Folami's Guide to Roleplaying for Noobs (Part 1.5)

Part One: Folami's Rules for Character Creation (continued)

We've talked about ways to keep yourself from getting overwhelmed and how it's important to start small when creating a character.  By this point you've probably been perusing some websites I linked to in the previous post and have done at least a minimal amount of reading about your chosen race's history and have a general understanding of what's currently happening story-wise in World of Warcraft itself.  You at least have a vague idea of the type of character you want to play, or maybe you already know their personality type and favorite color.  Now's the time to ask bigger questions such as where your character was born and why they fight (or don't fight, as the case may be), and it's time to flesh them out more beyond the simplistic "good" versus "bad" person you envision, which brings us to rule number five.

Rule #5: Keep it simple.

In your travels through Azeroth, you are going to encounter a multitude of player characters, many of whom have written veritable novellas for their characters' backgrounds.  They can tell you in infinitesimal detail what their characters were doing at any point in Azeroth's lengthy history and can account for every major life event as if they'd lived it themselves.  Their character ate a tuna sandwich on rye for lunch the day Deathwing came, and the most description you've come up with is to say that your character grew up in Silvermoon like a million other blood elves you've seen. Don't get discouraged by this because it doesn't mean you're a bad roleplayer, it only means you're either new or just a different sort of roleplayer who doesn't need to write a paragraph for every year of adult life on Azeroth.

Be the hero Stormwind deserves.

Another thing to keep in mind while you discover other roleplayers and their characters is that you're new to this and most of them are not.  Some of the people you encounter have at least a couple of expansions under their belt and have had the opportunity to put quite a few miles on their characters in terms of experience.  The vast majority of those backgrounds have been edited over the years to reflect some of the roleplay they've done, or the people who created a character a week ago have been playing so long that they have a good enough grasp of the lore that they can use it to their advantage.  Practice won't necessarily make perfect, but over time you'll find it easier and easier to update or add to your character's history, or to make up an entirely new character.

It's certainly understandable if you want to have a detailed history, but having one isn't a requirement to start roleplaying.  Also, as someone new to roleplaying and/or new to WoW, I'm going to suggest you do not try to line up your character's history with as many major events as possible.  Remember how I said to start small?  Focus on what's happening currently in the expansion.  What is the most recent thing that's happened that your character could have either participated in or reacted to?  Start there and then think about the personality questions we asked ourselves earlier.  Why is your character suspicious of new people?  What might have happened to make them this way?  Don't worry about making a cliché character (i.e. the angst-ridden, brooding loner) or that you're guilty of an overused trope (their parents died tragically).  For one, fantasy in general is full of clichés and overused tropes.  It's how you spin them and make them yours that makes it interesting.  Secondly, remember you can go back and change whatever you don't like and not every idea you have has to go into the finished product.  This isn't like baking a cake, and it is totally possible to go back and remove the eggs from your "batter" and still be tasty.  (I may be a little hungry while writing this.)

Consider generic events that could have happened in any life.  A child who grew up in Stormwind is still going to have fallen down and skinned their knee at some point, and even orc children have to do chores.  Maybe your mage "accidentally" set their homework on fire when they forgot about an assignment, or your rogue once fell out of a tree their mother had told them not to climb and broke their leg.  It's possible to give your character depth and personality by adding in things to their history that aren't tied to any major event within Azeroth.  For example, I had a dwarf shaman who didn't participate in much of anything in Azeroth's recent history until Cataclysm, which made sense for a member of the Wildhammer clan.  At the time I wasn't terribly familiar with dwarf lore, but I knew her personality as someone who was a healer first and fighter second.  In her background I included a little sentence that said she got her start by bringing home injured animals and, with the elements' aid, healed them.  That little tidbit offered quite a bit of insight into both her past and her personality, and it didn't involve her running off to lay low the enemies of the Alliance.

There's a story here,
but I'm not telling it now.

Whatever history you come up with, no matter how detailed or vague, remember that you don't have to share it with anyone right away.  The reason we think about a background and personality is to help us get to know our characters and try to figure out how they'll react to the situations encountered in your roleplay.  In real life you don't meet a person and immediately tell them your life story and all your hopes and dreams (or at least I hope you don't).  The same applies in roleplay.  While it's likely you'll take advantage of an add-on like MRP or TRP2 which give you space to write out some history, it's not required that you share everything there.  Even if you do, good roleplayers will have their characters be ignorant of who you are and what you've done while you're sitting in the tavern chatting over a mug of ale unless your character directly mentions something pertinent from their history.  (In some cases, they may whisper you out of character and say something along the lines of "Hey, I noticed your character was in X and I was wondering if maybe my character might think you look familiar?"  This is totally fine and even encouraged.  You don't have to say yes, but it can lead to some interesting interaction if you do.)  However, none of this means you have to divulge the tragic event in your priests's life that made them want to be a healer on the battlefield, or about the drunken bet your warrior made with a friend that landed them on a one-way trip to Booty Bay.  These are all things your character can talk about later, once they feel safe enough to share it with the people they consider friends, or maybe you quietly snicker to yourself from behind your keyboard while your friends roleplay trying to get your character to open up about their past.

Finally, know the roleplay you do will take place in the present.  Just as events in your real life have molded you and shaped your personality into who you are today, it doesn't necessarily define you.  Play your character in the present and remember the past isn't always going to be relevant to your story.  Not every other sentence you type in /say has to be, "By the way, my parents are dead!" followed by emoted sobbing.  Your character can be as sad or happy as you want, but you should also be reacting and interacting to the people around you.

Rule #6: Don't panic about mistakes.

You are going to screw up.  Whether it's confusing Illidan with Kil'jaeden or thinking it's totally reasonable for a troll to openly stroll through Stormwind, you're going to do or say something entirely wrong in roleplay.  Maybe it won't be something so obvious, but there's going to come a time when someone will poke at your MRP profile, or read a story you've written and tell you it's not possible.

Don't beat yourself up.  You didn't always know how to construct a sentence.  It took time and a teacher to show you how to do it, and even now you still make grammatical errors or forget that whole "I before E" thing.  I hope when that happens you laugh at those mistakes and correct them, and then move on from it.  Same rules will apply to roleplay.  If you get a timeline of events wrong, or mess up a bit of geography, it's fine.  Remember rule #1 and how I pointed out just how many millions of words of lore there are to read?  Nobody has a handle on it all and even the experts make mistakes, or at the very least have to go look something up.  Don't worry, after the initial embarrassment wears off, you'll be talking with your friends one day and say, "Hey, remember that time I thought Varian was Jaina's father?  That was hilarious and kind of disturbing!"

Corollary to Rule #6: If your mistakes hurt someone, apologize.

Other mistakes you make won't be so funny, and sometimes you can upset other roleplayers by something you say or do in character.  Apologize if you hurt or offend another player.  Full stop.  I'm going into this guide assuming you're not actively trolling your server's roleplay community and that you aren't going to intentionally make an offensive character or spout racist/sexist/homophobic bullshit in /say.  As you are a person who endeavors to be nice and inclusive, please remember that sometimes we slip up and say things we don't realize are hurtful or offensive to others.  It's important to be kind and to take the time to say you're sorry if this happens if the person is willing to hear your apology.  (Don't track a person down and apologize if they leave or otherwise indicate they don't wish to communicate with you directly.  Take your lumps and try to do better next time.)

We'll talk more about roleplaying controversial or sensitive subject matter and in character versus out of character behavior in another part, but for now if a person comes to you with an issue important to them, please try to hear them out.  There are people who will troll; however, the majority of people who speak up, even if they're angry with you, should be listened to.  With any mistake you make, learn from them and try not to repeat it.

Rule #7: Don't steal characters from other sources.

You are not Batman.

Inspiration comes in many forms, and often we find it via the many sources of media we read/watch/listen to.  It's fine if you want to crib some notes from your favorite book or movie character, but take care not to steal an entire character.  To use an example, Harry Dresden is a powerful wizard in his books' version of Chicago.  In Azeroth, he'd be a terrible mage.  Now, if you wanted to make a human mage that has a staff with flame-colored runes that light up when used like Harry's, that's totally fine and is definitely plausible.  You could even have fun experimenting with different weapon enchants to see which animation comes close to making it look like your staff is actually on fire (only if you're not already using that staff for end-game PvE or PvP content, of course; end-game enchants are expensive).

Other roleplayers look down on those who try to bring characters from other genres into Azeroth going so far as to outright ignore them and tell their friends to avoid them, and all for very good reasons.  By now I'm sure you've noticed creating a character for roleplay takes effort and time.  All that time and effort goes into designing our characters inside and out and making them our own.  Stealing characters whole cloth from someone else smacks of laziness and it makes you look boring and unimaginative which means your character would make for a very boring roleplay experience.  If you really want to play Sephiroth, there are online forums and websites where you can do that.  If you want to roleplay as a denizen of Azeroth, work with the resources at your disposal and make a character that's your own.  It's far more rewarding and you won't be restricted by predefined characteristics derived from the source material.

Oh, and if you think your character is obscure enough that no one will know? Remember, we're all geeks and nerds here and odds are someone is going to recognize who you're copying.

Rule #8: Have fun.

Whatever it is you want to do in Azeroth, whether it's raiding, doing challenge modes, or spending endless hours in Alterac Valley yelling at the people who fight in the middle of the road, the goal when we log in is to have fun.  At the end of the day, whatever story unfolds in the course of your roleplay, it's important to remember it's supposed to be entertaining.  If something isn't working out for you or your character, step back and try to figure out what the problem is.  Talk to your roleplay friends and brainstorm some ideas, but don't try to force yourself if something is making you uncomfortable.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, a character or a story idea simply doesn't pan out.  That doesn't mean you're bad or even that the character was bad, it just means it didn't work as intended.  Roleplay is flexible and forgiving, and whatever happens know that you can always try again and reinvent your character.  It won't always be easy and there will be days that are more fun than others, but as long as you still have the desire to keep coming back, that's what matters.

That's it for the rules, but there's way more to talk about!

Now that I've laid out some of my basic rules for character creation, and why it's important to keep it simple and to have fun, we're ready to write our character.  But how on Azeroth do you even begin putting it all together?  Well, in the next post I'm going to show you how I do it and offer a few tips that might help you finally put your character idea into a format you can share with other players. After that will be a post with tips on how to best utilize an add-on like MRP to enhance your in-game roleplay.  And further along the road we'll talk about the types of roleplay and how to go about actually interacting in-game as your character.