Your character is a real character
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Captain's Log: New Fiction:
Your character is a real character
Do you have a really cool character that you'd like to share? Post it here!
Thread inspired by Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar)
Rather than clutter up the Advice To Authors thread, I opened a new one for people to share their fictional characters.
This is the format that I created to track the characters in my stories, but you can use whatever format you want.
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Name: Your character’s name. Please try to make it pronounceable.
Rank: Military rank, or professional title.
Duty Title: Job title / enlisted rating from the list.
Roster number: Line number from the list.
Character created by: Your name or handle.
Height: In both feet/inches and centimeters, please.
Weight: Both pounds and kilograms, please.
Age: In Earth years, please. If not human, you can also include home-world years. Be mindful of rank and time in service.
Species/Race: Remember that this is ST:TOS/TAS era, but feel free to make up a new race/species.
Gender: Male / Female
Appearance: Short description of what the character looks like (skin tone, hair/eye color, general body build, any scars or tattoos).
Languages: English = Federation Standard.
Career history:
Time in service: Calculate based on age and rank. See notes below.
Time in grade: Calculate based on rank and time in service.
-- Previous assignments: As specific or generic as you want.
Decorations: Medals come in three flavors: meritorious service (typically one per assignment, but not everyone gets one, or less common for a single event of significant impact), valor in combat, and non-combat heroic action such as risking your life to save another life.
Skills & Training: Obviously, a crewmember is skilled at his/her job, but if they are exceptionally skilled, you might note it here. Many people have training outside their day-to-day job. Some people were cross-trained out of an old job into a new one. Skills don’t have to be job-related, which could still be listed here (or in Hobbies below). List level of hand-to-hand and/or firearms combat skills here.
Family status: Just a line or two about this person’s family life.
Personality / Mannerisms: What's this person like? What makes him/her tick? Is he/she a loner, a follower, or a leader? Are there little quirks that may seem strange to others? Does he/she have a "button" no wise person should ever push?
Hobbies / Interests: All work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy. What does this person do in his/her down time?
Background: No need to write a book, but please do tell us about this person. Everyone has a story to tell, and some have secrets they'd rather not tell. This is where all the interesting story-plot hooks are hidden. Don't need a book written here, just a paragraph or two will do fine. If nothing else, tell us what prompted them to join Star Fleet (even if "just looking for a job to pay the bills").
Note: Time-in-service min/max for each rank:
Ensign (O-1) 0-2 years; LT-jg (O-2) 2-4 years; LT (O-3) 4-16 years; LtCmdr (O-4) 10-20 years; CMDR (O-5) 13-25 years; CAPT (O-5) 16-30 years
E-1 & E-2: 0-4 years; E-3: 0-6 years; PO3: 1-12 years; PO2: 3-16 years; PO1: 5-20 years; CPO: 8-25 years; SCPO: 11-27 years; MCPO: 14+ years
Typical: E-1 & E-2: 0-1 years, E-3: 1-3 years, PO3: 3-6 years; PO2: 6-11 years; PO1: 11-16 years; CPO: 16-20 years; SCPO: 20-23 years; MCPO: 23+ years; O-2 = 2 years; O-3 = 4 years; O-4 = 12 years; O-5 = 16 years; O-6 = 20 years.
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This can be and probable should be a living document, updated as you write your stories to add new data as you make it up.
Garth L. Getgen
Here's one of my characters, based loosely on combining two or three people I served with in real-life:
Name: Joseph Michael “Mike” Martinez
Rank: Petty Officer Third Class (E-4)
Rating: Boatswain’s Mate
Duty Title: Damage Control Petty Officer, certified as Tac-Team member
Gender: Male
Species/Race: Human (Multi-ethnic)
Age: 25
Height: 5’8-1/2” / 174 cm
Weight: 165 Lbs / 75 kg
Appearance: Average build, brown hair & hazel eyes, olive complexion
Languages: English (native), Spanish (native)
Career history:
Time in service: 7-1/2 years
Time in grade: 1 year (demoted from PO2)
Y149: Police Force Basic Training and then Boatswain’s Mate School
Y149-Y152: Crewman, Tac-Team, on Police Cutter Elliot Ness
Y153-Y156: Boatswain’s Mate, Damage Control and Tac-Team, on Police Cutter Carabinieri
Y156-: Boatswain’s Mate on Police Cutter WPC Fletcher
Decorations: Three medals for heroic lifesaving action, two for valor in combat action, one for meritorious service
Skills & Training: Hand-to-hand = Green Belt, qualified w/ hand-phaser and phaser rifle.
Family status: Divorced, one child (son) with ex-wife’s sister -- hence the reason for the divorce. Mother passed away when he was a teenager, but he stays in close contact with his father. He has a large extended family in which siblings and cousins were raised together, making it hard for outsiders to keep track of how each are related to the others.
Personality / mannerisms: His motto is “work hard, play hard”. Good natured and kind hearted. Not one to start a fight, he won’t back away from one either. He will always have a crewmate’s back, no matter what. Doesn’t often drink, but if you hand him a beer, you’d better have another five (or ten) ready. Mike thinks of himself as a lady’s man, with enough success to validate the claim.
Hobbies/Interests: Plays basketball and soccer; plays hard rock on electric guitar. He loves poker, which has caused him no end of problems. He’s actually pretty good at chess, but doesn’t play very often.
Background: Martinez enlisted in Star Fleet at the age of 17, but due to quota cuts was told he’d have to wait a year or longer before going to Basic Training. As the Police Force was able to take him sooner, he switched over. He married his high school girlfriend before leaving, and she followed to his first assignment. As his cutter was stationed out of planet Meva, they made port every four to six weeks, giving the young couple a somewhat normal married life. Two years later, his sister-in-law visited, and one thing led to another, which led to a divorce. After his wife left him, Mike threw himself into his work and became, while not a model crewman, a respected member of the crew. He earned an early promotion to Petty Officer Second Class in just four years, but a couple years later was reduced in rank due to a bar fight. Mike picked up a girl who, as luck would have it, was a Marine, and her fellow Marines took exception to his advances. Martinez always gave more than he got in a fight, and put three of the Marines in the dispensary. The commander of the Base Station wanted him court-martialed, but he avoided this by accepting a punitive demotion. As his probationary period is up, he is now eligible to take the promotion test and perhaps get his Second Class rank back.
Garth L. Getgen
Went looking for my GPD base book and GPD Federation for this character idea. Found Klingon and Romulan, but no Federation. Found original ("Tricode") PD, but not GURPS PD. Annoyed, but going to try to work from memory (and have a LOOOOOONNG history of showing how bad THAT can be)...
Name: Iphrt (pronounced "IF-ert," with VERY little "e")
Rank: Lieutenant (SG)
Rating: Science Officer
Duty Title: Geophysical Scientist
Gender: Female
Species/Race: Mynenei (here's where I REALLY needed GPD Federation... 
)
Age: 87
Height: 2'3"/68 cm
Weight: 22 lbs/10 Kg (I think they're this small, but we all know my memory...)
Appearances: Rippling violet cilia, whitening then graying as you move out towards the tips with age
Languages: Native (native), Federation Standard/English (heavily accented, but still clearly understandable; accent is musically pleasant)
Career History:
Time in Service: 18 years; retired/left Star Fleet after 3 years, but returned after 20 year hiatus
Time in Grade: 5 years
(I'd like to hold off on "Previous Assignments" until such a time as I can get a handle on an overall story for our group of characters?)
Decorations: Contribution to Science; one award. Meritorious service: Star Fleet Academy; one award.
Skills & Training: Basic OTA training for non-field officers in both Hand-to-hand and phaser proficiency.
Family status: Single, never married, but with an extensive family of siblings, cousins, nieces, and nephews. In close contact with ALL of them, many of whom have joined her people's recent desire to take a more active role in events across the Federation.
Personality/mannerisms: a very warm and bubbly being, yet also matronly in the way she encourages interst in science. While normally able to give quick answers in areas she's knowledgeable, she ALWAYS responds to questions with ones of her own that lead the student towards the answers they seek. Quick to enjoy a joke, the tinkling chimes of her musical laughter are a common companion for her in all but the most serious of circumstances. Having spent almost her entire life in academic circles, she does tend to get excited about field work; an excitement that manifests itself in chattiness that borders on blathering, but if/when the #2 hits the fan, she often falls apart and CAN'T SHUT UP!!
Hobbies/Interests: All manner of STEM, with an emphasis on physical sciences. Constantly trying to master advanced mathematics (differential equations still elude her) and her love/hate relationship with computer voice interfaces is perhaps the only subject she'll tell jokes. Also has an interest in Earth music, with an emphasis on Baroque Classical and some elements of Punk and Goth.
Background: Iphrt originally joined Star Fleet as a way to learn about other peoples and, after her initial stint, retired to return home and teach others what she had learned. When her people made the decision to become more involved, she was quick to request a reactivation of her commission, but has spent almost her entire career afterwards teaching basic science at Star Fleet Academy. During this time, she met many, if not most, of the upcoming officers, and was quick to help pair them up (as needed) so those strong in certain areas would be able to help those who were weak in those areas. Many a good friendship among officers is the result of her efforts. She has also acquired more than a few friends among ranking starship officers as well; some have become quite convinced that they might have flunked out of the Academy, were it not for her "Meddling." She is similarly regarded among her own people, particularly those out on many colony worlds.
(My intent for this character is to have a potential NPC available for RPGs who, while they have rank, will NOT be a burden, can be used to open doors. Perhaps most importantly she will NOT be a "Mary Sue" and, therefore, will remain in the background for the PCs to be the heroes. On the other hand, if the PCs are the sorts to start unnecessary fights, she can become a liability, due to her propensity to panic.)
(I believe the literary term for my intent is that she's a "Gatekeeper" character...)