Roleplaying Guide 2: Developing Characters/Plots

[Jeremiah]

(NOTE: I HIGHLY recommend reading Guide 1 before you go on with this guide)
This is a continuation of my last roleplaying guide. Instead of talking about the fundamentals of roleplaying, I will be discussing how to create believable and interesting characters for roleplay, as well as interesting plotlines that your characters can follow to interact with other roleplayers and their characters. The guide will also discuss "God-Moding" and "Meta-Gaming" as concepts, and what you can do to avoid them both completely.

1. The Basics of Character Creation

The key to making a good character lay in one line, "It must be believable but surprising". Characters must adhere and conform to the universe that they are in, but they must be surprising, or interesting. This means, your character can't be an extradimensional demigod or angel, or something along those lines.

Good characters will blend in with the universe, but will shine at moments when their character traits are revealed to others through plot.

Story drives characters just as much in roleplay as in a book. A story in World of Warcraft could be anything from your character taking a leisurely stroll to the Stormwind Park, or going on an epic quest with a roleplaying party to retrieve an herb to cure a rare disease.

Story is driven by interactions with other characters, and it is here that your character traits will come out. This is when your character and their motivations will truly show (or not, in the case of your character -not- wanting to show his or her motivations).

A good example of an interesting yet conforming character would be a Stormwind Guard who is battling alcoholism, or a noble paladin with a genocidal hatred for the Orcish Horde.

2. Strengths and Weaknesses

I may have covered this in the last guide, but I'm going to cover it here since it is very important to the development of characters.

Add one weakness for every strength your character has. This is absolutely ESSENTIAL to making an interesting character. Characters with too many strengths and virtually no weaknesses shall heresoforth be referred to as "Mary Sues" in this guide, and in other literary sources around the internet.

3. Mary Sues

Mary Sues are characters with virtually no weaknesses, who are flawless, have a great number of abilities, or are based on other characters from other universes in a lorebreaking way.

Most experienced roleplayers will avoid your company entirely if they smell Mary Sue on you, and you'll be attracting newbie roleplayers, as well as White Knights and drama hoes, so just don't do it, seriously. No one can relate to or like a character with no flaws.

4. Dialogue

Dialogue is the seasoning of a good roleplay soup. Without dialogue, you can't interact with other character. Despite what your friends tell you, no one on a roleplaying server speaks in Ye Olde English.

Typical character conversations span no more than five minutes. In order to make an interesting conversation, you have to use a mix of /say and /emote, in order to describe your character's gestures.

DO NOT use *emotes* in asterisks in /say. That is what /emote is for.

Why do you need to use /emote, anyway? Well, think of reading a book with all dialogue and no description.

"Hello."
"How are you today?"
"Fine."

Now, try adding in some emotes in between.

Leogard looked over to Belethiel.
"Hello there, Belethiel."
Belethiel nodded his head, looking up from the opened book.
"Good morning. I have a terrible back ache."
Leogard grinned.
"Horde will do that to you."

You're not only adding in emotes, but you're talking about the context of the universe, which connects your character to their situation. Think about how your character feels about the current events in Azeroth. What has your character been doing lately? Who does your character like talking to? Who does your character not like talking to? There are an endless amount of options.

5. Meta-Gaming and God Moding

By popular demand, I've inserted these two concepts into the guide. People in the last guide asked me why I hadn't added the both of these, and so I decided to add them into the second part of the RP guide.

Meta Gaming - Using OOC (out of character) information to the benefit of your character IC. For example, if you were told your character was going to be assassinated OOCly, and used it ICly to make your character suddenly leave town, that would be meta-gaming. You're using information that your character doesn't know to benefit his ends.
God-Moding - Playing 'God'. You decide the fate of other characters, and reflect this in your emote. Typical god-moding emotes are as follows:

Leogard pierces the chrestpiece of (Character), killing them instantly.
Leogard rips off (Character's) head.

You can't decide the fate of other people's characters. It's a good idea to ask them OOC whether or not they consent to what you're about to do, if it will have detrimental effect son their character of their livelihood.

6. Using Context

Context refers to the context of your character's situation, how they feel, and how they interact with the world around them. A character's context is their situation, their surroundings, and their subconscious.

If your character is a tee-totaler, but is in the middle of a crowd of drunken dwarves, he might feel a bit uncomfortable, and thus you should change his attitude with emotes to reflect this.

People will find this intensely interesting, and will seek you out for roleplay if you not only react with characters, but react with your context.

Your character might, for example, hate the other races. As a result, he does protests in Stormwind, asking for non-humans to be removed. As a result, an angry crowd surrounds him!

Tune in for RP guide 3: RP Fighting. We will look at the multiple ways of solving conflicts between characters; many people prefer one method over another.

[TheBluePanda]

You surely did put a lot of work into this =) Great job!

[Jackie Moon]

Great Guide as always! Wall of Text = Worth the Read! I'd Rep you but I need to share the love