Tutorial #4 - Your Character

Each one of you will be required to submit a biography of your character before you can be posted to a ship. These do not need to be long, nor overly detailed. But it is essential that your new crewmates know something about you. To that end, I would ask you to take the time to create and submit a biography to me.

The following information is necessary: your character’s name, age, gender, species. Some optional items are a brief physical description, the names of your character's parents, siblings, spouse, children, and other family members who are fundamental to development.

You may want to include some brief personal history of the character, like where they were born and reared, or anything else necessary to our understanding of you. You could include any important experiences in your character’s like which you feel we should know about, or a brief professional history. This could include information about your character’s academy days, like the degree they achieved or any extracurricular activities. The more information you give us about your character, the better equipped we are to SIM with you.

Usually, a Bio looks like this:

• STATS:
  • Full name
  • Age (date of birth)
  • Species
  • Gender
  • Hair color
  • Eye color
  • Height
• FAMILY:
  • Parents
  • Siblings
  • Spouse
  • Children
• CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY:

Some Important Things to Remember:

1. There is something called “Widow/Orphan syndrome,” which we see a lot. This is when your character has had a lot of tragedy in their life. Remember, in real life, how many orphans do YOU know that had to raise themselves? How many widows, or widowers do YOU know that had a spouse die? Probably not too many. If you’re looking for ways to make your character interesting, draw on your own experiences as a person!
2. Your age should be appropriate for your training. If you’re a doctor, then you’ve been in medical school for a while both before, and after StarFleet Academy. In that case, your character would be around 26 once they got to their ship. In other situations, your character would be about 23, as they would likely have joined the Academy at the age of 18 (the end of their "high school" or secondary school experience), and then would have spent four years in the Academy, and one year on a “cadet cruise.”
3. Not everyone can graduate first in their class, and be exceptional at all skills. In the end, shortcoming are more interesting to SIM than exceptional qualities. Make your character balanced. Perhaps they won every track medal in their high school, but barely passed math and science.
4. Super powers like telekinetics (the ability to move objects with one’s mind) will not be permitted.