How do you rp an edgy character without being cringy about it?

Let's define "edgy" for a second. Are we looking for angst, or something beyond. There's the popular understanding of edge of course, but what specifically do we mean here?

Show emotions besides grim determination every once in a while. The reason most people hate "edgy" characters in rpgs is because they react to every situation the same way. Allow your character to be happy, or sad, or frightened every once in a while, and they become an actual character, not just an idealised self-insert.

I'm fairly sure that OP is looking to play an edgelord, not an actual character. His goal of the thread is probably to gauge whether or not this a good idea when revealed to people similar to those in his gaming group.

To which the answer is: yes, it's possible to play edge without being annoying. The distinction is having a purpose and goal, even is that goal is simply to get enough power to take revenge in a generally self-destructive manner. Pic semi-related.

Related question: On a scale from 1 to 10, how edgy is this fucker?

My edgy character lost his parents and had to become the father of his seven younger siblings in the wake of their loss.
He combatted his misery with religion. Became a cleric Batman who understood responsibility and wanted to smite evil in the name of his parents.

>Interesting backstory
But that's not edgy, user.

2-3, you braindead retards call everything edgy nowdays

>cleric
>edgy

This post in itself was kinda edgy

Not him, but that is incredibly edgy.
>dead parents make a guy go from depressed into the Dark Knight who's actually a White Knight Crusading Paladin

Ow.
The "looks like a bad guy but is actually the good guy" shtick is incredibly edgy.

Visually sure, but what's his deal as a character? I've skipped over this show and feel no regrets.

His appearance is edgy but he's not very edgy personality wise

But batman isn't religious, doesn't take care of 7 kids, and isn't a cleric. Reread his post and remove the words "edgy" and "batman" and the character he described isn't edgy at all.

Becoming a crusader because of past suffering is edgy.
>remove batman from the post
I'm assuming that the "batman" inclusion is critical, as it implies some paralegal vigilante-type behavior. There's a big difference between a D&D Paladin and a Gray Guard, and a Gray Guard with a back-story of personal loss and suffering is almost certainly going to have that brooding and angst core to an "edgy" character.

>paralegal
Meant illegal. Oops.

Somewhat related but what exactly makes a character edgy? I mean the barebones if you hit most/all of these points you're probably an edgy character

>Becoming a crusader because of past suffering is edgy.

>fighting evil for a good reason is edgy

Is there any way to not be edgy then?

Well, the Uchiha clan tends to get pointed to as edgy, so let's start there.
Right off the bad, we have the physical appearance. Lots of black, high collars, baggy clothing, especially sleeves, possibly robes, belts, you name it. Hair is usually also dark, razor-cut, and styled such that it falls over parts of the face.
In terms of character backstory and motivations, personal loss and pursuit of power for personal gain at expense, and indeed, by sacrificing innocents and especially family, figure prominently.
Attitude tends to feature angst, brooding, subdued anger, dislike of others as a general principle, etc. Social skills are not necessarily impaired, but are purposely underused.
Downfalls of very pure-hearted and good figures can also appear.

That's just off the top of my head. What else can we add?

Dunno what you define "edgy" as. Sulking depressive type characters work pretty well as long as they have more than one facet to their personality, still have ups and downs. I think what catches people is that they don't want to allow their characters to act against their "baseline" in idle moments because they think it'll erase the perception of who they are-- But I think the key is that idle moments are exactly when that's easy to get away with. The bits that people remember are the character's personality when they're responding to something that's emotionally significant. So when they're in a merchant cart laughing about the dwarf's beard smelling like lavender, and they come across a bunch of corpses of people a band of highwaymen robbed, they'll remember that you were the one who just shook his head and clenched his jaw and said "They were idiots. They were barely armed and they traveled alone. They brought this on themselves." And that's equally skulky whether your character wants to just move on, or if they start investigating the scene-- But if it's the latter, it suggests to the rest of the people at the table that you're putting on the edgy mask in order to bury your response, and you can't help but actually care.

I normaly use anyone from my family that lived between 1917-64 as a patern. And as all the stuff they did was done in actual life, making everything my characters absolutly not edgy or cringy.
Example, I made an ex canibal paladin inqusitor that works for church secret police and who has a "wife" which is actualy his younger brother , and the brother is his wife, because when they did get "married" females were getting slightly bigger food rations. They have two kids, one is a crazed pyro whos family my paladin had to execute and who attends a church secret police school, and a baby girl who doesn't know that her "mom" is a dude, and a child of a couple that lived outside my paldins house. And initialy he and his "wife" wanted to eat the child, but didn't because the siege was lifted. They kept it first as food for "bad" times, but later came to love her as her own. All based on real family stories from WWII. no edge no cringe.

14, automatically most powerful character in every game he plays, every girl (including his NOT BLOOD RELATED sister) wants his dick like it's made of diamonds.

Kirito is cringe and sue, but not edge

K' is moe

Go maximum hammy edge.

Or write an actual character that happens to have edgy traits.

You're missing a few key caveats.
The crusading was not prompted by good will or a desire to do good, but directly in response to evil. It's a very thin line between "actions taken for the betterment of the people" and "actions taken for revenge".
>fighting evil for a good reason is edgy
As with the above, whether the reason is actually good is what is questioned. A man who simply goes out and fights crime, but doesn't do anything that gives back to society, is fighting crime for revenge, honestly.
That's the difference between Batman and the Punisher, so far as main, consistent stories are concerned. Bruce Wayne gives back and tries to make the city better. Frank Castle does not. All the latter does is take people out of circulation.

Here's what I'm seeing, is that "batman" in the original sentence.
>became a cleric batman
If a cleric must act in the shadows to do good, then we must ask why. The DC comics Batman does it to keep Bruce Wayne or Wayne Industries from becoming a target, because unlike the Police, he cannot legally be a vigilante.
But a cleric is already an agent of his god, which I'm assuming is in this case Good. He should be out doing good as a sort of god-empowered policeman, so why is he going undercover?

Admittedly, we don't know anything about the setting this character was in, or if he could have simply been an undercover cop. Maybe becoming a cleric batman was necessary. Maybe not.

How edgy would it be to have a character who is literally haunted by the ghost of his dead wife? Background is that he was a young nobleman married to a local baron's daughter, whom he grew to genuinely love. He had to leave to serve in the military, and when he returned a horrible illness was ravaging the land, and his wife was on her deathbed. She died, and he took up holy orders to learn to treat disease and fight the scourge that took his beloved, but eventually he moved on and tried to remarry. That's when his wife came back, as a vengeful wraith. She's bound to him and tries to protect him, but is murderously jealous of anyone else (especially women) trying to get close to him

I think there are 4 things that makes a character edgy.

1. Apperance. Typically edgy characters have tattered clothing and/or wear hoods or something to cover their face. Possibly to look mysterious. Or possibly some jewlery, idk. Primary colors are black and red. Their facial expression is usually one of anger or melancholy.

2. Personality. Characters with a lot of internal struggle and emotional turmoil. Anti-heroes that straddle a moral gray area are typically edgy. Characters that seem like they would be generally unpleasnt to be around in real life. If written poorly they can sometimes come off as annoying.

3. Troubled past. Most edgy characters have troubled pasts, which often ties into their internal struggle. A deseased loved one, their father abandoned them, bullied by peers, etc. They often feel lonely and hate everyone or almost everyone.

4. Power level. Edgy characters are usually really powerful, if its an anti-hero then they are just as strong if not stronger than the protagonist and often act as a sort of rival to them. This point might seem weird, but think about it, edgy characters always seem to be stupidly powerful for no other reason than the fact that they are edgy.

Also I would like to point out that being edgy does not always make a character bad as long as you don't over do it.

What do you guys think, accurate?

Its a pretty spot on list just adding
Physical appearance:
>Red/Black on clothes
>Red/White/Black(or streaks of the others) for hair
>Lean? Or at least not bodybuilder muscular
>Leather
>Permanent Scowl(except to laugh at you)
>Hoods

Its weird. K~ hits a lot of the points of the edgy tryhard protagonists that came up in the early 2000s yet people love the crap out of him

Tbqh I was mostly just joking around but you make several good points. At the end of the day he's told us very little about the character and a lot has to be inferred, its hard to call someone edgy from a single paragraph or backstory.

Not edgy until
>She's bound to him and tries to protect him, but is murderously jealous of anyone else (especially women) trying to get close to him

A man with regrets, or if you prefer "haunted by his ghosts" is almost certainly not edgy. Edgelords have no remorse or regret.
What you have really isn't edgy, but in an RP group that wraith would honestly get annoying. As a character, it's essentially a question of how much power the wraith has. If it can, like some horror movie spook, inflict suffering, pain, and death, on anyone, then the Husband would need to constantly be fighting and containing the wraith. If not, and the wraith is just a specter visible only to him, then he's good.

Low edge out of ten. Entirely dependent on the Husband's attitude and how he interacts with the wraith.

Mix in some dialogue tendency "my pain is greater than yours" and some childhood trauma, be it neglect or other suffering, and that sounds like it covers everything.

...

Would Vegeta count as a well-developed "edgy" character?

Yeah that list alongside the other ones sounds like it covers most of the bases and yeah I agree that being edgy doesn't make a character necessarily bad it can be done well.

So I guess for OP's question probably analyze some borderline edgy characters or well-accepted edgy characters using these lists and go from there

>Now Gary Stu = Edge
Fucking retards you're as bad as liberals at destroying meaning of words by making everything mean same fucking thing -> "Character I don't like"

snk has a bit of experience where endearing people to edgy chunni protagonists is concerned

That's like asking how to play a shitty character without being shitty, what you should be asking is how to properly play a character with traits that could be edgy if done wrong.
Basically just don't design a character who has no personality traits beyond taking himself way too fucking seriously, and don't design your character to be such a socially maladjusted troglodyte that he can't cooperate with the rest of the group.

No, Vegeta was just agressive, not particularly angsty or edgy.
His son (Future Trunks, not Kid Trunks) was edgy. Between the Sword, the hair in the eyes, the "I never knew my father," attitude, the "I know everything but can't say anything," plot point, Trunks was easily the edgiest character in the show.

I would argue that the only thing that made Vegeta edgy was his sense of entitlement. His dad was king so he should be strongest, and because he wasn't, he threw tantrums.

Zelgadis from slayers was a pretty good edgy character. Maybe it helped that it was a simple comedic anime. He didn't wear black or have black hair, he had the tragic backstory and started out as a bad guy for one episode but he still had skills and personality and goals that made sense. He was serious and usually the straight man in comedy situations but rarely brooded or bitched. Oh and he used white magic which was another sort of inversion of what you'd expect.

Don't forget he's also a hacker.

...

>tosses jokes around
>yelling stereotypical japanese because he's a weeb
Nah.

Aggressive punk, yes. Edgy, no.

She's low key horror movie ghost, I.e. sounds, moving small objects, being spooky, etc. Nothing super powerful. Just enough to be useful some of the time and a hassle most of the time. She's visible to him more or less constantly, but only visible to others if she's manifesting to harass/attack them.
His relationship with her is mixed. He still loves her on some level, and is guilty for not being there for her, but he knows that her lingering is unnatural and wants to be able to be happy again. She fluctuates between melancholic, lovestruck bride happy to be reunited with her husband, and bitter, jealous accuser unwilling to let him get close to anyone or to leave her

One of his major objectives would be to find a way to put her to rest , which would probably involve being able to forgive himself for not being able to save her

Edgy is losing it's original meaning, while several people from this thread try to find essence of the character, but still make it too broad. Having anything darker than "goody two shoes with perfect family that lives till old age" and you fall into "edgy", killing sentinel creatures makes you edgy, being ruthless makes you edgy, accepting collateral damage to defeat your enemies makes you edgy, liking war makes you edgy

Just to further clarify edge, what keeps Revengeance-era Raiden from being edgy?

>killing sentinel creatures makes you edgy, being ruthless makes you edgy, accepting collateral damage to defeat your enemies makes you edgy, liking war makes you edgy

Have any of these been posted? Read the thread.

Pretty much. Although now that I think about it might be because while their characters act kinda edgy their actual motivations go the other way. K~ in particular gets called out for it in XIII where while hes a complete dick to everyone hes still a pretty heroic guy who'd throw his shades at people who threaten his friends. Honestly considering those hes barely edgy at all.

Don't classify El Presidente as edgy hes more of a parody

1)Parody
2)Not 146% distilled edge, just a character, but grim like a slav on a rainy day

he wasn't taken seriously

wait 80-100 posts and it all will be posted

yeah, giving a character a heart of gold or at least a soft side is an easy & reliable way to make it work

Edge parodies are done wrong 99% of the time. There's a handful of exceptions, but to be a parody the character must be edgy in the first place. Most characters either are not edgy, or are unironic edge.

It's not reliable for a PC to pull it off.

Not gonna lie, I love the character of reaper because he's actually got a lot of shit going on beyond dorky owl mask and hood.

Ayes. This time Blizzard put some effort in their characters.

Reminds me of a character I'd like to play.
>middle aged sword for hire
>village was burned down in a raid or something, including the murder of his wife
>character is depressed, only really does anything because he is pushed along and urged to live in spite of the past by the spirit of his dead wife which is in a cloak she made for him
>basically dirt poor at the start of the campaign, struggling to eat
to balance it out though
>tries not to appear depressed, not very talkative but still friendly
>killing is a last resort (unless maybe it's part of whatever group fucked his town up and killed his waifu)
Maybe throw on a thick russian accent and third person speech. "Gregor is tired of the fighting. No more death."

I like reaper's pairing with morrison

Basically following this principle Also would like to try to keep the wife in the cloak a secret at first, just have it seem to be a treasured heirloom or something.

Does a character whos only acting edgy still count? Like he has an edgy front to compensate for the fact hes broken/depressed/insecure/scared/etc.

Shittiest anime of all time/10

Yyyyyyaaametoo

Have a kind side to the character. It's alright to have a backstory and be a little closed off but the edgelord factor shows up when all you are is a ball of angst and brooding pessimism.

Maybe your character gets along with animals or is quick to anger but even quicker to forget. The best way to balance it is to have a counter action to most edgy actions.

>not having an edgelord misanthropic bbeg who can only see the bad in people
>whose plan is to use a powerful magic artifact he created to create physical incarnations of everyone's 'inner demons', so they know what he feels like
>not having him be struck down by a pure of heart paladin, with a final speech about how he is the bad that he sees and is only projecting that onto the rest of the world

They work really well together

So basically what the thread boiled down to was "Don't have edgy characters be flat single dimensional characters that have no other qualities to them or even anything memorable besides what makes them edgy in the first place."

Have legitimate grievances. Don't be one dimensional, you can be self loathing, drink yourself into surly oblivion and hate most everything, but you can still be happy now and then. Your character has other things going on, maybe the party rogue trooper over, he laughs. He sees an amazing sculpture and he stops to happily admire it.
Just give him something other than edge to work with.

You're also able to change and think about yourself. Your character might not like their own edge and tries to stop it, or help others from slipping into edginess.

Basically, people are complex.

at the simplest level it always boils down to something like that where characterization is concerned.

the rest is just making sure they don't clash egregiously with what everyone else is going for (or i mean maybe they can, if its in a way that's funny; the details really all depend on the group)

The fact that you're playing a roaming, remorseless killer for hire is already pretty edgy, honestly. The average adventurer doesn't need to get edgier.

>you braindead retards call everything edgy nowdays
This. Veeky Forums's opinions are worthless.

be kinda savvy and let the characters do all the talking. when they start rambling and not giving any information about there finances take control of the conversation. get them a bad deal that makes them reject it. have them negotiate

>1. Apperance. Typically edgy characters have tattered clothing and/or wear hoods or something to cover their face. Possibly to look mysterious. Or possibly some jewlery, idk. Primary colors are black and red. Their facial expression is usually one of anger or melancholy.
kind of. there equipment will be cheap, effective and expendable. modern day street gangs can ware other colors than just black or red
>2. Personality. Characters with a lot of internal struggle and emotional turmoil. Anti-heroes that straddle a moral gray area are typically edgy. Characters that seem like they would be generally unpleasnt to be around in real life. If written poorly they can sometimes come off as annoying.
i would say that there personality is more to take advantage of some one's situation. they can make a profit from anywhere
>3. Troubled past. Most edgy characters have troubled pasts, which often ties into their internal struggle. A deseased loved one, their father abandoned them, bullied by peers, etc. They often feel lonely and hate everyone or almost everyone.
just repeating No. 2 but i do agree that they have been taken advantage of in the past and will do the same to another given the chance (same as my No. 2)
>4. Power level. Edgy characters are usually really powerful, if its an anti-hero then they are just as strong if not stronger than the protagonist and often act as a sort of rival to them. This point might seem weird, but think about it, edgy characters always seem to be stupidly powerful for no other reason than the fact that they are edgy.
i would say have access to power even if there individually weak. they can run a drug empire.

they shouldn't be entirely honest i think is the key

i think got it
>they shouldn't be entirely honest i think is the key

the physical appearance should suggest that they are hiding something under there robes and in there sleeves. edgy means nothing if they seem honest. they also need to not trust the PCs to let the PCs know that this guy might be hiding something.

Make the character, play it. If someone starts whine about it being cringy... That player is cringy. Just... Why the fuck people have to bring these shit memes to gaming table. I understand that people talk about what is current in their life but why why why do they have to bring this "edgy, cringy, mary sue, magical realm" -term shit to the table. I just want to enjoy the fucking game and not listen to this crap. People make characters they want to play. That is it. I don't mind if there are some "fey catboys" or whatever... Play it if you want. Suits the game occasionally even.

TL DR; play it. Get something out of it.

most edgy character is a shop owner who has an empty store. PCs joke about buying some things and the shop owner offers to sell them for cheap if they come back tomorrow. next day they buy +1 weapons for cheap. he refuses to acknowledge that they existed after he made the sail and never mentioned how he got it.

the flip side is a store that never had the same person behind the counter for more than an hour and refused to acknowledge that there were other people working there. one of the PCs broke in and found a cult that was using the items that they were selling to steal the soles of their owners

there needs to be something off and the individual needs to either refuse to acknowledge it or try to hide it.

to me at least edgy is the breaking of trust. there is no real way to trust the guy isn't going to stab you in the back.

>666
>steal the soles of the owners
Fucking Satan is colluding with the Cobbler's Guild!

see if the PCs catch on to those cursed +1 boots

>refuses to acknowledge that they existed after he made the sail
he's also discriminating against sailors! The fiend!

I don't get it, but it's still funny

Why are you here, then?

cause he's trying to be edgy.

Be edgy without the angst.
There ain't nothing wrong with doing what you love.

I sometimes think that a full team of "polar/one dimensional" characters could probably work if everyone agreed on what they were going to play, and it might end up being amusing just from the interactions between the various inevitable trope characters.

But then of course it never works out in reality.

why you can't dispute his statement? You make him sound right

Soldier 76 works well as JoJo character

Geist, M.D. (He's a field surgeon with grenade amputation proficiency!) can still be pretty cringe worthy though, even though really he's just killing for a thrilling time.

I've seen lots of people consider MDG as absolute cringe when personally I find it kind of funny myself. Maybe that theme made it more endearing to me. CAN'T STOP HE'S JUST A SOLDIER.

Eh.

>137% kill participation
What?

I T J U S T W O R K S
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>Volke
>Edgy
>Literally only cares about money
Only thing about him that's edgy is that he's on edge because he's an assassin. I mean, a fireman.
'Edgy' can go two ways, a whiny sulky faggot who does nothing but brood on why he's a whiny sulky faggot or murderous sociopath who is all about depraved acts, usually of violence. I don't think either of those things are fun to play with or as.
If you want 'edge' just try someone who's tired, old and fed-up. He's seen and done bad things but his only choice is to keep going. He doesn't want to atone or change himself because he knows its too late for himself and he has no reason to care about anyone else. And don't show it at every opportunity, yeah?

Mary'est sue that ever sue'd.

Those are the same people that would consider Rambo cringeworthy.

>I've seen lots of people consider MDG as absolute cringe
They have shit taste, and don't actually understand what cringe worthy means.

Sorry user but this isn't very Edgy, at all

Edgy post themesong: youtube.com/watch?v=AvHfq1U-nv0

My 'edgiest' character was probably a middle aged fighter who did the whole adventuring thing early, and wound up burning out. He married his childhood sweetheart, a pretty sorceress, and went around fighty fighting evil with his best bro, a cleric of sune. The three of them made a name for themselves and the Local Lord hired the Fighter as a master at arms.

Important note about his wife, she was an enchantress. And while she wasn't evil (at first) she wasn't above using her magic for her own ends. As a young man, my fighter had a dangerously violent temper, but a soft spot for the sorceress. She decided to use him to protect herself from the more hostile (or amorous) villagers in their region who thought she was a witch when he went off and beat the shit out of some men harassing her one day. So for protection, she enchanted him. With charm person. Like, a lot, for years at a time. This did eventually turn to genuine affection on her part eventually (or was it just guilt?) but essentially she was just using him as shield. The fighter meanwhile, became very subdued as years of magical mental abuse permanently lowered his wisdom and charisma scores. Incapable of thinking a negative thought about his beloved because he was in love with her, both in reality and by magical impelling, he never knew there was or saw a problem - she clearly just calmed his youthful fire with her gentle nature.

Meanwhile, the Sunite Cleric they hooked up with was a true bro and a good friend, but like most Sunites, somewhat shallow, and obsessed with beauty. To the Sorceress he was a worldly, exotic man, and to him she was a rare beauty. You probably see where this is going. The affair began even before the Fighter was called off to war, campaigning for the lord who had hired him. The fighter dutifully sent his money and letters to his wife, who he believed was being watched over by his best friend.