Holding on to your RP..

[Bert]

I've been trying to delve more into the RP side of the game lately but am having a hell of a time with it. I keep losing sight of my RP which is causing me to lose interest and discard characters at an alarming rate.

Anyone else struggle with maintaining their character's identity in game? What do you do to keep it? The creative side of me operates like a slug, which makes things worse.

This is what I'm doing now to get myself going. Maybe someone has suggestions in this area as well.

* Come up with a basic history. Where I came from, parents, siblings.

* Try to think of personality traits that may stand out (grumpy, disrespectful, etc).

* I don't do speech yet, but I've been trying to play with smote and pmote and design a few different ways I may say things.

That's about it I guess. Then I go out and experience situations. I don't have a clear end goal in mind, I try to let what happens to me in game influence where I end up. There is no predetermined cabal choice, I leave all the options open.

Once in a while I'll experience something significant and use it to help direct my future. Bad luck there lately with a lot of deletions by people I had put my characters in line with.

One big problem I have is I seem to almost completely lose focus during extended periods of training in seclusion.

I dunno, maybe I need to have a sheet of paper with my history and stuff on it, and read it before I login. I think I'll give it a try.

[mya]

I hate to make RP from the start. I normally just go with the flow. Developing character traits as opportunities arrive.

Don't set in stone the start. Let it be more flexible.

Also be vague in background. This allow you to adapt better.

And remember people change. So it's natural that your character traits change with time.

Easy RP comes from tailoring your character to you. The more you two are alike the more natural it will come out.

Being a Rigid inflexible character when you are easy going person can be fun, but is harder.

Also Original RP's aid a lot. Look at Tidder the Milk god.

[abghoul]

Maybe youre doin a too complex setup.

I am not suggesting a simplex setup either, rather a multiplex.

You cant define multiplexity in text form, yet F.Schiller had his RP trick with an old apple in his table.

Every time he was lacking relation, he opened his drawer and the smell got him back to where he was.

Goethe always did mean jokes about that habit,...and i aint a too big fan of Schillers works, still the trick is a classic one, maybe help ya out.

[Croyvern]

you are on the right track, good rp is like good pk, it takes practice and a certain amount of devotion. Do not get angry if you mess up, just read the logs and try harder next time. Keep it up.

[mmajunkie]

To me it is better to start out with a simple idea and just let it develop in game.

A) It is a lot easier to do and can be more fun by just feeling your character out and letting the game help you flesh out the details as you interact and go along.

It is a lot easier to cope with things not working quite right for you because you DON'T have this mold you are forcing yourself to fit into. You are more apt to roll with the punches if you don't have such strict borders on your character.

C) I think it is more fun overall to start with a ball of clay and mold it as you play instead of taking a ceramic warrior and forcing it into a premade world.

D) I really love lists today for some reason

[kaboomer]

I was stagnated in my current's RP for a while. It felt like the same thing day-in-day-out. I prayed for some IMM audience, and and I was lucky enough to have Volgathras answer the call. We spoke OOC about how to keep a character fun and exciting. One of the best pieces of advice from the conversation was that a character should have goals, something to work toward. Cabal entrance/promotions are pretty standard goals, and they don't grab attention. Flex your creativity and come up with something unique. Explore all avenues of the idea, and do some solo RPing with your surroundings. Smote is a very powerful tool. From there, post the logs on the prayer forum, and they'll move them to the RP logs section. This lets the IMMs know what you're up to as well as the pbase. If the pbase likes what's going on, you'll start to have people approach you about what you're doing. That perpetuates the RP even further, and your creativity and motivation to play that character will boom!

[f0xx]

Hm, I've tried making RP plans from the start, and all of them have been failures.

My most successful characters have been those that I've let flow i.e. my interactions form my RP. I just form their behaviour mostly, like would my character be super evil and selfish? Would he be cheeky and happy? Would he be arrogant? How would he react to certain situations. The rest is interactions.

If I make a detailed background history, I've found that I lose interest fast too. Sometimes, I lose interest anyway. My advice in such situations would be to just not play the character as often. Just log in to get the minimum hours to not get rare purged and cabal booted, then someday get back to it. Evetually you WILL want to play it again. Just don't delete. In the end, characters that have been around for longer start to have their own lives, independant of you.

[Peras]

In a game like FL, the most important aspect to starting my RP is alignment. I start out by picking an interesting alignment, something I want to explore. The next step is to figure out what that alignment means and why my character is that alignment. Religion comes into play after that, and I try to figure out how the alignment fits with the religion and again how this character came to follow/embody this religion. Then of course there is guild, and I try to incorporate that into the background and RP. Finally, I come up with a nice, basic background and maybe some aspirations. At this point, I have a fairly fleshed out character, and from there I tend to let events or inspiration flesh it out some more.

Another way to do it is simply to have a goal in mind, as in something interesting you can try to do with this character. You can also, like Mya said, base the character's beliefs around your own beliefs and give it a simple background to explain its guild and religion then simply let events shape the character's life.

Anyways, as the others said, don't be afraid to let the RP change. As long as you know what the character's motivations are and why things have happened the way they have, the character should remain.

As for voices, those can be interesting and can really make a character feel real, but they take both practice and work. Unless you have a really exciting character concept in mind, I'd stay away from them.

[Imoutgoodbye]

RP has two paths to take, as you've seen from previous posts. You can mix and mingle them, but here's what I suggest:

1. Take into account WHO your character is. He/She/It has history. You have an age in the creation process. What happened to you before you joined your guild that may have created the alignment you've chosen? How did you end up in your hometown?, etc.....

2. How set in your ways is your character? How much of an impact does another character have to have to start to even sway your thinking, no matter how small a shift it might be? What would have to happen to push you towards a complete betrayal of your alignment, if that's even possible?

3. Religion. This is HUGE. It may belong in step 1 or it may not. Is religion something you found later in life? Are you Atheist? Agnostic? Is religion a stepping stone or a pact for greater power? Or are you completely devout, fanatical to the dogma?

These are just the bare bones. They help give the character identity and influence his/her/its decision making, but they're not WHO your character is, just a part. And I know that sounds odd given the amount of information you'll gather from the aforementioned, but ultimately you can create more, especially as time goes on.

As Croyvern said, it takes time. Of course, good RP won't ever stop you from tossing a character aside. That's determined by how much fun you are getting from the game. It's never fun when your RP doesn't appear to be having an impact.

EDIT: Pardon my assumption that it's the lack of RP impact on the world around you, but I found that when I played it wasn't enough for me to just stay true to my RP to be happy. I felt like the world was impacting me more than I was ever impacting the world.

[f0xx]

Double post...how odd....I really don't like this laptop.

I bet he doesn't like you too!

Bah, seems like you've found how to delete your post...

[Imoutgoodbye]

And, Bert, if you ever wanna talk, PM me and I'll give you my college e-mail address. It's the most consistent way of getting in touch with me and that is unfortunately only twice a week. But I still try to give a hand where I can.

[Volgathras]

Valek had an excellent post regarding RP, and I've read a lot of fantastic advice on this thread. In truth I've seen some excellent improvement in the Player-bases capacity and desire to roleplay, even and especially without immortal involvement.

Remember that the road to RP success is as varied as the people who attempt it. I'll give some advice here, and take in to account the advice that has already been given, but at the end of the day you go with what works for you.

Your foundation:

Your character is the extension of yourself in the world. They are your avatar and FL manifestation. That being said you have a choice of how you as a player connect with your character. There are generally two choices here:

*Root: The idea here being that the character emulates a part of your own personality. The benefits in this is that it's a lot easier to stay in character and maintain adequate RP over long periods. However, this usually type-casts you in to a single role. (Primarily beginning and/or intermediate RPers go with this).

*Branch: Here your character is very different from yourself, thus allowing you to explore a plethora of excited RP opportunities. Conversely, you run the risk of losing track of your character's goals and personalities, breaking RP because you don't know how the character would react, losing interest, etc. This is a great option if you have a good memory and are capable of really stretching out of yourself (generally more advanced RPers prefer this method).

I've employed both methods, and I've found that actually a mix of both is preferable to me - but of course, that's just me. I generally begin with a character that has a base in my true self and explore that section of my own character until he grows in to something else. This leads in to the next section...

Flexibility:

You will lose interest in a character if there's no change, either positive or negative. Remember to leave room for your character to be affected by his environment (as Valek said) and to leave his history open enough be adjusted without major glaring problems (as Maya said). Often you'll find a character's path starts to take on a life of it's own, outside of your control.

Parts of the Creation Process:

-History:

This one seems pretty straightforward, but it's a complicated aspect of RP. A good deal of thought needs to go in to a character's background, because you rill refer to it in later situations, especially if you encounter something you aren't prepared for. If your history is too thin you wont know how to proceed and get discouraged; too rigid, and you run the risk of being inflexible which will stagnate your character and often lock you out of potential RP opportunities.

Try to find a middle ground. Leave space for adjustment but get your foundation straight. Tip: I like to have two histories for my characters. A public history which includes things like hometown, parents, age, etc. and a secret history which involves things my character might be ashamed of, secrets pertaining to future goals and so forth.

-Traits:

The idea here is to fit your character to your history and your aim. We already have a good description system and people seem solid on the idea. I'll mention that while visible traits make a character more interesting, restrict them to something that furthers your characters development. Does your character wear a pair of broken shackles at his wrist? Why?

I also like to try and work with traits that are not immediately visible. A tattoo that shows only when he moves a certain way, for instance.

These are physical examples, but work with personality, too. Quirks are incredible RP tools that allow for great diversity; perhaps your crusader blacks out on occassion and suffers from homocidal mania. Your necromancer has a secret desire to be a horticulturist, etc..

-Goals:

Immensely important, as Kaboomer said. A goal is not "I want to get in to this cabal" or "I want that qrace/class." Working toward those goals only is a quick way for you to lose interest in the character, because even if you get those goals, what's next? Cabal warfare - you get caught in the stagnation I mentioned earlier.

Set goals both big and small for your character that don't involve game mechanics. Your storm giant wants to learn peace through the tranquility of the forest, for example, so he moves from home to build a hut and achieve enlightenment (the small goal being building a hut, with the larger goal of achieving enlightenment). Your blademaster has begun work on a blade so swift it almost leads the arm, taking control of the wielder like a demon (the small goal being research for creation of the blade, the ultimate goal being the blade itself).

Some of these goals may never be reached, but then again, you never know. The beauty of FL is that through good, consistent RP anything is possible.

Work with these suggestions and employ the tools you feel work best for you - or ignore them completely. These are suggestions which may or may not be applicable to you. Of course, feel free to ask more questions either specific or general and I'll be happy to help.

[Imoutgoodbye]

RP one of these

.....

[Croyvern]

Frikin awesome! But you can't bait me Rev, I am not playing that gnome.

[Twinblades713]

I think a lot of RP is the mindset of willing to do so. I am a person who likes to decide a combo he wants to play, but then has trouble playing it because it's forced. Therefore, I almost always end up playing my characters seriously at least a month after I've rolled them. This is my personal experience, but what I've learned from it are a few things:

Be Your Character:

This may seem fairly obvious, but alot of times I find it's not. Don't think, 'what would my character do', put your mind into the character and instead ask yourself, 'how do I feel about this.' You will often get a much more honest answer.

Becoming Your Character:

I actually found the easiest way to get into the mindset of something in Volgathras' "BRANCH" category, as in something you are not familiar with in your own life, is to play something completely different from what how you act in your own life. You might find some of your decisions are very foreign, but these are the moments real life is being breathed into your character.

When you become familiar enough with a single character, you will begin to compartmentalize that personality. Since it is likely you will play more than the exact same combo in your FL career, consider your feelings about a situation based on different race combos. Sometimes noticing this difference is enlightening.

Not as thorough as others, but I thought I'd throw a couple of pennies.