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 Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2009 1:37 am
Yea... I was glancing at the Class on Villians bit, and though i'm pretty sure it hasn't been touched in some time, have a question...
In one of my RPs i've got running... I have a minuplator type villian, but he isn't hidden behind the scenes... The RP world knows who he is, and where he is, but they knew very little beyond that, except for one, maybe 2 of my characters. What could some tips be that would help me play him better? One of the other RPers in it is already in the Black Knight role, but I haven't found anyone I really trust enough to hand hte reins of my main villian to...
Also, on hte guide for races... HEAR HEAR! I'm normally the guy who plays the ho-hum human, but when in a group with dozens of super-powers exotic races, I do adjust what my ho-hum human can do... But often times, though I play with a select group rather then anyone and everyone anymore, I don't have to adjust my character too much...
But a section I think could use some work with... How to properly manage mass NPCs, like a country or army... and I'm willing to help there... but not tonight... or rather, this morning...
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Posted: Fri Mar 20, 2009 11:46 pm
I thought I'd contribute to the names section. It usually cool to give your character an exotic name that has a hidden meaning, possibly an allusion, or maybe a characteristic of thiers. Behind The Name
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Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2009 3:52 am
thaskarin Think about how your name is pronounced before you write it down. Trust me it will save you a lot of embaressment. I usually think of how the name sounds before I write it down which can help make a flow in how the name is pronounced. names I used for example valeon (pronounced like vay-lee-own) of course thaskarin (pronounced tha-scar-een) and agothar (pronounced A-go-thar. That's a good idea that I'll use in the future! Thanks! Also, here's a suggestion if your character has a strange name and you're in an online RPG: you might want to add an OOC comment telling how your chara pronounces his/her name if it's not fairly obvious from the way it's spelled. For example, ((It's pronounced "kitty-reena" or "kit-ah-reena".)) for my chara name, Kitirena. Sure, it's an easy name to guess the pronunciation of, but how about one like Llylgamin (roughly, "Lell-gah-men") or Goibhniu ("Gov-neh-ew")? Welsh, Irish and Scottish, and Japanese names can be real tongue-twisters if you're not familiar with the rules of pronunciation of those languages, and those are real-world languages! Don't get me started on Quenya (from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings) or Klingon! >^_^< By having that pronunciation guide, other players can "hear" your character's name in their heads as an actual name rather than sitting down and trying to figure out how it would be pronounced using the rules of their native languages--which can be very different from what you'd think your character name would sound like as a native English speaker like me, nyao! Case in point: the Japanese name Ami is spelled in Romanji (Roman letters) the same as the English Ami, but they are definitely not pronounced the same--Japanese Ami is "ah-mee", while English Ami is "AIM-mee" (note the different stresses; English puts more stress on the first syllable, while Japanese stresses both syllables equally).
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Posted: Sun Aug 23, 2009 10:49 pm
Roleplaying Methuselah
This is an adjunct to Fenrir's "Playing Immortal Characters", above, in that if a character is immortal or close enough for jazz, then there's a good chance that he/she/it/whatever has also lived a long time already... and if that's the case, then they* have got quite a bit of history behind them already, right?
(*I'm going to use "they" and "them" from here on out simply because I don't feel like typing "he/she" all the time...)
Well, if the character has a long history, then they've obviously learned a few things from seeing ordinary mortals make the same mistakes over and over, not to mention the fact that all those years have changed them somehow. In games like Vampire: The Masquerade, where you (obviously) play a vampire, the older your character, the more likely it is that they have decided to pull back from the ever more confusing mortals' world and begun to deal with their own kind exclusively, while the immortals from Highlander: The Series have taken the opposite route--they live normal lives (well, as normal as one can when one lives forever and can only die by being beheaded by another immortal, anyway...) and pass themselves off as normal humans, even going so far as to develop a series of false identities to hide the fact that they don't age like the rest of us do.
Also, an ancient character has seen quite a bit of history go by... and would probably have an opinion about things they've lived through, too. Case in point: it's a given that each and every person here on Gaia saw the World Trade Center bombing on 11 September 2001. Do you remember how you reacted that morning? You were going about your normal morning routine when all of a sudden, a plane crashes into the tallest building in New York City--unless you're Nostradamus, you had absolutely zero clue that that day wasn't going to be the same as every other day in your life, right? That's how history is, basically. Now, let's assume that your character has lived through the French Revolution--first, how did they survive the Terror and the mass guillotinings going on? How did they feel about the fact that almost every noble in France was executed as a tyrant or the crony of a tyrant? How do they feel about it today, now that the revolution is nothing more than a chapter in a history book to the rest of us? This is only one example--history is littered with hundreds, if not thousands, of interesting events, and unless your character lived in a cave all of their life until now, they've experienced some of these things firsthand.
By incorporating some actual history into your character's backstory, it gives them depth and character. Even if your character isn't living on Earth, there's still a depth of history to the world/galaxy/solar system that your character lives on, right? Surely events in the past have shaped the person that your character is today, regardless of what world they dwell on. Elrond Half-Elven, from Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, for example, lived through the Great War against Sauron, and remembers it clearly, which is when Frodo Baggins shows up in Rivendell with Sauron's Ring, he's worried about how to deal with it, because he knows firsthand what the ring is actually capable of. Your character should be like that--what have they lived through? How did they survive it? How did it change them?
The other thing you need to figure out when playing an extremely old character is how do they survive throughout the years, and what keeps them going year after year, century after century? Is it an ancient curse that prevents them from dying, except in one very specific fashion, like the cursed Lords of the different domains in TSR's Ravenloft setting? Is it vampirism--and if so, does killing to survive still bother you? (Before you say "yes", keep one thing in mind: do you eat meat? If so, does it bother you to know that you're eating the muscles of a creature that was once alive? Or do you try hard not to think about how your next meal got on the table? A vampire who's lived more than a couple of decades has probably either gotten used to the idea of killing humans for food the same way we kill cattle, chicken, fish, etc., or else they simply don't think about the fact that the blood keeping them alive was once flowing through someone's veins. It's hard to keep moral qualms when faced with matters of survival.) Is it some strange magical effect, like the immortals in Highlander? If so, how do you keep people from coming after you in search of the secret of your perpetual youth and health? Is it a powerful spell that you must cast every so often, or a magical ritual you need to undergo periodically, like Ras al-Ghul and his Lazarus Pit from Batman? If so, when do you decide to undergo it once again, and how would you feel if something were preventing you from cheating death once again?
And why did you become immortal in the first place? Was it fear of death? Then you're not very likely to take risks the same way that someone who was cursed and wants to die but can't would. Is it curiosity? Wanting to see the latest new clever invention that humans have created? Or is it sheer bloody-mindedness? Are you the "just too stubborn to die quite yet" type? Or is it that you enjoy living so much that you can't stand the thought of dying, because death would bring an end to the endless delight of existence, or the endless party that you've got the golden ticket to? The answer to this question is obviously going to determine how your character approaches life--whether trying to maintain control of things as they are, or accepting changes bravely; whether hanging back cautiously and approaching new situations with guarded apprehension or throwing yourself headlong into one grand adventure after another; whether worrying about finishing the preparations in time for your next life-renewing ritual or enjoying each day to the fullest.
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Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 9:11 am
A tip for character creation:
I've seen tons of guides and tons of character profiles before on other sites. I've more rejections than I'd want to and I've noticed the number one mistake characters make when they make a profile; they assume the plot is going to revolve around them.
Before you even START making a character ask yourself a very important question...what is my character going to do to HELP the plot or a group? Don't think about what makes you the star of the show...think more about how your character is going to fit in with others. The more plot and attention you try to hog, the less you're likely to get and the more teed off other characters are going to get when you start doing outlandish things to get that attention.
Instead of busting in and saying "Behold! I am here! Pay attention to me and my woes!" come in and say "Behold! I noticed that you don't have any healers or medical professionals so I the doctor shall aid you!"
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Posted: Sat Sep 26, 2009 5:05 pm
Oh nice, this looks like it'll prove very helpful! Thanks biggrin
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Posted: Sun Sep 27, 2009 4:07 pm
Alright, when making a character try to be as detailed as possible unless told outherwise by the roleplay owner. It helps if you add some peace of yourself to your characters. It makes it much easyer to play them and relate to them. Try to put yourself in your characters possittion when making their bigraphy.(This is all unless you enjoy making characters unlike yourself) It is easyer to make them like you when you do so.
When posting in a roleplay. Picture it like a book and how a book is written,. Again picture yourself in your characthers possition and how you would feel,hear,sound things of that nature. And then as if it was a poem try to put it on paper.(or the post) Do not type quikly because as you may have noticed withen this post it adds to spelling mistakes helping it to look very amitureish. But just be yourself and try to do as well as you can and you will do wonderfly.
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Posted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 10:06 am
Just gotta say these guides and add-on are really interesting and extremly helpful. They made me think about a lot of aspects. I'm glad I joined this guild.
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Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 3:06 am
Saya on...
Description
Description is roleplaying, plain and simple. It is the key. I couldn’t say enough about it.
The line is drawn between good roleplayers and great roleplayers by whether they are telling or whether they are doing. Here’s an example. Your character is walking down the street. That’s all.
Doing:
Susie walked down the street.
Susie’s feet smacked the pavement as she walked down the street on that hot summer day.
Telling:
Susie walked down the street. She was headed to the grocer to pick up some much needed groceries, as she was currently out. It wasn’t a trip she really wanted to make. She would much rather be inside, doing something more interesting. Of course, duty called, and it would be horribly irresponsible of her to neglect it.
Susie’s feet smacked the pavement as she walked down the street that hot summer day. As sweat ran down her back, she couldn’t help but imagine her apartment and how cool it would be with the AC blasting. It made her dislike her current situation even more. She had to do it; there was no getting around it. Still, she wished for some cool air.
When doing, your post centers around the action. Whatever your character is doing is what you tell us. In varying degrees of "literacy" (the most common term, I've found), there may be more tacked onto that, but the majority and focus of the post is on the actions of the character. When telling, the center is on the character and the situation. It’s the idea that if your character is doing something, we don’t only need to know how, we need to know why; we need to know the feelings, thoughts, and catalysts behind it. Show precursors to events.
Posts that tell are inherently longer than posts that do, because there is more to say. There is more meat, so to speak, instead of having only bones. That’s where most roleplayers go wrong. When they hear “description” they automatically think that they are supposed to describe the actions with more detail. Their posts don't end up any better though, because their post is still centered around the action. The only way to gain more skill, interest, and general awesomness in your posts is to change your focus.
How do you do that? The best way to easily change the focus of your post is to know your character (which has already been extensively covered). Know everything about your character, bio’s aren’t useless and neither are personalities. Beyond knowing the kind of things your character would do, you need to know why your character would do it and how your character feels about. You also need to know the actions leading up to it, and why your character did/how your character feels about it. It’ll help you shape your post to include all the elements of telling. There are endless spins you can put on one simple action based on your character. After all, that’s what RPing is about.
In order to write well, your vocabulary has to be impressive. Why? Because an impressive vocabulary is more expressive. Your verbiage can make your post much more enjoyable and better, if not easier, to read.
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