How do you make a brooding character without being edgy

How do you make a brooding character without being edgy

Soldier:76.

I think.

Give him something to believe in.
Or have him mature has the game progresses.

He's the party's straight man.

Usually the difference is that an edgy character in the negative sense, is someone who wants to do shocking things, be cynical and all, but mostly just for the reaction it gets. As such, they'll be constantly trying to one up themselves or one another if they exist in the same game.


I tend to make my characters as being tired. But I hardly ever make a character that is entirely cynical or that gave up entirely. Character mind is about flaws and imperfections. To me, a man who acts cynical, acts that way for a reason. He doesn't want to show what he cares for, he protects it with a shield of disinterest. The reason he doesnt want to be selfless and altruist, is because he's tired of being let down, of losing things he care. So he tries to stop caring. But if he still, deep down, cares, then he's better than most teenager angst fueled edgelords you see there.

Don't make them a cynical asshole 100% all the time, give them moments of vulnerability to try and humanize them. Give them a legitimate reason to brood that isn't just excessive violence in their backstory. Give them realistic motivations, don't have them randomly kill people because they feel like it.

He broods but doesn't act edgy.

Don't be an asshole? Don't roleplay as a miserable apathetic cunt with no redeeming qualities who alienates everyone around them?

It's not too hard. Make it a character that has history, and pain, but isn't one note and bitter about it.

I know from edgy characters, I made THE edgiest character of all time to fuck up my friends game.

I unno.

So you made a sword?

Brooding is a Wizard pastime.

Make it ridiculously over the top

>edgiest
>a sword

Please, user, that has two or three edges at best.
Now a well-sharpened icosahedron, that's about as edgy as it gets.

Make them oppressed and trans

go full edgy, people in real life are edgy, it's an actual personality trait and there's nothing wrong with it if you pull it off right

maybe they are just depressed

i find it kind of lame when every sullen character in fiction has this super justified reason for being sullen, thats not my experience in real life with sullen people

in real life, brooding people know that what they are doing is counterproductive and that other people have it worse, but they cant help it, its just how they feel

Make Max Payne. talk in overdramatic metaphors. Invest max ranks in jump and tumble.

"There was something disturbingly familiar about the letter before me. The handwriting was all pretty curves."

"You're in a roleplaying game, Max."

"The truth was a burning green crack through my brain. Statblocks hanging in the air, modifiers glimpsed in the corner of my eye. The endless repetition of dice rolling and half-formed scribbles of every new piece of equipment or bonus that every trinket grants me. The paranoid feel of someone controlling my every step."

"I was in a roleplaying game. Funny as hell, it was the most horrible thing I could think of."

I'd say being edgy is alright if you aren't going full retard with it.

Do you even edge bruh?

>I want to be edgy
>But I don't want people to call me edgy

Sorry bud, that's all she wrote. You're edgy or you're not.

thank you, user. I needed that laugh.

Do you?

I'm basing my next PC on Max. I'm going to ask the GM if I can start with a piece of cyberware that records thoughts as text so I can do them without monologing out loud. They'll serve as a journal of sorts.

poor farmer who worked through hardships to adventure

Make him a coward

Don't have him go out of his way to shock people, just have had him lost something. Something important and irreplaceable. That loss makes him sad, it makes him mad as hell, and its never far from his mind.

He doesn't like to talk about it, but that loss is the reason he gets up in the morning. Sometimes its why he cries himself to sleep, and often its why he kills people. People he tells himself need killing.

He won't tell the rest of the party about what he lost. Not anytime soon. Its too personal, too raw. Its not something he wants to bring up, especially not with people he doesn't trust 100% to the point of being family.

There, no you have someone who will brood like a motherfucker, but isn't an edgelord. Just obsessive, vengeful, and private.

Make him tired, with a bad history and reason for pain, but he still makes an effort to do the right thing not because he's full of passion for it but just because it's the right thing to do, and the only thing he has left.

At the end of the day just remember that you're a hero and these people need you.

>you're a hero

And even if you're not the hero you wish you were... you still have to try. Even a bad man can do something good.

The trick is that people who brood typically don't do so all the time; it's the quiet moments. When you let them alone for a moment, they sink into that space, consumed by whatever it is that's chewing them up, and aren't especially speedy to return to normal functioning in absence of face-fucking danger.

Have some progression.

My current PC started as a lazy, brooding, cycnical asshole.
25 sessions later, he's the one convincing the other PCs to have some hope, because they have a very real chance at saving the world.

This.

That's really all there is to it. I've used that same path and even though the dude was an asshole at times, it really made a great story and nobody once considered him edgy.

Speechless and emotionless

Give him a good reason to brood

Stop caring about being edgy or not. Care about being a consistant character that adds to the enjoyment of the other players.

This.
The character needs to have a clear goal which is clear to both the player and the rest of the group.
Also, "brooding" does not mean mute; have him still talk, even if little. Have him still have emotions, even if he is cold.

Basically, play a normal fenno-scandinavian male.

A 40+ drunkard who would kill himself if he become sober ever again because of that thing that happend in the past.

They're a quiet, introspective character, but they're not ANTIsocial. They just keep their thoughts to themself for the most part, they don't throw snide comments around, they don't sit scowling in the corner at the tavern, they sit with the party and quietly smoke their pipe or tend the fire or darn their socks.

I usually go for the snarky jackass who is a team player who does the right thing. But the right thing has to be done in a way as to obtain maximum profit.

As for the times I try brooding, I act polite but defensive. I never initiate the conversation but I'll take first watch.