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View Full Version : Creepy, Off-putting, or Just Kinda Weird- Character Ideas



SirBellias
2016-08-09, 02:41 PM
Hey, y'all.

So one of my next characters is going to be a tad crazed by the Great Old Ones (GOOlock, if that's relevant), and I've been doing some reading. I'm borrowing several ideas from Lovecraft and The King in Yellow, but am not sure how to implement them well to make a truly compelling and weird character.

So, feel free to post tips of the trade, stories of awe-inspiring madness, and thoughts on ways to add an odd harmonic or two into your role-playing experience.

Inevitability
2016-08-09, 03:05 PM
How about basing it on good old 701 (http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-701)?

mr_odd
2016-08-09, 03:18 PM
Salad Fingers. Enough said.

ImNotTrevor
2016-08-09, 10:19 PM
The easiest way is with behavior that people find disquieting and uncomfortable.

Watching people while they sleep.
Touching people too much.
Smiling. Always.
Unemotional reactions to important things
Overly emotional reactions to small things.
Strange manners of speaking. (Only whispers, pauses and seems to listen to nothing randomly, etc.)
Muttering, facial/body ticks

Just pick a few behaviors and stick to those. Don't try to do them all. Just pick around 2 or 3 and do them constantly.

Belac93
2016-08-09, 11:14 PM
"Never stop smiling. Whenever you are describing your character talk, also describe their smile getting wider. Grin constantly while you are at the table. When your smile is as wide as it can go, use illusion spells to make it wider. Eventually, your smile will reach around your entire face, and the top of your head will pop off. Keep smiling. Your smiling breaks a hole in a fabric of the universe, and the top of your head falls in, it's grin getting wider. My smiling creeps into the mortal worlds, and makes people happy. They smile as well. Their smiling makes me smile. I smile wider. They smile wider. Their smiling reaches out of sight behind their ears, meeting at the back of their head."
"My work has begun again."

At this point in my narration, I was told to save my bard's backstory until an evil campaign, and to stop defiling their high fantasy.

Philistines! :smallbiggrin:

Inevitability
2016-08-10, 12:27 AM
Salad Fingers. Enough said.

NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE. Enough internet for today.

I suppose it was in the thread's spirit, though.

Arbane
2016-08-10, 11:05 AM
I was once in a game of fantasy Risus with a guy whose character's Cliches included
"JRPG Staff Chick" (healer type character) and
"Main character of Prototype" (Human-eating shapeshifting abomination).

That game went downhill pretty fast.

MrStabby
2016-08-10, 12:19 PM
1) Your character talks about themselves in the third person
2) Your character quietly sings lullabies in their sleep
3) your character always addresses conversation to an interlocutor's left hand rather than their face
4) Your character cautiously smells any text before reading it
5) Your character keeps muttering about the "ticking of the clock"
6) When not speaking to people your character still makes unflinching eye contact with them
7) When resting the character allign their body in a north south direction
8) On a full moon your charachter suffers from echolalia

Any of these work?

JeenLeen
2016-08-10, 12:22 PM
Especially if you are trying for GOOlock, I could see some alien mentality being appropriate.

My favorite PC just didn't get why people cared if he killed normal people. Like, he knew it was preferable not to and that people had hang-ups about it due to their weird beliefs and superstitions, but he didn't really get why they cared if he killed some random normal people.
He also liked keeping a token of every enemy he killed. (Not practical for D&D, but maybe for every type of enemy you face, keep a token to remember it by.)
(oWoD Mage: he was a Virtual Adept (Reality Hacker) who believed that all or most-all normal humans were NPCs, so killing was no different from deleting a file on a computer. He also cared about looting the foes, since loot is loot. It started off as a cool little gimmick, wound up like a serial killer's collection.)

If you can be Neutral (or Evil, but that's probably not a good idea), some of the above could work. Humans, or most humans, are so insignificant compared to the Great Ones, so why does it matter if they die for the 'greater good'? Of course, the PCs are significant since they are movers in whatever the GOO has you involved in, and so those they care about are cared about as an extension of them, but the random villagers being killed by gnolls? Yeah, sure, you'll help the team save them, but you don't see why it matters.


1) Your character talks about themselves in the third person
2) Your character quietly sings lullabies in their sleep
3) your character always addresses conversation to an interlocutor's left hand rather than their face
4) Your character cautiously smells any text before reading it
5) Your character keeps muttering about the "ticking of the clock"
6) When not speaking to people your character still makes unflinching eye contact with them
7) When resting the character allign their body in a north south direction
8) On a full moon your charachter suffers from echolalia

Any of these work?

I really love #4.
For any of these, keep in mind how easy and non-annoying it would be to RP for you and your group. Also, probably good to make sure OOC the group is okay with the concept of a wierd-o like your PC being part of the group. (Don't want the party paladin killing you for being corrupted by otherworldly evils or something like that.)

SethoMarkus
2016-08-10, 01:45 PM
Other than behavior, describe your physical appearance regularly. At the start of the game you appear mostly normal. Maybe you have an odd tic or you smile a little too eagerly, but you are Human (or Elven, or Dwarven, etc). But, slowly over time, as you become more powerful and more in tune with the GOOs you begin to, subtly, change. Never describe what changes took place, never address them directly, just describe your appearance as though that was the way you always appeared. Your skin slowly becomes more gaunt, pale, grey, wrinkled, smooth, etc. You slowly lose or grow hair in unusual places. Your face begins to flatten or become more pointed and sharp, or takes on an almost fish like appearance as your eyes bulge out a bit, your ears shrink... Your fingers become longer and more twig like, your nails are sharp like claws and long, and you can only keep them short by constantly biting them, so they are all jagged and uneven. Your eyes become milky or cloudy, or they darken to a deep black like a void.

And again, never mention the change itself. Dont ever say "my characters skin is becoming paler". One day describe your skin as pale and dry, the next day describe it as gaunt and grey, and the next day describe it as scaly. Describe details that wouldn't normally come into play, "as I shake hands with the innkeeper my nose shrivels as though smelling something rancid."

Waker
2016-08-10, 05:04 PM
And again, never mention the change itself. Dont ever say "my characters skin is becoming paler". One day describe your skin as pale and dry, the next day describe it as gaunt and grey, and the next day describe it as scaly. Describe details that wouldn't normally come into play, "as I shake hands with the innkeeper my nose shrivels as though smelling something rancid."
I rather like this idea, but the method I would choose is to tell the DM this outside of the session and have him point out stuff like that. See if any of the party members catches those little clues.

SethoMarkus
2016-08-10, 05:08 PM
I rather like this idea, but the method I would choose is to tell the DM this outside of the session and have him point out stuff like that. See if any of the party members catches those little clues.

Which is a perfect way of keeping the mystique up, as well. I've only had experience running creepy characters as the DM, so as a PC YMMV

BootStrapTommy
2016-08-10, 10:57 PM
My nephew had a cleric once who made a habit of collecting body parts of enemies, for reasons that were never fully disclosed.

A friend of mine ran that 5e module with the bard and the haunted house, and one of my fellow players made a rather terrifying character. He did not do it subtly.

Mostly, he sexually harassed the ghost in the story. As she became more and more disturbed, he became more and more aggressive, culminating in his assault of her dead corpse when it was found.

He also tied a leash to another player, and responded to many situations by throwing them at things.

He was a paladin.

At a latter game, I planned a rather disturbing Zenthrim. I was a bladesinger, and the party's only full caster.

I regularly used my dead opponent's blood as war paint, and was the quintessential mercenary. Cold, calculated, and willing to do anything for the right price. By the end of the session my mercenary behavior had my own party members bribing me to stay on their side.

During the first encounter, I claimed a werewolf's arm as a trophy. In our next encounter with the werewolf, I beat him to death with it.

I regularly visited a brothel in the town we were in. My girl of choice turned out to be the BBEG (who I was unintentionally funding with my party member's "bribes"). I later played her by convincing her I was infatuated and betraying the party (which I did not have to roll for, because everyone thought I was serious), then stabbed her in the back.

SethoMarkus
2016-08-11, 02:15 AM
~snip~


Idk, I personally feel that there is a difference between a character that is creepy and off-putting, and a character that is frightening/intimidating. For me, at least, creepiness requires some degree of subtlety and finesse. Assaulting another character (pc or npc) just comes off as evil to me (really, that "paladin" didn't fall?), and being sexually promiscuous is just a character trait in itself... They both sound like very interesting characters, and I'm not saying they don't have a place in this thread, just they wouldn't be the first thing to come to my mind with the word "creepy" as a primer.

I would, however, like to hear a little more about the using an enemy's blood as red substitute for woad battlepaint...

Lacco
2016-08-11, 02:25 AM
Salad Fingers. Enough said.

Haven't seen that one for looooong...

...oooooh, rusty spoooon... :smallbiggrin:

I'd also recommend Edmund Finney's Quest for the Meaning of Life as "must read". Most of the characters are quirky at least.

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-11, 02:55 AM
One of the most powerful yet delicate tools at your disposal when playing characters you're trying to make creepy is their concept of understanding. What somebody shows an understanding of hugely shapes people's perceptions of them. That guy who's really interested in magic and physiology but has no concept of social norms and thus asks random strangers whose bodies he finds interesting if he can give them a physical? Potentially creepy, but more of a "oh man, what a wacky old nerd" vibe in most cases. "I love botany but I don't get the idea of physical shame" lends itself to cute and endearing, or it would if it hadn't become just about the most common trait of Mary Sues trying to be cute and endearing, but anyway. "I understand the way of sword and honor but don't get when people are flirting with me" lends itself to social naivety and pure-hearted valor. And in the same way, several combinations can lend themselves to creepiness.

As an example from my own experience, in the current high-powered Mutants & Masterminds game I'm running, one of the party members is the setting's equivalent of an amalgamation ghost, formed from what amounts to the conglomeration of billions of personalities. He has huge amounts of knowledge and is extremely empathetic since he has billions of lives of diversity ingrained within himself. On the other hand, he physically can't comprehend the idea of consistency because his mind fluctuates constantly. He can treat somebody as his one true friend that he'd put everything on the line for one day and then tomorrow be confused as to why that person considers them close because the aspect of himself that cared has been washed into the tide. He doesn't understand long-term goals either, since his priorities shift so much more rapidly than an average human's, and he's utterly unsympathetic to long-term trauma since his own trauma gets shunted off on one of the myriad mental fragments constituting his existence never to be seen again, even though he's extremely compassionate about in-the-moment suffering. That compassion and empathy, along with existentionalism about whether he counts as an individual, are the only things consistent about him from one day to the rest of his life, yet that isn't on account of him being a wild in-the-moment type as it is his consciousness literally getting scrambled regularly.

And yes, all this adds up to the other players (though less so their characters) considering that character to be very creepy and off-putting. He doesn't have to laugh hysterically at corpses or look at you with dead eyes when you try to crack a joke to be creepy. It's unsettling enough just not being able to predict somebody's emotional reactions and knowing that they're phsyically incapable of caring about things long-term.

When you push he guy out of the way of a villain's attack, he'll nod a dutiful thanks, go back to kicking butt, and treat it as an appreciated but normal event if it's brought up after the fight, until seven weeks later when he bursts into tears at your doorstep over how courageous you were and thanks you profusely for saving his life, then needs to be prodded to even remember that that happened another week later and is surprised that you bothered committing something so insignificant as a week-old heartfelt thank you to memory... And maybe it's just my group, but that unpredictability becomes really unsettling when it can't just be chalked up to "oh this guy is a chaotic stupid idiot" but instead comes off as "this guy is physically incapable of having any particular mindset for long enough for me to try to relate to him as an individual person."

EvilBarrels
2016-08-11, 04:18 AM
It's generally the subtle things that make a character creepy. stuff like never blinking, or pronouncing "gloves" like you'd pronounce "loaves". Some things are creepy only in certain circumstances: Leaning close to everything you kill and giving a heartfelt apology is a cute quirk; until you stop dead in the middle of the road to apologise to that earthworm you just stepped on.

A personal favourite mannerism I use for creepy characters; is always using pronouns like "we" or "our" instead of their appropriate counterparts, like "you", "me", or "their".

When combined with a few other quirks, this can become truly terrifying.

Inevitability
2016-08-11, 07:39 AM
It's generally the subtle things that make a character creepy. stuff like never blinking, or pronouncing "gloves" like you'd pronounce "loaves". Some things are creepy only in certain circumstances: Leaning close to everything you kill and giving a heartfelt apology is a cute quirk; until you stop dead in the middle of the road to apologise to that earthworm you just stepped on.

A personal favourite mannerism I use for creepy characters; is always using pronouns like "we" or "our" instead of their appropriate counterparts, like "you", "me", or "their".

When combined with a few other quirks, this can become truly terrifying.

Even better: continuously talking in the third person.

"Greetings, traveler, why are you here?"
"He has come here to seek the sword of Hyrag. He wishes to avenge his family."
"Who are you talking about?"
"He is talking about himself. He does not understand the question."

Vrock_Summoner
2016-08-11, 09:03 AM
Even better: continuously talking in the third person.

"Greetings, traveler, why are you here?"
"He has come here to seek the sword of Hyrag. He wishes to avenge his family."
"Who are you talking about?"
"He is talking about himself. He does not understand the question."
I actually recommend against this particular option. It's worth making sure that the creepy element you pick stays sparse and out of the way enough that the fact that it's weird can be the most important thing about it. Your creepiness will be put at risk if your character's issue using the current person makes it frustrating to communicate information with them, because then people will start focusing more on how it's annoying than how it's creepy or weird.

Joe the Rat
2016-08-11, 09:50 AM
3rd person self reference talking can get annoying. Though it does give you the irony of beating up someone who refers to themselves only by name because "Hulk think The Boulder talk funny."

3rd person pronoun is a twist on it. 3rd person plural gets strange. "They are happy to meet you." Who? "Them <points to self> They are at your service." Bonus points for never using pronouns to refer to anyone else.

Sing-song or fluting your voice can do strange things - somewhere between childlike and deranged.

Consistency can be your enemy here. If you use something all the time, it goes from odd to annoying to predictable. Peter Lorre voice has good mileage. Spike Jones "My Old Flame" Peter Lorre all the time gets old.

SirBellias
2016-08-11, 11:14 AM
Wow, look at all the great ideas!

So the first session was last night, and while my character probably wasn't as "creepy" as I was originally thinking, I still think it went pretty well. I played it up as her mind being cracked by an influx of eldritch knowledge.

She ended up being a fairly scattered individual with little to no concept of social cues. Always asking questions about the situation we were in, and always accepting the answer outright, and always smiling. Muttering in the background all the answers she can think of to any interesting question anyone around her asks.

Her talking style was more short bursts of disjointed sentences, frequently going on tangents.

And then, when another character asked her what the coolest thing she could do was, the church bell got thrashed about by a shadowy tentacle emerging from the belfry.

There were no more questions. I think, for the most part, I achieved the level of "Mostly harmless...?" on the creepiness scale.

Relevant scenes include asking the goat if he was a wizard (he was), asking the drow if he was evil and then accepting his answer without skipping a beat, and when another character asked the goat chicken wizard guy if he had any potions that could make him fly without turning him into a chicken, she starting listing off every kind of bird ever under her breath.

The wizard did nothing for her sanity, mind you.

The DM loved the idea of adding more crazy people, and though the campaign normally involves characters being crushed and broken by a heartless and VERY dangerous world, we were doing a filler episode since half the group wasn't there.

Overall: Success!

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I definitely wanted to go for a Recognizably Good character (at first), as the last character I had in this campaign was Recognizably Not Good, sensible, and ruthlessly pragmatic. But still, good ideas for evil crazies as well, here. Not that we bother with alignment to begin with, because bleh.

goto124
2016-08-12, 08:17 AM
Mostly, he sexually harassed the ghost in the story. [snip]

Why did the GM not throw him out of the game? This is way beyond IC creepy.


Don't think I have anything really creepy here, I tend to tone them down for the sake of playability. My first PC is right out of a computer game and by right should have a good number of sociopathic tendencies (e.g. not understanding why death is such a big deal, as a GitPer above has already posted about), but she quickly got into a romance with another more regular PC and I couldn't really pull it off.

Later on, she got hit with a Sleep spell and her boyfriend had to drag her body away. Since this was freeform, I decided that due to some silly mechanics from her home gameworld, she was weightless. Cue boyfriend lifting a giant barbarian over his shoulder only to find she's lighter than a feather :smallbiggrin:

Vknight
2016-08-14, 04:21 PM
Play a vampire in, Vampire the Masquerade.
Be 14th gen so you can have kids who need vampire blood because they are ghouls and to some extent make there own but still need donations. Be a Tzismice so you start the game without investing any point into appearance(you have a power that lets you change your appearance stat so there is no reason a gm shouldn't let you if your several years old start with a 5 in appearance from altering yourself as a Tzismice)
Now you got a female vampire whose super gorgeous that feeds her 2+ children blood to stay eternal and immortal like her who are addicted and blood bound to there own mother.
Play for scary or play for kinky or what have you and have fun making people uncomfortable.

Play in Eclipse Phase a LOST project member, who has a normal and healthy outlook on sex and life.