Better Roleplaying

[Andreas]

Another personal pet peeve...

Know the difference between peek, peak and pique! I see people misusing peek and peak in place of pique all the time.

[Larethiel]

I find unjustified descriptions and notes difficult to read but will be quiet on the language side of things

[Harroghty]

One thing that's helped me over the years is to visualize what I intend to portray and then describe those things which come to mind. One can only nod, smile, smirk, shrug, etc. so many times during conversation but if you visualize how you yourself might act during a conversation then you can apply those things to your PC.

For example, I tend to adjust the tuck of my shirt or the amount of shirt cuff showing from my jacket sleeve now. Or, thinking back to a previous occupation, I might adjust my holster or gun belt. Harroghty therefore might adjust his jupon beneath his belt or move his sword scabbard slightly. These are not things done in response to the other PC's words, but they help to give others a sense about your PC. Are they concerned about their appearance and therefore try to manage it? Are they weary from wearing armor all day (it gets heavy!)? These little things help, I believe, to breathe some life into your PC and break the tedium.

[Andreas]

Andreas sleeps in his armor. Who are you kidding?!

[Areia]

Know the difference between peek, peak and pique! I see people misusing peek and peak in place of pique all the time.

As an English major, writer, and editor, I'm slightly ashamed to admit I never knew until this that "pique" was a word. Or at least, that it wasn't just French. XD

Another few things I'd add to the topic, though...

1. Use pose! I myself often forget that it exists, but there's really no feeling like walking into a room or scrying on someone and seeing right away how everyone is positioned and what each is doing. Really helps get a good picture of things!

2. This one might be slightly more difficult, but remember that while our characters are super heroes/villans in the extreme, they can still feel pain! When my PC's health shows "dying", for instance, he/she generally isn't going to be terribly talkative or acting like everything's alright. When I get a limb chopped off, my first reaction is generally not to aid self and pick up all the items that were dropped. (As a note, I'm not even certain that using aid to stop that much bleeding would be possible with the usual first aid materials available, which is why I just don't aid people with severed limbs anymore. But someone please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Thoughts on these?

[Yemin]

+1 on the use of pose

As far as aid goes. My wizard corterizes wounds with some fire spell or other. First aid kits are for panzies.

My fighter has clamps from his guild's medic teacher.
If you've ever watched the NIC you'll know what i'm talking about, they go back quite a ways as far as history is concerned.

My cleric uses heal

*shrugs*

[Zorinar]

Enforcing role playing based on ones own particular belief, is the worst thing that can happen to a mud. This is especially true when an enforcer is a staff member that openly punishes people for not acting as they think the other person should. I have seen this time and time again, where people appropriately role play their character but "someone" jumps in and chastises because 'someone' thinks that a different 'word' should be used, a different 'phrase' and etc... I have had characters outright murdered by metagaming means for roleplaying my character because not 'everyone' was having 'fun' with my role playing style, even though it is almost always justified. It has never stopped me from acting as I see my characters behaving and I never really give much of a second thought to such things but it cannot be emphasized enough that enforcing beliefs about what words are correct, what actions are correct, what grammar is correct is in extremely poor taste and borders on running the mud with a control-ist attitude. The IM scene always has juicy copy/paste logs of really bizarre and unwarranted role play policing and it generates a lot of anger. There is no universal dictionary of role playing, there is no phrase book nor rule book or any kind of book. Some are better than others, some use slang, some are smoting masters, some like to use old English words in a Forgotten Realm setting??? Well, whatever floats your boat I guess. No need to conform people to another's style. You can stand in front of the worst role player in the world and still have a great time by doing your thing, and doing it correctly as -you think- it to be. For all you know, -they- might think you are terrible at it. Everyone has their good days and their bad days: I have seen staff utterly horrible at role playing yet try to enforce their standards, and I have seen newbies be utterly amazing, yet think they are terrible at it. At the end of the day, if a person's style is not to your liking then you will not play with them. It's simple and requires no amount of authoritarianism. Also, a great role player will improve those around them just by being a great role player. It wears off, sometimes slowly, but it does 'leak' out, and I think many of us can say we did get inspired by someone at some time or another.

There are really only a few 'policing' situations for a role playing mud, some might include:
1) Overuse of Osay in regular conversation. (Some people do this A LOT and it kind of kills the flow.)
2) Blatantly going against your alignment for the sole purpose of spells or items.
3) Playing a priest that is absolutely against the dogma of one's church. But we have to be careful here because FR allows for a lot of priests to act against their gods' wishes, and there are stories where the god only acts if the church is damaged. Case by Case there.

The above list is not definitive, but I think that any good role playing mud sorts itself out with player to player IC interactions. Role playing muds are not script reading sessions, where players are required to read from the approved script on how they are supposed to role play. That is a Mud killer, right there.

[Beskytter]

I can agree with Zorinar on pretty much all of what he says to a point. I still suggest developing deeper personality to a character because it helps add depth to your role play in general. Not because you have to RP that your character has all this background but because it helps you RP your character. If someone asks you why you say or do something in an IC fashion, you have the depth to back it up. Give your character substance this way and delve beyond the cookie cutter, "I'm going to be the best, most Tempurian fighter ever!" motif so that you can get more out of playing your character.

It's advice though and I think a lot of what we're going for with this thread is advice for others on what they might try in order to glean some extra joy out of playing their characters. If you personally feel you're as in depth as you want to be with that character, then just go for it.

I personally don't disparage when I meet any other players in the game and will RP with any of them. If my character wouldn't be around you for any longer than he has to be, he'll RP through that. It's Role-playing, and just like we say in the catering business, relax and just breathe. You're doing fine however you're going about it, if you think there's a way to improve what you're doing... breathe first, then try it out or ask for help.

[Harroghty]

Enforcing role playing based on ones own particular belief, is the worst thing that can happen to a mud.

Zorinar: I hope that you (or anyone else) do not see this thread as enforcement! The idea is that people can contribute their ideas from which others can pick and choose; the kind of "leaking" of role-playing that you were discussing.

We spend a lot of time talking about rules and mechanics, but I believe role-playing is something we should also discuss. Maybe more than those other things. Good discussion should be like the rising tide which lifts all boats.

Thanks for your contributions to the thread!

[Areia]

Going to try to keep this suggestion short and to-the-point, lest it turn into a small rant.

Please, please try to remember that all of your PCs do not know the same things. Buying things from mobs, and even worse, from mobs who don't even obviously sell them (e.g., mobs who sell through speech and bribe progs instead of list), just to finish a quest that can't possibly even be on your qlog yet is pretty bad roleplay. As is moving in a direction that would, as far as your PC is concerned, run you straight into a solid wall so that everyone else in the room sees the "You slam yourself into a wall" echo to justify your PC's finding hidden passages when it has no way to detect hidden. Etc., etc.

These sorts of things jar roleplayers straight out of character, and it cheapens all the countless hours of hard work those builders put into their areas. And having your character say something to the effect of, "I think I might need this later," or, "I've always checked every inch of every wall in every room I ever enter for hidden doors," just doesn't cut it, in my opinion.

Just toning down on the metagaming and toning up on the RP (even if you OOCly know exactly what's coming in a quest line) will make things a lot more enjoyable for a lot of people. Thanks for reading!

Edited to add: Also, things like running a newbie or a friend's new PC through an area, giving him/her all the answers to keywords/riddles/where to find things/etc., or even just standing there to take all the hits from super high level mobs without RP, while possibly enjoyable for the runnee (Yes, it's a word now!) still very much hurts builders and stops any real RP before it can begin.

[Yemin]

Almost total agreement. I think it goes back to what Beskytter said. If your character is well developed enough. Each one can approach almost every quest you've done before in a new way and perspective that will surprise even you as his or her player. As a player of what I consider a fairly spontaneous character I am continually amazed at the things he does or that come out of his mouth. Its the prime reason Mers is my favorite character in terms of story and genuine character development.

However I will ask. Isn't the slaming into walls a legitimate and intentional measure for people without search to find hidden exits like hollow walls? I've just always assumed it was intentionally added in by the coders of the game I never questioned it. I wouldn't mind if it were removed to give rogues and such more desirability but ya..

[Areia]

However I will ask. Isn't the slaming into walls a legitimate and intentional measure for people without search to find hidden exits like hollow walls?

I expect it was, and I wouldn't at all have a problem with it if I saw people at least from time to time RPing their search of the room if the PC doesn't have search trained.

When it starts to be an issue for me is when the same PC without detect enters three or four different rooms in an area it's ICly never before seen and finds every last hidden passage without the slightest RP'd pause or effort. After so many repetitions, to me, using that super awesome trick that the coders were nice enough to give us turns into laziness and obvious metagaming.

[Yemin]

Ah, fair enough.

[Mattrik]

On grammar, is Common the same as Modern English? I have studied a lot of old texts of stories about Robin Hood, and the language of the 1400's is completely different than what we expect to see English be today. So be careful how you push that. There is no way the world of Forgotten Realms would be completely compatible with the way we use speech in the world we live in over here. It just wouldn't work that way. So, sure, argue your case about using correct word choice or grammar, but to enforce it on a character with 9 Intelligence is just asking for it...

Seriously, if I roleplayed a character with some 20 intelligence, and I knew some 16 different languages or something, it wouldn't be uncommon in such a situation to also get words wrong from time to time... Wouldn't that make sense also? That a character so multilingual would, at the very least, carry accents and speech difficulties due to his home speech, and those of the languages he has learned?

So, I think that enforcing roleplay on language misdefines the character who is speaking. I wouldn't care, to say, if someone said Peeked instead of Piqued in context. If I don't understand him, I can request him to clarify, if not, then the oversight means absolutely nothing anyway...

I think better roleplay should be the context in which the character speaks. How he does what he does and what he is actually attempting to say. Judge someone on that moreso than the actual grammar used.

[Areia]

Agreed, mostly.

The FR/FK language that we call Common is, as far as I know, nothing even close to English in any of its various forms. I've never been able to have a look at pictures in sourcebooks and the like, but I think even written Common is composed of various runes that have no relation to the English alphabet.

So, yes, good English grammar and such might be loosely used, if doing so might add some sort of flavor to a PC's RP like you (and I earlier) mentioned. Plenty of players here do this, and when done well, it can be a big help in getting a more detailed understanding of the PC.

The extent to which I, personally, and probably others who've made mention of this kind of thing are concerned with spelling and grammar is comprehension on the part of one's fellow roleplayers. It is a text-based game, after all, and though Common is not English we do use the latter to represent the former.

I think better roleplay should be the context in which the character speaks. How he does what he does and what he is actually attempting to say. Judge someone on that moreso than the actual grammar used.

Exactly. But if I actually cannot understand what Joe is attempting to convey with his last smote because, for example, he used a bunch of run-on sentences, failed to use commas to separate items in a list, or has misplaced modifiers throughout the post, I might have no way to know how to respond appropriately. Some of these things are small mistakes, and I don't mind those (I make plenty myself). But some things will, in fact, change the intended meaning of a post or fail to convey any real meaning at all. These latter instances are the ones of which I'd like to see fewer.

I have some logs with real examples, but I don't want to post them, lest feelings be hurt. Maybe I'll try to make some up and note them in addition to Harroghty's and others' later.

[Yemin]

What I take away from your post Mat is somewhat important though I think it comes down to my own personal taste which may not be shared by many. When I'm reading a book, I expect the grammar outside the speech quotes to be not below a certain standard. However, Here as in books, inside those quotes is almost free reign as long as its not similar to using modern slang specific to earth 1950s or after.

In Fr Novels they definitely make little enough effort to speak with the times. I usually find a very strange mesh of fairy tale Yee, lad and lass mixed with modern english.

In short, I think good spelling, outside of accents is more important than grammar in the spoken word since we don't speak in the same way we write. But grammar is definitely important in character descs, speechless smotes, etc.

[Mattrik]

I think these two above posts are very important things with which to judge a PC's smotes, descriptions and such. Sometimes, if someone would simply slow and take the time to type it out, it would work wonders.

Sometimes in my speech, I break up large ideas into smaller chunks, allowing some space between :: which is common in regular speech. You would let someone catch up and get the gist before carrying on. In the end, its how well you communicate your ideas that truly matters in RP. If someone isn't understanding you simply because of OOC typing style, then RP'ing it would be something I would do. Just look confused for a bit, and ask the PC some questions about it all.

What I saw in previous posts were people becoming extremely specific with how they would judge a PC's RP with how well they typed. Just ask anyone trying to make a speech in public without a prompter, you would flub words all over the place. Typing is even worse, as we have two lips but ten fingers....

Give your fellows a break when you can, and if someone cannot seem to get passed an acceptable form of English, than what would your character do if he couldn't have any idea what that PC was saying to him? You shouldn't have to break character to handle the situation, but sometimes even that is a challenge.

I understand the concerns, just be careful not to push this too far.

[Yemin]

Just a friendly reminder about OoCs. It's mentioned in the help files not to use this inappropriately. however i wanted to mention it here as I feel it's interesting to point out that about 40% of osays I see can actually be said through IC communication with no hiccups. So if you're considering an osay or an otell, I would like if some would consider, how does this sound IC. is it infact out of genre or not before proceeding.

[Beskytter]

Nearing the end of the second page of replies to this thread, I feel like a general recap is in order. So here I go:

The general theme to the thread has been to be more careful with your spelling and grammar mistakes which plague a lot of RP out there. Oft we see people who're too hasty with replying that must then re-reply in order to correct a simple mitsake (intentional) that could have been avoided easily by rereading one's text before hitting the return key.

The second main point is word choice (which does go hand-in-hand with grammar), surrounding words in English that seem the same but have different meanings. There, Their, and They're seem the same but have very different meanings and uses.
> There -- A location as in "over there."; An abstract as in "There were two.";
> Their -- Possessive as in "It is their gear."; Abstract possession as in "It is theirs." (Note the lack of an ')
> They're -- Often mispronounced by native English speakers, it is a contraction of They and Are. Said: They. Er. It signifies that you're talking about someone being something, as in "They're so amazing for having killed that dragon."

Two confusing words are your and you're. Your is abstract possessive as in "Your clothing is on fire, sir." While you're (you. er. ; or ewer) is a contraction of You and Are similar to They're. It is used much the same way as in the sentence "You're just so amazing for having killed that dragon."

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Further points made have included adding more depth to your character through exploring their personalities, giving them backstories that delve deeper than just being the most like a faithful of whatever god you choose for them to follow. Have them come around to follow a god by leaving it up to just RP with various faith members and not being single minded with it.

Mitigate OOC chatter and attempt to solve problems or get answers to questions in an IC fashion. Ask yourself the question, "How could I ask this ICly?"

Reduce or even completely stop metagaming by remembering that your newest character simply doesn't know all the things. Sure /you've/ run through that dungeon on your main character before (main alt is an oxy moron fyi) but this alt hasn't yet. /They/ don't know anything about the dungeon, so unfortunately they might miss out on some of the hidden things without properly role playing through finding it.

A final and most recent point was made about grammar, again, in that we should remember that Common is not English but we do represent it that way so that we don't all have to learn to speak some unusual language only the select handful of us who play would ever know. To this end those things that are said by your character are quite possibly bad in grammar, but make it part of that character's idiosyncrasies. Don't just have mistakes all over your RP, channel them into your character as flavor to their RP.

Hopefully I didn't miss anyone's suggestions an this also helps bring people current on what's been said so far. Woo! Go community at large! We are awesome! RP on FK really helped me improve my writing and reading comprehension skills, it also improved my WPM from 95 to 188. I see a lot of great RP out there and never shy from RP with anyone regardless of what I personally consider mistakes or shortcomings. Just my last word of advice for enhancing RP on this game is to just go out and RP as much as you can. Get involved with other characters, host events, tell fantastic stories through the lens that is your character, and evolve your abilities as you learn, experience, and grow. Above all, relax, breathe, and have fun!

[Gwain]

I make this mistake a lot but it's getting easier to avoid its follies

http://its-not-its.info/