Twokinds ARCHIVE Forums

Ok, this isn't a role-play- it's just a general area for question and answer about roleplay etiquette, character creation and roleplay ideas. Ask questions and expound on different thoughts here.

1. Godmodding- where does it begin and where does it end? Some things get confused with godmodding, like secret-carrying characters for example. This isn't godmodding- people in real life can do this really easily, even an Average Joe. Unless your character has mind-reading abilities (which are frowned upon in roleplays anyway) let him keep his secrets until he's ready to reveal them, or does something that would definitely reveal them.

Remember that the reason we have no godmodding rules is not so everyone has some fair competition in an inevitable fight to the death- in an ideal roleplay, we wouldn't have to even institute that rule, because people would be able to have nearly infinite power and still be responsible enough not to abuse it. However, not everyone's perfect, so players will continue to get as close to godmodding as they can, which brings me to my next subject...

2. Universal Roleplay Classes

Below a bit of explanation I've made a list of what I like to URCs, or Universal Roleplay Classes.

There is such a thing. They're probably not all-encompassing, but they're the most common. They come up in any setting, whether it's the year 20 bazillion on planet Gragapoofle and Galactic Defense Troops are battling twenty foot tall Care Bears or if it's Generic Fantasy World "Diarrheania" where you and a band of wanton adventurers who all met at a bar must rebuild the Crystal of the Four Elmos to defeat the dark lord Nylonus, Evil King of Male Tights. They're not "Soldier" or "Battlemage" or "Rogue" or anything of the sort. They're more like personalities than occupations.

Because these are forum roleplays you have the chance to break out of the constant kill-kill cycle that most RPGs fall into, giving you a chance to make something with a little more depth. Nevertheless, we still keep to the kill-kill because it's familiar and easy to play, thus we never get into something more interesting.

Keep in mind these are far from perfect, and most, if not all characters cross from one to another.

Here they are in order of commonness on the local boards:

Rambo: Already explained. If a fight scene doesn't start soon, this character will make one.
-Common, mostly because between-character fights are inevitable and also somewhat enjoyable, and everyone wants to be the main dude here. Almost everyone has some type of direct fighting ability, so most characters might be unfairly stereotyped with this. But let's get something straight- an rp with one Rambo and a bunch of other characters can get really annoying for said Rambo and everyone else. For example:

Character 1: "It seems that the unknown murderer who's slowly been picking us off is one of us!
All: "Who could it be?!?"
Rambo: "Easy solution." *Pull out M4A1 and slaughters the entire party, ending the threat in a sort of ironic yet nevertheless meatheaded ending*

Controversially, a thread full of Rambos can be quite interesting for those who want to relieve some stress.

A good way for a Rambo to work: Don't ever try to be a full Rambo in a serious RP. It's not impossible for Rambos to have personality, but when you put more effort explaining the ninety-five ways your character can kill a human being with their eyebrows when you should be interacting with the other characters, there's a problem.

Batman: "My past is dark and mysterious. That's why I (do whatever this character does)"
-Common due to the fact that dark, mysterious facts are basically a ploy to get people to pay attention to your character in particular. This character is done alot, and is either done really well or horribly so. For example, you have Jason Bourne or Yash, whose dark, mysterious pasts are honestly interesting, and then you have "Mystery person #jillion." They're the people who try to make short bios like "Unknown" or "None." They then attempt to basically write their character's bio in-game with huge paragraphs of people being brutally murdered. What's more, most of these characters are very introverted, which means that the roleplay is filled with massive paragraphs of crap that has nothing to do with what anyone else cares about.

A good way for a Batman to work is this-
-Have a good bio that exposes your past but doesn't expound on it. This way, you don't have to explain that you were in a prison in Mexico for ten years because your wife convinced someone that you murdered babies for a living or something like that. It's already known- but it gives you some filler so your character isn't a cardboard cut-out. Again, full-fledged Batmans rarely work, so always try to have a good reason for them to be interacting with the other characters, or at least one other character.

E.T.: "I fit in this roleplay about as well as Richard Simmons would fit into an episode of U.F.C."
-This happens, usually, for one of three reasons:
1. Attention ploy
2. Player never, ever changes his character but also tries to join any rp that twitches in his general direction
3. All of the above

This isn't necessarily harmful for an rp, but it can be if the said character becomes so close to the limelight that he becomes a main focus, almost always forcing the GM to change his intended tone. This rarely goes well with RPs, and usually sends the GM to writer's block world, which subsequently sends the entire RP to Hell.

Good way to make E.T.s work: This is assuming you just have one type of character (or simply one character) that you ever use. If you're doing it for an attention ploy, there are better ways, like making a character interesting without making him comparatively bizarre.

ALWAYS have a decent reason for him to be there, secret or otherwise. If you always play a robot and you want him in a medieval setting, maybe he was made by inventors long-gone. Nevertheless, there are limits, and One-Character players generally miss quite a few rps.

Einstein: (I know, I'm breaking the fictional character chain.) "We should probably throw a ball onto that lever, causing the elevator to come up and hit the rubber duck stuck in the rafting, which will then fall onto the fan switch, causing that document accusing us all of murder that none of us can physically each to blow into the fireplace."

This is the character who has the solution before nearly anyone else. There's two reasons for this, the first you can probably already guess- attention ploy, godmod, etc. The second is someone who honestly plays more intelligent characters.

Einsteins are generally looked upon as godmodding, the only character type who is probably moreso than a Rambo. An Einstein who honestly uses good reasoning shouldn't normally be confused with a simple godmodder, but those things will happen anyway.

How to play an Einstein: Throw out most other abilities. Being able to reason through things is powerful enough that you won't require just about any other notable strengths. Make sure your character isn't horribly smarter than you, however. You need to at least explain your character's reasoning enough that everyone else believes you when you say you're not godmodding out of handcuffs or whatever you got your character into.

More to come later. g'night y'all.

Due to the potential usefulness of this topic, it has been stickied.

It begins with the 14 year old weapon / spell master and ends when they gain wings, a backstory involving the murder of their family, and they are only upset when it suits them and are otherwise quite happy.


You seem to have forgotten the following group; People with extraordinary skills even for their universe. Often in an RP you'll find a 30-some year old war veteran (The experienced RPer) who has fought and killed before, then you'll find the 17 year old Weapon Master who has the bare minimum of combat training who hands the Veteran their own buttocks within about two seconds of a 'fair' match.

The same holds true with Magic (Namely, a Human Wizard at a young age [Usually with a Daemonic or Angelic parent] who can melt mountains with their "Warm-up" spells).

The worse for the above, in my opinion, are the MIXES of the two (You'll actually find them every now and then) who ALSO have an absurd rank or power for their being. "A Half-Daemon Boy Master Battlemage who rules a town that adores him in a world where Daemons are percieved by nearly EVERYONE as evil and hunted down" would not be that hard to find on some Forums or in some RP's; heck, I can name at least one forum now where such type of characters are considered 'low-tier' by their so called 'peers'.

Whew, got that out of my system. Now it's only a matter of time before this either gets applause for the truth, deleted for its somewhat rantish nature, or I get yelled at by someone on this forum for insulting their character.

There is nothing wrong with this post. It will not be deleted. If you ever feel a post may be deleted, kindly PM it to me first, and I will review it for you. ~Yash

This kind of goes with the above, though it deserves its own mention:

RP characters who're more powerful than the Canonical 'Top Dogs' in their universe.

For example, Ghargatuloth is canonically Tzeentch's favored Daemon Prince. An RP character claiming to be a Daemonprince of Tzeentch with more power than Ghargatuloth would be, to put it simply, 'wrong'.

Another example would be some FF character put into FFVII with more power than Sephiroth or Cloud. A Morrowind Character with more power than Vivec, Dagoth Ur, Nerevarine, etc. A Halo character with more greater skills than any currently mentioned Spartan / Elite / Marine / Etc.

The reason these can sometimes be 'bad' is they're often either played wrong, or they make little sense in the universe. For example, a Villain more powerful than Dagoth Ur who goes around showing off his powers would be well known in the continuity. A Halo Spartan with better Sniping Skills than Linda would be known as "The Best Sniper".

While these can be done right, they sadly aren't in most cases. Oh, and a final thing to go along with this: Make sure you also know what would be common knowledge at that time. Similar to the above, there are some people who may know more than any other being in that realm about what's about to happen, when none else expect a thing.

One serious problem that I continuously seem to run into on other forums is the lack of grammar... this can lead players to literally misread what your character is doing or even dismiss the post altogether as mumbo-jumbo.

Another form of Godmodding is what I like to call "The puppeteer". Simply put, they come up with their own plots not included or told to anyone, via bio or otherwise, and try to secretly orchestrate the rest of the characters into doing their bidding. Example:

Batty Lun A. Tic looked around, unsure of where to hide the body, before stuffing it behind Jason Victim's dumpster, where the police would find it not five minutes later.

Now, technically this can be used as player to player development, but most of the time, ESPECIALLY if done without the other party or parties consent, this is heavily frowned upon.

Sumor stufz.

3. Inevitable failure anonymous.

Last time I did a post, it was something along the lines of different characters, and I noted that I wasn't doing any of the miserable failure ones. Well, now I am.

Egoist: "I'm so cool, why isn't this RP about me anyways?"

This is the type of person who tries to focus all attention on himself. This type of player is prone to bunny-jacking, "stunting," (doing crazy stuff when there's not enough attention towards him) and, when incited in player to player combat, expects to win, and will probably be a sore loser otherwise.

People like this, luckily, are easy to find. They are most often Rambos or Einsteins, but can be E.T's if necessary and Batmans if they're really uncreative.

Fanboy: "So my character's a spiky-haired ninja with cat tattoos and an orange jumpsuit and he's possessed by a fox demon. His name's Ranuto, not Naruto! and his hair's black! Geez!"

Basically the uncreative of the uncreative. Players like this will impersonate their favorite anime character (and for whatever reason, since it's the internet it will more than likely be anime- though it may also be Drizzt) at every possible moment, usually spouting movie lines. Granted, some of them can be more subtle, and become such that they often fall into our next category...

Stereotype: "My parents are dead and I taught myself karate, does that make me cool?"

These are people who you could have sworn you've seen before. A million times. I'm not sure if I should put this in utter failure, because sometimes people pull off commonly used positions rather well. However, when it's obvious that it's not because they're trying to breathe new life into an old genre, but they're just too lacking in the brain department to think of anything else, then it's obvious that they're not exactly going to strike a good deal.

What to do in case of finding these guys:

Check all character sheets before allowing people to join. Do not be afraid to say what needs to be revised. It'll be a better experience for everybody.

Yash is active, trustworthy, and helpful. Feel free to use the power that is GM when it comes to deleting and editing posts.

Hm, a thought:

If one has the spare space on their computer / good enough organizational skills, could one request a full profile PMed to them, yet only make the most brutally neccessary things public?

For example, say I make this profile:

Name:
Age:
Race:
Personality:
Appearance:
Equipment (Public):
Equipment (Hidden):
Background:
Special Skills:
Weaknesses:
Other:

Now, say I remove everything beneath "Equipment (Public):" when I post it in the thread. While someone could view the neccessary things (what age group they are, their species, how they look, easy-to-notice items, etc), they WOULDN'T be able to see things that wouldn't be common knowledge.

This could easily remove the trouble of other players knowing too much about the character. If the RP maker themself didn't even trust themself with such knowledge, they could just ask a friend to store the full profile and give them the 'public' pieces.

If done right, one wouldn't have to worry about either god-modding (Hm, this character has a weakness against Horseradish. Better 'accidentally' put some in with their rations), lying about the profile (I never said I only carried three swords! There was a fourth and a dagger hidden in my pants! No, I didn't just change it!), or someone forcing themself into another character's background.

What about creating a NPC for the GM? i've found these to be common:

1. Redshirt-the guy in the background who dies. About as important to the overarching plot as an extra to a movie. Examples include stormtroopers, bandits, etc.

2. Princess-protect them, or it's game over. Usually the target of the bad guys.

3. Pupeteer-the guy manipulating everyone. usually a shadowy bad guy.

4.Deus Ex Machina-"I can solve all the problems." really bad writing. Try coming up with a good reason for them to not save everyone.

5.Everyone of the Universal Roleplay classes.

I find that it's best to mix the groups, like a Princess character who has extreme, demigod level powers that they don't know how to use.

I agree with Zso's idea fully, and everything else seems to bee in shape, but I've got a character type that I don't see a lot of, but it's probably my favourite type;

The Wingman (a.k.a. Haruno Sakura, pre-shippuden): I want to help, but I can't, so I'll just sit this one out."
-Basically a character that isn't very strong, to the point that the other characters are practically demigods to this character. That's not to say they can't defend themselves, but against skilled opponents, they would be at a severe disadvantage. It's not used very often, I think, because people don't like having to pretty much always rely on other characters for protection.

However, this type of character is all about character interaction, so they can easily be the group's strategist or moral support, or even comic relief, which can make an RP that much more interesting if the person knows how to play their character well. If they don't, the character becomes both useless and boring, which can hurt the RP overall.

Also of note, this type of character is a great candidate to receive some sort of power from the GM. For instance, say the group finds a magical weapon and the wingman touches it first; this could mean that said weapon is now bound to the wingman, only functioning for them. It's best if this increase in power isn't too great, so the player and GM should decide the ramifications via PM beforehand.

I don't mean to intrude, but perhaps this character sheet layout could come in use universally for RPs.



And here is the sheet when viewable.

Name:
Degree: (Basically, what does said character do for a living? Like swordsman?)
Gender:
D.O.B: (Date of Birth. Time does go by in-game. Could be years.)
Element: (Base elements like fire, water, wind, earth, light, or dark.)
Race:

Appearance: (Describe to your utmost ability and/or use an image.)

Background: (Explain a rough story of your character's origins.)

Personality: (Just list some strong personal traits if you wish.)

Power: (Defines the over all attack force of the character, rank E, D, C, B, A, or S from weakest to greatest.)
Strength: (Defines the over all physique and brawn of the character.)
Endurance: (Defines the defense, health, and resistance of the character.)
Agility: (Defines the movement speed, dexterity, and reflexes of the character.)
Wisdom: (Defines the learning ability and amount of of knowledge the character has.)

Equipment (List off the character's personal effects.)
Armor: (List the various pieces of armor the character may have on if any at all.)
Weapons: (List the weapons your character may have. 3 suggested limit.)
Accessories: (List any items like, charms or pendants that would help the character in some way. If they have no use, leave that in the Appearance field's description.)

Abilities (Explain the magical or special techniques of a character. 6 max limit.)

• (Name of the ability.) - (Description of how it's cast and what its effects are.)
• (Name) - (Description)
• (Name) - (Description)
• (Name) - (Description)
• (Name) - (Description)
• (Name) - (Description)

Now many RPs may not have some of these fields. My simply suggestion is to "gray" out the ones you wont use. (Or cut them out form the sheet altogether. I's your choice.) I hope this will come into use.

NOTE: It is advised that if you want to use this, please copy the code exactly as shown in the CODE box. I often notice some people who use this often mess up the LIST tag for the list of abilities and instead of having the bullets, they get asterisks.

That's a good idea, only thing is some of us have characters that don't go by D&D type stuff. I wouldn't know the first thing about trying to put stat values to my characters.

True enough, but the creator could always set their own rules for the numbers, like a score out of 100 for each, and perhaps a maximum overall, so that characters are more balances.

So if the creator wants the RP to have pretty average characters, they can set the max at 300-330, averaging 60-65 per stat, to be arranged as they person pleases. Likewise, if they want more powerful characters, they could set the max at 375 (75 per stat).

Overall, the numbers are just for comparison, so it wouldn't matter it the scale was out of 73.5 instead, because only the relative difference in values matters. This also allows GMs to make 'boss' style enemies for the RPers by setting their max stat values higher than the RPers' characters'. This way, the RPers recognize how tough a particular enemy is and know that they need to work together to win.

Similarly, people have different views as to what each letter entails.

To some, a 'C'-class Psychic might be "Pick up a 15lb object a dozen meters away and float it my way." For another, it might be "Rip the room asunder while debris floats around me at hypersonic speeds deflecting any attacks."

That, for example, isn't a good scale to use. One pre-set in the RP is nice, but the problem is they either tend to be too broad, a rare power level is chosen often, or you just have to spend too much time making your's "unique" compared to the other RPs.

Similarly, "Strength" goes hand in hand with "Power", for the most part (excluding wonky FF-Physics where you can cut apart buildings but can't break a fething sword).

Lastly, the weapons limit is a bit, well, 'extreme'. I think I understand what you meant (Main weapons, such as Spears, Swords, etc), but the way it is now a trio of Flintlocks on a "Festooned" Pirate would be their max (This is just an easy to think of example). Perhaps if you gave something like specific slots for your clothing, what the weapon is, etc (Again, however, this does pose a big deal of work for the RP creator).

Please please please please please please remind me when I said it was a numeric system... *Facepalms and sighs* :( I thought I was very very explicit with the explanation.I was copying and pasting from my own forum. By limit of three, I simply am meaning to imply that should be a generalized maximum of weapons. (After all, most weapons will effectively weigh down a character and act like there's no encumbering effects. (IE jumping at full ability or running full speed.) Seems unrealistic, about three should be fine for a fully functional character. I'll edit the description to say it suggests 3, not issue that as a rule as it sounds like.

Most of the time, I can understand this. That was just one of the few examples I could think of that would need addressing before one used the layout.