Post by Brovo on May 1, 2009 17:53:23 GMT -5
This will be updated and edited to better suit this website's specific style and goals. At the moment, I'll go with stock basic lessons that every Roleplayer should be aware of. So lets get to the fun stuff right off the bat huh. Oh yeah and if you have any questions or things you'd like to interject with, please do so. I'd love to answer any questions you have. After all, I am a teacher of Roleplaying!
Lesson one: The bare bone basics.
Firstly, there are some great big "no no" things in Roleplaying. Actually there is a lot of them, and they are different over different communities, but the most common of these is denoted through slang to encompass a wide array of "big no no" things.
1. Godmode, Godmoding, Godmoder. The act of greatly overpowering a character, non-player character (NPC), kingdom, spell, power, ability, or otherwise to make it unable to be dodged, invincible, unstoppable, etc etc. The act of Godmoding is the ultimate signal of the lack of caring, or extreme stupidity/ignorance of a Roleplayer. Now if you do it accidentally, it's okay as long as you fix it. An example of Godmoding is as follows.
Godmoder: Bill attacks Joe and rips off all his arms and legs in less than a second.
Player: Well.. Uhm.. That's kind of unfair.. How can Joe respond at all to that?
Godmoder: 2 bad ur character is lame.
That is all there is to it.
2. Overlording, Overloder. This term is old and generally isn't used anymore, though I might as well introduce you to it. Overlording is basically making a million NPC's appear out of no where, whether in an aggressive state or not is up to the Overlorder. Here is an example of Overlording.
Overloder: Suddenly, 10,000 cougars appear out of no where and attack you!
Person: . . . I don't even know how to respond to that considering we are on a pirate ship..
Overloder: ... Flying cougars.
It doesn't happen in real life, and unlike fantasy or science fiction, it shouldn't happen in a Roleplay either.
3. Metagame, Metagaming, Metagamer. The act of taking out of character (OOC) knowledge, and applying it in character (IC). Some Metagaming is okay under some circumstances, like for instance to get yourself into the Roleplay by "accidentally" encountering the character which your character is looking for. Otherwise Metagaming is almost as bad a taboo as Godmoding is. Example with explanation as follows.
Bill searches for Joe in the crowd, finding him immediately he runs up to Joe to rip off his arms and legs.
Now lets assume that Bill has never seen Joe. How would he find him immediately among a crowd if he didn't have any idea what Joe looked like? Now if he bumped into him in the crowd and the two chatted a bit something might come of it, but finding him immediately and without reasonable explanation is taking OOC knowledge and applying it IC. Thus defeating some of the purpose to TELLING A STORY.
4. Mary Sues. There are a large amount of things that fall under the category of "Mary Sue" so I like to divide it into two things. The literal definition of "Mary Sue" and then another one called "Superman". You'll find out why in a moment.
The literal definition of "Mary Sue" is simply that you make a character that is technically speaking, impossible. Example below.
Mary Sue loved casting fire spells, and will cast them all the time. Her weakness is fire, and if it's anywhere near her she will die.
The above strength and weakness, for example, makes the character completely impossible. Mary Sues are also characterized by having extreme schizophrenia. One moment they could be happy, the next they could be cutting themselves, and the next they could be screaming "DIE DIE DIEEE!!" While running at you with a butcher's knife, Chucky style.
The other definition of Mary Sue that I was talking about earlier, the "Superman" version, is simply giving yourself a lot of strengths while having one or two completely obscure and usually unusable weaknesses. Example as follows.
Superman can fly at the speed of a bullet, punch things hard enough to make craters, and has eyes which can shoot lasers! His weakness is a green crystal from his home planet which slowly kills him!
Not only is it an obscure weakness that makes little to no sense, is unusable unless someone knows about that weakness which is extremely unlikely, it is also a Mary Sue because he comes from a home planet that kills him. If you do not see the irony in that, then you need to get your eyes checked. Followed by a brain transplant.
There is more than these taboos, but these are the basic ones which I can remember from the top of my head. There are more terms, and I'll try to introduce them to you as this is written. (For example, above us was a thing that read as in character (IC). "in character" was the term, "(IC)" was the slang.) The second of two things that should be written into a bare bone basics teaching is how to make a basic character.
Every character sheet should have the following.
Name: (Your character's name.)
Age: (How old your character is.)
Gender: (Male or Female.)
Race: (Human or something else.)
Appearance: (What your character looks like.)
History: (Usually brief.)
Sometimes there is more, but this is likely the most bare bone a character sheet can get. Lets go through the short steps to making a character. Name, Age, and Gender are almost always purely cosmetic. Race sometimes plays an important role, such as the "War of the two Kingdoms" Roleplay denotes magical races such as Elves to be either a slave or in hiding when entering the kingdom of Theramore. (That is also a good example of politics and to some degree, racism.) Appearance is usually where you state everything your character wears, all of his weapons and tools and items, his looks such as hair, height, and eyes, etc etc. Sometimes this is divided into individual categories like Equipment, Height, Weight, etc etc.
Finally History is usually where you write a one to five paragraph statement. Good Histories will usually contain..
-Brief idea of what Childhood was like.
-One or more events that caused the character to choose his lifetime decisions the way he did. (Such as having your entire family slain before your eyes might make your character into some type of avenger, and being a blacksmith might make him an avenger who uses a blade.)
-Where he was when he was growing up, and where he is now.
-Why he chose to travel to the place he is now. (Like for instance in the War of the two Kingdoms Roleplay. The reason why Rayne is heading towards Theramore is because the kingdom to the north of Theramore didn't treat him too fondly, so he basically fled south to avoid dying.)
-Lastly, and most importantly, the above things must link together smoothly. The best way to do this is to go from childhood to adulthood, and listing the most important life events in the order that they occurred. This leaves as little room as possible for mistakes to occur.
Doing the above things will usually give you a good sized history containing important details about his/her personality and about his/her past, which help Administrators decide if the character is worthy of acceptance or if it needs some work before it can be accepted.
Also note that if you want to avoid accidentally making a Mary Sue or Godmode character, all you have to do is ask yourself this. "I have this strength with fire, should I give myself a weakness to water to compensate? Maybe a morbid fear of water?" Etc etc. Visible weaknesses usually attract the attention of good Administrators. Usually with the response "This person knows what they are doing."
Yes there is more to making a character than what I have stated, but as I said these are the bare bone basics. If you want more details on it, ask for help or wait for me to feel like writing about it again. Otherwise, thanks for reading and again if you have any questions just leave a comment with the question and I'll get around to answering it sometime this century.
Until next time this is just another Roleplayer signing off.
Lesson one: The bare bone basics.
Firstly, there are some great big "no no" things in Roleplaying. Actually there is a lot of them, and they are different over different communities, but the most common of these is denoted through slang to encompass a wide array of "big no no" things.
1. Godmode, Godmoding, Godmoder. The act of greatly overpowering a character, non-player character (NPC), kingdom, spell, power, ability, or otherwise to make it unable to be dodged, invincible, unstoppable, etc etc. The act of Godmoding is the ultimate signal of the lack of caring, or extreme stupidity/ignorance of a Roleplayer. Now if you do it accidentally, it's okay as long as you fix it. An example of Godmoding is as follows.
Godmoder: Bill attacks Joe and rips off all his arms and legs in less than a second.
Player: Well.. Uhm.. That's kind of unfair.. How can Joe respond at all to that?
Godmoder: 2 bad ur character is lame.
That is all there is to it.
2. Overlording, Overloder. This term is old and generally isn't used anymore, though I might as well introduce you to it. Overlording is basically making a million NPC's appear out of no where, whether in an aggressive state or not is up to the Overlorder. Here is an example of Overlording.
Overloder: Suddenly, 10,000 cougars appear out of no where and attack you!
Person: . . . I don't even know how to respond to that considering we are on a pirate ship..
Overloder: ... Flying cougars.
It doesn't happen in real life, and unlike fantasy or science fiction, it shouldn't happen in a Roleplay either.
3. Metagame, Metagaming, Metagamer. The act of taking out of character (OOC) knowledge, and applying it in character (IC). Some Metagaming is okay under some circumstances, like for instance to get yourself into the Roleplay by "accidentally" encountering the character which your character is looking for. Otherwise Metagaming is almost as bad a taboo as Godmoding is. Example with explanation as follows.
Bill searches for Joe in the crowd, finding him immediately he runs up to Joe to rip off his arms and legs.
Now lets assume that Bill has never seen Joe. How would he find him immediately among a crowd if he didn't have any idea what Joe looked like? Now if he bumped into him in the crowd and the two chatted a bit something might come of it, but finding him immediately and without reasonable explanation is taking OOC knowledge and applying it IC. Thus defeating some of the purpose to TELLING A STORY.
4. Mary Sues. There are a large amount of things that fall under the category of "Mary Sue" so I like to divide it into two things. The literal definition of "Mary Sue" and then another one called "Superman". You'll find out why in a moment.
The literal definition of "Mary Sue" is simply that you make a character that is technically speaking, impossible. Example below.
Mary Sue loved casting fire spells, and will cast them all the time. Her weakness is fire, and if it's anywhere near her she will die.
The above strength and weakness, for example, makes the character completely impossible. Mary Sues are also characterized by having extreme schizophrenia. One moment they could be happy, the next they could be cutting themselves, and the next they could be screaming "DIE DIE DIEEE!!" While running at you with a butcher's knife, Chucky style.
The other definition of Mary Sue that I was talking about earlier, the "Superman" version, is simply giving yourself a lot of strengths while having one or two completely obscure and usually unusable weaknesses. Example as follows.
Superman can fly at the speed of a bullet, punch things hard enough to make craters, and has eyes which can shoot lasers! His weakness is a green crystal from his home planet which slowly kills him!
Not only is it an obscure weakness that makes little to no sense, is unusable unless someone knows about that weakness which is extremely unlikely, it is also a Mary Sue because he comes from a home planet that kills him. If you do not see the irony in that, then you need to get your eyes checked. Followed by a brain transplant.
There is more than these taboos, but these are the basic ones which I can remember from the top of my head. There are more terms, and I'll try to introduce them to you as this is written. (For example, above us was a thing that read as in character (IC). "in character" was the term, "(IC)" was the slang.) The second of two things that should be written into a bare bone basics teaching is how to make a basic character.
Every character sheet should have the following.
Name: (Your character's name.)
Age: (How old your character is.)
Gender: (Male or Female.)
Race: (Human or something else.)
Appearance: (What your character looks like.)
History: (Usually brief.)
Sometimes there is more, but this is likely the most bare bone a character sheet can get. Lets go through the short steps to making a character. Name, Age, and Gender are almost always purely cosmetic. Race sometimes plays an important role, such as the "War of the two Kingdoms" Roleplay denotes magical races such as Elves to be either a slave or in hiding when entering the kingdom of Theramore. (That is also a good example of politics and to some degree, racism.) Appearance is usually where you state everything your character wears, all of his weapons and tools and items, his looks such as hair, height, and eyes, etc etc. Sometimes this is divided into individual categories like Equipment, Height, Weight, etc etc.
Finally History is usually where you write a one to five paragraph statement. Good Histories will usually contain..
-Brief idea of what Childhood was like.
-One or more events that caused the character to choose his lifetime decisions the way he did. (Such as having your entire family slain before your eyes might make your character into some type of avenger, and being a blacksmith might make him an avenger who uses a blade.)
-Where he was when he was growing up, and where he is now.
-Why he chose to travel to the place he is now. (Like for instance in the War of the two Kingdoms Roleplay. The reason why Rayne is heading towards Theramore is because the kingdom to the north of Theramore didn't treat him too fondly, so he basically fled south to avoid dying.)
-Lastly, and most importantly, the above things must link together smoothly. The best way to do this is to go from childhood to adulthood, and listing the most important life events in the order that they occurred. This leaves as little room as possible for mistakes to occur.
Doing the above things will usually give you a good sized history containing important details about his/her personality and about his/her past, which help Administrators decide if the character is worthy of acceptance or if it needs some work before it can be accepted.
Also note that if you want to avoid accidentally making a Mary Sue or Godmode character, all you have to do is ask yourself this. "I have this strength with fire, should I give myself a weakness to water to compensate? Maybe a morbid fear of water?" Etc etc. Visible weaknesses usually attract the attention of good Administrators. Usually with the response "This person knows what they are doing."
Yes there is more to making a character than what I have stated, but as I said these are the bare bone basics. If you want more details on it, ask for help or wait for me to feel like writing about it again. Otherwise, thanks for reading and again if you have any questions just leave a comment with the question and I'll get around to answering it sometime this century.
Until next time this is just another Roleplayer signing off.