[Orrin]

I think that trying to "encourage" role-play is basically a waste of time. You either make a game where everyone is expected to role-play and plan accordingly, or just let people do whatever they want.

If you're going to require role-play then you need to be clear about what you expect from players and do your best to support their efforts. You need to give them all the theme and setting material they need to create characters and stories, as well as any coded support they need. Frequent staff run events and interaction helps too.

I'm not a fan of rewarding role-play with points or loot or whatever. I've yet to see a system that wasn't either highly susceptible to being gamed or riddled with accusations of favouritism. Most of these systems seem to be an attempt to force role-play onto games that are more about levelling or loot and IMO this is the source of a lot of the frustration some people have with these types of games.