Damien Renorette
Shevraethian
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Yeah, sure you're serious. And who am I? The king of Norway?
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Joined: Sept 2006
Posts: 24
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|  | Lesson Seven: The Principle of the Thing
« Thread Started on Oct 5, 2006, 3:35pm » | |
-Hiyo! This is Teki the role-player of Damien Renorette. Again. You have seen about three lessons so far on me helping you improve your writing and (or) role-playing. Today, though, this lesson is entirely on role-playing. Specifically, role-playing canon characters from books, movies, or other such things. And helping those green thumbs who are asking ‘what the hey is role-playing?’ right now.
-This lesson is more like a guide with tips and steps on what to do that can help you rather than being as candid as the other three I’ve posted. I will not guarantee that these tips will work perfectly; I will only say that they should help.
-“Step One: Learn the basic rules of roleplay.”
-This step is the easiest of the steps seeing as it is the first and it is obvious most of the time. Here is a list of most of the rules people have on role-playing boards that you must follow to not be kicked out.
“1. No god-moding or power-playing.
2. No perfects, despies, or n00bs.
3. No chatspeak.
4. Use a form of OOC.
5. Ask to join.
6. Tell me whom you’d like to join as.
7. Literates and up only, please.
8. No harassing others in OOC.”
-Now, some people have more rules and others have fewer rules, but this is the basic picture that most people have. Okay, so I know some of you do not understand these terms, so I will explain them to you.
“God-moding: Making your character all powerful.
Power-playing: It’s basically god-moding, but it’s sort of like your character is the main character in a book or movie, except in a role-play.
Perfects: Characters who have no flaws and are perfectly good and beautiful/handsome. Most people also call these characters Mary Sues or Gary Stues, depending on the gender.
Despies: They aren’t perfect characters, but they really like another character and they are all over them whether the other character wants that or not.
N00bs: If you don’t know what these are, then I am no help to you.
Chatspeak: The infamous language of the n00bs and the n00b-hunters.
OOC: This stands for ‘out of character’. It basically means that you put your posts in parentheses, like this (( text here )), or put ooc// (ooc;) in front of your text so people know that that post is not in character. Without this system, mass mayhem could be invoked.
Literates (and other terms): There are three levels to role-playing. Semi-lit, Literate, and Advanced-Literate.
Semi-Lit: These people are the bottom of the line on role-playing. They use chatspeak in post sometimes, have horrible intros, and usually don’t care that much about grammar. If you are lower than one such as these, just take a hike. If you are one of these, then you have a long, long way to go.
Literate: This section is past semi-lit and they usually have fairly good grammar and nice intros. But they aren’t experienced or good enough to be Advanced just yet. They still need some practice.
Advanced-Literate: Most of the time, people refer to these as ‘advanced’. Okay, now, look around this site and here you are. Advanced. Proper grammar, dang long posts using description of the mind and body, and dang good characters. This is the big leagues, baby. Just don’t get run over, ‘kay?”
“Step Two: Lurk. Lurk. LURK.”
-Now that you have learned the basic rules of role-playing, you must begin to lurk or watch other players. I suggest looking for literate boards. Why? Because that’s a good place to start. You don’t want to go to a semi-lit board, otherwise you are not going to make it much anywhere. But you don’t want to get on an advanced board because you may be overwhelmed.
-Lurking may last a week, a month, a year, maybe. It just depends on how long it takes seeing other people having fun doing something while you are just sitting there, doing nothing.
“Step Three: Choose a character.”
-Choosing a character is probably one of the hardest things to do in becoming a role-player. I say ‘choose a character’ because this is supposing that you are interested in joining a fan-dom version of roleplay . Whatever you do, though, never do anime. Lordy, spare your life on that. I’ll use Harry Potter, Marauders’ Era as an example.
-I play Severus Snape, James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Sirius Black in Marauders’ Era role-play, but I am my best at dear Severus. Can any of you guess why? It is because he is actually the first character I ever role-played. Ever. In result, it doesn’t matter how short or how quickly I wrote an intro for Sev; it always results in comments about my being brilliant and such. Now, you may be wondering why I am telling you this. The answer is that that’s how good you have to get. You have to get so good that your responses are brilliant no matter how little time or effort you put into it. Of course, I’m not saying anyone can attempt this and succeed, but you can try. Like heck you can try!
-In choosing a character you must find one that you like, that you know a little about, and that you can find some similarity between you and the character. For example, Severus’ parents fought when he was a kid; my parents fought when I was a kid. Secondly, I like Severus because I love the double-agent/traitor/villain characters to death, even though he isn’t really one until he’s a Death Eater, and I can be blatantly sarcastic with him. Lastly, I’ve read all the Harry Potter books at least twice each, most of them four times, so you can’t say I don’t know Snape. So, basically, you have to have something along those lines to work on.
-Also, with some characters you get a history right off for them. Like with Remus and Sirius, you know a good bit about their past, so it’s easier. But with other characters in this division like James and Lily, it is much harder taking note that everyone but JKR knows so little of them. We know James was infatuated with Lily forever and is pureblood. We know Lily is smart, is a mudblood, and hates James’ guts. So, if you wish for a challenge try one of those two.
-Then there are the characters in the middle, like Severus. You know a little about them, like he’s half-blood and he pretended to be pureblood. But the rest is really blurry, isn’t it? This is the best type of character to do, in my opinion. You know enough about them that you already have a skeleton to work with, you just have to give the body organs, muscles, flesh, and blood. Thus meaning that such characters as Severus can be portrayed in many different ways. I will not betray my view of him, but I will say that if you’d like a role-play, PM me.
-For in between characters and hardly-known characters at all, it depends on your opinion of how they were and how they should be when they are adults at what their pasts were or are.
-Note: I used Marauders’ Era because it is what I originally role-played, which is the best to try.
“Step Four: Get started.”
-Now, now, kiddies, it’s finally time to get started. Can I hear an ‘amen’? AMEN! Heck yes, I needed that. There isn’t much to say here except to actually go and find a board, ask if your character is free and, if the character is not taken, join. Or apply your character to the forum. I won’t say that you’ll be perfect the first time or that your intro will be awesome, but you’ll try. When you are done, ask how they like the intro and they’ll say what they think. If they think it was good, then it was good. If they think it needed some work, then work on it a little.
-And that’s it. It’s all I can tell you to do that can help. Once you get started you fly solo, baby! Though if you still want more tips on role-playing then PM me or read the other lesson on here.
“Made-Ups”
-One last thing, if you’d rather have your own character, try for a made up character in any genre you wish. Some role-playing boards may not allow made ups to be certain things. For example, for most Harry Potter boards, vampires, werewolves, animagi, ghosts, and other such things. But you can still make a good made up. Look at some of the characters on this board, though I don’t suggest stealing any of them. It would probably only result in a lot of very gory, very painful suffering.
-Last last of all, here’s the list of tips on becoming a role-player. Good luck!
“Step One: Learn the basic rules of roleplay.
Step Two: Lurk. Lurk. LURK.
Step Three: Choose a character.
Step Four: Get started.”
-Anyway, kiddies, see you next lesson! Sayonara!
-The next lesson that I post will be on your style of role-playing. No, this has nothing to do with the way your character dresses or your ranking as a role-player. It is much, much more to work on than that, though it could lead to your ranking, however distantly.
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"Explore the terrain of the imagination;
capture the smoke within your grasp."
---Teki, roleplayer of Damien Renorette
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