RolePlay - Guide

[Ensim]

Ensim's Roleplayer Guide: Observations of a Roleplay warrior.


1: Don't be too eager to finish the game. Imagine how Lord of the Rings would have been if the script had been:
"At the meeting at Rivendale..."
"Look, for the last time, we are not using a catapult!"
"Then I agree, it is hopeless. It's not like we can just fly over on a bird and drop it in."
*Gandulf steps up* "Are you f*cking kidding me? Watch this!"
*Gandulf summons birds and flies over mount doom.*
*Drops ring into the volcano and it explodes.*
Hobbits: "Woah..."
Gandulf:"Now what the f*ck was so hard about that?"
The point of an RP is to tell an interesting story. You do want to make sure the story does'nt become stagnant, true, however, completing story arcs, or acts, just means you have that much less to role through. The fun in a Roleplay is not the acheivement, it's the journey along the way. If two charicters start bickering for some reason, let them go at it and let their personalities clash. It may open up a whole new window for the players to explore. charicters in RPs are only human (Well, except elves and stuff) They will do stupid things, they will be vengeful, fall in love, laugh, cry, don't be afraid to let your charicters stop and do something, oh, I don't know, human. They're not always going to be emotionless, goal oriented only, Robots. Hell, even robots have feelings more times than not in Roleplays...

2: For GMs, don't be too strict with your storyline. You may want to lead it somewhere, and only somewhere, but it will stem creativity, and players may be afraid to post if they fear GM reprisal, and their post being invalid and worthless. Even any ending you have in mind, be prepared to change it just a bit, to fit if the story is starting to lead somewhere else. You don't have to let the players completely take over your roleplay, as you do of course have say in what the main plot is, but just try not to make every last event conform. Sometimes you will be missing out on alot better stories this way.

3: Roleplays are NOT video games! RPs and Video games differ in the fact that alot of video games will throw out tons of enemies for you to quickly kill and be on your way. This gets very boring in Roleplays, very fast. Even in war-scenes, or battlefield-centered roleplays, try to conserve on the actual number of battles you throw at players. And as for the battles themselves, don't be too ready to just cut through and kill people. It is a battle, a struggle. The point is not to post something like, "My charicter goes forth, cutting down anyone who gets in his way" It's not a video game, where the monsters are just thrown in to keep you from completeing the game and giving you something to do. They ARE the game! Role with them, battle and skirmish with enemies. Like any other part in the RP, it is simply an event that rquires it's own description and storytelling. It is little different than the rest of the story. The point is not to merely get past it, but to do it with style, if that makes any sense. Just like the RP. The ending is not so important as how your charicter got there.

4: Statistics. I have rarely ever seen anything good come from each person giving a read-out of how fast, intelligent, strong, etc. A reasonible example should be given in a person's charicter sheet if they exceed normal in any peticular trait, and Item lists make things a bit easier to keep track of, but otherwise, this is really just stupid. And don't even think about giving out Experience points, or Level ups. This rolls into Rule 3. Roleplays are not table-tops. The experience of each is very different. If you want charicters to gain new spells or equipment, have them granted as quest rewards, or some such thing.

5: Everyone likes a team-player. If 8 people join an RP before you, and 6 of them are frail wizards of the dark arts, don't join as another wizard. If you do, then try to change your spell array to compliment the spells other players already have. If everyone is a fire wizard, if a water monster comes along, you're all screwed. If an item unique to Fire magics come along, you'll all bicker for the next three pages over it. Try to round the team out. If someone focuses on major attack spells, try to get something like a support spell or two for them. If you can learn it on the side, a few other spells for yourself to make your own self well rounded in case you find yourself alone is always wise, but try to plan around other members. Even if you're a rogue, or a warrior, do dual or triple person technique attacks with other people. (If you've ever played Chrono Trigger and seen some of the triple techs, they are pretty impressive. Imagine what you could do with such teamwork.) This often time requires alot more preparation and planning with other players, but pulling off one person attack, then another person follows up, then a third person comes in with an awsome finishing strike for example, and most GMs would be impressed enough to let a multiple attack go off and do several times more of an effect than alll those people alone could have done. It makes things more involving for everyone. After-all, there's no "I" in "Team", but there's a "We" in Weapon"!

6: Don't make a charicter that follows along a sterotype that's been done a million times before. Melo guys who are goodhearted, and always freindly, but always serious in battle, those guys are dime-a-dozen I swear. Make something fun, that way you'll remember your charicter later. Make them with a certain and unexplainible hatred or fear of something. Give them a special niche like, unable to resist stealing any red objects, or unbeleivibly handy in battle using just a T-shirt, or make them a little off the deep end with some stupid idiocincrasy or habbit. Make someone who plots revenge and to kill everyone but will delight and forget all about such plans upon the first person who presents something sweet. Perhaps these are too strong of examples, but be creative, and type something out that people will remember, chuckle, and maybe even feel incredible pity or sadness for them.

7: I see this an awful lot. People post a few times, or even post for a couple weeks when the RP is still hot and new, then just completely stop posting. An RP is a commitment. It is very rude, and speaks very badly about your reliability when you bail out on RPs. When you only do it a few times, it reflects a bit poorly on your reliability as an RPer. If you do it all the time, it reflects poorly on your reliability as a person. If you know full well ahead of time, you cannot spare enough time required to be on a Roleplay, you should not sign up. It's just that simple. If a roleplay does not interest you a week or two down the road, try to do the best you can in spite. Perhaps it will pick up. If it really starts sucking, or you just cannot keep up with it, sh*t happens, and RPs are not a life or death thing. However, at least have the curteosy to either tell the GM, or post a note in the thread declaring your leave. What happens to any charicter's you controlled varies depending on how nice the GM is, and how they are feeling about it.

Also, on this same note, try not to become a spot-light charicter unless you are on often enough to make use of it. If people will be referring to you often, make sure you can get on to post enough. Now, normally, getting online once to twice a day should be well enough suffifient for most RPs. However, that may vary from roleplay to roleplay. Also, there will be times, the forum may turn into a chatroom. Most times are after kids get out of school, when an RP starts up, late at night, or when major conflict first arises in the storyline. Try to plan around these, to either be online and able to post, or try to give your charicter and excuse for large inaction time gaps between posts, so you don't have to catch up 3 pages in a single post. That often just looks sloppy, or forced.

8: Roleplays normally do NOT have any "main charicters" or "Destiny heros". It is generally not wise, not liked when people try to declare their charicter as "Special" to the storyline. All charicters are special and have an equal chance at the spotlight. Things that generally disrupt this kind of thing are "legendary" class items. Your charicter should never have anything "Legendary" or "Supermythical" or whatever, unless it is important to the storyline, it is earned, or is cleared with the GM in some other way. And to GMs: Try not to make the RP about a single charicter, and all other people joining in to be side charicters on you're own personal "quest". I've seen this done by a few newbies from time to time, and fortunatly, no one else.

9: Try not to start out at your total peak, or a level with weapons, gear, and spells that is so strong you don't have much room to improve. Half the fun of many games is collecting certain items of power. (Except LOZ: Minish cap, because then it's just a fricken nightmare of never-ending puzzles.....anyways) What fun will the game be if you can easily smash through anything on the field? Consequently, the GM may have to up the ante on challanges just to keep things fair to you. This will inadvertantly punish other players who chose more "mortal" charicters. It's only human to have weakness. It adds challange and keeps you feeling on your toes, that you actually have to try. Did I mention how awsome and cool it is when you collect new powers and items along the way of your journey? There's a reason it's called "Treasure".

Also, try not to cover every base when you create a charicter. It get's REALLY annoying. Mostly whenever I see someone who gets a charicter with Knight's full plate armor, the declares that there charicter has trianed in it long enough, they can move fast enough so it does'nt deter them. I say that's bullshit. If you wear heavy armor, your agility is decreased to make up for extra defense. Period. You don't get normal to increased dodging speed and high defense both on the same token. It does'nt work that way. If you are a mage, you are not Hiryu or Dragon Ball dude, you cannot go in with a sword and start killing shit ninja style. If you are a rogue arch-type, you cannot take a gazillion hits and still be fine, and you are not Conan the barbarian, capible of massive feats of strength. If you are a warrior arch-type, you do not have complete mastery of a hundred spells, and you will be lucky if you can cast any spell, half as well as any mage can. If you wear massive armor to increase your defense, it will either be magical, and under the GM's disgression to give you, or it will be heavier than hell, restricting you from dancing all over like a damn ninja on a sugar-high.

10: Be polite, and forgiving to other players. It's an undeniable fact of RPing life: you are going to piss someone off eventually, and someone will eventually piss you off. Whether it's an action you feel is a violation over charicter limits, or unlawful interferance with your charicter, or someone who is used to a different set of rules than you, or a common mistake in reading, or because someone is'nt as skilled as you and types some pretty lame posts, etc. The sole reason I'm not still at my first forum I started at is because I was'nt forgiving enough to some other Roleplayers I got into an argument with them. It ended...pretty badly, ending in me getting banned. Be lenient and understanding with your fellow roleplayers. They are only human, they get irratated and commonly cuss, saying things they don't mean or are only joking, etc. Don't alienate your fellow RPers, it will create a bit of harsh and akward times roleplaying with them, and you may have to find another forum because of a simple argument by the time everything is said and done. Good roleplayers are about as endangered as the Right whale.

11: Be creative, be resourceful! It's pretty cool to go just slashing enemies in half and cutting their heads off with your sword for a first few pages, but it gets dull after awhile. Try to be creative. If theres a nearby tree, swing across a branch and deliver a kick to the enemy's face. Use the surronding terrain to your advantage. Just don't get too carried away. ^^; Instead of just slashing through enemies, try to get creative. Practice and research some sword or weapon techniques and implicate them. Cooler sounding attacks tend to get alot more damage & hit%, and "That's totally sweet!" from other players.

12: Be detailed enough to be interesting, but be breif enough, and don't stuff too much "filler" into your post. This goes for Biographies, as well as battle manuvers. Try to include a few hand movements, and weapon positions, but don't type up more than two paragraphs for a technique. In fact, NEVER, write more than two paragraphs for a single technique, unless it's a bad-ass, mother of all, to end all, awsome super magic attacks or something, that will likely cause an earthquake around it's so friggen intense, or story-line important. In fact, try to keep technique description down to one paragraph per technique maximum, unless it's an incredibly complex technique, or requires mutliple actions. And as for biographies, try(emphasis on try), to keep them shorter than 4 paragraphs, or 60 lines of whatever web page you're on. People want a brief overview of your life, and if they need anything else, you can do flashbacks or dialogue with people for it.

13: Throughout RPs, besides Events, there are several things GMs can throw out at people to pass the time or conflict areas. Battles are only one thing a person can do. Be creative. A natural crisis, such as a fire, a quake, a storm, a collapsing building, all present danger and a chance for players to react in manner. Also don't forget traps. Who could get through a dungeoun or castle without encountering a few deathtraps?

14: A note about magic: Be subtle, and keep a sense of realism about you. If your goal is to burn down a hamlet, who in their right mind would summon a swarm of commets from space, to crash into the tiny village and turn it to ash? Most mages would be intelligent enough to simply throw a small flare onto a flammible haystack, and throw a couple weak linking fire chains between buildings. It gets the job down with 1/40th the amount of mana/MP spent, because let's face it. Conjuring a powerful spell takes a little bit of time, and a lot of energy and preperation. Walking around, holding your hands up and instantly obliterating entire buildings is something no playible charicter in any game should ever have.

[Mistress Sheena]

This is in the wrong forum. Your guide has nothing to do with TFF's style of RPing. We don't have GMs or anything of the sort. I think the guide you made is for tabletop RPs like D&D, or something totally different.

I'll have Andromeda move this to...er.. somewhere other than here, I guess.

[Andromeda]

I find it curious indeed that someone that was looking for help about Roleplaying all of sudden drops down a guide of Roleplaying. This leads me to the belief that you are obviously experienced Roleplayer of some sort from another forum or venue. By your guide it would imply a D&D style text based roleplaying. Considering the length you went to, I would presume that you enjoy what you do and are thorough. However, it would seem that you lacked one courtesy before laying down your guide. That would be to read our RPs. If you read them you would have an immediate understanding that your style is not our method of Roleplaying. You guide has merits I will give you that, unfortunately most of it is invalid for our style of Roleplaying. But I am also always open to new ways to Roleplay. Learning other styles can only improve our over Roleplaying abilities. I will move it to the OoC Forum, since in your guide it is more suited for setting up Roleplays than actually plaiyng them.

[Ensim]

well thank you Andromeda, yes i'm experienced in this. But not in what you do here, so that's why i made this. IN CASE it someday will be legal....

[DragonHeart]

To my knowledge it's not illegal, we just don't use that RP system here. I'm sure if you want to do RPs in that style you're more than welcome to, it just isn't the standard. The only thing I can see that would be a problem is how you -don't- want a lot of description, so spam posts could become problematic.

~DragonHeart~

[Snowman Rob]

Sections of it are worth reading even for TFF's RPs. I've quoted the bit's I think are must reads for newbies here. I also changed over certain things like GM's to thread starters.

Originally Posted by Ensim

Ensim's Roleplayer Guide: Observations of a Roleplay warrior.

Don't be too eager to finish the game. Imagine how Lord of the Rings would have been if the script had been:
"At the meeting at Rivendale..."
"Look, for the last time, we are not using a catapult!"
"Then I agree, it is hopeless. It's not like we can just fly over on a bird and drop it in."
*Gandulf steps up* "Are you f*cking kidding me? Watch this!"
*Gandulf summons birds and flies over mount doom.*
*Drops ring into the volcano and it explodes.*
Hobbits: "Woah..."
Gandulf:"Now what the f*ck was so hard about that?"
The point of an RP is to tell an interesting story. You do want to make sure the story does'nt become stagnant, true, however, completing story arcs, or acts, just means you have that much less to role through. The fun in a Roleplay is not the acheivement, it's the journey along the way. If two charicters start bickering for some reason, let them go at it and let their personalities clash. It may open up a whole new window for the players to explore. charicters in RPs are only human (Well, except elves and stuff) They will do stupid things, they will be vengeful, fall in love, laugh, cry, don't be afraid to let your charicters stop and do something, oh, I don't know, human. They're not always going to be emotionless, goal oriented only, Robots. Hell, even robots have feelings more times than not in Roleplays...

For thread starters, don't be too strict with your storyline. You may want to lead it somewhere, and only somewhere, but it will stem creativity... Even any ending you have in mind, be prepared to change it just a bit, to fit if the story is starting to lead somewhere else. You don't have to let the players completely take over your roleplay, as you do of course have say in what the main plot is, but just try not to make every last event conform. Sometimes you will be missing out on alot better stories this way.

Everyone likes a team-player. If 8 people join an RP before you, and 6 of them are frail wizards of the dark arts, don't join as another wizard. If you do, then try to change your spell array to compliment the spells other players already have. If someone focuses on major attack spells, try to get something like a support spell... but try to plan around other members.

I see this an awful lot. People post a few times, or even post for a couple weeks when the RP is still hot and new, then just completely stop posting. An RP is a commitment. It is very rude, and speaks very badly about your reliability when you bail out on RPs. When you only do it a few times, it reflects a bit poorly on your reliability as an RPer. If you do it all the time, it reflects poorly on your reliability as a person. If you know full well ahead of time, you cannot spare enough time required to be on a Roleplay, you should not sign up. It's just that simple. If a roleplay does not interest you a week or two down the road, try to do the best you can in spite. Perhaps it will pick up. If it really starts sucking, or you just cannot keep up with it, sh*t happens, and RPs are not a life or death thing. However, at least have the curteosy to either tell the thread starter, or post a note in the thread declaring your leave. What happens to any charicter's you controlled varies depending on how nice the GM is, and how they are feeling about it.

Also, on this same note, try not to become a spot-light charicter unless you are on often enough to make use of it. If people will be referring to you often, make sure you can get on to post enough. Now, normally, getting online once to twice a day should be well enough suffifient for most RPs. However, that may vary from roleplay to roleplay.

It is generally not wise, not liked when people try to declare their charicter as "Special" to the storyline. All charicters are special and have an equal chance at the spotlight. And to thread starters: Try not to make the RP about a single charicter, and all other people joining in to be side charicters on you're own personal "quest". I've seen this done by a few newbies from time to time, and fortunatly, no one else.

Be polite, and forgiving to other players. It's an undeniable fact of RPing life: you are going to piss someone off eventually, and someone will eventually piss you off. Whether it's an action you feel is a violation over charicter limits, or unlawful interferance with your charicter, or someone who is used to a different set of rules than you, or a common mistake in reading, or because someone is'nt as skilled as you and types some pretty lame posts, etc. The sole reason I'm not still at my first forum I started at is because I was'nt forgiving enough to some other Roleplayers I got into an argument with them. It ended...pretty badly, ending in me getting banned. Be lenient and understanding with your fellow roleplayers. They are only human, they get irratated and commonly cuss, saying things they don't mean or are only joking, etc. Don't alienate your fellow RPers, it will create a bit of harsh and akward times roleplaying with them, and you may have to find another forum because of a simple argument by the time everything is said and done. Good roleplayers are about as endangered as the Right whale.

Be creative, be resourceful! It's pretty cool to go just slashing enemies in half and cutting their heads off with your sword for a first few pages, but it gets dull after awhile. Try to be creative. If theres a nearby tree, swing across a branch and deliver a kick to the enemy's face. Use the surronding terrain to your advantage. Just don't get too carried away. ^^; Instead of just slashing through enemies, try to get creative. Practice and research some sword or weapon techniques and implicate them. Cooler sounding attacks tend to get alot more damage & hit% (snowynote: we don't often do that here) , and "That's totally sweet!" from other players.

Throughout RPs there are several things thead starters and players can throw out at people to pass the time or conflict areas. Battles are only one thing a person can do. Be creative. A natural crisis, such as a fire, a quake, a storm, a collapsing building, all present danger and a chance for players to react in manner. Also don't forget traps. Who could get through a dungeoun or castle without encountering a few deathtraps?

Originally Posted by Ensim

Ensim's Roleplayer Guide: Observations of a Roleplay warrior.
If 8 people join an RP before you, and 6 of them are frail wizards of the dark arts, don't join as another wizard. If you do, then try to change your spell array to compliment the spells other players already have.

I especially liked that... I remember joining an RP a couple of months back and after seeing that everyone was either a swordsman type, theif type or mage type I decided to be a white mage/summoner who was weak but used his summons to his advantage.

1 day later two people came back and edited their posts to include god-like summons...

Although if this was to be used by TFF I think we would need to chuck in a note about the host not advancing the story...