TL;DR

Ah, the glorious wall of text, how cumbersome you are. How effective an indicator of inefficient role player and all-controlling god moder alike. How we scorn thee, yet how you fill us with nostalgia of the time when we, too, were drawn in by your siren-sweet lure of endless gilded prose, for how else were we to convey the depth of our characters? If not by mountain of adverbs or page-long emotes, how were we to describe precisely what our actions were? For who in the many endless worlds of role play would not wish to know how many boogers brave Felodious had harvested from his heroic proboscis or at how much length dear Amelenieghertevuincie the half-elven-one-eighth-gnome-one-fourth-half-ogre-two-fourths-drow had learned to pluck her first chord upon the-

Had enough yet?

Nobody wants to read your poetic ramblings, or mine, or for that matter, even their own. You have a nice vocabulary, we get it. You know your grammar, and that's fantastic. You know every detail of your character down to that chip on his left bicuspid. You have all your ducks in a row! Good for you! There is, however, one thing you missed: your audience.

In a forum role play, a page-and-a-half-long response can be okay in the beginning because there are no visual elements and there's a whole bunch of set-up you need to do. We may get to that in a later post. MMOs and chatbox role plays, on the other hand, are very fast paced. By the time you're done typing your flowery prose, the person you were talking to has wandered to the other side of the city because they thought you were ignoring them. Leniency will of course be granted to newbies and those who type slower than others, but nobody will have any pity for you if you make them wait 10 minutes between each part of a 4-part emote.

"But how do I let them know all the details?!" you cry. It is a good question. The thing is, we don't need a paragraph of description to understand what you mean. You have a good vocabulary, right? (Hint: Yes) Use it! You could say "Felodious scratched his head with fury as a thousand lice found shelter in his flowing golden locks and, finding his life's fluid to their tastes, bit down upon his scalp," but it would be much easier for everyone if you'd just said, "Felodious scratched his head vigorously. If an onlooker were to study him closely, they might spot a louse or two." Both of them convey the point (Our dashing hero has lice and is seriously not happy about it), but while the first option beats around the bush until the bush begs for mercy, the second simply tells you what's going on. Let's try another one.

"The sword that our dashingly handsom hero, Felodious, bore into battle shone like the smiles of angels and had not a single nick or scratch. Its blade was crafted of the finest elven blued steel that could be obtained and its hilt boasted golden floral decorations and tiny yet vibrant gemstones of ruby, emerald, and sapphire."

OR

"Felodious' sword was well polished and well tended. It had a blade of blued steel and its hilt was decorated with gold filigree and an assortment of small gemstones."

Your audience may not see the same mental picture of your character that you do, but they can fill in enough blanks from a general description that they can get a good enough idea, and considering that you'll only interact with most people for an hour or two before promptly never seeing them again, that's really all they need.

IC You

Who you are IC (In Character) and who you are OOC (Out of Character) is drastically different. There is not a fine line between the two, there is a brick wall. Most people with a decent amount of experience in role playing know exactly where this wall lies, but quite a few newbies (and a somewhat nauseating number of oldbies) tend to have trouble locating it. I'm not going to pick on anyone for this (as annoying as it can be) because frankly not everyone's mind bends to the rules of RP that easily, and there's no blame to be put on anyone for that either - man did not evolve with the intent of pretending he's a half-elf wizard every Thursday - but there is plenty of merit in explaining, for the thousandth time, how to figure it out and how to interact with people who haven't, and just on the off chance that you understand my particular explanation, here you go.

-For the Little Lost Lambsies:


Here is your golden rule for the lesson: You and your character are two entirely different people.


Remember that wall I mentioned earlier? Think of it as a one-way window. You can see just about everything your character is up to, but they have no idea you even exist. What your character knows, you know; what you know, your character does not. Obviously, there are some exceptions to that, but don't concern yourself with them right now. Think about the basics.

Imagine yourself in one of an endless slew of detective TV shows (Castle would be fitting). You are behind the one-way glass where the cops (or in this case, fellow role players) hang out and sip coffee whilst providing amusing commentary. Your character is on the other side, interacting with all the other characters. You can see and hear everything that's going on out there. You can even chat with the players of the other characters and maybe share hints about what is to come or ask them to critique your performance so far (awesome idea for newbies), but NONE of this has any affect on what happens on the other side of the glass. Do you recall any of the countless scenes where the detectives chatting idly behind the glass suddenly have an epiphany during an interrogation and then run off without the interrogator even knowing they were there? That's what's going on here. Your emotions toward characters and fellow players, knowledge of the plot and game world, personal speculations, morals, ethics, past experiences, and skills have absolutely no bearing on your character because it is not even aware that you exist.


On the flip side, your character will sometimes knows things that you don't. This happens so often that most of us, even the mighty elitists, don't even realize it most of the time. This is because most of the time it's about something small and unimportant, however if you learn to notice when you've come across something like this you can add an amazing amount of depth to your RP. You do not live in a fantasy world, and you are not an adventurer. You (hopefully) have no idea what a rotting corpse smells like, how a stab wound feels, what a magic missile to the face feels like, how to fight a spider twice your size, how to wield most of the weapons your character encounters, etc. The list could go on for the length of a novel and still wouldn't cover everything. You don't have to run off and research all of this, but a little homework may do you some good. Try making a list of things your character knows, but you don't. You'll be surprised how long it is.
Obviously you will never know everything your character does no matter how much research you do, but the point is to be prepared. If you realize, after making your list, that you have no idea how to wield a broadsword in combat, then you'll know not to write detailed descriptions of your character's fighting technique. If you don't know how to ride or care for a horse, then gloss over those passages in your stories with vague acknowledgements ("Phil then prepared his horse Winifred to rest for the evening").

But what if something comes up unexpectedly? When I still played World of Warcraft there was an evening when several of my guildies had gathered spontaneously in Ironforge (generic Dwarven city for those of you who never played). A good number of us were already there chatting about something or other, when a friend showed up with an emote revealing that she was smoking a pipe. The elf I was playing at the moment had a particular dislike of the smell of tobacco, so I emoted something along the lines of "/e wrinkles her nose at the smell of tobacco." The friend then promptly sent me: ((There is no tobacco in the pipe. My character is smoking mint.)) Oops. Mechanics of smoking peppermint aside (because that has got to clear the sinuses something fierce), the scent is something anyone within a 10-foot radius would recognize. I did not because the Smell-o-Puter has yet to be invented. My character knew this. I did not. There are two lessons here: 1. If you know that your character has something going on that most would not expect (i.e. mint in the pipe instead of the assumed tobacco), make sure that you include it in your description. 2. If you are unsure about something, or if you think somebody may have left out a detail, it never hurts to ask them OOC, or in case you mess up (like I did) then this is one of the few situations that, with the permission of the group, it's okay to retcon.

-For Those Who Know Better:


It can be trying to interact with someone who keeps letting their feelings or knowledge OOC bleed into their character's life. I don't think that needs much more of an explanation. This is not, however, an excuse to completely lose your temper and beat them into a senseless puddle (not even if they use the telepathy excuse). Depending on the person in question and your dwindling amount of willpower, there are a few options you could try:

1. Politely explain in an OOC whisper that what they are doing is very much breaking the basic rules of  role play (and the poor, battered fourth wall) and how they can work around this ("You should totally go read this awesome blog I just found!"). The person may be new and honestly not know that they're doing anything wrong. Getting angry at them will only put them on the defensive and may even turn them into a dreaded Griefer. Nobody wants that.

2. Dismiss or ignore what their character is saying IC, just don't be too rude about it. If they insist on knowing that you are the Dread Pirate Wesley and you would really love to maintain your disguise of a simple farm boy, go ahead and tell them that they probably heard of another Wesley who is conveniently on another continent. If they insist, then do your best to steer the conversation in the direction of those lovely daffodils growing on the side of the road. Alternatively, you could ponder out loud that perhaps your new friend is a complete and total whackjob and maybe you'd better alert the guards before he does something rash.

3. If all else fails and the person is exceptionally thick and/or persistent, then you may fall to your backup plan: A convenient list of excuses to get the heck out of dodge. Simple, believable, and requiring you to leave right now with no further explanation. Fire alarm, emergency guild meeting, tornado warning, pet turtle on fire, roommate stole your cookies, sudden attack by geese, Spock appeared in your living room, etc. Or you could ask a nearby friend to come over and whisk you away because "OMIGOSH, Elle fell off a cliff again!" It seems cruel, but if you can't get through to this person and your patience is wearing thinner by the second, then logging off to play an alt they don't know about is a lot kinder than chewing their head off.

Lambsies, I am sorry if those last two options offend you. Please realize that somebody who has been role playing for years has come across more idiots than genuine newbies and because of this we have short tempers about this sort of thing. Many of us are very patient and even helpful if you give us a chance, but even we have our limits. Since RP flexes the mighty brain-muscles of word manipulation, we know how to RAWR with the best of them and some people I know could make you cry without trying. If you show an attempt to listen to our explanations and politely restrained gripes, then most of us will be more than happy to show you some leniency, but this is the internet we're talking about here. Thinly veiled hints that you're doing it wrong and sudden "power outages" are among the more merciful of outcomes.

We're off to see the wizard!

In fantasy settings, when something seems out of place or cannot be explained, the age-old answer is to simply say "A wizard did it."

"How do you even get a halfbreed of those two species?!" A wizard did it.

"This timeline doesn't match up here." A wizard made it happen.

As infuriating as this answer can be, it's important not to forget its true meaning: not to get so hung up on the tiny inconsistencies of a plot that you can't enjoy the story as a whole.

Sometimes the answer is that there is no answer; things don't make sense, and that's okay. That's what fantasy is all based on. But when you are in the position of writing fantasy, anything that can make sense should, even if not immediately or obviously, or you risk losing the reader. When you role play fantasy (or pretty much anything else in fiction), you need to balance the two. How do you avoid the already present wizards without adding too many of your own? The great role players know how to do it. Whether or not I'm one of them is something you can decide for yourself, but I have picked up a few useful tips over the years and maybe you'd like to know them.