Roleplaying Etiquette

Roleplaying is a fun part of D&D, and while not a requirement to participate in the server, we have plenty of roleplay text channels for your characters to hang out around Phandalin and Waterdeep, get to know each other, and make friends, enemies.... and sometimes even more, with the other members of the Guild.

When Roleplaying in the text channels, there are a few rules we ask you to follow to keep things fun for everyone involved.

## Channel Usage

* **Public Roleplaying Channels:** The public RP chats are for any character to join in. These represent the "public" areas of the world, where you can stumble across anyone and anything.
* **Overflow Roleplaying Channels:** These RP chats are for when you would like to take an RP scene and limit the people who can interact with your characters. For example, if your character and another person's character go off deep into the woods to have a heartfelt conversation, you can (but are not required) to reserve an overflow to ensure that your scene does not get interrupted.
* **Campaign Roleplaying Channels:** These channels are locked to characters in a campaign only (and are often only viewable by the characters in those campaigns.) You may roleplay in these channels when your campaign DM permits.
* **RP Voice Channel:** In this channel you may roleplay with other players using voice chat. Please note that all AG rules are still in effect in this channel.

## Do's and Do-Not's of Roleplay

* **Do** describe your character! When roleplaying, describe what your character does, and how they interact with the environment or other characters. Try to keep the intent clear, much like you'd do during a game session
* **Do** have your character leave an area if you know you are not going to be participating in the roleplay any longer. Please do not leave your character idle in the middle of a conversation. If you character does end up idling in a public chat, they are considered to have left the area after **eight** hours of inactivity. This rule does not apply to the Overflow Roleplay channels.
* **Do not** metagame. In character thoughts may be described by another player using narration, but they are by no means to be considered In character knowledge.
* **Do not** join an overflow roleplay in progress that you have not been invited to join.
* **Do** end your overflow roleplay scenes with some form of line break. This allows overflow channels to be freed up for other people to use. As these scenes can take upwards of weeks to complete, it's hard to know when one has finished without a line break.
* **Do** use your character's stats when making rolls! Making rolls is not required for any action other than attacking and spellcasting, but making rolls can spice up an RP scene, placing your fate in the hands of the dice! If another player character requests your character to make a roll or check to determine information, please do so with the respect you would give your DM had they asked you to make the roll. In the event of a dispute, settle it politely if you can, and if you cannot, please contact a mod.
* **Do** use insight rolls before asking for deception or persuasion rolls. On this same vein, you are not required to roll if your character is lying, unless directly contested with an insight roll.
* **Do not** god mod. If your character attempts to control another player's character's actions or speech, this is considered against the rules. For example, grappling a character without allowing them to roll, or casting a spell that targets a willing target without the player's character actually being willing. There is no fun in forcing players to have their characters do something that they do not want to do. When in doubt, ask out of character first.
* **Do not** roleplay your character in more than one public location/chat at the same time. Overflow channels don't count for this rule, since they are semi-private.
* **Do not** roleplay more than one of your characters in the same location/chat. Characters that belong to a singular player cannot interact with each other, even through any kind of roleplay. They can establish a minor relation or opinion of each other if it makes sense (ex. one of the characters is well-known). Overflow channels don't count for this rule.

## Text-RP Formatting

When roleplaying over text instead of voice, it can be hard to navigate the formatting rules. We utilize discord's formatting coding to separate in character, out of character, and out of character talk.

As a standard in the AG all narration, actions or emotions you wish to express as a character should be placed between two asterisks ( \* ); this will italicize the text in Discord. This is one of the most flexible tools you have in your roleplaying kit. You can use it both to describe actions, how your character feels or the manner in which they express words. Example:

*some hot water onto separate mugs laid across the bar*
"Would anyone like some green tea?" *she said with a gentle tone looking around at the various people in the room*

**Conversation**

As a standard in the AG all dialogue should be placed between double quotes ( " ). Example:

it?"
**Attendant**: "Kind of, Attendant lays out some of the parts of it on the ground and then falls on them"

**Whisper**

To whisper to someone you should place the whispered text between grave accents ( ` ). This adds a background to the text. When whispering to another character please make it clear with an “Action” (text between two asterisks: \*) who you are whispering to.

Example:

**John Doe**: *John Doe smiles uncomfortably and leans close to Yorick’s ear* ``Did you just fart?``

**How to emphasize or add tone to a speech**

Note: The following examples are meant to serve as examples/showcases of how you could add exotic language in the middle of text roleplay to further encourage its usage. Sometimes players want to emphasize specific words or the tone in which they say a certain phrase. While this can be expressed within an Action (example: he retorted with a harsh tone) it doesn’t allow for nuance within a line of spoken dialogue.

With that in mind here are a few examples of things we suggest alongside some recommendations on what to avoid.

This example adds an italic styling to a single word, which is the same as how we style Actions. We believe that for isolated words or pairs of words you can italicize them without causing too much confusion but we strongly advise against doing it for a whole sentence.Rather than doing that try to communicate the tone of the speech with an action.

**Example 2: Loudness/Harshness**

"She did WHAT now?"

These examples help communicate loudness. We recommend you use double asterisks more than the capital letters because it iseasier to read bold text than text written entirely with capital letters.

**How to converse in Exotic (Non-Common) languages**

When having your character speak in another language, please indicate what language using brackets like this. ( { } )

Here is an example:

**Random elf**:{Elvish} "Go kiss an orc!"
**Attendant**: "Oh okay... owta micla..orcu.. It almost sounds like orc, pointy ear language is funny!"

In this case, the two exotic languages were indicated with brackets, while common was not.