Advice/Help How do you store and keep track of your OCs?

[Battlemaid]

Mine have always been tailor made for specific rp's with the exception of D&D, so I have a nest of folders on my pc arranged by site>> rp >>current//old and by the specific characters themselves

If its a long term rp then each character I use has their origin spec sheet, current spec sheet (accounting for in rp growth) and a scratchpad style document for key events, their thoughts about those events and notes on feelings about prominent characters within that rp.

I use a similar method when i write fanfics.

 

[Shawdios]

I’ve generally got a select few (12-ish) OCs that I adjust to the situation with their personalities (roughly) staying the same.

Most of the time I don’t fill out character sheets, only if it’s required. But when I do, I adjust the OCs to fit the RP and i save the sheets on a google doc.

 

[cazhascake]

for characters that i use quite a lot, i like having their bio sheets on a google doc so i can just send over the link to anyone who may want to know about them!

i also have a list of my ocs in my notes somewhere to kinda remind me of who all lives up in my head ( the amount of times i've forgotten about an oc and then immediately went,, "hey why did i stop using them?" )

writing long, detailed bios is fun for me if i really love that oc, but for the ones i don't use that often, i make 'tiny' bios with only their need-to-know information.

i know playing favorites is bad but i do genuinely just love certain characters of mine more than others, for some reason :'D

 

[Jules8008]

I'm storing mine on refsheet.

 

[pet]

So I used to not have an official place to store them at all tbh... but then I got a Toyhouse account and now I try keeping everything on there.

If anyone is interested in trying out Toyhouse by the way, let me know and I can get you an invite code. I have tons of them that I can't get rid of...

haaii!! i have no idea if you still have an influx of invite codes but if you do may i have one or two?

 

[Lorsh]

have a thread in extra pages

 

[.quietus]

I don't. I just forget the ones that aren't memorable enough. Only my best creations get to survive -- just like the RP gods intended!

 

[Kveykva]

i always hated when i would forget about characters i made for one thing or another, so i (tried to) created a list that had every oc on it. once i see their name, it was always easy for me to recall who it was and what information i had on them. when i got a toyhouse account, i devised a detailed character sheet and intended to use that as my main mode for storage. what stopped me, you may ask?

closed species adoptables. from what i understand, toyhouse was created as a character platform for those types of communities (to keep records of character trades and prevent art/character theft or something, idk), and so they have a bunch of tools for users to use to add all the credits they need when posting an adoptable. none of this really mattered to me at first because i made all my own characters and their designs, and if i didn't draw them myself, i could just credit the artist who did. it was all very simple.

then came fox-n-key. a little species i found on chickensmoothie a couple years ago that just seemed so cool??? they're like psychic foxes from space that have little keyholes on them and each one has a key to unlock its potential should it and its partner (keyholder) choose to do so. idk they were super funky so i joined and ended up with a few of the little guys. i love them dearly and have wanted to try and develop each one alongside a custom oc who would be their keyholder, but i haven't put any of them on toyhouse because there's all these rules that i don't fully understand and they scare me. there's all this stuff you have to credit with closed species adopts because there's like, the person who owns the species, the person who did the lines, the person who did the design, and yes the character is yours but not like fully??? it's a mess and i don't get it. because i'm dumb or something lmao.

long story short, the four floc adoptables i ended up with as characters scared me too much to finish moving all my ocs to toyhouse, so i pretty much just have all of them scattered between different roleplays on the forums of chickensmoothie and quink. i will figure it out someday, just not today lmao

 

[ThreeFive]

I have a bunch of .txt files on my aging laptop, which seems like a recipe for disaster if I am being honest. Sometimes I use Evernote, because I like being able to access them on any of my computers. Though today while writing an RP post in Evernote, I noticed a large swath of it just disappeared, which did not make me a happy camper.

 

[Pokeking]

What I've been doing recently is use Microsoft Word docs. A couple are called [character name] bible to keep track of everything pertaining to that character. Another file is called Lore because it's not just a character sheet. It is an actual world building situation in which I've been canon welding certain characters that seemed they could live in the same world.

 

[elosaloh]

I used to use Google docs and Google notes to store ocs but I switched to programs that suited me best. Now I use libreoffice, samsung notes, and TH.

As for filling them out, I tend to have their backstories and random information filled out and that's about it !!
But I do find that I create new characters for a lot of my roleplays, which I tend to later develop for new stories and/or other roleplays.