Posted by Søren(VIP) on July 3, 2000 at 05:07:39:
In Reply to: How can I become a better roleplayer? posted by Bearclaw on July 2, 2000 at 18:37:14:
The review for Carronfields on the Mud-connector illustrates another point about roleplaying. ---TMC-quote -- Unfortunately, the roleplaying atmosphere did seem rather non-existent for many players. They seem quite content to simply "hack 'n' slash", without any roleplaying. Upon a few adventures, my fellow companions were discussing sound cards and game controllers, until I began to exaggerate my roleplaying - I guess I made them feel guilty ;) Being a strong advocate of rp'ing, I feel that players should do it on their own, not just follow along with somebody who decides to roleplay. ---Quote end --- If you have spend along time making your character and you feel 'in-character' it is very discouraging not getting any response from the players around you. Even worse, getting completely bizarre interactions that your can't really react to in any way without breaking character. Examples can be this, your hero-paladin-arbiter stands watch in Galadon and a level 8 drow-warrior comes up to you, spits and you and starts to flame. In the real world he would *Never* du such a thing. What I do with these case is spending one say/emote on the character and then ignores him. You can't get any good roleplay out of such a case. Also, take a look at this link for more help : I hope some of this can be of help and inspiration, Søren gethe@diku.dk
Getting to know your character is the single most important thing. Role up a couple of character of deferent classes/alignments/races, make short roles/descriptions (descriptions are mandatory I know, but they can be altered when you get the feel for the character) and add a list of emotes/socials for them in WORD, and then start playing one at the time. Play them to level 20 or so and then try to look at which one you feel have the most potential as a roleplay character e.g. who have most friends, who have most fun. Delete all the rest.
Spend 30 min. fitting your draft to the character that you now have played for 20-25 hours and want to keep playing the next 300 hours, it is a good investment. Then spend another 20 min. figuring out what will be some typical traits of this character. This traits should be small things, things that are not included in your role. It could be that she doesn't like resting in the woods. Not because of a big trauma, but just because she doesn't like it. Will he never carry more then one extra weapon. Not because of some omen from God, but just because he is lazy. This small things makes the character more alive and will help you roleplay better.
As with most of these bad interactions I tend just to ignore the character involved since I don't feel like wasting my time and energy on people that are just not worth it. This can not be stressed enough. If you keep trying to roleplay with people that refuses to do so you will drain yourself of the creative flow. If in a group and people starts to ' discussing sound cards and game controllers' either ignore them or leave the group with some in-game excuse.
Last but not least is the time issue of proper roleplay. If you want to be a good roleplayer it will often mean you will have to sacrifice some of the easy ways of playing. No newbie-boots for your fire-giant. No, if you have a bias towards killing clouds, you will not group with that god-sendt tank that just asked you and so on. This will often means you advance slower than you are use to, most annoying. But in the end it will give you hours of play where you have a chance to roleplay with those around you, not just those in your pk-range but all those you see often in the game. Another take on time issue is that the homemade emotes tend to take more time to write than the socials on the list. Make aliases for some, but try to be creative. If you really want to *nod* at someone, write the emote yourself, even if there is a standard social for it. This will often lead to a small change in the emote and will make you more confident in yourself as a roleplayer. At times I realise I am actually writing the same words as those in the standard *nod* teen times in a emote, but then the eleventh time I might without thinking change it to 'Søren nods at you with a small smile on his lips' and this one time is what help transform your character from a flat character to a three-dimensional character.
http://cf.qhcf.net/roleplay/religionrp.html