I agree with this, unless the author really planned on the mc’s exact built, body type and appearance figuring heavily in the story itself, there’s not much point in having the appearance choices so heavily restricted (and deeply unsatisfying).
More pictures! Ok so you are not body builder build! You won’t have bulging muscles (because your 16) you will have healthy natural muscles
Like this:
Not this:
Ugh now you guys are scaring me 
I chose these builds based on what I thought was cool. Now I feel like I’m doing a bad job 
. Maybe it was a bad idea to add the option to customize your characters I obviously don’t have the talent to do it 
I’ll start thinking of a default character 
Why does this post make me titter so? It must feel horrible, and inspires much pity, and yet…I cannot look away…
Poor us.
@idonotlikeusernames, hon, COG flashbacks, yes?
Mmhm. I’m always in the camp of go all out or silence is golden.
2 Likes
Oh, okay, well if we can couple the “muscular” body with a really pretty face, like that certain actor then all is well.
Though the anatomy seems a bit off in the first one, and I wouldn’t actually mind my mc maturing into the second one, but at sixteen it’d be a bit much.
Don’t care much for the tattoo on that one either, but the body type seems to more or less match my anime picture of Squall, so I guess I’d be cool with that.
Nah, you’re not doing a bad job per se, you’re just running into the fact that your audience’s tastes and how we’d like to visualize our mc’s vary tremendously.
Unless the mc’s appearance and build or body “type” and shape really affect the story in a meaningful way (beyond just being very handsome or beautiful all of a sudden) you can either just not bother with mc customization and leave it entirely up to our imaginations. For example: if you just say in your opening scene with the bullies that after their transformation the mc now looks like a “(super) model” most of us will fill it in for ourselves what that means to us, besides suddenly being beautiful or handsome, or both. 
On the other hand if you like writing up descriptions you can also provide a longer and more varied list with detailed descriptions that only affect (a page on) our stats screens.
Only if you envision it somehow playing an important role in the narrative itself does it need to become more important or difficult than that. 
If you’re still worried about the player-character customization or lack thereof, take a look at how some of the other authors around here handle it. If you want to go to the trouble of providing explicit customization options I’d recommend looking at how the Myrmidon and “Freak: Amidst the Neon Lights” handle these things and on the other side of this we have Guns of Infinity, where we do not explicitly customize our mc’s appearance and we know only that they probably look like dashing cavalry officers and the rest is left entirely up to our own imaginations.
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This is really really what I was hoping wouldn’t happen. Please don’t be upset. If people thought you didn’t have the ability, I think we ( though obs I can only speak for myself) would save the energy it takes to explain ourselves. Also…I don’t know that I like the sound of DEFAULT MC. What do you mean by that?
I’d like to add Children of the Gods and The Seven Heirs of Ophaesia as two I’m partial to, off the top of my head.
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Yes your body type would have(cuz I’m not sure if adding customization any more) made you more attractive to the RO. If you chose to look like your mom the male RO will be easier to romance and if you look like you father the female RO will find you more attractive. You would still romance either but the RO affection will boost depending on the body type. And yes you would basically looked like a model if you looked like your dad.
Since no one seemed to bring it up, @OracleD3, please refrain from using the term “trap(s)”, please. It’s a horribly transphobic slur and shouldn’t be used in jest at all.
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It would mean that you MC would look well like however I make them look? Like this would be what your MC look like through out the series and you just pick their name, powers, clothes, aura, personality
Default male:
Default Female:
Well then I’m glad you’re re-thinking it, or else you’d have been saying that basically every male RO is more into “androgynous guys” who look (a bit) like girls, which wouldn’t have been all that satisfying to me, and I’m sure some of the other gay guys around here as well and would have carried some quite nasty implications.
A male one I hope. 
You can still leave that in, if you want, really no further detailing necessary if you don’t want to bother with it. Just having the RO’s treat us as generically beautiful or handsome, with everything else dependent on how we actually act towards them and maybe how we choose to dress is enough.
Only do more if you really want to. 
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Oh I’m sorry I’m used to calling my friend that as a joke but I understand that it’s insensitive. I’ll stop.
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This thread moves so fast sometimes… and I’m also running on 2 hours of sleep. Thanks, @Sammysam. Just consider me seconding you.
Like I said, it shouldn’t be used in jest at all. The trans community is already fetishized enough online as it is, and that’s just one of the many terms/slurs used, but thanks for agreeing to stop. Cheers.
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Ugh now I feel like a insensitive jerk I’m so sorry.
OracleD3 do you still need to know how to blurr?
Well you wouldn’t be androgynous? You would just be short and fair looking. The RO find you attractive either way it’s just a affection boost.
Yes a male model 
lol. If I take character creation out then I’m going to based the male MC appearance off my friend that resembles this:
He’s always encouraged me to do this and has been really supportive so I want to base the MC off of him as a thank you for his nonstop support
but I will let you choose your personality if I don’t allow customization.But he wouldn’t look so childish.
Lol no I figured it out like 2 minutes after that post. But thank you.
No offense to your friend, but I’d rather you keep it in if that’s the case. He wouldn’t actually be that much different from me when I was younger, except that I tried to train really hard to fill out my top half from college onwards (with only modest success, alas) and had a full head of hair. But being short and looking like barely sixteen until I was ten years older than that in reality has caused me no small amount of grief and embarrassment in real life, so I’d like to escape that in my escapist fiction, if at all possible and not something I’d willingly inflict on my mc’s.
Ugh, being constantly carded in bars and even actually refused entry into a nightclub when out with all my friends because some idiot bouncer was absolutely convinced my real, government issued, ID must somehow have been a really good fake, ugh one of the low points of my social life. 
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I can guarantee you most people won’t like having the appearance of the MC be defined. Genderlocking a protagonist is enough to make people not be willing to play a game simply because they can’t play as the gender they identify as, but those games still allow you to customize the MC as you see fit. You could technically go ahead and do it, but… it’s not going to be a popular decision. Most people would prefer the MC’s appearance be left a blank slate if no customization options are present so that they can simply embed their own visualization of the MC into the game.
The thing is, most interactive fiction allows the player to create and define their character. Even if no customization options are present, they’re allowed to do so through imagination and headcanons. If you choose to restrict the MC’s appearance, you then have to ask yourself this: is the MC the player’s character, or yours being imposed onto players?
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My friend and you would get along well. He complains how people mistake him for a girl and thinks he looks like one. But I tell him if he dosent want to look like one then he should cuz his long hair but he likes it so he hasn’t. He’s pretty so no one but him is complaining about his appearance lol.
This picture would work for the MC if there isn’t customization it looks like my friend so it could work
