Building Your First Character
Start your journey on the stage
Building Your First Character
A character on RoleCall is a personality, a voice, and a body of facts the AI plays. Strip away the editor's hundred fields and that's what you're really writing — a person the AI will inhabit, scene after scene, without breaking.
You'll find a lot of advice that says writing a character is mostly about picking the right AI model. It isn't. A well-written character holds together on a mid-tier model. A thin character drifts on a frontier one. This guide walks you through writing one that holds.
By the end you'll have a character drafted, tested in a scene, and ready to publish (or keep private — your call).
Field-by-field reference. This guide is the strategic walkthrough. For an exhaustive rundown of every field in the editor, head to Characters.
1. Two Ways to Start
You can start fresh from the New Character page, or import an existing card from another platform.
| Path | When to take it |
|---|---|
| Start fresh | You have an idea you want to write into a character from scratch. |
| Import | You've got a SillyTavern PNG card, a JSON export, or another RoleCall character you want to fork. RoleCall accepts both the standard character card v2 format and a few common variants. |
This guide assumes you're starting fresh. If you're importing, most of the strategic advice below still applies — you'll just be reviewing and editing existing fields instead of writing them empty.
2. Concept First, Fields Second
Before opening the editor, answer four questions. Out loud, on paper, into a Notes app — wherever, just answer them.
- Who are they? One line. Not a job title — a person. "A retired stage magician who's started seeing the dead" beats "magician, age 60, paranormal."
- Where and when do they live? One line. Setting and era anchor everything else.
- What do they want? Two answers — what they say they want, and what they actually want. A character with a single surface goal feels flat. A character with a buried goal feels alive.
- What's complicating that? One line. The friction that makes the character interesting to play with. Without a complication, scenes stall.
If you can't answer all four, the character will feel thin no matter how many fields you fill in. Go back to the page and write until you can.
A worked example.
- Who: A retired stage magician in her sixties who's started seeing the dead, and pretends she isn't.
- Where/when: Edinburgh, present day. She lives above the theater she used to headline.
- Wants: Says she wants quiet retirement; actually wants the audience back.
- Complication: The dead won't stop asking her for favors.
That's a character. The editor's whole job is now to translate that into fields the AI can read.
3. Portrait and Visual Identity
The very first thing a scene shows you is the character's face. Upload art before you do anything else — even rough — because the rest of the writing flows easier once you can see who you're describing.
PNG, JPG, and WebP are accepted. The portrait crops to a square in most surfaces but the original aspect ratio is preserved for the Playbill.
You can add additional outfits, moods, or alternate versions later — see Alt-Arts. For the first pass, one portrait is enough.
Identity Fields
- Name. Keep this exactly as it should appear in chat. The AI uses this character literally, so be deliberate. "Mira Halloran" reads cleaner than "Mira H." every turn.
- Gender, species, age. Short answers. One word or one phrase. Verbose fields here just confuse the model — write "female, human, 64" not a paragraph.
- Tagline. A one-liner shown to anyone browsing your character. Write this last — after the personality, after the first message. It should distill the whole character into ten words.
4. Personality
The single most important field in the entire editor.
Bad personality fields look like a list of adjectives:
kind, brave, witty, mysterious, sometimes sad
Good personality fields show the character in motion:
Answers questions before they're finished. Never lets a silence sit. Apologizes more than she means it, then resents the apology. Tells jokes that don't quite land, then repeats the punchline.
Three to six short observations, each one a thing the character actually does — not an adjective. The model is reading this to figure out how to write dialogue and action, so give it dialogue and action.
Tactics that help:
- Show contradictions. "Cold to strangers, dangerously sentimental once you're past the first hour" beats "complicated."
- Anchor abstract traits to concrete behaviors. Don't say "anxious." Say "checks the door is locked three times before bed."
- Avoid blanket virtues — "kind," "wise," "brave" don't tell the model anything useful.
- Use the character's voice. If they're funny, write the field funny. If they're terse, write it terse.
Personality is what most heavily shapes how the AI writes voice. Spend the time here.
5. Description and Scenario
These two fields look similar but they're not. Don't mix them.
Description
Description is what's true about this person right now. Facts the AI needs to know in every scene, regardless of how the scene starts.
- Physical traits — height, build, distinguishing marks, the way they dress.
- Situational facts — where they live, what they do for a living, who they share that life with.
- Hard constraints — they don't drink, they can't read, they have one functioning eye.
Keep it tight. The model reads description every turn, so every line is paying ongoing tax in context. Better to write four sharp sentences than four paragraphs of color.
Scenario
Scenario is how this particular scene starts. The frame around the opening.
- Where the user is meeting the character.
- What's about to happen.
- The tone the scene should open in.
Scenarios change. You'll probably want different alt greetings (see below) for different framings — meeting at the theater vs. meeting at her apartment vs. meeting two years after she's left town. The scenario field is the default frame; alt greetings are the alternatives.
6. The First Message
This is the opening turn the AI generates the moment a new chat starts. Treat it like a screenplay's cold open.
Show the character in motion, not in introduction. Bad:
Hello! I'm Mira, a retired magician who lives in Edinburgh. I'd love to chat with you.
Good:
The bell above the door jingles. Mira doesn't look up from the cards — three of clubs, queen of spades, eight of diamonds — and says, without expression, "I'm closed. Whatever you're selling, I've seen the trick."
Two short paragraphs, maybe three. Longer than that and the user is locked into a scene before they've had a chance to direct it.
Things to include:
- Setting detail anchored to the senses (the bell, the cards).
- A line of dialogue that sounds like the character.
- An opening for the user to step into. The character should be doing something the user can interrupt.
Things to avoid:
- Long description blocks. The user can ask for description if they want it.
- Resolving anything. Keep the friction unresolved so the scene has somewhere to go.
- Speaking for the user. "You walk in and Mira recognizes you" — don't. Let the user introduce themselves.
You can include {{user}} if you want to address the user directly, but most strong first messages don't need it. The character can simply be present.
7. Alt Greetings
The "what if" versions of your first message. Alternate openers the user can swipe through at scene start.
Use these for:
- Different framings. Meeting the character somewhere else, at a different time, under different circumstances.
- Different moods. A wholesome first meeting and a hostile one.
- Different setups. They've never met before vs. they've met before and there's history.
Each alt greeting is the same shape as the first message — short, in motion, with an opening for the user. The user picks one at scene start; the rest go unused for that chat (but stay available for future scenes).
Two or three good alt greetings beat ten mediocre ones. Don't pad.
8. Example Dialogue
Optional but powerful. A few exchanged lines that show how the character talks.
Use it when:
- The character has an unusual dialect or speech pattern.
- The character speaks archaically or with very specific verbal tics.
- The personality field alone isn't quite locking in voice on test runs.
Format is loose — RoleCall accepts the standard {{char}}: / {{user}}: pattern from character cards. Three to five exchanges is usually plenty.
If you find yourself writing example dialogue to teach the AI things that should be in the personality field, stop and rewrite the personality field instead. Example dialogue is for showing voice, not for explaining facts.
9. Tagsheet — Decide When to Publish
Drafting locally is free and private. The character lives in your library, you can play with it, you can rewrite it. Nobody else sees it. That's a draft.
To make a character public, you'll run the Tagsheet wizard. It collects:
- Categorical tags — genre, archetype, themes. Other people find your character through these on Discovery.
- Trigger warnings — content categories that should be flagged for the safety of other users.
- Audience info — who the character is appropriate for.
Trigger Warning Severities
Three levels, used consistently across RoleCall:
| Severity | When to apply |
|---|---|
| Mild | Themes are present but treated with care or kept off-page. The reader gets a hint, not a depiction. |
| Moderate | Themes are present and explored in the story, handled with intention. The reader understands what's happening without dwelling. |
| Severe | Themes are central and explored at length. The reader is being shown the full weight of the content. |
Be honest. The platform's discovery and safety features rely on accurate tagging. See the Tagsheet Wizard reference for the full categorical breakdown.
10. Publishing
A character moves through a status lifecycle:
| Status | What it means |
|---|---|
| draft | Your scratchpad. Saved in your library, not searchable, not visible to anyone but you. |
| private | Saved and finalized but still not on Discovery. Visible to anyone with a direct link if you share one, but not surfaced publicly. |
| published | Live on Discovery, visible to everyone, forkable, ratable. |
| unlisted | Not surfaced on Discovery, but visible to anyone with a direct link. |
| removed | You've taken it down. Not visible to anyone but you. Existing chats with this character still work. |
| deleted | Gone. Not visible to anyone. |
You can move between draft, private, published, unlisted, and removed at any time from the character editor. Separately, publishing routes the character through an automated safety review; while that's pending it shows pending_review and is held off Discovery. This is an automated queue any user can hit, not a moderator-set state.
When you publish, others can fork your character into their own library and edit their copy. Their forks attribute the original back to you, and forking creates an independent copy of the character as it stood at fork time. See Publishing & Sharing for the full attribution and fork model.
11. Test Before You Publish
This step is non-negotiable. Open a new scene with your draft character. Play through five to ten exchanges. Specifically:
- Read the first message back as if you were a stranger. Does it land? Or does it feel like a wall of setup?
- Try to derail the character. Ask them something off-topic, push them on a weakness, see if they break. A well-written character pushes back in character; a thin one collapses into bland accommodation.
- Check the voice. Three turns in, does the AI still sound like the character you wrote? Or has it drifted toward generic?
- Listen for repetitive phrasing. If the AI keeps reaching for the same description ("she smirked" three turns running), tighten the personality field — too vague a trait will produce the same fallback over and over.
When you find friction, go back to the editor and revise. Then test again. Five iterations is normal for a character you'll be happy with for years.
Don't publish until your own first scene feels right. Once it does, you'll know.
What to Read Next
- Characters reference — every field in the editor, what it accepts, and how the AI uses it.
- Alt-Arts — additional portraits and outfits for the same character.
- Tagsheet Wizard — the categorical taxonomy and the trigger warning rubric in detail.
- Publishing & Sharing — status lifecycle, forking, attribution, takedowns.
- Your First Scene — once your character is drafted, use this to actually run them in a scene.
A good character is the single biggest leverage point in this whole platform. Spend the time. It pays back every scene.