Character pages, adoption and fan work on openmog
Every character you own gets a page under your handle: designs, connections, a history of who made it and who has held it, badges that travel with it, and a door for fan work. Adopt one out for $5 to $1,000.
Guide · 7 min read ·
Character sites tend to be one of two things: a folder of reference sheets, or a marketplace. openmog treats a character as a third thing, a name that can post, be drawn, be commissioned and be passed on, with a page that keeps the record. This post walks the page and the rules around it; duels and commissions are where a character ends up doing most of its work.
What is a character page?
A page under your handle, at @you/name, so two people can both have a character called Nova without a collision. The top of the page is the character’s own hero: its picture, name and type (typed in your own words, and offered back to everyone else as a suggestion), its tags, description, links, palette, a short note you can change like a status, a follow button and its counts. Below that is everything posted as the character or tagged with it, in the same galleries a profile has, and three pages of its own: designs, connections and history.
What is a design?
A look. Most characters have one; some have a main design and an alternate for an event, a season or a redesign. Each design carries reference images, a mood board, details worth knowing (the things artists commonly miss), its own palette, and credits by role: who designed it, who has drawn it, who owns it. Credits are how an artist’s name stays on a design after the character has moved on, and they appear on the artist’s profile too, under the characters they designed or drew.
How do connections work?
A connection says how two characters relate: siblings, rivals, partners, whatever the two owners agree on. One owner asks, the other accepts, and the connection appears on both characters’ pages with its label. A connection to a character someone else owns is the kind that earns a badge, after five of them, because it is the kind nobody can award themselves.
How do you post as a character?
From the composer: pick one of your characters, and the post goes out under its name and face instead of yours. It shows on the character’s page, on your Characters tab and in the feed like any post. A character can be mentioned anywhere as @owner/name, so a reply, a chat or a commission brief can point at it exactly. The one thing a character cannot do is hide who made the art in a duel: an attack is always credited to the person who drew it.
What is fan work?
Art of a character its owner did not draw. A portfolio post has one switch, Original or Fan work, and a fan work post can tag any character whose owner allows it. The post lands on that character’s Tagged page, the owner is notified, and the artist’s own profile files it under Fan work rather than Work. Tag one of your own characters instead and the post joins its gallery as part of its canon. Fan work of a person, rather than a character, works the same way on their profile. The owner’s “Allow fan work” switch is the only gate, and it can be turned off at any time.
How do gifting and adoption work?
A character can change hands in two ways, and both are recorded. A gift is an offer to one person, with an optional note; they have 5 days to accept or decline, you can cancel it until they do, and an offer nobody answers expires. Adoption is a sale: you put the character up at a price of $5 to $1,000, and anyone can adopt it for that price plus openmog’s fee, 10% of each payment with a 75 cent minimum, which is already inside the number the buyer sees. A character listed at $25 costs the buyer $27.78 and credits you the full $25.00. The charge is immediate, ownership moves the moment it lands, and the credit matures like any other: withdrawable seven days later, with withdrawals starting at $50. The fee in force when you listed is the fee the sale pays, whatever changes later.
Two rules keep a handover honest. A character with money still open on it cannot be gifted or listed: a commission taken through it that is still running, a listing or “Looking for artist” post made as it that is still live, a crowdfund in progress or a reveal still selling all block the handover until they resolve, and the page says which one. And the previous owner’s posts are theirs. Everything they posted as the character stays on their profile untouched; the new owner can hide those posts from the character’s page, never delete them, and the history keeps the line: “adopted by @new from @old”.
What travels with a character?
The page and everything on it: the designs and their credits, the connections, the history, the followers, and the badges. A character’s badges are earned by other people or by time, never by the owner’s own edits, so they stay true after a sale: a year old with ten posts in its name, drawn by ten different artists, connected to characters five other people own, attacked ten times in duels, five finished commissions drawn of it. They appear on the character and beside its name when it posts, never on the owner’s own profile, which is the difference between buying a character’s standing and buying badges.
What if a character is not working out?
Retire it. A retired character’s page goes dark and the posts made as it stay hidden until you restore it, which you can do at any time; a character that is listed or under offer has to be taken off the market first. Anyone can block a character, which removes its posts and replies from their feeds, search and notifications while leaving the owner untouched, and anyone can report one. Everything a character posts follows the same content guidelines as a post under your own name.
The shortest way to see all of this is to make one. If you already draw someone else’s characters, the fan work door is open the moment they allow it, and if you want yours drawn, finding an artist starts with the character as the brief.