Endora Island

Welcome Tips for RPing! Here you can find some useful advice for successful Role Playing! We have things such as how descriptive you should be, what areas to explore and just how far to go!

The thing that you want to remember the most is that you want other people to know what is in your imagination. You want them to see what you see in your character, in a certain environment or in an emotion.

Throughout the guide, I will be using examples from Endora and fictitious characters (Mary, Joe and Jim-Bob) they will be in blue.

descriptive in your Character

To you, your character is the most important person in the board. The other characters are like second best to your own. And so you must be discript in what you want your character to be doing.

eg- Jim-Bob went into the room, laid on the bed and went to sleep.

Being undescript leaves too much to the other players' imaginations. If you want your thread to be developed you need to have more description:

eg- Jim-Bob became fatigued. His shoulders were slumped and his feet dragged as he forced himself up the stairs of the Tower. He entered his dark room and realized that his crystal blue eyes were already closing. He opened them and the light blinded him. He managed to remove his muddy boots and torn cape before yawning and lying back on the soft, feathered, bed and quickly falling into a deep, dreamful sleep.

This way, the other players know exactly what is going on with you. They know that your character is tired and may not disturb his restful sleep. This gives them more restrictions and therefore more to play with.
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Descriptive in your environment

When you are Role Playing, you are in a specific environment. You want to use your surroundings to the fullest extent. Various items that are in your environment can be used to your advantage:

eg- Mary entered the large room and lit a candle to give it some light. There was a large bed on her left covered with a silky red duvet filled with owl feathers and fluffy pillows propped up on the intricately carved design on the head of the bed. On the far wall was a vanity desk. She went to look in the mirror, but something caught her eye, she went to the window instead and viewed a spectacular sight. The sun was setting lighting the sky in pinks, purples and golden rays.

Later on in the thread, you can add more description to your environment as you need it (and by checking back in the thread, you can remember what is already there.) Although you may think that this restricts your character to a certain surrounding, it provides a better image for the other players. This is your environment that you created, you want people to know what it looks like.

However, just because you came up with the idea, more details can be added by other characters:
eg- Joe entered Mary's room suddenly, to warn her of the impending danger. However he did not see the bump in the rug when he entered and tripped, bumping his head on a misplaced chair in the center of the room.
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Descriptive in your emotion

Make sure that you provide much information to as how your character is feeling. Having an apathetic attitude throughout all of your threads makes it less interesting for the other characters.

You have submitted your character bio, some of these things are difficult to change, for example, your alignment, so let us suppose that Joe is chaotic good and his biggest agrivation is when he sees somebody harming animals.

The Hunter hacked away at the small dragon. Joe could hear the helpless dragon screaming for help and came to rescue it.

The one thing that Joe isn't going to do is ignore the situation, he's definately going to try to help the poor creature, but how does he go about it, the following is an example of how Joe is not going to handle the situation.

"Stop it," said Joe, he did not like what was happening to the Dragon and he stood with his feet apart waiting for the Hunter to stop attacking the creature.

However, the following is an example of what Joe may do:

"STOP IT!" Joe screamed, enraged. Passionately, he stood, his hand on the hilt of his sword waiting to fight. When the Hunter did not cease, Joe pulled his long-sword from his sheath and ran toward the Hunter with both hands clapsing the sword handle screaming.

Now, Joe's attempt may be in vain, or he may be successful but at least he tried his best right?
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Being promiscuous

Pay attention! Remember, by being attentive throughout the entire RPG board, you can add description along with the other RPers. It is a definite advantage to read other RPer's threads to see what they have written and what they have created.

Let's describe Aithne City for example:

Thread Number 1: Jim-Bob ventured into the Elven territory with guards on either side of him. It was dusk but he could hardly tell in the deep thicket of trees. Crumbling marble pillars competed with trees in height. In amazment he beamed at the glowing spiral staircases climbing up the trees and the swinging bridges connecting them all in an intricate city.

Thread Number 2: Mary struggled with her binds and was thrown to her knees on the dry forest floor. Her sweaty blindfold was removed and what she saw took her breath away. Staircases twisted up the trunks of trees and drooping rope bridges barely bowed under the wieght of the people. The houses were made of the strangest materials, sturdy, like stone but light enough to rest on the top of reinforced pillars and the tops of the trees.

Thread Number 3: Joe entered the city of Aithne as if he were an Elven King. The people cheered his entrance and excitment filled the flower woven tree tops and beautifide city, as if it couldn't be beautiful enough. It's people waved bright red cloth flags and danced and sang as if his entire life was one beautiful song. He was ushered toward the tree in the center of the city. He climbed up hundreds of stairs to the largest building resting on both the largest tree and an ancient pillar. It was the building which held the history of the city and all of southern Endora, it was the building in which the greatest sought Elf lived.

Don't RP in the assumption that the story line is your thread and only your thread. By using other's imagination, you can develop a greater environment, feeling and RPing experience!
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Using outside sources

Never think that, when you are Role Playing, you can't use a dictionary or thesaurus. These are two tools that we encourage our players to use in order to get as much description as possible. Beef up your story as much as possible, it helps when you are trying to describe any of the above.

Compare the following:

eg- Mary sat on the river's edge. She felt the water flow through her fingers and could hear the birds sing a tune.

eg- Mary relaxed on a large stone,warmed by the midday's sun, on the calm river brim. She fingered the icy liquid as it rolled through her palm. She listened to the songs of native birds singing an enchanting melody.

Go to Dictionary.com or another online dictionary or thesaurus site if you do not have one of your own. You can also use Microsoft Word if you have it.

Outside sources also help in checking for spelling errors. It can make a thread difficult to read if it does not have acurate spelling and although Ezboard.com does provide a built in spell checker, it can cause hassles. I prefer to use a different method for any errors that I am unsure of.
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Proper grammar and english

Good RPers use proper grammer and don't use the typical Internet slang used when chatting. Also, when RPing it is not a good idea to use l337 5p33k. These things take away from the RPing experience as it is difficult to determine what the character is trying to say.

An example of what not to do would be:
eg-Mary ztood @ da end of da bed, b4 she could zleep, she needed to ajuzt her quilt. :)
eg-M4ry 5t00d @ th3 3nd 0f th3 b3d, b4 5h3 c00d 5l33p, 5h3 n33d3d t0 4dju5t h3r qu1lt.

An example of what would be appropriate would be:
eg-Mary stood at the end of the bed, before she could sleep, she needed to adjust her quilt.

But these thing are mostly just common sense and are rarely used even in chatting.
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controlling other characters and NPC's

When you are playing an NPC character or somebody else's character do not be too controlling. Because you are playing with other people, you want to have an interesting story line, the entire fun and point of freeline RPing with other people is to see what they are going to come up with, even if you're not going to like it very much.

However, if you Role Play a free Non-Played Character too much, it takes out of the imagination from the other people, and it is as if you own that specific NPC. Share the NPC's, it provides for much more interesting Role Playing. Also, you have to be willing to take upon the task to role play an NPC. It's not hard, just tell the story from your own perspective, but say what the NPC is doing as well. This way the NPC is moulded from many imaginations and not just one, as your character and personal NPC is.

Controlling other Characters in Tishras, is forbidden because it prevents the owner of the character from coming out with something imaginative to say about their own character. If you control their character, they have nothing to work from!
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