Role Playing Training lessons

[The Dude]

This is for new people who may be RPing for the first time or for those who could probably use a refresher. In this I hope other experienced RPers can help out with this aswell in offering their tips and knowledge in order to improve the over all quality of the RP's in the RP section. Here's some of mine.

Step 1. Set the scene. If there was one important author I can think of that fits best with this would be F. Scott Fittzgerald. Those that read his books know one thing, not a whole lot of action was taking place but he did set the scene. This is crucial in that it sets the time and setting for the RP. Use good adjectives but not too many.

Step 2. Space things out. In your post, you may describe several events going on either at once or events may span over the course of hours or days. It's important that you space out these change of times and settings. If something is happening and something else is about to happen, space it out and put it into a seperate paragraph. Don't just mesh these events into one giant cluster**** of a post.

Step 3. Be descriptive. You may imagine some grand event or setting, but people can't read your mind so it's crucial that you be descriptive. Do not attempt to post a short stubble and think that it will carry out the story. Cause chances are, it won't and the other RPers may just leave you behind.

Step 4. DON'T ASSUME. This is crucial. Don't think you know exactly what's going on without going back and reading through the other posts. Also, don't assume the other RPers know exactly what you're doing aswell. The best thing you can do to prevent this would be to get in contact with your fellow RPers so you can talk about what's going on and what can be done.

That's all I really have. Again I encourage other experienced RPers to add in their own tips and help out. Questions from new RPers or anyone are always welcome.

[Akira Avelon]

I have two things to add Rping basic connsepts and a zBio writting example. Both are originally from the last version of FFE and I hope they will help just as they did before.(I'll span them out by doing two posts.Since both are exceptionally long.)


Role Playing: Basic Concepts

A RPB [Role Playing Battle] can feature 2 or more players. For simplicity we'll use 2 in this guide.

For the two players to fight, they must have Character Biographies that are Approved by the RP mods or whoever is in charge of the Role Playing Forum.

Character Bios: You must create a character that to use in battles. Do not use characters that already exist in games, or steal other peoples characters, reasons are because it's lame and lacks any skill.

Give your character the basic traits -

Name
Gender
Age
Origin
Race
Eye Colour
Hair

etc.

Use these features to build up a character. Once you have a general image of your character you can begin to put some life into it.

Weapons
Magic
Armour
In depth description
History

etc.

All of these traits are optional, you don't have to use all of them. ONLY the Fundamental ones.

Once you've constructed a character worthy to play with, it'll most likely have to be approved to make sure you are on the right tracks and have not done something wrong that could mess things up when in a game.


In-Game: When playing in-game the aim is more to have some fun and see what you can do and how good you strategy and thinking is. It's not about winning and losing. When playing you can use a range of features. You could attack with your weapons, you magic, you could use the environment to help you etc.

The main thing you cant do in RP is GodMod: This is when you take control of your opponents character. You can't decide whether you're attack was successful as not, only your opponent can decide that. Providing on the style of the attack and how smart you are, you can corner your opponenet so that the move can only be successful. It takes skill and thought. You can never describe what your opponents character is feeling, thinking, or perform any actions for it. You can describe what your character is seeing from your opponenets character but nothing more than that.

The more and more you RP the more you'll understand the game and how things pan out. Detail is vital in your posts to help your opponent understand what and how your character is acting. Detail can sometimes be pages long. It doesn't need to be, as long as the general message is conveyed. No need for overkill on detail.

Example: A door frame.

right - The door frame, chipped paintwork and scratched all around, looked to have been mauled by an animal.

overkill - The door frame was destroyed all around. The paintwork was chipped and large scratches lay all over the frame. The wood had began to peal off the wall, decaying from dampness. The door looked to have been viscously attacked by some form of animal.

The object is only a door frame and does not need a tonne of information to describe it unless necessary.

Methods: Developing your own methods will help you greatly. For instance you may wish to create a character based solely on a fantasy wing. Something you'd expected from The FF and LOTRs universes. Or you may wish to create a character more realistic, simple in appearance yet more dynamic. Such as a western gun-slinger with a few special traits. You could base your character on scientific points and views. My own character is based on this principle - a cross between realism and the far end of scientific spectrum.

[Akira Avelon]

How to write a role-playing bio tutorial:

This is for all the people out there that want to roleplay and improve the quality of there written bios it supposed to be a short “how to” style guide but that idea will probably go to shoot when the history writing starts.

STEP ONE: The concept

The concept is arguably the most important step in writing a bio, it’s the “blue print” for the character if you will, for this tutorial I have chosen a priest of some alien god of Light and healing. It’s worth spending some time on a cool concept as its lame to make “squall” or “that guy from kingdom hearts” make something original that you have rights to call your own. (BTW if any of you rip one of my characters I’m going to find to and sting you up by your intestines… just so were clear on that) so with the crude concept done its time to add some detail, however it is perfectly legal to draw inspiration from things you see, I inspired my character Hemanius on a picture I saw online and the original form of Nova was a “Terran ghost” from “StarCraft”. As long as you don’t get your ideas from sources that are to obvious and bland its all cool.

Of course this god will need a name and so I’ve scoured the internet (well just googled it really) for a suitable name and then “fantasty-fied it” Greek and/or roman mythology is usually a good place to start when looking for names of gods, they had gods for everything so theres usually a match that’s pretty good. The original name of the greek god of healing was Asclepius, which is pretty fantasy in its own right but I dislike “hard copying” stuff so I named my god Asleption (pronounced AS-lep-ion).

Then ofcourse so does the character, for a decent name for a character there are a few easy ways to make names,
- One is a site called seventh sanctum and then use the name generator to make a dozen or so names and then mix and match until you end up with something you like.
- Another option is to type in some random gibberish and turn that into a cool sounding name (this is the one I use the most) of course its perfectly legal to leave some letters out when your turning it into a real name…

BTW: its very important to make a name that isn’t to hard to remember as you and the people you are roleplaying with will need to remember it and be able to type it when there posting

Gibberish:
Sdhf dajfl
Proper name:
Sudéfil Dahefó

So now we have a character with a name, a thing he does to pass his time and some other bits and pieces. The first step is now complete

STEP TWO: the appearance
After the concept it’s all up to you do decide what order to do the bits in but I prefer doing this first as its easier when writing the history bit,

Again there are 2 reasonably easy options,
- The picture, Google is a good way to do this, this can be tricky as some art is copyrighted, but if you sent an email asking for permission you can usually obtain it (I get mine without to much hassle),
- The description, this is trickier as it requires you to get the idea for your character from your head onto paper which is a lot trickier then it sounds at times.

As I have recently gotten hooked on GuildWars I have chosen to get my picture from there(I’m not really great at writing descriptions the picture my over active imagination produces are usually to detailed to get it down right but you can try),

This image corresponded pretty well to what I wanted:http://manual.guildwars.com/images/j...dered-monk.jpg

So the appearance section is now done… (as this armour doesn’t look tough enough to offer significant protection I have decided its just normal cloth)

STEP THREE: history

History: Okay now every character needs to have a history. What of its childhood? Its training? Its motivation and life. This is a pretty easy section. You can add detail about your characters personality here but I find it better for you to have your own section. Maybe a paragraph on what your character acts like, his attitude, motivation, etc.

This was the blank history section from the Old official FFE blank bio…

Well we’ve already decided that the character is a “Healing monk”, so that probably includes some form of youth at a monastery, and as I am a big fan of kung fu I’m throwing that in too… (always been meaning to write a kungfu character)

There has to be a reason for why my character is in that monastery in the first place and having him orphaned and raised by a travelling monk sounds cool (if some what corney) so I’m going with that angle, so we got the bare bones of the concept done now its time to write the real biography, (when I start I have nothing in my head and I make it up as I go along) So This will need writing… I usually aim for about a page to a page and a half of history and while I understand this might be aiming a bit high for the more n00by amongst you but when I start I usually end up writing more…

So I’ll get to doing that… cya in a bit…

28 minutes later I have the crappiest history ever written for a character of mine but as this one is MAINLY for display who cares?

The history is added to the “charactersheet” which is at the end of this post…

So were almost done writing the character now that we have the most important of things written down, I would like to take this moment to remind you that ANYTHING NOT IN THE BIO IS SOMEHTING YOUR CHARACTER DOESN’T HAVE!!!!!!

STEP FOUR: abilities and other traits
As My character is supposed to be a healing monk with some martial arts aspects I have chosen to give him 2 healing spells, 2 spells to protect him while he is in combat and some martial arts based abilities again these are in the character sheet at the bottom of this post. This is also the step when you detail your weaponry of it is applicable, for example my character Nova has a particularly long section here for here assorted guns and gadgets.

ONE THING: DO NOT make a character that cant be killed and can kill god with his eyes closed and his hands behind his back its just not cool…

We’re pretty much done now…

STEP FIVE: have I forgotten anything?

This is a short step where in you fix the bio run a spellcheck, check the ability section to see if you have described everything clearly, and do other general wrapping up work.
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Seriously though, the only thing I can add is that the spells need limitations. Lets saw you're a rogue who can cast an ice spell. Since you aren't a mage your ice spell shouldn't be powerful, and you shouldn't be able to cast it very often. (like once every 5 minutes) otherwise casting your ice spell, which could cause the target of the spell to stop moving for 5 seconds, could just be cast every 5 seconds and would make your character way to powerfull.

Also if you create a new weapon, place a description of the weapon you have made beside that weapon. If your bio doesn't say it, then you don't have it. And your bio must be cleared by the person who has created the RP, so anything can be nay-said, so don't be overpowered
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Perhaps a description of the character's weapons and armor, if they have any, would be beneficial to battles and the like. Not only would that help people understand who they're up against better, but it can also be a safeguard against people pulling out massively powerful weapons in the midst of battle.
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And that's about it. I hope this helps people with Bio writing. But this isn't a backstab at anyone. I don't even follow this example totally. It is only here for reference.

[Shakan'Dar]

I have something to add in the way of general RP conventions.

Thoughts
People all have a different way of their character thinking, but generally, I find it's easiest to know a character is thinking something if you outright say : he wondered what was going on.
The other way that is also easy to do is italics: what's going on?
Quotation marks are generally only used for speaking and : "what's going on?" he thought, can lead to confusion.

Actions

Generally, when your character does actions in an RP, you are not required to place the action between - -'s or * *'s. Think of it as a novel, and not as the SPAM section's "Actions only thread"

"Hey wait up!" he said, as he ran after her. sounds much better than "Hey wait up!" *he runs after her*


Speech

I know this may sound redundant and silly but put your character's speech in quotation marks. I've seen RPers use all kinds of strange ways of speech, including and not restricted to: placing speech between - - 's, simply not using anything at all and hoping context will do it for you, and other strange and unusual speech patterns.

A simple set of quotation marks around speech ensures that your readers are enjoying your post, not drawing up a legend for how to recognize speech in your posts!

I'll post more helpful hints up later when I can think of some, and be bothered to.

[.e]

I'll add a bit to this I guess.

Bios

As stated before, detail is the most important. No one here is really gonna read and respond to a bios, so the more detailed you want your character to be, the more you can add to it. Essentially, bios are like reference pages where you or your opponents (or anyone that's interested) can go and read about your characters and see who they are, what weapons they have, why they are so pissed off at the world, etc.

An important thing to remember as well is bios can evolve as your character does. Maybe your character starts off with a small sword or something, and as he grows in power gets the Leetness of +10 Cool. Add that in his history, maybe even link to the RP where that happens. Perhaps he has some kind of strange revelation (like his brother is the savior of an alien race, which makes him heir to a throne); that can go in your bios section. Just remember that no one goes from man to god in a day.

Battle

Try to be as descriptive as possible, but not overdrawn. Essentially, if it plays a role in your post, describe it. If it's just something that your character moves by, it doesn't need to be done in detail. Generally, I've always followed these rules:

1. Tidbit / Previous Post
2. Reaction
3. Action

1. In the first parts of my post, I try to reveal something about my character's thoughts or feelings as his opponent is attacking/talking, etc. I usually start my posts slightly before where my opponent ends, and then recount that in my post, making sure I add in my reactions.

2. The reaction to my opponents action, pretty self-explanatory. This can be pretty indepth (and should be).

3. Action. What am I doing now, how does this effect me, my environment, etc.

Misc.

Healing is dicey. I try to avoid it as much as I can, the most I usually have is a weapon that can slowly heal wounds over large amounts of time. Unless I specifically play a character that can heal (in which case there are some obvious drawbacks), healing is generally frowned upon in RP battles.

Summoning is also difficult. Its hard to justify being able to take two "actions" per post, especially if the summon is incredibly strong. In role play games (ORPGs), summoning is ok, since you are generally going after opponents that you might have control over. Usually small summons that only take one action are acceptable.

That's all for now (that I can think of).