Character Driven RP

[Ylanne Abdul Saleeb]

This is an experimental roleplay idea that I started on another website, where it has gained eight accepted character submissions other than my own. I will use a different character than the one I am using there for this site's copy of the experiment, to keep things interesting. Here goes:

This roleplay does not have a title. Or a plot. Yet. That will depend on you. The players.

Being me and being the GM, I would like it to have a realistic and modern setting, with romance NOT the primary focus of the game. Fighting will also NOT be the primary focus of the game. One, both, or neither may appear. It depends on you. Or, rather, upon your characters. Whom I would prefer to not all be between 14 and 25. In fact, I would prefer at least 2/3 of the characters to be over the age of 25. Your character may be one you have used before, or have used in non-roleplay writing.

As a writer and a roleplayer, I want to get back to the basics. The fundamentals. In my opinion, the best writing is character driven. After a all, a plot is a sequence of actions, and you do not have actions without a character (whether a being or otherwise) to perform or further them. Such characters are intriguing (interesting), believable (if not quite realistic), sympathetic (not necessarily likable), and dynamic (change as the story arcs). They are well-developed, unique, and sometimes larger than life, though never so much that they are faultless or without good in them. And it is through the interactions of these characters, as they wish to obtain their desires, or wants, and must face obstacles throughout, that the story, or roleplay, develops, and the characters' lives intertwine, and conflict and resolutions are established.

The best roleplays are written by roleplayers for roleplayers. And so I have come to this idea:

Titleless, plotless, characterless.

You will sow the seeds.

Please obey the following simple rules: your character must be describable as above, you must post literately (quality over quantity), and you must remain in the roleplay (no minimum posting requirement). Absolute no characters with Mary Sue or Anti-Sue qualities. If you don't know what those are, this isn't the roleplay for you. Please post the word 'peripheral' in your submission. (One other rule: romance/violence/cursing, please keep it okay for a teen to read. Meaning violence, making out, and occasional f-bombs are acceptable. But don't go overboard. You know what I mean.)

There will be only four slots other than mine, which may or may not be extended or shrunk, and may or may not be taken on first come first serve basis. Meaning, if the first two submissions I get are absolutely terrible Mary-Sue ish type submissions, they won't be accepted, even though they were posted first.

Things I'm looking for in character submissions:

(this part is important!) At least 3 of the 5 final characters should be over the age of 25, preferably over the age of 30, and mine is one of them. Actually, please post the word 'disclosure' in your submission. Moving on: I want a mixture of races, meaning not all white characters or all Japanese or half-Japanese characters. A mixture of education and financial statuses would be good. So would an even gender ration. So 3 girls and 2 boys, or 3 boys and 2 girls. Lots of diversity. Even in relationship status. I don't want all single characters either! This roleplay is character driven, so I expect each of the characters to be different and unique from each other!

In order to join us in developing this roleplay, please post the following:

Character Profile

(optional picture here, realistic ONLY)

Full name:

Preferred name: (i.e. Eun Kyeong prefers to be called Lucy or Nicholas as Nick but Kevin remains Kevin here)

Age: (as of 19 August 2009)

Occupation:

Race/nationality:

Religion:

Physical description: (please keep under 3 sentences, and no purple prose whatsoever)

Skills/abilities: (no powers or magic)

Biography: (go wild)

Accepted Players/Characters

1. Myself (I would hope so!) -- Tahira Ali
2.
3.
4.
5.

My profile

Feel free to use it as a template for yours.

Full name: Tahira Ali (born Elan Tahera Almontaser)

Preferred name: Tahira Ali

Age: 59

Occupation: Unemployed

Race/nationality: Middle Eastern

Religion: Agnostic

Physical description: Tahira Ali is two or three inches shy of five feet, and has thin shoulders and a frail frame. Her hair is grey turning white, and her eyes are a light grey/blue color. Her skin is olive-toned, and her cheekbones high on her face, which is marked by a distinctive widow's peak.

Skills/abilities: Tahira Ali is able to write the traditional Arabic calligraphy. She speaks Gulf and Classical Arabic. She also speaks some English. She is proficient enough that she requires no interpreter or translator; however, she is far from fluent, and lacks formal schooling in English as a foreign language. She has a clipped accent and strange forms of syntax and usage when she speaks, often using archaic terms, and almost never using contractions. Likewise, she doesn't understand jargon, slang, colloquial terms, or idioms.

Biography: Tahira Ali was born in May 1950 to Shasta Wadiri Almontaser, a dissident Uighur journalist writing during Mao's period, and Beatrice Marie Anandini, an expatriate philosophy professor working in Red China. She was born Elan Tahera Almontaser in a Washington DC area hospital while her parents filed papers for asylum in America. Shortly afterward, they decided their daughter was not safe and asked Shasta's sister, Sumitra, a failed missionary to the Arab world, to raise her instead. The whole family, less Elan's older brother David (who had recently graduated from a boarding school in America), adopted a series of false names and went underground.

She was raised under the name Tahira Ali alongside Sumitra (now Solara)'s daughter Alia. Alia had a near genius IQ and received a full scholarship to Tokyo International Academy. Due to the nature of Solara's missionary work, Tahira Ali was offered a full scholarship to the local Catholic school, which was run by a mission of nuns and a single priest. Most of the other students belonged to the European upper class, which ruled her predominantly Arab nation. She performed about average in school, excelling in math and theology, but only mediocre in science, history, and language.

Graduating in Spring 1968, the politics of her nation were growing tense, a bomb waiting to explode. Early August, tensions exploded, and a full scale revolution began, complete with vicious violence against the European oppressors. The first day of the so-called August Revolution, Tahira Ali disappeared and re-emerged over the following months as the world's newest mass murderer, killing victims in no less than five different countries. By December, she had murdered several high-profile victims, including an American Senator (and presidential nominee) and a renowned Catholic Cardinal, and she was the first woman added to the FBI Ten Most Wanted List.

As months stretched into years, unsolved murders were often attributed to Tahira Ali, who seemed to have disappeared. By the 1980s, law enforcement internationally suspected that she was involved with so-called "Islamic terrorist factions". By the 1990s, the FBI accumulated evidence that suggested ties to Usama bin Ladin and Al Qaeda. The current reward for Tahira Ali's capture is $25 million.

David Almontaser is now chair of the department of mathematics at MIT and married with five kids and a number of grandchildren and even a few great-grandchildren. He remains unaware to whom he is related, as no law enforcement agency has the information that Tahira Ali itself is really only a lifelong alias designed to protect against the schemes of Mao Tsetung. Solara (Sumitra) has since passed away. Alia received a Nobel Chemistry Prize before her death in 2006 during a brief war between two nations. Despite constant questioning, Alia denied any knowledge of Tahira Ali's whereabouts or activities up through her death. Solara cooperated with authorities, providing them with most of the known photographs or handwriting facsimiles the police have on file.