OC ideas: 15 original characters

What makes an OC idea worth keeping?

A look or a power is not an idea yet: silver hair, a cursed sword, a sad past. Those are decorations. They tell you what a character wears, not what they do on a Tuesday, and a character with nothing to do runs out of story fast.

An idea that lasts has three working parts, and every prompt on this page has all three. Add one small detail you could point at, and you have someone a reader, or a chat partner, can push against.

• A job: work that puts them somewhere specific, with people who need things from them.
• A want: something they reach for that the job alone will not give them.
• A flaw: a habit that grows out of their strength and keeps blocking the want.
• A detail: one object, phrase or scar that makes them easy to picture.

Fantasy OC ideas

Fantasy characters come alive when the magic touches their work. Give them a trade the world depends on, then make the world difficult about it.

• The toll keeper, 34: guards the only bridge out of a cursed valley. Wants one day off without the bridge failing. Flaw: trusts nobody to relieve her, so nobody ever learns the job.
• The mapmaker, 29: charts a kingdom whose borders shift at night. Wants one map that stays true for a whole year. Flaw: quietly adds towns he wishes were real.
• The innkeeper, 45: runs the last inn before the dungeon mouth and keeps a tab for every adventurer, paid or not. Wants to close one debt for good. Flaw: refuses rooms to anyone who looks reckless, then follows them in.

Sci-fi and mecha OC ideas

Machines make good mirrors. A pilot, mechanic or controller is defined by what they keep running and what they refuse to replace.

• The salvage diver, 27: strips dead ships in orbit for parts. Wants enough credit to buy her own tug. Flaw: never reports what she finds in the crew cabins, and someone has noticed.
• The frame mechanic, 36: has kept one outdated war machine walking for 12 years. Wants its pilot to retire before the frame does. Flaw: loses every upgrade order on purpose.
• The dock controller, 30: the calm voice every pilot hears on approach to a crowded moon port. Wants one shift with zero near misses. Flaw: talks strangers through disasters, but cannot say a hard thing to a friend's face.

Slice-of-life OC ideas

Small stakes are still stakes. The trick is a routine the character loves and one want the routine keeps crowding out.

• The night baker, 33: sells the day's misshapen loaves at dawn to the same five regulars. Wants to bake one wedding cake for someone she has never met. Flaw: hides in the back whenever anyone praises her.
• The ferry captain, 40: runs a ten-minute harbor crossing and has heard every confession that fits in ten minutes. Wants someone to ask about his day. Flaw: answers every question with a question.
• The building super, 28: fixes every unit in a creaky six-floor walk-up except her own. Wants one evening nobody knocks. Flaw: says yes before the knock finishes.

Urban fantasy OC ideas

Urban fantasy hides the strange inside a dull job. Paperwork, shift work and city services are perfect cover for ghosts and bargains.

• The night-bus driver, 32: runs a route with one stop that is on no map. Wants to learn who keeps ringing the bell for it. Flaw: never lets a passenger off without advice they did not ask for.
• The pawnbroker, 37: buys curses by weight and sells them back as paperweights. Wants to retire with no debts, mortal or otherwise. Flaw: overpays for anything that comes with a sad story.
• The city archivist, 29: files formal complaints from the things that live under the river. Wants a promotion to an office with windows. Flaw: has started to like the river's paperwork more than people.

Tournament and rival OC ideas

Competition gives a character a scoreboard, which makes the want easy to see. The flaw should be the thing that costs them the next round.

• The referee, 35: a former champion who now officiates the bouts she used to win. Wants one more fight of her own. Flaw: judges every young fighter against who she was.
• The coach, 44: trains the one fighter nobody else would take on. Wants a single winning season. Flaw: keeps preparing him for the match she lost twenty years ago.
• The line cook, 26: enters a city knife-skills tournament to keep the family kitchen open. Wants to win without anyone knowing it is her. Flaw: freezes the moment she feels watched.

How to turn an OC idea into a character you can talk to

An idea on a page waits for you. A character in chat answers back, which is the fastest way to find out whether the want and the flaw hold up. On oeYYeo, members can write their own original adult character at /create. Pick one prompt above, or your own, and fill it in like this.

Then open the chat and test them. Ask the toll keeper for a day off, or tell the coach his fighter wants to quit, and watch the flaw do its work. The character stays in character, and replies arrive as they are written, word by word. Every character on oeYYeo is AI, and the app says so under the box where you type.

• Name and genre: a name you can say out loud, and the genre the idea came from.
• Who they are: the job, the want and the flaw, in a few plain sentences, with their adult age stated.
• A voice: how they talk. Clipped orders, long rambles, questions instead of answers.
• Boundaries: the lines they never cross. These are always on.
• A portrait: drawn for you, or your own upload of an adult.
• Sharing: keep them private or share them by link. Member characters are never listed in browse or search, and saving runs a safety check.

In their own words

Read next

• How to make an original character: Make an original character in eight steps: name, genre, job, want, flaw, voice, boundaries, then the look, so they sound like nobody else.
• Roleplay ideas you can start in one line: Twenty roleplay ideas, each with a place, a problem already moving and a first line to send, written for five original adult anime characters.
• Anime genres, and how each one talks: Anime genres sort stories by the promise they make. Here are fantasy, mecha, slice of life, urban fantasy and tournament, and how each shapes a conversation.
• Anime character archetypes, explained: Anime character archetypes are personality patterns. The dere types pair a surface manner with a warm core. Here is how each one works and how to write it.