General Role-Playing Tips

December 3, 2007, 11:53 AM

Role Playing Tips

Here are some general role-playing tips. I've seen some rather insubstantial posts, lately, and I thought I should post up some tips.

I'll probably place some tips specific for RPBing, ORPGing, and URPGing in their sections, the Coliseum, World's Gate, and Alexandria respectively, but come here for some extra tips. Also, if you have any other tips, place them here; it really isn't my opinion that matters, it's yours.

1. Interact with the Environment.

Environmental interaction not only adds a great deal of substance to your post, but provides endless combinations to use, with or without your character.

Firstly, interacting the environment with your character. Let's use an example, shall we? Say we're fighting in a forest. Well, use the trees! If your opponent relies heavily upon visual stimuli, you can use the trees to your advantage and hide, provide sneak attacks, etc. If you're on a plain with long grass, use your weapon to provide a distraction! How? If you are using a sword, slice the grass. This will, logically, create long blades of grass and, if you time your next slice right, you can launch the grass upwards, creating a screen of grass, if only for like, two seconds. This can give you a slight advantage, and a better one if you are closer to your opponent. There are endless combinations you can make with your character and the environment, and are limited only by your imagination.

Secondly, interacting the environment with your post. Blaitantly stating the weather or the conditions you are fighting in can have a greater effect than you realize. You can't, according to God-modding/power-modding rules, make the weather directly affect your opponent, but you don't have to. A wise player will be able to use the weather to predict his opponent's actions. Even if you can't predict their actions, weather and conditioning can affect how your opponent fights. i.e. If it's windy, they might be more cautious about how much they jump or leap away, etc.

2. Descriptions

Well, for starters, descriptions and clothing can have a drastic effect on how a player fights. If a player is wearing really baggy clothes, they won't be as agile as a person wearing tights

Instead, logically, the wind will slow them down. Recognizing this and stating it can not only give you a good idea of how your opponent may fight, but also give the opposing poster an idea of his limits, limits that they set by giving them certain clothing to make them look a certain way (why do you think my Allsies don't wear clothes, and Jake's clothing is only slightly baggy?).

Also, descriptions of your weapon will give you and your opponent an idea of what to expect. Now, it may sound like a double-edged sword, but it's more like a triple-edged mace, with two of the sides pointing at your opponent. As a disadvantage to you, the opponent now knows what style to expect. However, as an advantage to you, they will have to alter their style of fighting to suit an opponent that carries, for example, a supremely heavy Zweihander sword or a Flamberge, and that style might not feel too comfortable to them.

Another advantage is that they might just have a little trepidation, and I'm not even referring to the designs of the swords. The fact that a sword is small doesn't mean that it's harmless, especially if you're up against an opponent who wields a weapon that slows them down. Rapier vs. Zweihander = Rapier wins. Why? Because a Rapier is very light and very fast. A person wielding a zweihander is usually very slow, and will generally be very open to quick attacks. A good player will be able to recognize these weaknesses and take advantage of them.

3. Grammar

I don't know why everyone underestimates this, but seriously, grammar and spelling can play a HUGE role in how someone reacts to your character and how the player acts in reality.

"Brome whisked away to heal felldoh but got caught in the crossfire and fell unable to get to felldoh right way but he healed felldoh anyways."

Now, can anyone tell me what's wrong with that? Well, for starters, its a run-on sentence. As a result of its run-onness (yes, a made-up word), it brings the impression that Brome healed Felldoh even though he got shot and fell. How is this possible? To illustrate what it really means, here's how the statement should look.

"Brome shot after Felldoh, who had just been hit with an arrow. Though Brome ducked and weaved through the arrows, he eventually got caught in the crossfire, and found an arrow protruding out of his shoulder. He fell from the pain, crying out. I've got a job to do, Brome thought, grunting. He pushed the pain aside and crawled over to Felldoh, quickly stripping a bit of cloth off of his own clothing and bandaging Felldoh's arm, blood trickling down his own."

Now, you notice how much I got out of that? Wow, much bigger once you put it in proper grammar, isn't it? DON'T BE LAZY, USE PROPER GRAMMAR!

You'll also notice that I neglected to capitalize Felldoh in my first statement, and I used his name repetitively three times. If you understand even the basics of the English language, you know that doing that 'just ain't right,' and neither is my slang there

Continuously restating something like that is just dumb, especially when you can use other nouns. The fact that I did not capitalize Felldoh in the first statement may bring the idea that Felldoh is a thing, not a person, that needs healing. Admittedly, the rest of the sentence says something different, but if I were to say "Brome ran at to the fallen felldoh," you'd probably get the idea that he ws running to some kind of downed tree.

Another thing you'll notice is that I put a thought from Brome in there. Placing even the slightest thought or speech into something can make a huge difference. It can lead to new ideas and bring in other stuff, so don't hesitate to do that.

The occasional typo is acceptable, but if you were to write "their" in reference to a place instead of "there," you can really screw someone up. Admittedly, the rest of your sentence makes a difference too, but if that isn't structured properly either, then you'll throw everyone off whack.

4. Vocabulary

Once again underestimated, vocabulary can play a huge part in the quality and understanding of your post. There is a reason that the English language is so hard to learn, and that's because a lot of words in, for example, Japanese or Spanish, will have about 5 different counterparts in English, with suttle but important differences.

Well, let's deal with lack of a wide vocabulary first, specifically adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives, for those here who do not speak English as a First Language or those who just didn't really give a damn, are words that describe a noun, which is a person, place, or thing. Adjectives play a HUGE role in good RPing. The difference between, "The black rain came sheeting down" and "The rain fell" is very obvious, and I mean VERY obvious. The adjective 'black' describes how the rain actually looked, and the adverb (a word that describes an action) 'sheeting' describes the actual appearance of the rain while it was falling. Please, please, do not underestimate the power of a good adjective or adverb, they can add amazing quality to your post for only an extra word or two per noun/verb.

Another thing to address is using a differing word to represent the same thing as a word before it, called a synonym. A synonym is, quite literally, a word that means relatively the same thing as another word, but with a different spelling, such as "same" and "mirror image." There can be slight differences, such as "same" and "similar" mean, quite literally, alike. However, 'same' is a much stronger degree of 'similar,' and shows that there are few, if any, differences; whereas 'similar' shows that there are noticeable differences. Adding a word to emphasize the adjective, such as 'exact' for 'same,' can place more quality to the post.

Using differing nouns, for example, can also have a drastic effect. It is unbearably repetitive to say "seat" five times in a single sentence, so mix it up a bit and use synonyms, such as "chair." Using the same word continuously is extremely boring and can get old very fast, especially for the RPer, who is probably feeling like he/she's moving in circles when they keep saying 'water' every single sentence for a whole paragraph.

In all honesty, I could write an entire legion of essays on how to properly format and use grammar, but I'll save your eyes the trouble

That's all for now folks, but stay tuned, and please, submit tips of your own.