Current Character Description - Ror Surion

An athletic, tanned male elf with short, brown hair. The hair is longer on top than at the sides and springs up in spikey strands at the back of his head. The ears are adorned with small, rings at the tips, and engraved with elven runes. He has thin, brown eyebrows set above cobalt blue eyes and a straight nose. A white scar runs as a thin white line from his hand till his shoulder. His mouth is broad and his teeth are remarkably white. He is usually dressed in a TriPower military uniform with white overcoat that reaches past the knees. Red and blue lining is seen at the end of the sleeves, while the collar covers the whole neck. The collar is secured with a button on the right. As button the silver symbol of the TriPower Research Unit is used. No military rank is worn next to it.

How to write a Character Description

If you never roleplayed before and you want to roleplay, where do you start? In this post an example will be given on how to build a character from nothing simply by asking yourself a few basic questions and following logic.

A who or a what? A who
A male or a female? A male
A human or something else? Something else
What race then? A dwarf
Age? Middle-aged (note: no numbers yet)
Height? A bit above dwarf average (note: once again no numbers yet)
Weight? Average dwarf weight
Chubby or muscular? Muscular
Why muscular? Because of his profession
What is his profession? He is a blacksmith
Does he dress like a blacksmith? Not anymore
Why not? Because he is an adventurer now
What does he wear then? More armour worthy of a soldier. And he is a dwarf, so chainmail!
Does he use a weapon? Yes
What kind of weapon? A hammer
What kind of hammer? A large warhammer
Any special clothing or jewellery? He wears a broad belt with a gold buckle over his armour

So, what skin type underneath all that armour? A light skin type
Any scars? None
Anything else about the skin (pocks, sweaty, rosy, whatever)? Ordinary
Colour of the hair? Red
Bald? No
Facial hair? Yes, a beard!
What kind of beard? A big one, trimmed into a point with tassels at the end
Any companion animals? None

And that should give enough information to write a description on your very first character:

A red-haired dwarf with a big beard that's neatly trimmed into a point with tassels is dressed in chainmail with large armour plating. A broad belt with golden buckle is set across his waste and on his back he carries a large warhammer. The muscular build of this above average sized dwarf allows him to carry the combined weight of his armour and hammer. 

See that nothing was mentioned about him being a blacksmith? That's because you can't see that when you look at a person. Unless there was a detail to give it away. For instance:

A red-haired dwarf with a big beard that's neatly trimmed into a point with tassels is dressed in chainmail with large armour plating. A broad belt with golden buckle is set across his waste and on his back he carries a large warhammer. The muscular build of this above average sized dwarf allows him to carry the combined weight of his armour and hammer. The callous palms of his hands have the scars of blisters on them.

Nice! Furthermore, although no scars or skin specifics were thought up when writing the description, for a reference to his period as blacksmith it was a subtle addition. This is a demonstration of how a description grows slowly along with the background of the character until it makes sense logically.

With the description done, specific traits such as actual height, weight or age can be worked out. Either by guessing the right figures or by looking the averages up online. Then again, there's nothing against keeping traits such as age, height and weight descriptive as they were in the first outline!