Roleplayer's guide to the Galaxy

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Greetings, welcome to my handy guide on how to fit into a roleplaying server, this will adress any question you might have.

First of, there are many types of roleplay, always keep in mind that not everyone might agree with your style, you should be flexible. There are those roleplayers whom for example find smileys to be viable during IN-character situations aswell as abbrevations of existing words, such as; u(you), wtf(What the f***), lol(Laugh out loud). Keep in mind that most roleplaying communities find this measure to be outright wrong and banned within the community itself, in turn can shun player(s) for this, it is advised not to use abbrevations of such magnitude, though take it lightly and do not judge new players.

Second of, there are two 'modes' the roleplaying community is turned on, first off will be the most important one and hopefully the most active one.

1. In-character (IC). This is fairly obvious but very important and must be distinguished from OOC ( Out of character ) when used, vice versa. In-character is where you are ENTIRELY in your character mode, a.i: You are playing your character, will not reply to any actions that you would not deem as an action that would happen within the moment.
Though, keep in mind you should also take this lightly, not outright scream incase somebody violates your personal bubble, such as one perhaps misstelling in the open or perhaps casting a spell outright at random, there are limits ofcourse.

There are ofcourse heavier levels of IN-character, such as some people transmitting their roleplaying into multiple channels of communication, such as party chat/Guild chat/Whisper, often you will notice that most people plays with their own personal rules, remember others might not know theese rules hence please make sure that everybody that you wish to be affected by them is acknowledged by them and always remember; You can not force roleplay upon anybody.

2. Out of Character (OOC). This is where the most conflicts are placed when people disagree with eachother's gameplay ( Within the Roleplaying community ) and those whom do communicate in the open, in an out of character manner should pay their respect to those whom are In-character and notify them through whatever the community has to offer, many use the; bracket system is where you enclose your words in double brackets from both angles in order to show that you are not speaking to everybody & in-character, some use the /me /e system in where they type freely in the emote box, though keep in mind this tend to clogg up the chatbox and considering that the /me is a very active roleplaying tool, people might get confused & I advice you from this.

Now, those are the two main pillars that you require to generally roleplay, but there are several aids on the road, this is obviously specified for World of Warcraft.

Literacy This is by far not required by extremely approved and should be supported. This is to ease others aswell as yourself into the character experience, ofcourse it doesn't have to be PERFECT but punctuation, capitalization is smiled upon.

Lore This can be mandatory, depending on what kind of roleplaying community you're attempting to enter or alredy participating in, knowing your race, class and your limits are almost a must for players whom wish to engage further into the roleplaying experience, a few tips would be to get your hands on the; Player Guides, Novells, RPG's if you're onbly looking for small bits of information, wowpedia.org possess information that can help you on your journey through Azeroth.

Now, if you're read through this guide, followed it step by step, etc etc and consider yourself ready to enhance your experiences, you might ask yourself a question such as; Alot of roleplayers dissaprove of PVPing to settle an IC argument, what do I do? - Well, the /me /e ( Emote ) system can be used to engage within text-based combat with a foe or a friend. Most players will experience this atleast once, it's best to know how to do instead of frustrating the other player into ripping his hair off, so there are a few tips.

Physics/logic Know your character's limits, avoid being a Mary Sue. Your character is not Goku Skywalker. This is also where realism is important, example; You can not bullettime a hail of gunshots in a daily situation. All this depends on your class/race/such obviously but if you are playing a powerfull character capable of doing actions out pf the ordinary, I suggest informing your fellow duelist of your limits, but make sure he understands this ONLY out of character wise, unless of special conditions. This means that his character may have no awareness of what's going on.

Systems This is how you will engage your foe. He might wish to impliment a system of fairness, a common version of one of theese systems are a rolling system of where you /roll after your targetted emote and hope for chance, there are different variations but it is usually that the one that rolls highest winns that roll, depending on the action, it usually goes how the 'winner' wishes.

Though, there are also another system wich relies on the trust of your fellow fighter to know what he is doing, knowing his character. As you should know yours. In this you emote freely ( Often in turns, though ) and relies upon the opponent to decide incase he wishes to set himself as the victor of the moment or not, also depends on your influence of the moment, keep in mind that you may not force anybody to do something he or she does not wish for, but you may also speak out a system of turns till the end/Hitpoints of your characters, etc etc. The ranges end only with your imagination.

Power-emoting This is connected to the previous panel, involving mainly text-based fightning, but can be applied to different situations aswell.

Fights; The opposite ( or you ) player forces his or hers ability/move-etc-etc upon your ( or anyone's ) character without their consent, or making a determined blow without looking to the 'victim' character first. A good way to avoid this for newer players is to add a form of ATTEMPT based word into your emote, example; Indiana ATTEMPTS. This usually fixes that problem. Also, NEVER assume that your blow hits, there are many factors in combat that you might have overlooked.

Other; In this category this is mainly aimed towards outside fights. Okay, so essentially for those whom are aware of what; Metagaming means this is a brief explainatory. Metagaming means that your character knows something they are incapable of knowing, such as vital information of perhaps the pressure combination of a titanic puzzle ahead of time. You must also not confuse OOC information with IC information, without the other person's consent, that information is not valid in most roleplaying circuits.

Now that we have the basics, let us go into the advanced bits

Restrictions. As free as the roleplaying world is, it's not unlimited. There is a few very important implications that need to be brought up, though they are by no means essential in the short run. The IN-game Mechanics should be in no way confused with IC-mechanics, this means that basically; Just because you're level 85, the other player is 79 doesn't neccesarily mean that your character outskill or outclass his character in-character wise. It is all about plot and character development.

Most roleplaying communities take into consideration that people whom played longer and has held the maximum level for a long time and achieved something during his or hers roleplaying, are superiour to say, a lower leveled character or a 80+ that just recently dinged & achieved really nothing in character development. Let's face it; Nobody likes to be lowest on the food chain. Don't stress, though everybody should be treated with the same respect however you should not consider yourself omnipotent. In the end it all ends up with how you play your cards IN-game in your IC-mode.

Gearing

This may not be as essential as other things but should never be taken out of consideration, gearing do come very important later on, for example you can't really pretend having a super flashy set of equipment, can you? Well, sure one can but the chance of being taken serious are slim at most, in order to show that you have actually accomplished something you must work for it, this usually means achieving your equipment in an OOC enviroment, this is where the crossovers tend to begin. Many players do tend to work raids into their character developments, usually as soldiers or commanders on the field. This tends to work quite properly except when things intervene and give ones own character too much power, this usually ends in a flame war and frustration on both parties. In order to avoid this, do not give yourself a great position if you can not handle it or pay the consequences.

Also, keep in mind that your character is by no means a supersoldier, he is still a proper candidate of death and usually more then likely to fall in battle then a footsoldier, depending on his proffession. Your skill and resources may exceed a footman but you are also put into the crossfire bit more often and in turn regarded as top of the food chain.

Next is a tooltip upon conventional modernized weaponry that is included in Warcraft, remember; This is not including any magcial weaponry or of such kind, will fit into most roleplaying communities.

History
Firearms were invented by the Dwarves of Ironforge being created during the Second Orcen War and put into the hands of Riflemen during the Third War. This means that firearms are truly a new invention being approximately twenty-seven years old. Between the time they were invented and implemented during the Third War, the Dwarves of Ironforge had a significant amount of time, see: eighteen years, to advance their technologies in relative peace.

During this time, they were able to develop such improvements on the base model of the musket such as rifling, Minié balls, the flintlock (as opposed to the matchlock), and even the percussion cap (with limited use). While this does not sound like great improvements, for a span of twenty-seven years, these improvements are massive innovations. While it does seem quite ridiculous that this is the best they have even with Gnomes being their allies, you must remember that the Gnomes lost the majority of their production equipment with Gnomeregon and they are quite preoccupied with creating bigger and better (and quite useless) technologies to out-do the Goblins, leaving more practical technologies to their Dwarven cousins.

Making a Firearm
The creation of firearms is more of an art than any other kind of weapon making and even has its own specialization. Gunsmithing is a mix of engineering and blacksmithing, requiring the smith to be proficient in both, and to have devoted his life to the perfection of his art.

The most common materials to make these weapons out of are iron, brass, and bronze. They are all fairly common, with iron being the most common with hand-held firearms and brass and bronze being used for cannons. This is due to the need for hand-held firearm barrels to be thinner, but still strong enough to withstand the forces of the explosions. The making of the barrel is a fairly complex process. It usually involves a liquefied metal being cast around a rod to make the hollow barrel.

The stocks are made of woods with the type of wood being purely cosmetical for the most part, the only requirement being that it be one piece of a hard wood such as oak or maple. Soft woods like pine would simply shatter under the forces exerted by the explosions that propel the bullets.

The third, and most complicated part, of making a firearm is the firing mechanism. The mechanism varies slightly between flintlock and percussion cap. With flintlock firearms, the trigger is pulled, releasing a hammer that has clamped in it a piece of flint. The flint strikes a metal plate, sending a shower of sparks onto a flashpan containing a small amount of gunpowder that leads inside the barrel to the charge.

Firearms


Flintlock

When firing a flintlock firearm, one must pour the black powder charge into the barrel. Followed by this is a small patch of cloth called wading to create a seal on the charge. On top of this is rammed the lead musket ball. When brought up to fire, a small amount of gunpowder must be present in the flashpan in order for the flint to ignite the charge when fired. This creates something called a “hang fire” which is the time between pulling the trigger, and the charge igniting and firing the bullet.

Note: No. Flintlock firearms will work when wet. End of story.

Musket
The musket is the most common of all firearms in Warcraft. It is simply the easiest to construct and ready for combat. The musket has a smooth bore; that is, the barrel has no rifling to increase accuracy and range. These weapons are typically somewhere between 13mm and 20mm in caliber. This means that the projectiles fired by the muskets will break bones, sever limbs, and generally mutilate bodies. However, these weapons are incredibly inaccurate (having an effective accurate range of 50 yards) and are only truly effective when used en masse by a line of musket infantry and fired in volleys.

Pistol
The pistol is essentially a smaller version of a musket. The bore is smooth and has an even shorter range that is even more inaccurate with an effective accurate range of less than 15 yards. In fact, the smoothbore pistol is so inaccurate that it is used in conjunction with a melee weapon, typically a sword or cutlass. However, if a projectile from a pistol hits its mark, the effective is similar to that of the musket with broken bones and nasty wounds ensuing.

Blunderbuss
Ah, the blunderbuss. If you want a shotgun, this is as close as you can get. The blunderbuss is a musket with an extremely wide bore typically being 2 inches at the muzzle. They are typically cast of bronze or brass as they are truly hand-cannons. While working like other firearms, the blunderbuss is filled with lead pellets (note: these pellets are not that small, being only approximately half the size of regular musket balls) and fired at targets. While highly inaccurate, it is very deadly in short range situations and more quickly fired than muskets or pistols. The maximum effective range of the blunderbuss is only about 20 to 25 yards because of the spray of the pellets.

Caplock
Caplock firearms use a primer charge, enclosed in a small brass cap. This cap replaces the need for a flint and flashpan, but is incredibly expensive to produce without massive industrial equipment. In fact, the percussion cap is singularly used for the expensive gatling guns that are used by the gnomes and dwarves on some of their flying machines.

Gatling Gun
There has always been a heated debate about machine guns in Warcraft. However, they are possible. Just not like most people think. They are possible in the form of the Gatling Gun. Said firearm is a cylinder of multiple barrels operated by a crank to pass by the cartridge. The ammunition for this weapon is incredibly expensive to maintain and reload. Each round is an individually loaded steel cylinder containing the bullet, powder charge, and percussion cap. It also typically requires two men to fire and four to properly operate as well as a platform to fire from. Concisely put, it is not a conventional firearm.

Misfires and Malfunctions

Misfires
Warcraft firearms are prone to misfiring. Period. It is a fact of RP that they can and will misfire. Even if made by a tinker. (Note: there are a few special firearms that are unavailable that have extremely low rates of misfire) Many things can make a firearm misfire. Wet or old powder, a charge that’s not packed enough, too small of a charge. The list goes on and on. The fact of the matter is, you should roll whenever using a firearm to see if it misfires.

Hang Fire
A hang fire is when there is an extended delay between the time the hammer hits and the charge ignites. This is a common malfunction and happens about once in every three shots. This makes it extremely important to follow through with your shots, just like with bows.

Firearm Upgrades


Rifling
A rifled barrel can greatly increase the range of a firearm. This improvement is simply a twist put on the inside of the barrel to force the projectile to spin, giving it stability and increased accuracy. This upgrade is typically only applied to muskets, transforming them into deadly rifles that are accurate up to 300 yards. Pistols may receive this upgrade as well, but it severely reduces the caliber of the pistol, increasing the accuracy, but decreasing the damage caused by it.

Minié Balls
These projectiles are an incredibly deadly upgrade to the standard musket ball. Formed in a conical shape and rigged along it’s body, the end of the bullet is flared so that when fired, it forms to the grooves of the rifling, sealing off all the gas produced by the gunpowder explosion and giving it fins for stability and increased accuracy. These bullets make sharpshooting possible, extending the range of a rifle by another 100-200 yards.

Scopes
Scopes, in the modern sense, do not exist in Warcraft. In the sense of Warcraft, they are simply elongated tubes with a slight magnification to them. Usually about 2x. This does not make it possible to “snipe” targets, only sharp shoot. In fact, the most common scope is simply a tube that narrows the field of vision and zones in on the target.

Silencers
This section will be brief. There is one silencer in the lore. And it is unavailable for use. And technologically, there is no physical way to silence a muzzle loading firearm. Therefore, silencers, for all intents and purposes, do not exist.

Wounds


Guns vs Plate
There are two trains of though on this. One says that plate cannot be penetrated by the kinds of firearms in Warcraft, the other says the opposite. However, both have some merit. Plate can be penetrated by muskets and blunderbusses at close range only. Simply put, pistols do not have the outward velocity to punch through. This does not mean, however, that if you are far enough away that bullets will simply bounce off of you. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Your armor will be heavily dented and you will likely be knocked down and suffer from heavy bruising and possibly broken bones and internal bleeding.

Guns vs Mail
Mail, unlike plate, is not rigid and is much more impervious to penetration. Projectiles from pistols and rifles will obvious knock the wearer down, possibly break bones, and definitely cause some internal damage, but will not penetrate. Blunderbusses, however, have small shot which will penetrate the chains because all of the forward momentum is put into a smaller point. All in all, mail will turn most bullets, but the stun effect will knock you out, assuming it doesn’t kill you.

Guns vs Flesh (Or Light Armor)
All projectiles used by Warcraft firearms are made of lead. Even if the item says it’s made of something else, it’s not. It physically couldn’t be. It’s made of lead. But this is not a problem as lead is far more dangerous than any other metal could be. Lead balls and the Minié balls mushroom when they hit the body. This means that the front surface of the projectile expands, doing more damage to the body, literally ripping flesh, shattering bones, and severing limbs.

A gunshot wound is not a thing anyone could simply shrug off. And such wounds cannot simply be healed by a paladin or priest. Surgery must be performed to remove the lead inside of the person otherwise infection and death will follow. No ifs, ands, or buts.

End.

Note, I have been incapable of adding any pictures due to my limit of understanding those sites. >.<