact with each other. When there are no reasons, there is no chemistry, and the RP dies.

To illustrate this point, imagine you’re packed into a crowded bus, with people all around you. You don’t know them, and you have no reasons to talk with any of them, so despite the fact that you’re all physically close, everyone is standing around looking at their phones. There is no chemistry here.

Similarly, characters that are in the same RP need to have reasons to interact, otherwise they’re just sitting around doing nothing. Simply being in the same RP is actually a rather weak reason to interact, so you need to put some thought into your character’s personality and background to avoid the crowded bus problem.

Chemistry through personality

If I’m a player who’s deciding if I want my character to interact with yours, the first thing I look for in your character sheet is their personality, so that I can compare it with my characters’. If there’s a good fit, then that’s a reason for them to interact.

Obviously, two characters with similar personalities will have more reasons to talk to each other, and would probably make good friends. However, even characters with diametrically opposed personalities can have good chemistry. They might dislike or hate each other, but if they’ll start arguments, play pranks on each other, or are actively trying to ruin each others’ lives, then this is great chemistry because they’ll always have reasons to talk to each other. As long as the characters’ suffering is fun for everyone to RP, characters being enemies can be just as satisfying as being friends.

The most difficult personalities to play are shy characters and characters who brood silently in the corner. The problem is that nobody has a reason to talk to the corner-sitters, so they don’t. Or if they do, the corner-sitter pushes them away before a deeper interaction can happen, so there’s little motivation to keep interacting. If nobody wants to interact with them, they may as well not be there.

This is not to say that a shy character could never work. Shy characters could open up when certain people talk to them, which encourages further interaction. However, people still need that initial reason to approach a shy character. This is where the character’s background comes in.

Chemistry through shared backgrounds

Shy or not, all characters benefit from having a full and varied background. A good background doesn’t just tell the character’s life story up to the start of the RP. Rather, it needs to be useful for answering the question: "How is my character's life connected to other player characters' lives, whether directly or indirectly?"

Crucially, the answers to this question are the reasons that other characters should interact with yours, which is where we get our chemistry. The more “plot hooks” you add to their background, the more other players can find some reason to interact with them. Even little things like hobbies they’ve picked up, successes and failures they’ve experienced, or places that they frequent, can create good reasons for two characters to interact, even if their “main story” is different.

For instance, a programmer who works on bank software appears to have little to do with a journeyman plumber at first blush, but add one simple detail— that they both have a love of football from having played in high school— and suddenly their lives could have crossed in multiple different ways. Perhaps they played for the same high school team, or played against each other at different schools, or they frequent the same sports bar and became friends that way.

Conversely, if your character’s background consists of training in a secluded mountaintop all their life, you’re probably going to have a hard time. It doesn’t matter how much detail you write about their mountaintop home, their childhood, or their training— due to their seclusion, there is no way for other players’ characters to cross paths with yours, so your character had better have one hell of a personality if they want to fit into an RP.

Summary

In a character RP, character chemistry is the engine that drives the entire experience. Therefore, the most important aspects to character creation for character RPs is making a personality and background that gives other characters’ motivation to interact with them. Without this, a character is doomed to standing around awkwardly doing nothing, like a shy person at a house party who doesn’t know anyone there.