When it comes to the theatre of mind, it is much easier to focus on things that you are doing, and easy to forget what you look like while doing it. A character’s physical appearance is as equally important to the character’s identity as any of their traits.\
Building out your character’s appearance from their racial and bodily features, to their clothes, to the manner of their appearance. These factors all help to carve out your character and makes it easier to keep them in mind. Here are a few tips on building out your character’s appearance as well as how you can weave your character’s appearance into your roleplaying.
Imagine a Silhouette
You are starting to get the characteristics in mind for your character. Now imagine a silhouette of what you customer will look like. Start with the basics. Are they tall, short? Fat? Muscular? Thin and lanky?
Are you bare chested? Heavily cloaked? Wearing armor?
Hair? Balding head? Beard?
Once you have a basic outline, start filling out the finer details.
What is their eye color? Blue.
How is their face structured? He’s a strong fighter, but I want him a bit uglier, so maybe a squarish head, large bulbous nose, left eye sliding slightly to the right from a bad hit to the head.
Armor is scale mail, used a beaten up. A brown tunic beneath that is hardly washed. Gauntlets ruddy with old blood and mud. Leather pants to keep the heat in while traveling at night, frayed at the edges. Boots large and flat due to his lumbering steps.
Link your characteristics to your physical form
How we behave currently is based upon our upbringing. And a huge factor in that may have been our physical form.
Perhaps your character is afraid of people because they used to be bullied as a child. Maybe your character is particularly small for a goliath, and was constantly beat up for being “weaker”.
Perhaps your character does not know how to connect with others emotionally because they were a gigantic size for a gnome.
As well as have a characteristic be a result of your physical form, perhaps your physical form is a result of one of your characteristics.
Maybe your firbolg always looks down towards the ground when traveling because he is a druid and does not want to harm any creatures by accident. Due to this, your firbolg has a slight hump to his back.
Perhaps your character is prone to anger, and thus their fist is swollen and bigger than normal because they punch walls when angry.
Involve your appearance in your roleplay
Once you have your appearance settled, include elements of your appearance into your roleplay. Delve deeper into bringing these attributes to a subtle forefront.
“As I wait for the merchant to accept our deal, I learn back on my chair, careful to not tug on my beautiful blond hair. My long fingers tap upon the table, impatiently waiting.”
“Before the battle starts, I tie my blond hair up in a ponytail. Can’t get blood on it after all, dries it out.”
“I beg to my father to aid the people of [Town]. Kneeling on the floor, I take out a dagger and cut my golden locks with a resolute face towards my father. The golden strings swirling in the mud below. ‘Please father! I am serious!”
Attaching values to your appearance, and having those values challenged can be very interesting roleplay elements.
Voice
Finally give your character a voice. There are many things you can accomplish with the voice of your character. Many people immediately go to accents, and you don’t have to. Some people like them, some people are terrible at them. But there are many things you can do to give character to your voice.
Accent: This is the most obvious, but replicate an accent in the real world if you’d like to build on a character type
Speed: Without changing your pitch or tone, changing the speed of your words can greatly modify the feeling of your character
Introducing interrupters: Things like wheezes, coughs, sneezes, inflections, and the like can add a different flavor than normally heard
Vocabulary: This is the easiest (or hardest) change to make. Perhaps you add more slang to the words you say. Or maybe you use really big words. Or maybe you use short and efficient words. All of these can lean into your character traits and personality.
