Since I\'ve heard some people liked to see a roleplaying guide in the newbie section and I had too much time on my hands I present to you:
How to Role-play for Dummies, written by a dummy.1 Character CreationRole-playing is all about playing a role and to play a role you first need to have a character.
What does a character need?
1.1 The NameYour character will need a name and not just any name but one that fulfils the following requirements:
- It has to be an original first name. Planeshift won?t allow you to pick a name that has already been chosen by another player. The surname is optional and can be shared, implying that you are of the same family.
- It can?t be the name of a famous person, a historical or mythical character or basically have any background story behind it that is known by most people. Such a background will make your character less or completely not original
- It can?t be a title like
Lord Talbo
- It can?t have an obvious meaning like
Killalot or be based upon ?popular? internet culture like
p0wn3r or
the n00b.
- It has to be pronounceable, which means you can?t use names with numbers like
Sari001 or names that are just a bunch of letters thrown together.
A good example would be:
Kirand Fitho. It doesn?t have any meaning but still sounds good and a bit exotic, making it very fitting for our fantasy setting.
1.2 The RaceYour character needs to be of a specific race and gender. The race will not only determine how your character will look but also what its stats and some special skills will be when you start playing. For example the frail but intelligent Lemur will be much less suited to live as a hardened fighter than the solid Kran. It is not impossible but it is much harder and therefore far less common. There are other things like the ability to breathe under water or an allergy to certain metals which will have an impact on your character. This is why it?s important to know as much about the race you pick as possible. It helps you create a more realistic character.
The character information can all be found here:
http://www.planeshift.it/setting_races.html1.3 The History A character?s history will have a big impact on a lot of aspects like his or her personality, the skills and knowledge your character has as well as how it looks and how it is dressed. A history is basically the story of your character?s life up until the moment you start to play. This is probably the largest part of creating your character so I?ll try to give some tips to make a good history:
- Detail, detail, detail! The more you have, the less chance you have of being unoriginal and the more fun you will have playing your role.
- Avoid too much stereotypical elements, again so you?ll be more original and have a more realistic character. Not every character needs to be a hero or diabolical madman but there can be a little hero in everyone
- Use as much of the Game?s background and settings as possible. The more your character is integrated with the world, the more real it becomes.
- Also work the less obvious or less interesting aspects out. If you want to make a helpful priest, spend some time thinking about less positive sides of him as well. Variation makes things interesting and nobody is 100% good or 100% evil.
You should work your character history out as much as possible and write it down somewhere because you?ll probably need to read over it regularly in order to play your role right. However you shouldn?t put it somewhere where everyone can read it easily, like your in-game character description. Unless your character wrote a book about it?s past, random strangers won?t have a clue about your character?s history.
1.4 The LooksAnother important aspect of your character is its appearance. Because we have a limited number of skins available on Planeshift almost everyone looks the same but this doesn?t mean we all have to look the same. We players can write descriptions for our characters where we should describe how our characters look, how they are dressed and how they come over in general. Just like with your character?s history, detail is very important here. Besides the usual characteristics like height, hair color, eye color, clothes, etc. try to put in some more detail as well. For example: Does your character wear any jewellery? Does it have any distinctive markings like tattoos or scars? Is your character left- or right handed?
You should also try to put some general behaviour traits in this description, but be careful here. These traits should be things people can see without knowing your character. This means they have to be visible but they don?t have to be true. For example it could say ?Kirand usually has an absent-minded look in his eyes, making him come over rather unintelligent.? Kirand could actually be a very smart mage but he is usually thinking about magical matters, making him come over confused.
A good suggestion is to make your description in paragraphs. First you put the very obvious things, things everyone sees right away. In the next paragraph(s) comes a more detailed description, which people only see when they?ve been looking at your character for a couple moments and in the last paragraph(s) you put behavioural patterns or tiny details, which people will only notice when they?ve observed your character for some time.
1.5 The PersonalityThis is probably the hardest part to work out. Your character?s personality is strongly influenced by its history and probably by its race, gender and looks a bit as well. Most role-playing traditions will build from a thing called alignments when they create a character?s personality. Some of the most common alignments are lawful, chaotic, good, neutral and evil. A chaotic good character would always try to do the right thing and fight evil but wouldn?t always obey the law to do so. They aren?t afraid of crossing the law and creating a bit of chaos to accomplish their goals.
Personally I don?t really like to use alignments for my character?s personality because I find it a bit unrealistic. People can act very differently according to the situation at hand. However it is still important that you know what type of personality your character has so you won?t shift from one personality into the other while playing. It is also good to chose a personality that differs from your real one but one with which you can still relate. It shouldn?t be too hard to act out but it shouldn?t be too easy either because then you might just be projecting your own personality onto the character?s.
1.6 The Stats and SkillsNow that your character has a personality, a history and some looks you?ll need the skills to make him or her real. You can use the character creation process to give your character some skills and tweak their stats so that they are integrated into the world of Planeshift better. A character that earned it?s living with mining will obviously have mining skill and a good deal of strength, at the same time it will probably be less intelligent or less charismatic since mining isn?t very stimulating for the mind and rather rough on the looks.
Of course you won?t be able to give your character all the skills you want, if you want to create a powerful swordsman you?ll have to be satisfied with a bit of sword fighting skills and prepared to train the rest of it yourself as you play.
P.S.: This is the first part of my RP guide, hopefully it\'s clear and helpful for most people. There will be two more parts following, namely 2 Roleplaying and 3 Further Character Developement, as soon as I find the time to write them up. Any constructive comments are appreciated.