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Intermediate Roleplay Guide

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Jesse:
Read the rules. Read them again.
Rules.

Familiarize yourself with the lore. It may take a while for it to stop feeling foreign, so you may have to read them a few times.
Lore.

Create a good character biography.  I suggest sticking with a simple character for your first one.

Start feeling around for factions that you feel your character might be a good fit in or create another character that might fit in a faction.

Have fun.
Commands: ShowHide
C opens up a self-explanatory menu.
0 opens up animations. (Use them sparingly)
Q for local chat.
/me' for emotes. /me jumps/ jumped. More on formatting later.
/i for inventory
/w for whisper
Hold shift before pressing enter to shout
/help for all available commands
Backspace for admin help and questions
P to drop money or show pouch
/guid to show your GUID
/setdesc 1,2,3 By using this you can describe your character's clothing, mood, or whatever you feel like without having to type it out repeatedly.
/desc 1,2,3 shows the set description.
/roll (number) to display a number 0-100


Character development and character biographies: ShowHide

Writing a character biography is not just a means to get whatever gear you want. It is an exercise in creative writing and the better you develop your character, the easier it is going to be to play them according to their character. Some people hate it, some people who enjoy writing don't mind it.

Bio template

I will walk you step by step through the different things required in this current iteration of biographies and offer suggestions.

Character picture
This can be hard to find but is helpful in further cementing the character in your head and sometimes you just really need someone to see what your character looks like because the warband character creator is atrocious.

Naming conventions


* Rhodoks-  Scottish, Irish. Italian.  The more obnoxious accent the better.
* Swadian- England, western and central Europe.
* Nords- Danes, vikings, self-explanatory.
* Vaegirs- Eastern Europe
* Sarranid- Middle-eastern
* Khergits- MongolsDon't choose the name of someone famous. There are hundreds of lists of names for these places during medieval times if you feel like googling.

Nationality
The ones most relevant to the scenario are Swadians, Nords, Vaegirs. If you have in mind what faction you would like the character to be in beforehand, it helps to pick a character that fits their theme, but it's not super important.

Personality
Personality traits
This link is helpful in defining your character's personality if you feel like doing the research required to make a better character.

Character traits
Give your character negative and positive traits, please. No one is perfect and your character shouldn't be the idealized perfect version of yourself. Here is inspiration and references if you want to research to improve your character and make them more realistic.
Traits
More traits

Character history
I have a format that I generally follow that makes it easier to write

Parents, birth. Location. Impact of location on character, the impact of parents on the child during early life. For the location, you can get complicated with this, but just looking at the war-band map and choosing one of the bigger cities works.

Early to middle life.. Describe any training they received, describe any interesting events you will allude to later in your own RP, describe their travels or whatever you want to with this life.

A paragraph about what drove them to come to these lands and maybe some of their goals and ambitions.

This can easily make three paragraphs but can expand into more.

Mistakes of the role-player and how to avoid them to enjoy roleplay more fully: ShowHide

Be patient
When you post something, it's the other players turn. Don't continually write twelve lines while the character is in the progress of responding to what you wrote before. Good roleplay is basically taking turns at any length. If you continue to spam one-liners it doesn't give the other player a chance to respond.

Self-insertion
Sure, it's fine to put a piece of yourself into the character you're playing. I have known some good role-players and excellent writers who have basically been a self-insert, but... If you're playing yourself in an unfamiliar situation, you're not really playing a character. The more you separate yourself from your character, the easier it is to keep the lines between yourself cleanly and neatly divided.

Overattachment to character
I think many are guilty of this sometimes, especially when you are relatively new to roleplay. You are writing with other people; they are not opposing you and they are not there to make your life miserable; they are (hopefully) trying to act how their character would act and immerse themselves in a different world.

People do not do what you want them to, scenes will not always go the way you want them to. When this happens, when your own feelings about whatever happens become blurred with the characters, return to character. Some of the best scenes can come from spontaneity and randomness. If something happens to your character that pisses you off, take a deep breath and think of what your character would do next. If breathing isn't deep enough, maybe it's time for a break as soon as the scene finishes.

Perfect Characters
No-one in real life is perfect, and one should strive to some level of realism in their roleplay. Your character feels pain, your character gets angry, has emotions. Has flaws, has a backstory. Don't make the character that everyone is supposed to love without giving other people a reason to want to roleplay with you.

Metagaming
When you get surrounded by bandits, as tempting as it, don't get on steam and summon your sixteen friends immediately. If you go off alone in a military situation or your character pissed someone dangerous off, don't summon your sixteen friends. It's unfair to the people who are taking the risk of confronting your character and creating an interesting tense scene for you to enjoy. If someone robs your character, go find someone IC and hunt them down. If someone hurts your character, report them to authorities or plot your revenge depending on your character. Just don't meta-game.

IC seeping into OOC
Tense dramatic situations between two characters are fun if approached right. If you get wrapped up in whatever scene your character enters, just say nothing OOC at all. If rules get broke and finish the scene and report them afterward. Maybe you can state that they are breaking the rules and why, but in a tense scene this just ends up delaying it and makes it frustrating for yourself and the other party. If it's obvious that talking won't help or that they are not willing to discuss it, finish the scene and contact an admin or write a complaint. In hostile situations, it's sometimes best to start recording or taking screenshots just in case.

OOC seeping into IC
You will not get along with everyone, you will not like everyone out of character. You should try your best to forget the name behind the character and act according to your character towards theirs, If you suspect a character is behaving a certain way towards you because of OOC, avoid them. If they continue to assert themselves on you consistently, report them.

Over-passivity
It is no-one's responsibility but your own to create interactions and stories and plots for your characters. If you're having an issue with this, it's an issue with your creativity, so you should search for inspiration.

Overly aggressive
As tempting as it can be to throw your character on every passing person without an IC reason, don't do it. People have goals, have other things their character had planned, have ongoing scenes. Don't force interactions where it wouldn't make sense because of your boredom. In a similar vein, if there seems to be a one-on-one RP going or a small comfy group RP, you don't always have to intervene. Depending on the situation you might be welcome, but if you're not sure, don't. If you are new, sometimes you have to be assertive but still, be mindful of what other people had planned.

Playing to win
As many Warband players are competitive, it can be hard to allow your character to lose or to want bad things to happen to your character. Allow your character his failures and allow for their redemption arcs which might be more interesting than if everything had went your way. Sometimes, the best RP comes from failures. Similarly, throw some accidents into your RP to create more dynamic situations.

Post formatting: ShowHide

Past Tense
The most common tense and POV in novels and forum RP is third person, past tense.

John ran.

This is the format I prefer because it's the most universally accepted.

Present tense
Another option is third person, present tense. I don't see the advantages of using present tense, but some people just prefer it because it appears as describing the action in progress instead of already happening.

John runs.

First person
Mostly in other RP platforms you will find first person. I think people believe it makes things feel too personal, as I explained earlier in the guide I aim to detach from my character as much as possible so I avoid this like the plague.

I move my hands to crack my knuckles.

All of this being said, if you are new to roleplay, I suggest the third person past tense because it will be more similar to what an English person has been reading most of their life.

Usage of Asterisks or Italics
Assume the person you're writing with is capable of understanding where action starts and where dialogue is that's shown by quotation marks.  There's no reason for Asterisks, italics, or the usage of would (except in rare circumstances.)

* Jesse "How are you today?" John shot a cursory glance over her.
Write like a writer.

Post lengths: ShowHide
Talking heads
This is for quick flowing dialogue and is the most useful in large group scenes or something where a conversation needs to be kept flowing quickly. I don't find this the most immersive, but this is where you will start (hopefully not end) posting.

One-liner
Usually one line of dialogue and one brief action with no detail. This can be fast still depending on how you type and doesn't really detract from group scenes by using.

Paragraph
This comprises a detailed action, more wordy dialogue, and can incorporate some emotions and thoughts into if briefly. This nears the Warband post limit and is frowned upon by some impatient people who don't feel like waiting. I don't bother even doing this unless I know that someone is going to return the effort and I am comfortable with them.

Multi-paragraph - 2-4 Paragraphs
This is much more common in other mediums and usually takes more time. Here, multiple actions, multiple dialogues, and thoughts and emotions are much more prevalent in being displayed.

Novella
Anything above multi-para is novella. Seen on forums. Where the majority of my RP's in other mediums lie.

The Emperors Death Korp:
Italian names are also for Rhodoks, called Lowlanders aka the city dwellers and more civilized folk of the confederacy

Jesse:
Added that to Rhodoks, I forgot about that. I was remembering that in one of the servers lore Swadians were played as Italian as well.

Native Clan Fighter#8:
stop using 'would' in ur emotes

Jesse:
Added that just a minute ago.

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