Character Categories: A Guide

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Warning

Taken from directly from VirtueVerse Wiki. Some information may not apply to the Ouroboros portal. Please see the Ouroboros Portal:Article Guidelines page for specifics.

Most of the categories mentioned in this article would be located within sub-categories of the [[Category:Character Traits]] on this wiki.


WARNING: VirtueVerse material may carry a PG-13 or R rating, beyond the Teen Rating mandated by Ouroboros Portal. Surf at your own risk.


The VirtueVerse Wiki has a large number of "Character categories" that help describe the characters. There are quite a lot of categories, and it could be difficult to find all the ones relevant to a particular character. This page lists all the categories in an organized fashion, to make it easier for players to use them and for the admins to keep track of them.

Tagging

Tags are a useful method of organizing your character into different categories. They allow people to find your character based on keywords, groups, and specific traits. They also provide logical organization to the content found within the VirtueVerse Wiki.

Tags are a special wiki code placed at the very bottom of the characters page that help the system identify how to organize and sort your character. In order to add your character to a category, add the following tag to their page:

  • [[Category:Category Name]]
Example Character Categorization:

[[Category:Character]][[Category:Hero]][[Category:Defender]]

- This would list the example character under Character, Hero and Defender.

Important Notes

  • Do not edit the category page to add your character.
  • Make sure you use the correct case (capital letters) for the category's name.
  • All Character pages must have [[Category:Character]] defined.

The Basics

All characters should be tagged as [[Category:Character]], this ensures they will show up under the main Virtue Character listing which includes all player characters posted.

Alignment

  • Hero - One of the good guys!
  • Vigilante - Good guys willing to take extreme measures
  • Villain - One of the bad guys!
  • Rogue - Bad guys who follow their own path rather than fall in line with Arachnos.
  • Loyalist - Praetorian who follows Emperor Cole's regime.
  • Resistance - Praetorian who fights Emperor Cole's tyrannical rule.

This is the obvious classification taken directly from the game. But maybe your character is beyond the simple "good guy/bad guy" divide - in which case, there are these categories:


  • Accidental Hero - you never sought the life of a hero.
  • Anti-Hero - you're contrary to the archetypal hero, possibly even its antithesis.
  • Double Agent - you work for one side while pretending to work for the other.
  • Ex-Hero - or maybe you've retired from the cape and cowl gig?
  • Ex-Villain - you've retired from your days of mayhem and mischief?
  • Fallen Hero - fallen from the light...
  • Mercenary - work for whoever pays best and ignore the moral implications.
  • Monster - not so much evil as a rampaging force of destruction.
  • Neutral - neither hero nor villain.
  • Reformed Villain - ...or crawled back towards it?
  • Reluctant Hero - you were pushed into the role of hero.
  • Reluctant Villain - you were forced into the role of villain.
  • Unlicensed - regardless of alignment, you operate without proper authority.

Archetype

Note that, with the coming of Going Rogue, archetype no longer defines hero or villain status. Still, the ATs are listed in under which side they originate for convenience.

Heroes:

Villains:

Origin

Where does your character derive their powers? This Origins should match the in game origin you selected for your character on creation. For your convenience they are:

Gender

Most characters fall in one of the three categories listed below. If your character is not specifically female or male it should be listed as [[Category:Genderless]] and/or [[Category:Asexual]]. (Examples: robots, monsters, aliens, etc)

The Fun Part

Well, we got the basics out of the way, now it's time to get down to the interesting stuff. The next part is all In-Character: these are not traits that the game tracks in any way. This means two things: 1) The sky's the limit. If you think your character falls into ten or fifteen or more categories, go ahead and add 'em! 2) Try not to clutter. Don't add tags to your character just to have more tags, be sure they are meaningful in some way. For example, don't tag your robot character as "Plant" unless he actually has plants somewhere in his construction.

Where you came from

First, background traits - things that determine who your character is.

Species

Often called "race" in fantasy or sci-fi, these are all the humanoid species that aren't Human.

The ones with a modern/sci-fi bent:

  • Alien - generic or unspecified aliens... FROM SPAAAACE!
    • Kheldian - the CoH-Verse's very own flying Koosh balls.
      • Nictus - a divergent breed of kheldian created through science.
    • Martian - a life form native to the planet Mars.
    • Rikti - not actually from space.

Artificial lifeforms created through either science or magic.

  • Construct - artificially created life-forms.
    • Android - less mechanical, more human-looking (may even have human parts).
    • Bioengineered - a unique, organic creation of new life through science.
    • Clone - an organic recreation of another life-form based on its DNA.
    • Golem - a mystically empowered robot or animated inorganic material.
    • Robot - walking bolt-buckets.

The races more common in fantasy:

  • Djinn - elemental spirits, often bound by magic as servants.
  • Dragon - of draconic descent or true dragons who have assumed a humanoid form.
  • Dwarf - small, stout, bearded humanoids. Scottish accent optional, but recommended.
  • Dark Elf - the dark-skinned, white haired cousins of those other elves.
  • Elemental - a creature composed of one of the traditional elements, including but not limited to air, earth, fire, and water.
  • Elf - the "arrow-slinging long-lived hippies" of fantasy literature.
  • Fae - the more traditional "nature sprites" known as fairies or faeries.
  • Goblin - typically a baddie in fantasy settings.

Less common than standard fantasy are those with ties to Heaven and Hell.

  • Evil
    • Demon - fiends of a chaotic nature
    • Infernal - fiends of a lawful or orderly nature
  • Undead yes, unperson - no!
    • Lich - powerful wizards who have turned themselves into immortal undead through magic.
    • Spirit - incorporeal apparitions, ghosts, and such.
    • Vampire - blood-sucking fiends (or sparkly teen idols).
    • Zombies - brain-eating monsters (typically mindless).

If your character is part human and part other species (half-elf, half-dragon, half-catgirl), you can tag them as both Half-Human and their other half, or maybe use one of the categories below as appropriate.

And some other races and descriptives to help flesh out what you are...

Inborn traits

Humanity is comprised of various ethnicities and nationalities.

Maybe they're not quite human, but not quite a different species?

Maybe they have a quirk in their heritage.

Not all heroes are straight. Most are generally assumed to be unless otherwise noted. Here are some suggested tags that can help define your character's orientation.

Some people have a Mental Disorder or other troublesome behavior which may hinder their heroic aspirations or be a source of their villainous behavior.

Backstory

Maybe they came to Paragon from somewhere far away?

Or perhaps just a Foreigner currently dwelling in this country.

Other aspects of their life:

What's going on with you

Your character's job, status, or superhero comic archetype.

Classic archetypes

Identity status

Age

Most characters are assumed to be adults unless otherwise specified. Here are a few examples of characters which are not yet adults or way past the traditional adult age.

Arcane Arts

Careers

Adventure!

Armed Forces

Arts & Entertainment

Police, Rescue, & Security

Rogues

Schooling

Science!

White Collar

SCA

Groups

If your character's Supergroup has a large presence on the wiki, they might also have a category to which you can add the character. Supergroup categories (including Villain Groups, of course) aren't classed amongst the Character Categories, instead having have their own parent category, but they're still useful tags for characters.

In-Game Organizations

The existing in-game groups like Crey or Wyrven or Malta have their own subcategories in the In-Game Organizations category. They can be used for tagging characters in the same way as regular categories.

Genre

For some people, its important to distinguish not only where their character fits into the story, but also what kind of story it is.

Roleplay

This is an important aspect of many people's gaming experience, though not a necessary addition to your character. It does help like-minded people find each others' characters, though.


Making New Categories

If there is an important aspect of your character that isn't covered by the existing group of character categories, you might find yourself wanting to make a new one. This is fine - a wiki is a group effort, after all - but you should first try to be sure that the category will be useful to the wiki at large, not just to your character. Categories are a way to group characters with similar traits, so a category with only one member isn't very meaningful, even if that trait is very important to your character concept.

A good place to begin is to consider whether or not a category is too specific. Browsing the Character Categories page will give you an idea of how broad a category should be in order to be useful. It will also let you check whether or not there is an existing category which provides an adequate replacement for the category you're thinking of making - there's no reason to add another category if it's effectively a duplicate of an existing one.

Once you've determined that the category is broad enough, you should try to ascertain that it will be useful to more characters than just the one you're making. A good way to get an idea of this is to perform a quick search for the name of the category, and see how many times it appears in other characters' pages (this will also give you an idea of whether or not you have chosen a good title for the category - try to choose an unambiguous or self-explanatory term, if possible). If you get a lot of search results, this is probably a worthwhile category; if you get few or no results, chances are that the category is too narrow to be appropriate.

Once you've made a new category, remember to add a description to the category's page - you can do this by clicking on the link created at the bottom of your character's page. Try to keep the description as informative and factual as possible, and explain clearly which sorts of characters fall into this category.

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