Roleplay Tips

[Chris]

To start off with, I have to say that I didn't write all of this, and I'm not sure who did; I found it on another site and it helped so many people so much that I just had to put it on here. And since this is the member assistance board, I couldn't think of a better place to post it. I know it's a lot of reading, but believe me: it is totally worth it. Take a few breaks if you have to, but read the whole thing. This is the best thing since sliced bread, seriously.

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In roleplay, whether it is conducted through a chatroom, email, or any other number of roleplay mediums there will most usually, be action/description and speech in each post. This means that part of your post will be descriptive, detailing what your character looks like, their thoughts, or their surroundings, etc. And the other part of your post would consist of your character speaking.

What first needs to happen then is a way for people to distinguish what part of the post is action/descriptive and what part of the post is the character's speech. You should all know that speech goes in quotations. If you don't... Just don't even... ah...

-Important: When making your character...-
When making your character you have to keep in mind EVERYTHING you want them to be. Picture them in your head, see inside their mind. Then type it all up. Whatever you see for your character, describe it all. We can't see inside your head, we don't know what your character looks like unless you give some nice descriptions.

Histories are important. Without how they were raised and what has happened throughout their lives there would be no current them. They would have no personality, the way they react to things would be boring because there would be no drive behind it.

When giving your character a personality, ask them questions. What would you do if you met someone who was ____? What would you do if you were left on a deserted island with someone? Things like that. Also when thinking about personality, think of their history and how their past would shape their present view on the world and how they act towards it.

When you finish your character you should ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS go to one of the following sites and take the tests on them. If you are determined to be a Sue/Stu then work on fixing it and making your character better or asking around the site, in the General Chat perhaps, how to improve upon your grounding.

www.springhole.net/quizzes/marysue.htm
www.ponylandpress.com/ms-test.html

-Important: Paying Attention to Other's Posts-
Pay attention to other people's posts even if they aren't directing it to you. You don't have to read them thoroughly but you should skim them over. Reason being that while they may not be addressing events directly to you, what they do may affect your character. How much is mostly left up to you. Because in real life you are often aware of your surroundings and you would be aware of events that would affect you. So let's say you're in a roleplay with three people. You're interacting with only one of them, but the other person is also interacting with them. You will notice what's going on between them as well as between you and the person. USE THAT IN YOUR POST! Don't just ignore what they post, it makes people angry to be ignored.

Not only does this put you more realistically into the scene by making you and your character more aware of what is happening in their surroundings but if you are a new player starting to RP, it presents an opening for your characters to enter an ongoing RP more naturally.

-Important: Being Descriptive in your Posts-
Playing a character is not simply typing out words onto a screen. One should be descriptive in their actions/posts. Anyone could slap on a name and type in any sort of actions such as:

He appeared into the room and watched.

To me this simply conjures up the image of 'poof' the character appears fairy-god-motheresque though without the glamor and sparkles. It leaves the post empty and lacking as well as making the person behind the character seen unimaginative, when this could be the opposite. When you make a post, you should consider as many angles as possible. "How" is the main question. Working on the previous example, we should ask 'how did they appear? by what method?' 'was there any effect that those around them may have felt or seen/heard if they were looking/listening?

While you don't have to be descriptive in -every- single action your character commits, it's not a bad idea to get some practice because it comes in -great- use during fights. By describing, how, where, when, etc, in your fight posts, you help your opponent know -exactly- what sort of injuries they should sustain or how they should block it with little to no confusion. This also will help with reducing many of those ooc arguments that break out during a fight based on misinterpretation of the opponent's actions. An action such as:

He striked at her.

contains quite a bit of ambiguity - in fact it would cause a -great- deal of confusion. 'Where are you striking at?' 'How?' 'Which direction?' 'How hard are you hitting?' 'Are you using a weapon?'

-Important: Keeping Your Character Consistent-
When playing your character, you need to keep in mind the qualities that your character possesses. Try to keep consistent with your character, if your character changes personalities at times, like in a specific situation, then that's fine. A character, Shana, changes her personality with each role she takes on. Another character's mostly childish but she does have a darker, more serious side. What I'm saying is that you do not have to keep just one personality for one character, but you do have to keep it constant. Don't write up one way then suddenly change to another simply because it suits -your- mood at the moment.

Again, character evolution. That happens, yes. Personality can change but rarely will it bounce around from 'a' to 'j' back to 'b' to 'd' and then back to 'a' not unless your character has multiple personalities, that usually doesn't happen in real life. But, like I said, personality can change; say if your character was a happy-go-lucky, laid back guy who worried about nothing and then one day suddenly saw their best friend killed in front of them. I would imagine they'd become a bit more paranoid, scared and withdrawn.

You need to keep in mind how the character acts, speaks, thinks, their personality, their quirks, strengths and weaknesses. You need to be consistent with your character; if you wrote your character to be cool and aloof, then don't have them buddy buddying up with a complete stranger. Find some other way for your character to get to know another person.

I know some of you might be asking 'what about character evolution?' There's nothing stopping you from evolving your character as you play. However, change doesn't always happen in an instant. It's hardly possible that a once powerless creature would, suddenly, the next day achieve super abilities that would allow them to do this or that. Like in real life, you cannot learn to play the piano beautifully without first going through a least a few years of practice. You would need to play your character practicing and attempting to gain this new ability you want before you can actually call it your own. And I'm not saying practice for a few days either.

-Important: Take it Easy, Make it Easy-
When someone posts three or four paragraphs about what their character is doing or saying, you definitely have it easy. You can choose one aspect of their post to write about or two or three or four etc. Long posts make it easy to make more long posts. But when you make a nice long post, and the person replies with a line - how do you feel? It certainly makes it harder to reply to. While you gave them many paragraphs to work with, they gave you a line which is very difficult to get anything out of.

If someone gives you a nice long post, don't post just a line, or two lines. Use all the aspects of their nice long post to make your own nice long post. It will make the roleplay run so much smoother and people will want to roleplay with you more often because they know you're a good roleplayer and that you'll give them a lot of information to use in your own post.

-Taboo: Multi-Posting-
Try not to multi-post. This is when you post more than one post in your "turn". For example:

Mary: she emerges from her building wearing a nice soft pink jacket, skirt and a cute hat. She heads down the street towards the coffee shop.
Joe: He caught sight of the girl, his mouth watered.
Joe: He silently moved towards her, sneaking up behind.
Joe: He grabs her from behind and pulls her into the alley. Intent to have his dinner.
Joe: Quickly he sinks his fangs into her neck and drains her of all her blood.
Mary: She screams as the man grabs her and pulls her back, she struggles and kicks in an attempt to free herself from his grasp.

Now you see that because of the rapid posting of Joe that Mary's post, while completely valid, is out of sequence. This makes it confusing for both Joe, Mary and anyone else that is involved or wanted to join in because now they do not know whose post they should respond to. Mary will think that Joe has ignored her post and get frustrated. It's best to think about the "unspoken post order". This means that when you're posting, there's some post order that you follow. Normally it means you give everyone a chance to post, normally in a similar order (Joe, Mary, Bob, Charley, Joe, Mary...) so that nobody's lost and feels left out and angry.

-Taboo: Bad Presentation-
That's right. The presentation of your posts. Now, before you tell me that "what's inside the post is what counts" .. I know that. I know that this isn't one of the most important points of roleplaying. But here's a question: What if no one can understand your posts?

The point of fact is that roleplaying is not only about the individual -- there are very few things in this world that are only about the individual -- and one should be somewhat mindful to the comfort of others. And I do not mean using a bigger font either.

It is fine if the chatting is OOC among friends to use abbreviations and "net-speak" .. I am quite confident that everyone in that group is able to understand everyone else but in RP there are many people that may want to read and join in in an RP but if the posts are hard to understand (eg: TyPiNg LiKe ThIs or using the same font colour as the background, etc.) then it would be much more simple for people to skip over the bothersome posts and move onto someone else's rp that is easier to read.

Again, it's what the message inside the posts that count. Someone may have a great idea but if their posts are so hard to read, no one is going to pay attention to them and their idea will be wasted.

-Taboo: Limitations of Characters-
I found that sometimes people do not realize and keep in mind the limitations of their characters in a real world setting.

Say, for example, a disrespectful thief sneaks into a party.

It is understandable that, were someone looking right at the entrance at that time, and happened to know the guests invited to the party to notice that the thief wasn’t on the guest list and to alert an guard or the host/hostess. However, if there isn’t anyone looking at the doorway or everyone is engaged in their own conversations, it wouldn’t be realistic for Everyone to suddenly notice that an uninvited guest had entered.

Or for the entrance of the thief to be ignored but as soon as the thief makes any act of disrespect towards the host, etc. the whole room turns upon the offender as if they had their attention on this one person the entire time.

I’ve seen characters having conversations with five or six people at once, and on top of that suddenly noticing that a stranger has entered the room. I’ve seen characters doing something on one side of the room and being able to spot another's character show some sort of disrespect for another member and immediately responding despite the distance between them. I’ve seen characters who have abilities that they shouldn’t have.

Granted that some creatures will have great abilities that would allow them to do all of the above but, what I am trying to say here is that people do not seem to be able to keep in mind the limitations of their character.

-Taboo: Mixing OOC/IC-
This is probably one of the biggest problems that exist in the world of roleplay. Most seasoned roleplayers are able to separate themselves from their characters, but I also know that when you're just starting out roleplay that it could be pretty difficult.

Basically the key to keeping your real life out of your online roleplaying life is to remember that they're separate lives. You are not your character. When you go to turn off your computer, your character is turned off with it. You do not go around living a life with the mindset of your character. And when you go to put on your codes and your av and slip into the role of your character, you do not exist in that fabricated world that your character lives in.

I do realize that you cannot play your character completely objectively, else you'd have no passion for interaction. But remember: YOUR CHARACTER IS NOT YOU.

What your character feels may not be what you feel and vice versa.
I started roleplaying, 7-8 years ago, my character got involved with another character and we were happy. I was happy. But when his character went off with someone else, my character was hurt; I was hurt and I shouldn't have been. Why? Because this was roleplay; this wasn't real life. I wasn't being cheated on, my character was. At that point in time, I hadn't fully realized and grasped the idea that this was a game. It wasn't real life. While I do acknowledge that online relationship are possible and do happen, because your character is attracted to another character does not necessarily mean you and the other typist are a couple outside of roleplay.

Another point. What you, as the typist, knows about another may not be what your character knows. Now this can be a little difficult to separate, because, say, you, the typist, found out that some hunter is going after you and is hiding out in your home to stab you to death the moment you fall asleep, your character may decide to spend the next several nights at a friend's house or camping, whatever. This is not exactly what I'm talking about because such information is hard to forget; not many of us make characters just so they can be killed by the next bob on the street. What I am talking about is when you're ooc and you find out some information, like a weakness, of a character; you cannot use that information about that character. When you obtain information ooc, you cannot and should not let this information leak into your character's knowledge. There is no magical link that connects your brain to your character's brain like that. This is not how it works in real life either. If your character needs information, they have to do their own homework: research, spying, asking people, whatever. Your character does not know what you, the typist, are thinking.

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Thanks for reading! I hope it helped =D If you didn't read, scroll back up and do so. Now. Go on, you know you want to...