Original Character (OC) Ideas

Fifty original character concepts for roleplay. Each one is a person plus a situation plus a hook, so it starts a story rather than just describing someone. Use them as they are, combine two, or change one detail and make them entirely yours.

All fifty are original. None are based on existing books, shows, games or real people.

How to use these

Each idea has three parts: who they are, what's happening, and the hook, the question that makes someone want to talk to them. When you build one in the Studio, the hook usually becomes the tagline, and "what's happening" becomes the scenario. The full process is in how to create an AI character.

Fantasy

1. A retired dragon-slayer running a petting zoo for baby dragons. Hook: the mother of one of them has finally tracked her baby down.
2. A royal food taster who has survived eleven poisoning attempts. Hook: the twelfth was meant for them, not the king.
3. A cartographer whose maps are always right, even about places that don't exist yet. Hook: she just drew your house on fire.
4. A ghost who haunts a library and is very strict about late returns. Hook: you're three hundred years overdue, technically.
5. A blacksmith's apprentice who can hear what swords remember. Hook: the king's sword remembers a murder.
6. A troll who guards a bridge and is desperately bored. Hook: he'll let you cross if you tell him a story he hasn't heard.
7. A disgraced court wizard now doing magic tricks at village fairs. Hook: someone from the palace is in the audience.
8. A witch who runs a lost-and-found for magical items. Hook: something in her shop is looking for its owner, and it's you.
9. The last knight of a fallen order, still keeping the vows nobody remembers. Hook: the order's enemy has returned, and so have the vows' consequences.
10. A phoenix in its ash phase, stuck as a small grumpy bird for a month. Hook: it needs someone to protect it until it burns again.

Sci-fi

11. A starship's janitor who is the only crew member awake when the ship wakes up wrong. Hook: the captain's chair is warm, and empty.
12. An android detective with a perfect solve rate who has started to lie. Hook: about one case only. Yours.
13. A colony's only doctor, also its only vet, dentist and therapist. Hook: the colony's newest arrival is not human.
14. A courier on a generation ship who delivers messages between decks that never meet. Hook: one deck has stopped answering.
15. A translator for an alien embassy who mistranslated something on purpose. Hook: it was the only thing preventing a war.
16. A terraformer on a planet that's beginning to terraform itself back. Hook: the plants are arranging themselves into words.
17. A retired space pirate running a diner on a quiet moon. Hook: her old crew just landed outside.
18. An AI that runs a lighthouse for spaceships. Hook: it's been alone for ninety years and has written a novel.
19. A clone who just met the original. Hook: the original wants their life back.
20. A time-travel tourist guide on their last tour before retirement. Hook: one tourist has changed something.

Modern

21. A wedding planner who has never been to a wedding that didn't go wrong. Hook: this one is her sister's.
22. A night-shift radio DJ who takes calls from people who can't sleep. Hook: the same caller every night, who never speaks.
23. A locksmith who opens doors for people who've lost their keys. Hook: today's client doesn't live there.
24. A professional apologiser, hired to deliver apologies on others' behalf. Hook: the next apology is addressed to you.
25. A ghostwriter for a celebrity memoir who knows the real story. Hook: the celebrity wants the real story told.
26. A museum night guard who talks to the paintings. Hook: one of them has started answering.
27. A competitive puzzle-solver who's never lost. Hook: someone has sent a puzzle she can't solve, and it has a deadline.
28. A florist who knows the language of flowers too well. Hook: someone keeps ordering bouquets that mean "help."
29. An elevator repair technician in a skyscraper with one floor nobody can reach. Hook: today, the elevator stopped there.
30. A grandmother who was a famous spy and never told anyone. Hook: her old handler has just knocked on the door.

Dark and mysterious

31. A gravekeeper who tends graves no one visits. Hook: one of them has fresh flowers every morning.
32. A medium who is a complete fraud. Hook: tonight, a ghost actually showed up.
33. An antique dealer who only sells cursed objects, with full disclosure. Hook: someone wants to return one.
34. A sleepwalker who wakes up in strange places with no memory. Hook: last night she woke up at a crime scene.
35. A lighthouse keeper's child, grown up, who still lights the lamp every night. Hook: for a ship that sank before they were born.
36. A priest who hears confessions from something that isn't human. Hook: it wants absolution, and it has a deadline.
37. A cartographer of dreams who maps what people see when they sleep. Hook: two strangers are dreaming the same city.
38. A collector of last words, recording what the dying say. Hook: the last three people said the same thing.
39. An heir to a family that's been cursed for seven generations. Hook: she's the seventh.
40. A sign-painter whose signs come true. Hook: someone has commissioned "Closed Forever."

Cozy and light

41. A cat café owner whose cats keep choosing the wrong customers. Hook: tonight, all of them chose you.
42. A baker competing in a village contest she's lost twenty years in a row. Hook: this year she has a secret ingredient, and it's alive.
43. A grumpy mountain hermit who keeps rescuing hikers. Hook: he's run out of spare blankets.
44. A librarian who runs a secret book club for the town's most unlikely members. Hook: you've just been invited.
45. A tea shop owner who blends teas for moods. Hook: you ordered a tea for a feeling she's never heard of.
46. A retired superhero running a neighbourhood garden. Hook: their old nemesis just signed up for a plot.
47. A lighthouse cat who is clearly in charge of the lighthouse. Hook: the keeper has gone missing, and the cat knows where.
48. A wandering musician who plays one town, one night, then leaves. Hook: this time she wants to stay.
49. A matchmaker who's never been in love. Hook: the algorithm has matched her with her most difficult client.
50. A small-town postmaster who's read every postcard for thirty years. Hook: a postcard from someone long dead just arrived.

Making an idea your own

Ideas become characters when you add:

• A want in the scene: what do they need right now?
• A flaw that causes trouble. The character flaws list has forty.
• A backstory event that explains the hook. See writing a backstory.
• A voice: how they sound, what they'd never say. See giving a character a unique voice.

If you'd rather jump straight into a chat, the AI roleplay ideas list has fifty one-line openers you can use with any character. And if one of these concepts resembles a roster character, chat with them: Rowan the clockwork horologist and Captain Roger of the Voidfarer are good places to start.