Creating your character is the most important part of an RPG. If you do it right you could have years of fun with your character. The first thing your new captain will ask you to do is send in a biography of your character. Here're a few tips on creating the character of your (and everyone else's ;))dreams.
Key points to remember when creating your bio:
Make your character believable: don't make them too heroic or exciting, if you do, other players' characters may avoid him/her. Remember the aim of the game is not to be the hero, but rather to interact with others. If you do this your character may end up being the hero anyway.
Give them a job that you know a bit about: The worst and most embarrassing thing that can happen is for you to have to do something on a mission and you don't have a clue how it's done. You know they always say 'write about what you know.'
Give your character many layers: You don't want your character to become boring in the first week of play, in order to prevent this give them many layers, in other words exciting personalities, a bad temper, a missing sister, a memory problem, whatever - just as long as it can be ongoing if you want it to be.
How do I start?
Keeping in mind the above tips, it's a good idea to start with the profession of your character. I'm good at counseling people so I decide that my character should be a counselor. I'm female, so I make her a female human - I could make my character male, but I wouldn't know how the male mind worked, so I make her female. Already a picture of her is forming in my head, so next I think of her looks. She's pretty and young, blonde bobbed hair, blue eyes, fresh out of the academy counselor's course... so I'll make her 25. I'll call her Betty because I don't know any Betties so I won't think of someone else when I'm writing for her. Next I think of a sir name, I go for the common Smith because I know a lot of Smiths so I won't associate her with someone I know.
So there you have it:
Betty Smith is 25, this is her first assignment, she is a human counselor with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Next we invent a past, eventually we establish that her mother died when Betty was ten in a battle with the Borg. Her father is an admiral who doesn't really care about her. Betty joined Starfleet in an eager attempt to impress her father, she is always attention seeking with a soft heart, she is squeamish and a vegetarian.
So there we have our character. You see it's easy. Characters don't necessarily have to be so detailed, others will be more. It all depends on your captain. Most captains will send you what's called a bio-form in which it states the info you need to give the group. Most captains also have web-sites that have the crew manifests on them.
Sometimes it's nice to have a photo of your character, this can be done with any photo editing program, all you need to do is scan or find a decent head on the internet, then combine it with a uniform. Careful your chosen face isn't too well known otherwise others in the group will think s/he's a little strange...
a few pictures of characters:
an Andorian. I created her by tinting her skin and hair.
a human that came out specifically nicely :)
a bit of an unrealistic Klingon - but she gets the idea across.
Well that's it - now try a few experiments of your own!
You can visit this site for great female character creation (thanks to the creator of the site that didn't put their email address on the page :))
