Role playing is a great creative outlet and has been referred to as the ultimate gaming experience by some of the more seasoned and hard core gamers. It gives you the most control over your character and the ability to “live” the game since you are not interacting with a pre-scripted computer generated code. Instead, you interact with living, breathing, human beings that offer realistic interactions and will react with all of the knowledge, emotion, and imagination of a creative individual. However, because of this great amount of freedom and the fact that you are dealing with a variety of personality types, it is important to have an established set of guidelines for role playing in an RPG (Role Playing Game). To help you understand the ins and outs of role playing, and to keep you from ending up in a virtual graveyard somewhere, familiarize yourself with these basic do's and don'ts of role playing in an RPG.
With Bright Hub tends to focus on graphical MMOs, we also write reviews and guides for text based RPGs, MUDs, and MMOs as well. Threshold RPG, a role playing required MMO, was one of the first. It is a top notch RP along with the usual MMO/MUD fare (combat, quests, etc.). The things you will learn in this article would definitely help you adjust to a game like Threshold, Bloodletting, or other text RPGs.
DO: Always obey the directions of the GM (Game Master)
While there are general role playing rules that are typically universal, keep in mind when you enter a game realm that you are in the Game Master's territory. Whatever rules, limitations, or directives the GM chooses to put in place should be followed - regardless of traditional RP formats or guidelines.
DO: Play to Rank
Regardless of how powerful you intend on making your character, if you are playing in a world that has a ranking system you must keep your current rank in mind during game play. In other words, trying to kill someone in a battle when you are a level 7 character by using a skill that you do not acquire until you are a level 10 is a big no-no.
DO: Separate Your Speech From Your Actions Using Proper Cues:
When you are role playing it is important to remember that you are writing both dialog, actions, and sometimes scenery or background. To keep these different elements straight, you need to learn the various cues which set apart speech from actions, etc.
One of the most common ways of doing this is to use the asterisk (*) as an action marker to set apart actions. To further clarify, you can put your dialog in quotations, although sometimes you may find that quotations are not used for dialog and only the actions are set apart. The following is a simple example of how this is done:
*a tall woman appears from the shadows with long, deep red hair dressed in a deep dark purple velvet dress with matching choker and a modern black trench coat in a tailored military style. Smiling slightly as she nods her head in a subtle bow*
“Dark Greetings to you, may I welcome you to the realm."
Other variations also include using a double colon (::) as the action marker before and after the action. Also, some people may or may not use quotations for speech so it is often the case that text without any identifying markers is assumed to be spoken by default. The screenshot below taken from the Bloodletting RPG shows what this would look like in action:
DO: Use Proper Grammar and Correct Spelling.
Role Playing is an art form the relies heavily on other players being able to understand you. You should not have to stop and try to guess at what the other person is trying to say in the middle of a battle. This just causes confusion and may end up with very few people willing to RP with you.