Follow TV Tropes

Following

Roleplaying Tips / Our Avatars Are in a Room Together

Go To

Welcome to this page. What is this page? Well, as you can obviously see right up above us, its the page where we fine folks at TV Tropes have compiled a bunch of helpful tips to help you squeeze the most out of your roleplaying experience.

Note that this will be dealing specifically with forum RP and chatroom RPs. Also note that we do not profess to be the absolute authority on roleplaying. These are just a few things that have been tried and tested, and seem to work in multiple situations.

Onward!

In-character tips:

  • Not everyone wants to fight all the time and many characters will act exasperated if you try to start something. Talking is okay too.
  • Use common sense when interacting with others. You'd be nervous if someone started waving a gun or something around, too, regardless of the reason.
  • Deal with traumatic events realistically. Don't Wangst and let it define your character, but don't ignore it the moment it stops being recent. Deal with it the way people in real life get over it.
  • Your character does not need to be the centre of attention all the time. Other characters will ignore yours at points, due to being in a conversation with another, being distracted in some other way, not wanting to deal with them right now or a thousand other reasons. This is not the end of the world. They will be able to interact with your character later.
  • No one is going to be impressed with how powerful you can make your character. Furthermore, abilities do not make a character.
  • Try to focus on making sure your dialogue doesn't get too stiff. There's a fine line between a tense moment and a cheesy melodramatic one, and people trying to make characters sound sympathetic can easily make them sound smug by trying to have them drop "chestnuts of wisdom" that are a bit too forced.
  • Constantly spouting memes isn't funny, nor is it counted as "dialogue".
  • Meta knowledge isn't as good of an idea as it seems. Not only does it come off as godmodding sometimes, it can lead to disputes of what is and isn't canon, which nobody likes (especially when headcanons are involved), and is entertaining to no one but the person doing it, as the players already know what is being said, and do not need to heard it again. Meta characters that know everything about everyone are really overdone, usually boring and sometimes rather Sue-ish.
  • Roleplaying in the discussion thread can be confusing to new players, keep it to a minimum.
  • Not every situation has to be a win. Sometimes, failure is a good way to advance the plot or motivate a character. Also keep in mind that some situations are purposefully designed to be unwinnable, usually for plot reasons. However keep in mind that forced failure may render players and characters nothing more than decorations by the side of the road.
  • Godmodding constitutes:
    • Autohitting: Automatically hitting another character with an attack or another ability meant to be harmful
    • Ghosting: No selling every single attack that comes your character's way.
    • Asspulling: Literally pulling powers out of your ass and giving them to your character without any kind of real background or foreshadowing.
    • Deus ex Machina Spamming: Trying to instantly fix a problem permanently and constantly, with that problem's solution having little to no foreshadowing.
    • Meta Knowledge: This goes along with Meta. Knowing everything about everyone. This can't be avoided since some characters are omniscient. But if used in a way that say Bob fights Jim and uses a large needle-like weapon to scare him even though he has no business knowing Jim is afraid of needles, even if his player told Bob's player. Keep your character's knowledge base to something they would realistically have.
    • Mad Puppeteering: Attempting to control another person's character.

Out-of-character tips:

  • Listen to other players; sometimes, constructive criticism is just that, and can be helpful.
  • When the GM is gone, please don't just post pages of random crap for the sake of posting, unless it's something substantial like character development, or foreshadowing for your own eventual plot idea (if it's that kind of thread). And even then, make sure it doesn't derail the GM's plot. Doing this 1. creates confusion over just how long you've been standing there, talking in the middle of a fight/jailbreak/et cetera, 2. is a pain for the GM to have to deal with and read through, and 3. has a nasty tendency to derail things when left alone long enough. You wouldn't want to GM a plot and come back one day to find your plot that you worked so hard on essentially dead.
  • New players should always ask about the setting and a recap before entering a game.
  • Do not attempt to drive a GM's plot yourself. It is up to the GM how things go down, what happens, and how much the characters know.
  • It's just a game. Have fun with it. Serious Business is not needed.

Again, these are just guidelines, but they are guidelines that tend to work across multiple RPs. Keep them in mind when playing, and remember to have fun!

Top