3DSPlaza forums - General Roleplay Ettiquete and Mistakes to avoid.

Back to forum: Roleplaying Forum

Search forums via Google

11 Users appreciate this thread.

General Roleplay Ettiquete and Mistakes to avoid.

Started by HanShotFirst
(2014-04-14 09:25:03)

HanShotFirst (2014-04-14 09:25:03)

In the "Decent Character Sheets and Why they matter" thread, I brought up that oftentimes, newer roleplayers fall into traps because of common mistakes that should be avoided.

I'll be discussing some of these, as well as general roleplay etiquette you should always follow when roleplaying anywhere.

Let's look at some general mistakes.

1) Separation of Player and Character knowledge.

This is one I see all the time. Whenever an RPer learns something, their characters tend to gain the same knowledge without reason, or gain it through convoluted methods to smooth it over. This is highly disrespectful to the integrity of the Roleplay, because it either breaks the suspension of disbelief, or disallows roleplayers in-character privacy.

No, there is no way in the nine circles of hell your character could know that one of the others may secretly be working with the bad guy and start suspecting them when they haven't done anything suspicious, reveal the secret even though there is no logical way they could've come to that conclusion, or their convoluted method or cop-out method (Psychics) is unjustified or even plain unreasonable in the setting.

There are some things your character will not know, even though you do. This is part of roleplaying. If the hero of the movie or the book knew that their friend was the bad-guy right from the get-go, it would be less interesting. If the audience knows, then it adds to the drama because you're constantly thinking "DON'T TRUST HIM/HER/IT" even though the hero does so anyway.

2) In-Character arguments taken as personal Attacks.

This one doesn't even extend to just arguments. Any hatred of one character by another is sometimes seen as personal attacks, even though, from the setting perspective, it's completely justified. After all, A vampire hunter kills vampires. Don't expect them to, by any means, act anything but biased against vampires.

Roleplayer A does not hate you, but Character A hates your character. There's a difference. This one is not only for the roleplayers, but for any mods. Fights will break between characters of differing opinions, just like they do in real life. Let it happen, because that's pure gold right there, and the last thing we need is a good roleplay be cut short in a great scene like that because a mod was a bit too sensitive about arguments.

Granted, this only works when there's a reasonable justification for that hatred, rather than just a simple "My character hates that guy" (I swear, if I hear that sentence one more time.....)

3) Godmodding

Basically, having your character break the setting, or warp it so badly in order to conform it around their actions, for example: Never missing. Always dodging everything. Capable of beating everything. Not getting hurt/immune to something that should've hurt them. ect. I'm sorry, but the rules of the universe don't conform to you. You conform to the rules of the universe, and as such, your character will get hurt. They will miss, they will get beaten, and they can and in many cases will, die from that fatal injury they took, rather than walk it off like it was nothing. Nobody lives forever, and for the most part, neither do your characters.

4) One word/one line posts

This is personally, my own pet peeve. One word/one line posts are so devoid of content it's difficult to respond to properly, especially when everyone else is pulling their weight and using at least 3 or 4 lines of text.

The only time a single line of text is ever justified is when posting a single line Dialogue, but even then, those cases are few and between, but this is still incredibly common.

"[Character A] sits down on the object"

Doesn't help anyone else actually respond to your action.

"[Character A] sat down on the object carefully, so as to make sure he didn't fall over like he usually did and spare himself the embarrassment. Once he had settled in he [does X action]. "

See that? Now there's a few ways someone can respond. They could notice how sat down extra carefully and point it out, they could jokingly make a reference to him not falling over this time, or they could respond to what he did when he finishes sitting down.

One word posts are even worse.

"Yes"
"No"

"Yes" what? "No" what? The air? Who's talking? Where are they? What are they doing right now? Do they not have anything else to say at all? No additional thoughts or feelings going on their head at the moment?

5) Illegible posting.

Not much to say on this one, other than make sure other people can fully understand the message you're trying to get across. Read your posts, Use punctuation, use proper spacing, for god's sake do something, Anything at all to make it understandable.

6) Yes No responses.

Basically this is one response sets a point, but another directly contradicts it in an irreconcilable manner. For this case, I'll use a basic example.

Character A is moping about how it's a blizzard outside and they can't leave. All of a sudden, character B shows up, and they directly contradict it by entering character A's house soon after, but on a bright and sunny day. A blizzard and sunny day cannot be happening simultaneously. Thus, either one post is rendered null, the other is. Since a post is rendered null, then it fails as a way to roleplay anything because the entire post is irrelevant until someone edits.

The better method is "Yes, But." responses, for when you want a contradiction, but you use in-character means to show it in a way where the post isn't rendered null.

In the same example, character A is moping about how terrible the weather is. Character B shows up to character A's house on a bright sunny day. This one is a funny example this time around, because while it seems to have a contradiction like the first (Sunny day vs "Terrible weather" ), it can actually work, because to Character A a sunny day is terrible weather..

^ See that, it helped develop character A just a bit, while allowing person B to do as they originally intended, which is enter character A's house on a bright and sunny day.

General Roleplay etiquette is avoiding as many of these mistakes as you possibly can, as well as avoiding Mary sues (See my character sheet thread) and completely derailing a roleplay on purpose (See my Managing RP thread).

The point is to have fun, but it also means not ruining the fun for anyone else.

This post has been edited one or more times, the last time was:
2014-04-14 16:25:51

Taka! Kujata! Condor! Tajadol~!

AntiChrist (2014-04-15 03:07:26)

These threads are great. I don't know how to comment on this other than saying that but I'd feel bad if I didn't comment at all since you typed this much.

so uh... yep. Good thread.

Once-ler (2014-04-16 19:51:29)

Finally, someone who knows how to RolePlay.

I'm full of myself but still hungry.

PM me..

TREEhugger101 (2014-04-19 07:44:28)

Example of a good starting prompt:

Victoria's stillettos clacked against dark mahogany floorboards slowly, almost broodingly, as she examined the dusty room. The floor creaked against her weight, prompting her to fall still for a moment as her stormy grey eyes shifted calmly over the unperturbed room.
In the middle of it sat a sagging cardboard box, tattered playing cards scattered across the damp top. Dirty off-white pillows surrounded the box- a group of squatters finding time to play cards in a dusty mansion?
Unfortunately not, Victoria thought. Amidst the calm scene stood an ugly splatter of crimson. Signs of malicious intent, struggle, death.
It was up to her to find out what happened in this place.

Written by me.