I love unique names. This is an excellent quality when you’re making up characters and a considerably less useful one when, several months later, you can’t remember the name you personally invented.
I also write a lot. I'm a chronic list maker, and have Google Docs for everything. If information can reasonably be put into a spreadsheet, there is an excellent chance I will eventually put it into one.
Not complicated administration, though. I’ve tried enough elaborate organisational systems in my life to know that sometimes the most useful system is simply somewhere to put things so my brain doesn’t have to keep holding them.
I need somewhere to put all the people in my head
I have quite a few alts in Final Fantasy XIV, but I don’t think of them the same way I think of my main character. My main is me in Eorzea, which is something I wrote about in more detail when explaining why RPG players get so attached to their characters. I’ve played her for nine years, and there’s no elaborate separation between what she would do and what I would do. When I’m playing her, I’m making my decisions.
My alts are different. They have their own lives, histories and personalities. Some of them are characters from stories I’ve written that don’t even take place in the same world as FFXIV. The game is somewhere I can give those characters a body and run around as them for a while, but their stories exist independently of Eorzea.
This presents a minor administrative problem when you enjoy making characters with unusual fantasy names and possess a brain that apparently believes remembering those names is optional. Hence, Google Docs.
I start with backstory, not appearance
When I’m developing an original character, I usually start by writing their backstory. I don’t like beginning with a list of personality traits and deciding that this person is brave, sarcastic, stubborn, loyal and frightened of geese. I’d rather work out what has happened to them first and see who they become because of it.
I believe we’re all shaped by our unique experiences and by how we choose to react to those experiences. I approach fictional people in much the same way. Once I know where a character came from and what they’ve lived through, their personality starts developing much more naturally. Their relationships do too.
How they respond to another person makes more sense when I already understand the experiences they’re bringing into that relationship. Physical characteristics actually come quite late for me, which is slightly inconvenient when the character already exists in FFXIV.
I’ve bought Fantasias for characters because their stories changed enough that the person I’d originally created no longer looked quite right to me. Apparently even fictional character development can have microtransactions.
My notes aren’t particularly organised at first
This is probably the most important part of my system: I don’t require my thoughts to be organised before I’m allowed to write them down. I am a big proponent of brain dumping.
If I have an idea about someone’s backstory, a relationship, something that happened to them or where their story might go, I want to get it out of my head. It doesn't need the correct heading or a neat place in a character template. Polished prose can wait too.
It can be a paragraph, half a thought or a list of things I don’t want to forget. Organisation can happen later. When I write my thoughts down, even when they’re still messy, it lets my brain breathe because I no longer have to keep mentally carrying the idea around because I’m afraid I’ll lose it.
And I will lose it. Again, unique names. Lovely in theory.
Writing things down also lets my characters change
I don’t really want a character profile to become a contract. If I wrote down that someone was reserved when I first created them, but the story gradually gives them reasons to become more open, I don’t want an old character sheet telling me they’re doing it wrong. The notes are there to help me understand the character, not imprison them in whatever I happened to decide about them first.
Starting with backstory helps with that because I’m keeping track of causes rather than just outcomes. Instead of this character behaves like this because I wrote it in their profile, I have some understanding of why they behave that way. If their experiences change, they can change too.
Sometimes enough to require a Fantasia, apparently. I would like Square Enix to know that this was character development and therefore a legitimate literary expense.
Google Sheets is where the furniture situation lives
My spreadsheets serve a rather different purpose. FFXIV housing is one of my favourite parts of the game, and my characters tend to have homes. Each one has at least an apartment or an FC house that I’ve decorated for them, which means they also own furniture.
So much furniture.
Every time I redecorate, things come down, new things go up, old things get stored and eventually I have a ridiculous amount of housing items distributed among characters and retainers. Without a list, finding one specific furnishing can turn into a tour of Eorzea’s entire retainer-bell network.
Call retainer. Inspect bags. Wrong retainer. Call another retainer. Inspect bags. Still no chair. Change character. Find bell. Begin again. There are only so many times one should have to interrogate an innocent NPC about the whereabouts of a sofa.
So I keep the housing items in a spreadsheet. Having everything in one big list makes decorating much easier because I can see what I already own instead of manually checking everyone’s inventory. It isn’t glamorous, but neither is buying another copy of something and discovering twenty minutes later that you already owned three.
This is the point where my RPG hobby stops resembling storytelling and begins to resemble warehouse management.
I don’t think everyone needs an RPG database
There are some incredibly elaborate systems out there for keeping track of games, and if building one is fun for you, excellent. I understand the appeal. But I don’t think you need a beautifully constructed Notion dashboard with seventeen interconnected databases before you’re allowed to keep notes about an RPG.
My own system is mostly Google Docs and Google Sheets because they’re familiar, easy to search and already part of how I work. More importantly, I actually use them. That’s the bit that matters.
If you keep forgetting character names, write them down. Developing an original character? Dump everything you know about them into a document. And when your inventory becomes an archaeological site, make a spreadsheet. You can make it pretty later, or don't. The information will not become less useful because its heading is still called CHARACTER STUFF.
Sometimes the game is only part of the story
I think this is also why I enjoy having characters from my own stories as FFXIV alts. They aren’t necessarily FFXIV characters just because I’ve recreated them there. Their original histories still belong to their own worlds, and their personalities aren’t dictated by whatever quests I’m currently doing in Eorzea.
But being able to see them helps.