New Player – Could Use Some Advice

Hello everyone,

I’ve been playing here for about two weeks and this is one of the best muds I’ve played on in any genre. I’ve gotten pretty comfortable with the game mechanics and all that so my question / lack of knowledge is really in the areas of RP.

I’ve written a character sheet, history and think logs for my main character (Level 141 Engineer). Problem is I’ve never really role played before so I am pretty timid about communicating IC over clantalk and other forms of communication as well as interacting with other people. I guess my biggest fear is coming across as amateurish when there are so many great RP’ers (Tenai and Spet being my two favorite characters to encounter).

I also understand that the game is going to be resetting itself in a few months so I’m considering this a "practice" character and hopefully I will have gotten accustomed to the game well enough to be a full participant. In closing, does anyone have any words of wisdom for a former hack and slash player turned RP?

Thanks,
Gonrin

Well, there isn’t really one way to RP. Some people will always hate the way you RP, no matter how good you are. Essentially, you should come up with a back story, a personality, and other little querks that your character might have, and try to go with them during your RP, even if you wouldn’t do the same thing in real life.

But of course, the biggest thing about roleplaying is having fun.

Like Ilyena said, there’s really nothing special you need to do to RP. Know your character, and act/react like they would. A lot of people get it in their heads that RP is big emotes. That isn’t true. RP is about inspiring action and getting people involved. You don’t need big emotes for that, you need creativity. I find that the first while with a new MUD/Character/etc are always the best for RP because you’re open to new experiences. Be a Yes Man. Get yourself involved. It’s the best way to make your mark on the MUD, and you’ll get more opportunities to RP and more chances to improve.

If you need references, check Wookieepedia, don’t be afraid to ask on RPC or Imm, or even on OOC.

Wookieepedia: <!– m –><a class="postlink" href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page">http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page</a>&lt;!– m –>

Edit: I apologize in advance that all the example emotes are of girl characters! xD; Being one, it’s what comes naturally.

If you’re a new character to the mud, there’s really only a few things that I can tell you that– as a relatively new player myself– blew my mind when I first started.

— The emote command. Dude; the emote command is like.. the best thing ever. It’s the gateway to higher RP, to show what your character is doing with what or who, and so on and so forth. Like, example(s):

[code:2jeoobbo]emote glances up at the hazy red skies as she tugs her gloves more firmly over her wrists, shaking her head at the question posed to her&#46; &quot;Of course I’ll be good&#46;&quot; she mutters, eyeing the spaceships landing and launching in the nearby port with a careful gaze&#46;

emote rubs the back of her head awkwardly&#46; &quot;So&#46;&#46;&#46;&quot;[/code:2jeoobbo]

The emote part would be replaced with your name. Like everybody said.. the length of the emote doesn’t matter. It’s just supposed to show people what your character is up so! Anyway.. There’s also a way to begin an emote with OTHER than your name, should you so be interested!…

[code:2jeoobbo]emote As the kitten mewed at her, $n wrinkled her nose, arms folding stubbornly over her chest in defiance of the animal’s cuteness&#46;[/code:2jeoobbo]

Socials are fun and get your point across, but there’s some things that just can’t be said without an emote, especially when it comes to certain racial qualities, or a specific action. A bellowing laugh, a person limping, a wide-eyed stare… just a few examples. &lt;3

— Another great thing to be mindful of are your tones. They’re diverse and there’s a wide selection of them, and how you use them can affect how your character comes across sometimes better than even the best of emotes, especially when it comes to the talk channel. Tone list will show you every single tone in existance! Keeping a default tone to use on your character helps to make it what it is.

— Don’t be afraid! Not speaking up because you’re afraid you’ll say something wrong is just dumb, and you’ll probably only hurt yourself for doing so. If you have a question, feel free to ask on RPC, or OOC. You learn from your mistakes, ( or so the saying goes &gt;_&gt; ) so live life a little on the edge! ( Just not /too/ on the edge. Remember that every action has a consequence. &lt;_&lt; ) But don’t get yourself into doing the same thing every day. Go to different places, do different things, meet new people. LotJ has a large playerbase… explore and meet many unique characters!

And remember– LotJ’s galaxy is composed of thousands of planets and races, with only a few of them actually in-game, so be mindful that when people talk about places that you can’t travel to ICly, that they actually /do/ exist. You just can’t get to them.

The last few pieces of advice I can give you are.. uh..
— Don’t make grenades in a ship.
— Don’t fly into a sun.
— sui &lt;password&gt; is /never/ an answer you should listen to.
— Some people can be mean retards, and others are nice and will help you.
— Be natural! Let your character develop and flesh out as time goes on.
— Have fun, and welcome to LotJ!

Thanks for the encouragement – I’ve been pondering over the last couple of days and came up with these ideas for some quirks:

Whenever a communications come over the comlink, my character will glance down at it. Second, at random intervals, my character’s left eyebrow will raise and quickly lower.

I use zMud, so I am trying to figure out how to implement these as scripts so that I don’t have to manually type in the emote command whenever my comlink goes off and randomly type in the command to do the eyebrow twitch.

The comlink I can kinda figure out by making triggers so that whenver a comlink communications is received it fires off emote glances quickly down at his comlink.

The random eyebrow twitching has me puzzled though – any advice?

Timer? I know that you could make a timer so that he does it every so often. I’m not sure how to do that in zMUD though.

If I were you, I’d just use it as a signal for &quot;HEY RP WITH ME&quot;. People tend to ignore other players who are just standing there, idling and I know of someone else who had a similar trigger… it fired all the time and it was [b:v5ampu3l]very[/b:v5ampu3l] annoying.

I do something similar. Most of my characters will have an alias or two that are generally not related to any particular current situation, but it is something I can quickly hit when someone enters a room (or when I enter it) that basically says &quot;hey here I am I want to do some emoteish RP if anyone is down.&quot; It sure beats my old standby of saying something to a person when they enter a room or spending 20 seconds typing an emote, only to have them leave .5 seconds before I send it.

I like the alias idea – in fact the more I think about the sillier having emotes fire off automatically seems to me. I mean, what’s the point of emoting to an empty room, which it seems is where I spend most of my time anyway (engineering workshops).

*slaps himself on the forehead*

I’m starting to realize that this is a lot like D&amp;D only set in the Star Wars universe and using a computer instead of pen and paper. 10-12 years ago I used to DM quite a bit and one rule I followed was to always have at least two secrets for every character and then scatter clues around. Hmmm… I could do that with this character and put a clue or two in the history file, maybe leave a few data discs laying around and see if anyone follows up on them.

Thanks for all the ideas…

*scurries off to his big whiteboard to start writing a back story*