Guide to Roleplay

Roleplay is another way for players to experience our server and get immersed in the world we have built. As a beginner it can seem confusing and hard to understand, so we made this guide to help you learn and become a capable roleplayer! At the end of this you should be able to understand roleplay terminology, how to act out combat roleplay with dice rolls and more!

Character Terms

Roleplayer

The 'roleplayer' is the person at the keyboard playing the character.

OOC

This stands for 'Out of Character'. This refers to anything that is happening out of roleplay, such as something the roleplayer is saying, not as a character.

OC

This stands for 'Original Character'. Your OC is the character you have created to roleplay as.

IRP

This stands for 'In Roleplay'. This refers to anything that is happening in roleplay as characters. It is the opposite of OOC.

Throwaway

Throwaways are small characters that are often made for interesting backgrounds or situations where a specific role is needed. Sometimes another player might need a doctor for one of their roleplays so you could always play a 'throwaway' character who will be there for this situation and then not be played afterwards. Some people have recurring throwaways who only appear in situations they're needed in and aren't played elsewhere. It's important to make sure throwaways are realistic though, to prevent any powergaming or metagaming.

Roleplay Terms

Powergaming

This is a term used to describe a situation where one person's character is controlling another player's character without their permission. This is not allowed because you are only allowed control your own character

Example of Powergaming

'My character threw a rock at your head and killed you.' - This would be powergaming because you just killed someone's character without giving them any chance to do anything, such as dodge the attack and have a chance to survive. Situations which result in some sort of control over another person's character must be agreed on by the roleplayers involved.

Metagaming

This is a term used when someone has their character know things that the character did not find out in roleplay. This is not allowed as it can be used to ruin other players' storylines and general immersion, and is essentially roleplay cheating.

Example of Metagaming

The Fire Lord has died and it's been kept in secret so the Fire Nation doesn't go into mass panic. I know this information out of character and go tell other characters about it in roleplay without my actual character finding out about the death. - This would be metagaming as my character doesn't know the Fire Lord has died. Even though I know about it out of character, I can't have my roleplay character know this without actually finding out about it in roleplay first.

Godmodding

This term is used for characters who have unrealistic powers and skills they didn't work for. This is not allowed because you have to work through roleplay to achieve rare abilities or master something. You can find the information about how to do this for each nation on their mastery pages. It is important that characters work for their skills and still have flaws.

Example of Godmodding

My character is a master firebender who knows combustion bending and how to lightning bend. He also is really good at telling when people are lying so it's impossible for people to plot against him. - This would be Godmodding because the character is a master and knows extremely complex and rare skills which they haven't worked for, which gives them an extreme advantage over others.

Mary Sue

This is a term for a character who has no flaws at all and is absolutely perfect. This is not allowed because we want to keep roleplay realistic and fair, so having a character without flaws wouldn't abide by that.

Example of Mary Sue

My character is the smartest man in the world who also knows bloodbending and mastered waterbending at the age of 5. If anyone threatens him they will get killed instantly. - This would be a 'Mary Sue' character, as they have no flaws at all. It's important that characters aren't perfect and are kept realistic by having certain flaws to them.

Tip

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you think someone is doing one of these things, make sure to let them know. That way you can discuss it and explain what things might need to be changed to fit this criteria. If you are confused about any of these terms, you can always ask other roleplayers!

Roleplay Speech

Speaking in Character - It's important you make your in character speech obvious so that people don't think you're speaking out of character. We ask you to use roleplay chat channels and it's advised to use speech marks when your character is speaking. For example: "Hello!" He said as he waved.

Performing Actions in Character - When performing actions as your character it's important to differentiate it from speech to avoid confusion. There are two ways to do this: You can use asterisks (*) before and after the actions, or just not use speech marks to show you aren't speaking. For example: *I bowed to the King.* "Hello, sir.", or I bowed to the king. "Hello, sir."

Speaking Out of Character - In roleplay scenarios you need to make it clear when you're speaking out of character. You can do this by speaking in the local channel rather than the roleplay channel using /ch local. You can also use brackets around the words you are saying out of character. For example: I put some dirt in his sandwich. ((This is going to be so funny!

Roleplay Channels

Please make sure you are using the right channel when roleplaying. If you are roleplaying in-game, do it in /ch roleplay so people know you are roleplaying. If you are roleplaying on Discord, make sure you carefully select with nation and which channel you'll be roleplaying in to avoid confusion.

Combat Roleplay

Combat Roleplay is something people find themselves in a lot. It's a really fun way to have your character get through fights and learn combat without it being unfair. Acting out combat roleplay can be confusing at the start, but this should teach you exactly how to do it.

It's important you don't break the rules on godmodding and powergaming as that would completely ruin the fairness of combat roleplay. This means that whenever you are doing combat roleplay and haven't got permission to directly kill or badly hurt someone, you have to leave room for them to react. Instead of saying 'I hit and pierce you with a really sharp ice spike', you would say 'I lift a sharp ice spike and attempt to hit you in the shoulder with it'. This leaves room for the other person to evade, dodge or react in any way they want. No matter how strong your character is, you are never allowed to control someone else's character without their permission. Sometimes this can lead to combat roleplay lasting a very long time if both players are keen on not letting their character get hurt, which is why some people prefer to use rolls.

Rolls

Rolls aren't required when roleplaying, so it's important to discuss with the other person if you will be using them or not. Rolls can be done in all our Nations' Discord servers, so it's important to check what command that nation uses for dice rolls. We usually do rolls out of 20, so you'll get a random number between 1 and 20. The lower the number, the worse the action is.

If someone rolled a 20 when throwing a boulder and you rolled a 3 for your defence, their boulder would hit you as they had a significantly higher roll. Some people don't like to use rolls as they find their combat roleplays are more interesting and realistic when they do it themselves. It's important to note that if you don't use rolls, your character should still take a few hits here and there even if they're a master.