RP is far more than emote lengths. Character history, choices made while in game, clothing worn, food eaten, everything you do in character is part of your RP. Not just your emotes. So, in an attempt to return to the more complex and interesting discussion on rp that made me start reading this thread, I'll toss in my two gold coins.
Histories mean everything to a character, imo. So, here is my too long rant on them:
They should include:
Living relatives, though rarely other PC ones.
Non-traumatic or dramatic histories
Full rp of a history once in game, no matter how traumatic or not you make it
Characteristic poses based on that history
Goals based on the character history
Since none of us play newborns when we arrive in game, we should all have backgrounds. “I have amnesia.” “Ogres (druids, vampires, werewolves) murdered my family.” “My parents deserted me as a child and another race raised me, which explains why I do not seem to know any of my racial customs.” “A monster raped me and I had a baby I abandoned and my family hates me for it now.” (Yeah yeah, getting into the more farfetched ones ::giggle:
We have all heard them, seen them, and even been them more times then we can count. The five things I listed above are, imo, vital to whom your character is today. When you walk into that world, have a realistic background. One that has living relatives is very enjoyable, because you can miss people, go visit folks (during those times you are away from the game for a week), or receive letters from family and friends.
Not having had some overwhelmingly traumatic event happen before your arrival permits the things you experience once in the game to have a much greater impact on the character. Example, if Crystal, the lonely human whose entire family was killed before her eyes sees a dear friend attacked but not killed, she can respond with horror and fear at having the same old same old occur again. She might retreat into herself and essentially recapture who she was when she arrived in the world as a PC. On the other hand, if Christie, a young woman with a mother she writes to each week, one very old grandmother who died, and a sweetheart she left behind, sees a dear friend attacked but not killed, she can respond paralyzed by fear and shock, horrified by the sight of the blood, confused about how to respond, scared enough to run. She can spend the next few weeks trying to understand why the violence occurred, contemplating a change of career so she can defend herself should such a thing ever happen again, or even just praying to end the violence in the world. It can fundamentally change her understanding of the world. Crystal, on the other hand, is just continuing down the same path she started on, death, mayhem, misery.
The other problem I see with the very common dramatic and disastrous history is quite simply that keeping it alive is very hard roleplay. If you walk into the world playing a 18-year-old whose family was murdered before his/her eyes when you were 10, how much laughter, enjoyment of others, comfort and trust, is he/she going to be able to feel? Very little, depending on how you have your history play out from that grisly scene at 10. Three months into playing the character though, chances are your character will have made friends, will laugh, will find moments where he/she is enjoying things thoroughly. What permits such a fundamental shift in a character who has had 8 years of struggling and being alone, and then in game time, manages in less than a year to overcome much of this? It puts quite a burden on the IC activities your character experiences once in the game, requiring them to justify letting go of the heavy background. This is also where characteristic poses come in. If you have a character struggling to get over a dramatic background, make your poses show her issues! Or if you decide she is the stoic type who will not let anyone know she is struggling, show that in poses. Do not use hugs, giggles, pouts, or other things in your poses that imply easy going, friendly actions. Particularly avoid those types of socials. They are easy to use and a lot of us get into the habit of them, but if you have created a dramatic background, keep in tune with it when you choose both your socials and write your poses.
Finally, goals that come from dramatic backgrounds tend to be too dramatic themselves and not always something other folks can get excited about helping you reach. Crystal’s goal might be to avenge her family’s death. Something she will likely never achieve, even come close to, and essentially will involve years of getting to be a great fighter. A fairly singular goal that does not involve the participation of many. At most, Crystal can rp with others to find out more about the race/clan/guild that killed her family. However, unless she used something very specific out of the history of the world, other folks will not be too helpful. Christie, on the other hand, might have the goal to learn how to use magic that might be helpful to her family (perhaps they are miners selling fine ores). She hopes to learn to work with haste using magic and to be particularly perceptive to avoid being deceived by rotten customers. Maybe she also wants to learn to fly, to get out of those deep mine shafts quickly when they crumble. As she learns each new spell, she can talk to folks who play merchants in game, figure out if they have the same problems, how they get around them, if the spells are useful. She could rp with someone far more advanced than her to learn how to “teach” magic to those unfamiliar with it. Then she can rp having returned home. She can come back excited that her family was proud; disappointed that she could not seem to teach them the spell very well; worried that they might accidently use it wrong and harm themselves.
Personally, I would rather interact with Christie, even if she is as obnoxiously peppy as the name implies.
Illiandra