Roleplaying Etiquette

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While roleplaying, there are several unwritten (but respected) guidelines that apply. While you can break these, it is generally frowned upon - but following them will earn you respect among RPers and get you invited to private threads.

Here are some (but not all) of them:

DO -

- Roleplay a Creative Character! The classic footman, or the average citizen, or the Orc warlord, or the adventurer that killed the Lich King and claimed power eternal are fine, but we've seen em all before. Give your character a fresh personality with lots of (but not too many) twists - it's great fun!

- Interact with Others! When in an inn, or a military warcamp, your character is not likely to simply sit alone and stare into the air, or have an inner monologue while surrounded by peers. Talk to, query or threaten others and watch the interaction unfold! Additionally, no one likes a loner - so don't expect people to drag you into the interaction if you haven't said a word. It has happened, but is unlikely.

- Give us Emotional Dialogue! Nobody wants to read about John who has a drink and goes home. Tell us about your character, give us his feelings (without too much monologue), and tell us WHY he is doing what he is doing when he is doing it. "Because" is no fun.

- Give us Pets! A hunter's wolf or a warlock's demon is always fun. So long as you keep them animal (Your pet crab is NOT signaling in sign language), they're great additions to most, if not all RP situations.

DON'T -

- Power-Emote / Godmode. This is the act of taking control of another character's (re)action while RPing. Examples:

"Salyndra stabbed the Orc in the chest, causing him to fall over, bleeding."
"Grok held Mrok in the air by his neck, the peon gasping for air."

Doing this to ambivalent NPCs is fine. Doing it to players is not - give them control of their own actions. Here's an example of this done right:

"Salyndra flung her dagger at the Orc."
"Grok glared at Mrok, menace in his eyes, and yelled 'Don't talk back at me, peon!'"

- Be Invincible. It's fair enough that you don't want to get hurt - none of us want to lose! But be believable - nobody magically dodges everything that is thrown at them. You can take a few hits without losing your credibility, in fact it will likely boost it. Examples:

"Reynold dodged the dagger thrown at him by Salyndra. He then sidestepped, moving out of the fireball aimed at him's line of momentum. Then, mid-movement, he changed direction, narrowly avoiding a broadsword blow to his neck."
"Mrok's eyes glowed red, and he parried every blow of the far bigger orc, constantly dodging and sidestepping."

- Bend the Lore to the Extremes. Adding on to lore is alright, but please, make it believable. Thrall did NOT magically have a son with Arthas through immaculate conception. Illidan is NOT homosexual, and he certainly didn't have any male lovers. Neither did Jaina for females. It's okay to be related to characters who had many children (such as Onyxia), but for the ones who didn't, limit it to far-off relatives - or nothing at all. I would personally rather be defeated by an Orc warrior from a respected clan than by Varian's secret gay vampire lover.

- Go OOC. This is one of the main peeves of many RPers. OOC is, opposed to IC, talk that is not related or applicable to your roleplaying. This can be anything from the political situation in Iraq, to going AFK for the night, to flaming someone else's RP (which you shouldn't do, IC or not!), to bragging about how you showed those bitches in trade chat yesterday. If you DO need to go OOC, do it in brackets ( [[...]] or ((...)) ), preferably at the start or end of your post.

- metagame. This one is less common, but it happens. Metagaming is making use of knowledge in RPing which your character does not naturally know of. An example is the whole Bolvar/Lich King thing - YOU know cause you read it on MMOchamp. Your character has never heard of it, and thus it is extremely unlikely that he is able to discuss it with anyone. This includes anything you know that your character does not - before posting significant info ICly, a good rule is to ask yourself "Is it conceivable that my character knows this?" If not, lay off it.

-Plagiarism. This is, of course, when you copy someone else's work. A nice example can be seen here and here. Please note that those were done on purpose, for your benefit only!

-Being Off-Topic. Keep on topic. Yeah, we know that this is a given on any forum, but it's a great reason to link these two threads again :P

If you are going to be participating in combat roleplay, please see this page! Thank you

Feel free to send a PM to a moderator if you'd like to add something