What is roleplaying?

This is a beginner's guide to roleplaying, which will go from the basics of what it is to the more intricate aspects, such as the preferred typing and tense conventions. A guide to roleplaying etiquette can be be found on the rules page.

## What does roleplaying mean?

Roleplaying, or RP, is the art of taking on a character and acting as them. For this server specifically, it means taking on the role of one of the residents of this fictional world known as the Land of Souls, and acting and speaking as if you were them. This means that your character should not have the same knowledge you have, or even the same ideals. Often, but not always, people will model their character to think very differently from themselves, and to have a separate personality, in order to explore different aspects of the world and story that they are taking part in.

In essence, it is the creation of a living story, where everyone is their own actor, writer, and director, and all have the capacity to drive their stories in whatever direction they choose (provided, of course, that it fits the theme of the world).

## How do I get started creating a character?

To get started creating a character, try to think of a backstory that might be interesting to develop off of and build a story from. As you become more familiar with the world through playing, you will likely be able to better integrate your character(s) with the environment and society, but to begin it is most important to have a general personality and economic status.

This world also features a couple of playable fantasy races, a map, and an extensive list of skills/spells that you can learn, which may be helpful in the character design process.

It is also advised that you find or create some sort of skin that is fitting for your character, but that is not required, as we want to make this experience as accessible as possible!

## What should I avoid doing?

In general when roleplaying there are a couple of things that that generally should be avoided. The main ones of these are powergaming, metagaming, and making people uncomfortable.

Powergaming is when you force actions upon people withuot giving them time to respond in-character. A simple example of this that isn't very harmful is if you say /me shakes your hand, as opposed to /me extends a hand for a handshake, the latter of which allows the other party to accept the action or not. A much more important example of this is if you force RP-battle without consent, or kill another person's player before giving them a chance to respond (for example, /me decapitates you).

Metagaming is when you say things that your character wouldn't know as your character. Infringements can be talking about technologies that do not exist, . Occasionally, it can be used for comedy, which is of no issue (e. g. referencing real-world countries that do not exist in the game world), but it cannot be used in a serious or RP-affecting way.

The last one should be fairly self-explanatory, but avoid putting people into situations that they are uncomfortable roleplaying. This can be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, but do consider it before doing anything rash in roleplay. That said, you should still bear in mind that this world comes with a violence label (as you could probably tell from the powergaming section), so if you dislike that, then this may not be the ideal place for you.

## Typological Conventions:

* Quotes ("text") denote character speech. It is not necessary to use quotes when your character is speaking, but it can be helpful to differentiate
* Asterisks (\*text\*) denote character actions. The commands /action or /me can also be used, however asterisks are useful if you have an action between speech. On occasion they are used to denote thought or feeling, but this is discouraged, as your characters thoughts should be communicated directly/through action or not at all. You can, however, use it to display emotions.
* Parenthesis (either: (text) or ((text) denote out-of-character discussion in regional chat. Normally, OOC discussion is done in /ch ooc, the out-of-character chat channel, but sometimes if you just want to do quick out-of-character discussion with the people you're RPing with, parenthesis are the way to go, as they can be used regardless of the chat channel.
* Chat channels are used to separate certain types of discussion. Out-of-character chat with the whole server has a reserved channel, but other channels are based on distance, as a way to simulate volume. You might chat in a range of 100 are yelling, or you might chat in a range of 5 for a whisper. A full list of chat channels can be found here.

#### Examples:

* Quotes: /action picks up the book and opens it, inspecting the pages. "You're sure this is from the ruins? I didn't think anything could survive that long."
* Asterisks: I don't know. \*He shrugs.\* I'm just telling you what I saw.
* Parenthesis: ((Oh wait sorry brb

## Important things to remember:

You are not your character, and other people are not theirs. If you have an IC (in-character) grudge, then don't bring it to OOC (out-of-character). Similarly, if you have an OOC grudge with someone, try to keep it off the server — you don't want to make other people a part of it, and people don't want to hear about it.

Yeah pretty much just don't be a jerk, respect other people, and have fun!