Character Haircuts, Appearances are everything. Options

[Arethusa]

I'm bored, and this is a subject of player culture that I haven't really seen addressed here, well, ever, to my knowledge. I remember reading an article years ago that stated the difference between male and female roleplayers:

Male: "My character is male."

Female: "My character is blond with hair cut to her shoulders, wearing a short green jacket..."

I'm sure you get the idea. Unfortunately, the generalization is bullshit, and so was the rest of the article, but it almost counts as a good anecdote to start with. Anyway, I'm curious how much attention you pay to character manerisms, appearance, clothing, haircut, etc— basically, aesthetic details. Describe your character, your game style (casual, roleplaying intensive, videogame, etc), whatever.

[Kagetenshi]

In real life, my hair is static. Immobile. When cut, it's somewhat shorter than usual; after about a week, it proceeds into a month-long process whereby it doesn't grow up, out, or down, but just proceeds to thicken into an impenetrable mattress which can have its form altered for a duration of a few minutes by total immersion in water. As a result, haircuts or hairstyles don't enter my mind most of the time.

That being said, certain areas of my character will be very fleshed out (for instance, my current Rigger's scarred face and single cybereye, along with the way her eyes never rest in a single place for more than two or three seconds), while others are almost nonexistent (she probably wears something comfortable and loose, I don't know. Maybe gray?). However, as a writer and an actor, I find that mannerisms make the character.

~J

[hahnsoo]

This definitely varies from player to player in my group. Our decker/face's old character description was "He's an average human male with a friendly face" until we forced him to try to describe the character. I mentioned that perhaps he looks like George Clooney from Oceans Eleven/Twelve and he said "Yup, that's what he looks like" without giving it much thought. So obviously it wasn't important to him.

Our rigger wrote up something like 5 pages of his character's backstory, a long tale involving betrayal, the Russian mafia, and unrequited love from a son to a father, but almost no mention of what his character actually looks like. So he was a Russian Human Male, and that's about all that we knew of him. Finally, he caved in and produced a picture from Cowboy Bebop as a sort of template/inspiration, although he does mention what type of clothes his character wears when he goes to meets.

Our mage (who is female) wrote a rather detailed description of her character's appearance, emphasizing a lot of different physical features. At first she said she had braided hair, but then thought of the Lara Croft pigtails and decided that she just wears it in a ponytail. This is a character who is Good Looking and Knows It and has a charisma of 6, so I guess it is justified.

Our demolitions expert/gun bunny was a male dwarf who wore combat BDUs, and so we got a pretty good image of what he would look like and the later description of his character that he posted for us pretty much says the same thing in many words.

As for me, well, one of the other players in the group wanted some details so she can do some sketching, so I wrote this up for her:

[Arethusa]

[Sandoval Smith]

I do my descriptions thoroughly enough that you know who you're looking at, so build, hair style and color, eye color, ethnicity. Generally though, my characters end up with a cartoon wardrobe. Whatever they're wearing when you first see them is what they tend to wear for the rest of eternity.

[Kagetenshi]

[Arethusa]

[Kagetenshi]

[Weredigo]

Oh, this should be fun.

Weredigo, Dwarf, stands about Four foot Five, and gives his full attention to everyone he encounters, He wears Six buckle boots, Black Cargo Slacks, a Very Rare Metallica Tee-Shirt, Orange/white/black flannel, Grey denim duster (armored), and a Leather Harley Davidson ball cap over his flame red mullet, as a very traditional Dwarf he keeps his beard long and clean. One eye is Mint green, the other is Sea green. At both armpits are holstered Colt revolvers. On his right boot is stuck a Super Ruger Warhawk revolver named Mollie whose grip come to just an inch and a half from his right palm. { selective magnetic cyberlimb system with dimmerswitch, hand made} Tucked into his belt is his ever present travel mug of gourmet coffee, and some trashy detective novel from his collection.
(The concept for him started as a more sober and kinder Yosemite Sam)

Jack Frost, Elf, stands Six foot Nine, I dressed from the neck down in the finest (yet armored) black business suit, with White shirt, and Black tie, the perfect effect broken only by the thick leather moccassins (Wyvern Hide). He wears a black short brim fedora with a dark yellow brim upon his naturally bald scalp, and black sunglasses.
{This is the guy who accidentally put his bike through a Nieman Marcus, and then put a single round down the barrel of a Mini Missile Launcher, thus Jamming it. So when I moved away from my GM and decided to start GM'ing on my own I took him and a bunch of my PC's and organized them into a Mercernary outfit, "The City Slickers". Can anyone guess which movie I take the Dress code from?")

Shady, Female, Elf, five foot eight, Red hair, green eyes, Victim of a fashion war.
(my first female PC, My first Decker, Has a habit of Shooting "The Mage" with Gel Rounds loaded with DMSO/Hyper)

[Aes]

I usually do a bit of work on the characters appearance. I usually start determining height, weight, distinguishing features, skin/hair/eye color and obvious cyberware. (Limbs, twitches, exact location and make of datajacks, color and make of cybereyes etc). Then I go rummaging on the net (digitalart.org, selected artist homepages, sijun forums, elfwood etc.) after a picture that looks roughly like the character idea I'm after, retouch it a bit in PS to look like what I want and write a textual description to match. I also make sure to emphasize(sp?) whenever my character goes any great lengths to alter his/her appearance, such as my old pc having artificial, ruthetium-covered hair added as cosmetic surgery (for a lesser fortune) to go from short-cropped black hair and pale skin to long, red hair and dark skin (thank you, autotanner) in preperation for an infiltration.

Descriptions of how people look are as important as telling everyone what your character are doing. It helps immersion.

Also, if I'm feeling paticularely jazzed-up on coffee at the time, I fetch a few props and try to act out the characters mannerisms. Going back to the infiltration where my PC were disguised, her cover ID was to be the assistant of a famous neuroscientist. So I stuck a pencil behind my ear and carried a sourcebook around as a clipboard, pretending to take notes every so often. (Hey, it helps immersion and I got bonus karma ;) )

[CoalHeart]

I do two things that my group seems to like.

I have a sheet of paper that has questions on it.
Eyecolor ____ Hair color ____
Height ___ Weight ____
Hand Preference___ Exceterea.
has about 20 little fields to fill in, then they can mash it together and make a blurb of description out of it. You'd be surprised how many times guy players forget their characters even have eyes or hair.

Second thing I do is what I stole from the D20 Modern Book is in the back there is a list of "Quirks" numbered from 1-100 and you roll a percentile, twice. Or pick one trait and roll 2 more.

The list has just a huge selection of strange quirks. Such as Odd Birthmark, Meticulous(often played as OCD cleaning), Finger habit (rolling a coin or rubbing fingers or clicking pen) Oral Habit (smoking, chewing gum, clicking tongue ring) and so on. There are so many and I don't remember them all.

I don't force anyone to play them, but these little quirks let the person add in a bit of random flavor to their character. They have no in game effect, they take nothing away from the character and elicit no rolls.

Like our team samurai got the Meticulous quirk, and thus dedicates a portion of his time to perfectly cleaning and maintaining his gun collection.

The shaman got Odd birthmark which she described as being very similar to the symbol of her totem (Moon) So it was a cresent shaped mark on her cheek.

My character got oral fixation, so grinds his teeth to sharp points with a file, and often clicks his tongue ring against them.

[LinaInverse]

I scan/Poser/crudely draw pictures of my characters. A hold-over from my days playing Champions/Hero. So I essentially submit a 1000-words of description of my chars...:D

[Weredigo]

Sometimes If I see a pic that comes extremely close to a character I'll tear it out of a magazine, and just have a discription of what they're wearing.

[John Campbell]

Like Lina, I typically draw my characters at some point fairly early in their career (e.g. Sven Eitresson), which requires me to make some decisions about general appearance and typical attire.

[Sokei]

[JudgeIto78]

[Fortune]

I sometimes use pics of actors (or musicians, etc.) for characters. If I had even the least little bit of talent in art I would draw my own, but sadly that isn't the case.

[Drain Brain]

I was guilty of taking a sneaky picture of some random guy in a shop once and showing it to my GM... "That. He looks like that..."

Mostly I am meticulous about that. For me, character concepts start with imagery and I'm always making sure that they conform to my original ideal in some way.

Oddly, so many people (including me) make their SR characters long haired, when it's probably safer to be totally bald - no hair as evidence, can't be grabbed in a fight - but go figure... must be the punky setting...

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

All of my characters have relatively short hair. As a rule of thumb, the men don't have hair longer than mine (which is pretty short, but can get shaggy if I don't get around to getting it cut often enough), and the women have average length hair, if that. In pretty much every case it is due to a certain efficiency, but also I figure there's no reason for them to stick out in corpville, and most of them do have backgrounds involving membership in organizations with certain grooming standards.

I also rarely use pictures with my characters. In many cases, I can't find pictures of people who look like them. In others, they share certain physical characteristics of people I know or have met, and I will never use images of them. I did find a picture and photoshop it for one character, but she's the exception.

[Dissonance]

Photovoltaic hairplugs, man. That's the way to go.

Nothing says "I'm a badass runner who's going to kill you friggin' dead!" like a 7 inch tall, 1 inch thick neon pink dayglo mohawk.

Or a mullet. Remember -- Eighties.

[Shockwave_IIc]

In the group i've just started playing in one of the players has commented on the fact that i tend to spend more time discribing what my PC (Adept face without Kinesics or Imp Social skills) is wearing and how then the rest of the group.

Though i frequently havean image in my head as to what i want my PC's to look like. I very rarely find Pic's that come close more so if i'm playing a Meta Human.

[Pthgar]

I tend to make my characters of either Irish or Italian descent, like me. That being said, most of my chars have brush or crew cuts, dark or red hair and blue eyes.

One guy in our group created his dwarf mage Frocephus by making the image first and then building the character around that. It had potential to be lame but it cme out ok. In fact it was a good way to make a first SR character.

I can draw but those in my group who can't use Hero Machine.

[Arethusa]

[Dissonance]

Mullet = Hairstyle.
Mullett = Fish.

[Kagetenshi]

My next character is wearing a mullett.

~J