How To Role Play For Beginners

[Ekurian]

How To Role Play For Beginners or How To Role Play For Dummies or How To Role Play For Retards With No Arms.

_{Don't be offended by the last title; it's just an inside joke c:}

Since Nismo asked me so kindly the other day, here is my guide on how to role play.
This guide is by no means the definitive way of role playing, it's just the way I go about it. And I've been in the RP(that's short for role play) business for years.

I'll be going over the basics of character creation and how to participate in an actual RP, using my characters on this site as Guinea Pigs.
The end of the guide will go over the things you absolutely must never do. Ever.

Below is a table of contents of what I will cover in this guide.
Click the titles of each part to skip to them.


Part 1: Characters

Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus
Believability
Playing As Your Character

Part 2: In Action

Hostility and Combat
Romance
Mod Encounters (World of Dust specific)

Part 3: No-Gos

Power Playing/God Moding
Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus (again)
Ch4t 5p34k
Conclusion

Without further ado, let the teaching commence!

[Ekurian]

Part 1: Characters

In this section, I'll be going over the basics of creating a decent character. What I cover here can be applied to all RP, not just this site alone. i'll also briefly go into how to play as your character.

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Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus

First of all- what is a Mary-Sue? (Since Gary-Stus are just male equivalents of Mary-Sues, I'll just use the one word to save typing time.)

A Mary-Sue is, in RP terms, a character that is completely ridiculous, generic, cliched, and generally just laughable.

Mary-Sues are frequently spawned by someone who is completely new to role playing, and usually come with huge helpings of Power Playing and/or God Moding (which we'll cover later) and are generally put together terribly and even played badly.
Things that might seem original or cool usually come in overly copious amounts and are taken to the extreme, thus making the characters boring and/or simply annoying.
Originality does not come in droves of 'uberness' and 'awesomesauce' (no matter how great those words are). It comes from clever execution of the character and in their personality and history. Sure, they might have had something terrible happen to them in the past, like my Saul, but it's how this experience affected them that matters. In Saul's case, it turned him into an insane, evil bastard.
_{(And funnily enough, he's still my favourite character.)}

Mary-Sues often have terrible names that aren't thought out very well at all. The names of celebrities fall into this section. If you can't come up with your own name, you really need to do some serious rethinking about your character.
Another common naming strategy is spelling a name in an odd way, or using something that's completely made up, or even the combination of words that don't even make sense as names.

For example: Kriztal.
You say it as 'crystal' but it's spelled differently. What's the point of that? 'Krystal' or 'Cristal' are totally acceptable alternate spelling of the name, but 'Kriztal'? They sound like they fell out of a really bad Gangsta Movie.
Another example: Jarkoviah Von Shadowdart.
'Jarkoviah'? Well, although it's made up, it's not that terrible. It sounds almost believable, however would a real name substitute be so bad? Like 'Jarkovich'? The 'Von' part is a bit redundant, unless there's actually a reason for this to be there, such as the character is descendant from royalty or something. Now, 'Shadowdart'. What? It doesn't even make sense as a name. A nickname maybe, in which case it would be: Rupert 'Shadowdart' Gardner. But as a last name? No. First name? Hell no.

Another common attribute for a Mary-Sue is having so much good looks they make every supermodel out there look like they fell off the back of a meat truck. Having a good looking character is fine, if it makes sense for them to look good. Everyone knows that looking attractive takes hard work, even for those with natural good looks. you have to work to keep it that way.
You can't just 'be beautiful'. For this defies science.

Ridiculous amounts of ugly can be just as terrible. Having a character that should be sitting on Page 3 is bad; having a character that looks like The Thing From The Black Lagoon or something is almost as. Once again, your character needs a reason to be looking hideous. They were burnt in a fire, they were born with some sort of genetic defect, they fell into an irradiated lake... they rubbed their face all over a pile of barbed wire. Any reason, as long as it's believable.

Now comes the 'being invulnerable to any kind of weakness ever'.
Everyone has a weakness. Even Batman. Batman is a normal human- albeit a rather rich human- but if you stabbed him in the stomach or shot him in the face, he'd die. Or be mortally wounded. He's even afraid of bats.
Your character has special abilities? They're still not invulnerable. Superman is impervious to bullets, can shoot eye laser beams, he can even spin the Earth backwards to turn back time. But just a tiny bit of Kryptonite can suck all of that away and make him mortal.

While we're on the subject of abilities, these are also common in Mary-Sues. Having any at all may be completely against the rules and reality of the RP you're in; having to many is just ridiculous. Sure, Superman had quite a few, but he couldn't move objects with his mind, he wasn't telepathic and he certainly couldn't go invisible. if abilities are allowed, keep them reasonable.
Even if they aren't superhuman abilities, having someone who can run insanely fast and doesn't run out of breath is just daft and completely unrealistic.

To round off, I would like to express my innate displeasure at seeing so many 'bad asses' floating around RP forums. It's okay to be the nice, quiet, helpful person in the corner. In fact, this can sometimes be far more interesting! If you want a mean character, I again stress the 'there must be a reason' phrase I keep on repeating throughout this guide.

~~~

Believability

This is probably one of the most important factors when it comes to creating characters and playing as them. You can't have a well put together character and play them in a way that just makes them seem unrealistic, or just doesn't fit with their character at all. The same goes for the context of the character and where they are being played.

For example: everyone know the ye olde archetype of werewolves vs vampires. However, if a site/thread has specifically stated in the rules or title that in this RP, only werewolves exist, it just wouldn't make sense to introduce a vampire into the fray.

You need your character to feel real, to connect with the other characters and their players in some way, not seem as if they're some sort of other-worldly entity. Unless they actually are an other-worldly entity, which, by all means, be extravagant and mind blowing-ly awesome; just keep to the rules that have been established.

It may be safe to say that making your character believable links in with the Mary-Sue-ing; too much or too little can just be boring, ridiculous and just downright annoying.

A good way to make your character feel real, and make them fit into the world that they are being played in is to not have too much history laid out about them to begin with. Having a back story to explain briefly about why they are the way they are, and how they got to a specific point is an absolute must, but keeping that back story small can help to pave the way for further development.

In my opinion, there is nothing more rewarding in an RP than seeing your character develop in ways you never thought they could, almost as if they actually were real.

~~~

Playing As Your Character

So, you've made a well thought out believable character, and now you want to RP with them?

Oddly enough, it's not that difficult to get the hang of, as long as you have basic story writing skills. And that's what an RP really is- a big story that a few (or a lot!) of people take part in writing.

Think of it like this- in video games, you play the part of another person. It's exactly the same in role play, only you have complete control of the character. In role play, you are playing as another person (or persons!), and have to act and react the way that they would.

For example: hypothetically, I am in a role play and am using Saul.
Knowing his personality and mental state, I have to play him accordingly. Since he is the leader of a rather nasty gang, it's quite clear that he isn't a nice guy and isn't going to react well to threats and/or people trying to say they are above him.

In this hypothetical role play, another person's character has been constantly irritating Saul, and has told him to shut up, threatening to 'poke his eyes out' if he doesn't. Saul being Saul, he would react violently to this kind of threat. If there was a blunt implement on hand, he would try to hit them in the face with it. Failing that, he'd swing a punch, and naturally try to injure them in some way.

What Saul would not do, is say okay, and shut up. Even if the 'shut up' comment was merited, he would still try to hurt the other character because of the added threat. If they had simply told him to shut up, he would simply glare at them, or shoot them a rather foul word in reply.

How you play your character really depends on who they are. A nicer person would have probably shut up, and may have felt hurt by the threat, unless it was said jokingly, or they simply knew the person well enough to not take it seriously.

Another thing to consider is to not over do the reactions. If you person has a short fuse, blowing up at something as little as that makes sense- unless this is the first thing they have said/done. The same goes for being impervious to every little annoyance; I've seen role plays that have gone nowhere because one person was trying to get some sort of conflict going, but all of the other characters seemed to brush everything they did off with a smile.

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Well, that concludes the first part of this guide. The main point you should take away from this section is the 'everything must have a viable and believable reason'. Without a touch of reality, your RPs might as well be bad fan fiction.

[Ekurian]

Part 2: In Action

Following on from the 'action-reaction' theme in the previous section, here I'll go into more complex things- romance and combat, to be more specific. There will also be a World of Dust specific part that covers how to react to Mod NPC Encounters.

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Hostility and Combat

There will always be conflict in role play, it's a natural imperative. However, you can't just attack and be mean to every person you meet. Even bad guys have friends. My Saul, even if he is an asshole, will still have people he trusts to keep his gang in order. There may even be like-minded people who he could call friends.

No matter how 'bad ass' you think fighting everyone is, in reality would you really just run around attacking everyone you saw for no reason? _{(If you just answered 'yes', you have problems.)}

If there is going to be a fight with a properly viable reason, if the other player/s are going with it, you need to do it fairly.
You may want your character to win, but what if that just isn't possible? You can't just suddenly give your character a power/ability that they never had to begin with! And you most definitely can't take control of the other person's character (power playing/god moding, which I'll go over later)- because then what's the point in role playing? You might as well be just writing a story for yourself.

Remember to keep it believable and stick to the way your character is.

For example: Saul, although he is a vicious, nasty and violent guy, couldn't really win a fight against an ex-army guy made of pure muscle. He'd put up a fight, but he would be beaten. Even though he has some muscle, he's also pretty thin, and doesn't think out what he's doing- he just goes for it. This would get him into a lot of trouble with Mr Ex-Army- who's been trained in fighting. I can't just suddenly give Saul the ability to shoot a laser beam out of his mouth or crap out rockets (no matter how freaking awesome that might be).

You should also remember the rules of the role play you're in- you can't have blood and guts flying everywhere if the rules specifically state that there should be no graphic fighting!

A good thing to do if you're planning on starting a fight, or are in the middle of one, is to talk to the other character's player out of character.

Out of character, or OOC, is basically anything that isn't in the actual role play. You can indicate what's OOC by putting 'OOC' before what you want to say then BIC (back in character) for the actual role play, or by putting it in ((double brackets)).

By talking to the other player OOC, you can both agree on the final outcome of the fight. If you both want to win, you could agree on calling it a draw, or even get another player/character to intervene and break up the fight. If you really can't agree on anything, you should message an admin, who will then resolve the matter. Most admin will go over the actual fight scene and decide who would have realistically won, or if that isn't directly obvious, they'll look at the character each player is using and decide who will win. If, in rare cases, there is no obvious winner, the admin will declare it a draw.

But really, it doesn't have to come to involving an admin, does it? We're all civilised people c:

And another thing: what happens in the role play isn't real. If another character insults your character, they're not insulting you. If they say something OOC that you find offensive, don't immediately get upset and take it out on their character. It may very well be a misunderstanding- which, as civilised people, can be resolved.

However, if you do feel that you've been genuinely victimised, in character or out, you should notify an admin rather than getting angry and feeding the fire. It really isn't good to have flame wars.

A word of warning: there are some people who specifically start conflicts in character and out to upset people. They're trolls, pretty much. The best course of action is to report them, and then ignore them.

~~~

Romance

Ah yes, romance. This is yet another inevitable factor in role play.

First things first- does it state in the rules that there is to be no graphic romance? If it does, that means to role play sex, no groping, no nudity ect. If you really must have your character and their friend do the do graphically, take it to somewhere private, like PMs.

Right, now that we've established that, what about actually role playing romance ect.?

If you've decided that your character is attracted to another, or is just a horny bugger, they'll obviously start with the flirting. _{(Unless they're completely and utterly tactless, in which case will get them a smack in the face)}
It's the same in real life, is it not?

The other character may not take much notice of your character's attempts at flirting, or may go along with it. To escalate it to even more, you really should as the other character's player OOC if they're up for it. In fact, it's a good idea to do this before you even attempt flirting, because if they say no, then there's no harm done.

If both parties are good for it, then go ahead and get into that romancin'. Romance and relationships can be a great factor for adding drama to a role play and can even help you to get to know your character more in-depth.

What if the relationship doesn't work out? What if it's completely dysfunctional, but still works? What if they're so madly in love and completely made for each other that it makes some one jealous?

All of these things can be interesting character development and plot points.

~~~

Mod Encounters

Here on World of Dust, we have an interesting feature. Our moderators can conjure up Non Player Characters, or NPCs, and use them in role play. These NPCs aren't characters, they don't have much depth, and are simply there to fill places that are mundane. There really is no point in developing a character to open the Haven gates, now, is there?

NPCs also applies to sudden, random encounters when you're out and playing in the Wasteland. You may decide to have your characters attacked by a drove of undead, but technically they know the attack is coming- because they're controlled by the same person.

Mod NPCs take this factor away- they are a complete surprise. The rules still apply to the NPCs, of course. If you think a mod is abusing their position, you should tell me or one of the other head admin.

In an NPC encounter, you should react the way you would with every other character you meet- only you really shouldn't get attached too them, because most are only temporary.

For example: your character and a group of friends are out scavenging in the Wasteland, when they are attacked by an NPC Outsider gang. You can simply decide to fight them or run away, or to add more fun to it, you could take the opportunity to ask the mod controlling them OOC if you can use this as a plot device. You might want to have your character kidnapped by the NPCs!

If you really want. you could even ask the mod to notify myself, or any other moderator who has an Outsider gang member to bring their character into the fight.

The NPCs are there to add a bit of flavour to the role plays.

As well as bringing in NPCs, mod encounters are also the mods pointing out something that should realistically happen. Perhaps you forgot to have your character to bring water with them into the Wasteland. In which case, the mod would drop a hint, perhaps emphasizing the weather. If you still aren't getting it, they'll tell you outright OOC.

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And that's the end of part two of the guide! A lot of the elements covered here really fit in together and follow the same basic rules. To sum up, just be respectful and fair and everyone will enjoy themselves!

[Ekurian]

Part 3: No-Gos

In the final section of this guide, I'm going to highlight the absolute "you must never do these ever" things in role play. They're really obvious things, to be honest, but some people don't understand what the terms are/why they're so bad, so it really is worth going over.

And ranting about.

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Power Playing/God Moding

Power Playing or God Moding- one of the worst crimes one can possibly commit in a role play.

What is it, exactly?
Directly, it is taking control of another player's character without their explicit permission.

For example: I am in a role play using Saul (I use him a lot, hmm?), and the other player's character is called Boris.
In this role play, Saul and Boris have been at each other's throats, and the situation has finally come to a fight.
Boris' player posts: "Boris swung a punch and it hit Saul right in the face, breaking his nose. Saul screamed 'You broke my nose you asshole!' and tried to stop the bleeding. Boris then grabbed his head and slammed it against the wall, knocking him unconscious."

No no no no no! You must never control another player's character, especially in fights! Fights will always be a dodgy subject, which is why you should always decide the outcome OOC prior to role playing them, but dictating how things will happen on your own is completely against the rules in every role play there is.

What Boris' player should have done, is swung the punch and waited for me to react. To save typing lots of short reaction posts, Boris' player could have even added what they intended to do afterward, if the blow hit- this would give me the chance to decide whether or not Saul should take the hit. I should also consider what Boris is like: is he bigger than Saul? Is he stronger, faster, or both? All of these things would dictate whether or not Saul would get hit.

If it ends up with him getting hit, what Saul would not do, is scream the obvious at Boris and stop right there to stem the bleeding. Breaking his nose would just piss Saul off, resulting in a rather infuriated stream of curses aimed at Boris. He would then fight back in whatever means he could, not really caring that there was blood gushing out of his face. Saul really is completely insane; even if he knows he can't win, he would still fight Boris and probably laugh his ass off as Boris pummeled him to a pulp. Because Boris is a bad ass, and Saul is crazy.

Another, less obvious kind of power playing, is saying that a player's character felt something, or imposing something upon them

For example: "Boris was a towering, muscular man. When the others saw him, they were intimidated by him as he walked by."

This may not seem so bad, however, it is still power playing. Boris may be a terrifying presence, but that should be described rather than imposed. It should go more like this: "Boris was a towering, muscular man. He seemed to have an intimidating aura about him, which was compacted by the constant glare of his eyes."

Not only is this keeping away from power playing, it's also a lot better written and adds a better impression of Boris as a character.

If you catch anyone power playing, you should point it out to them- it may have been a mistake, or they may be new to role playing. Most people will correct the mistake. If they refuse or ignore you, you should contact an admin.

~~~

Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus (again)

Yes, I know I've already gone over these, but because they're just so absolutely terrible and sadly so common, I thought I should reiterate my words.

Everyone hates Mary-Sues. They're boring, annoying, uninteresting, unrealistic, you name it. Never ever make a Mary-Sue character.

One more thing: If you're playing a fan role play- that's a role play based on something that already exists, like Pokemon- your character is not related/connected to a canon character. That is, a character that is established in the universe you're playing in, like Ash Ketchum for example. Your character isn't his sister, aunt, cousin, great granddad. However, if you say your character is the daughter or niece of one of the PokeMart owners, then that's perfectly acceptable.

The same applies to this forum- you do not know Saul, Lesley, or anyone else, unless you have discussed it with their players.

Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus are bad.

Got it?

Good.

~~~

Ch4t 5p34k

Chat Speak, Text Speak, whatever you want to call it, is basically annoying. It makes u seem lk a cmplt ilitrit moron lol.

Using the odd abbreviation, such as lol, brb, gtg/g2g ect. OOC is okay, using them in character is not. In a role play, using 'u' in the place of 'you' and 'r' in the place of 'are' ect. is annoying, and funnily enough, not everyone can actually speak it. Using num3r5 instead of letters can be equally annoying, and can even be difficult to read and decipher into coherent words. You don't say 'hello' as 'h three seven seven zero', do you?

Really, it isn't that difficult to write words the way they're meant to be, is it?

~~~

Conclusion

If you stick to the basic rules of role play, you should be safe no matter where you do it, and you and the other players will have an enjoyable time.

Thanks for reading this guide!

If you have any questions, or if there's anything you think I've missed, send me a PM or make a thread in the Q&A forum!