Welcome to The Independent Order > Hall of Guidance

RP Guide for TIO Members

<< < (2/3) > >>

Achkaerin:
Planning an RP

Useful Contacts Achkaerin, Libby, DaveIronside, Lakhzovia

A lot of good RP comes from good planning, sometimes building up over a long period of time, over multiple threads. But whether it be a single thread or a long term story line the principles are the same. And here are some tips to help you better plan your RP.

1) Work out Endgames - As mentioned in a previous entry it's important to know where you're going with an RP but be aware that when it comes to RP planning it pays to have flexibility at all times that includes the ending. This is simply because you don't know what other people are going to post and that ultimately affects how the RP progress's, it may be the case that what you originally thought was going to happen ends up not happening. Multiple endgames also help keep things unpredictable.

2) Curve balls and Red Herrings - Curve balls are basically plot twists. I always like to have a few surprises in store to throw people off, note this is done in an IC sense. So you shouldn't be using this as a means of sidelining people but more to throw something unexpected at them to keep them on their toes.  A red herring is something more akin to disguising where a plot is going, the best way of describing it is misdirection you set something up somewhere to distract from the real focus. Generally these may need a little OOC discussion with people involved.

3) Have an out - If an RP gets out of hand i.e. so far removed from the intention for example an archaeologically dig turning into a war zone (oh the memories of Fallen Angels) always have a means of getting either back on track or ending it.

4) The retcon is a last resort - A retcon is a complete removal of an event from the RP. It is a last resort and should not be used simply because something has not gone the way you thought it would or that you don't like it. It should only be used if an RP has got to the point where a thread through various methods has become skewed or 'gamed'. If using the retcon consider how using the retcon will affect others and previous events.

5) TV shows and films are ok to use as sources of inspiration, but try to remember that things may not play out here exactly as they did in the show/film. For example one may post a story around the attempted assassination of a major figure ala the Jackal. But obviously the relative progress of the story will be different.

Achkaerin:
Characters

Useful Contacts Achkaerin, Libby

Characters are the lifeblood of RP story lines so it's important to discuss how to construct a good character. The template for generating character profiles can be found here here. Which when filled in can generate something like this:
Fleur MishimaTitles"Arctic Fox"
"Queen of Tanks"EducationOfficer Graduate Achkaerin Army Academy (Armored Corp)
High School Qualifications from Valkyria High SchoolPositions Held
Major (Achkaerin Army)
Posting: Achkaerin Armored CorpFamilyMother - Kira Mishima †
Father - Jonathon Mishima †
Grandmother - Gwen Mishima †
Grandfather - Athos Mishima †Links to Important events?Reunification of Safraen
Seaforth Eugenics War (Officer Commanding Battle of St Catherine's)
War of the Enlightenment (Officer Commanding Battle of Border)
Operation NightshadeBiographyShe could do without the pressures her nicknames within the Armored Corp bring her way. She's smart, tactically astute and an experienced officer, having developed many of the strategies that the Armored Corp use. She's the granddaughter of Achkaerin's great general of the Mhorish Sea Campaign in the Great War, she's touted as being as gifted as he was and many things are expected of her.

Queen's Star awarded for "Distinguished and courageous leadership in the face of the enemy."
Hermione Leonidas Order awarded for "Conspicuous Gallantry in action against the enemy"
Now no one is saying that this is something you must do, it is simply a useful tool to keep track of character details, I personally find that having an image to work with helps generate a feel for the character, others may disagree with this but each to their own. What's of great use is the record of what they've done and where they've been so for example looking at Fleur's profile we see she's commanded military forces at two major battles in two separate conflicts, this gives suggestion that she is a reasonably experienced military officer. This will also help others gauge how to act around your characters.

So here are some basic tips for character generation:

1) Every character should have an edge - in short something interesting. What is there about this character that's going to be different from the norm? Do they have a disability? Do they work too hard etc. This does not need to be a negative but it is useful, personally I like to focus each character around an area and generate them based on that, this especially helps in terms of general parameters for how they act - a royal will behave differently to a military officer, classroom teacher etc.

2) No one is perfect - self explanatory there should be a drawback to each character especially the ones that get used the most frequently.

3) Have an initial plan for each character - don't just generate a character for the sake of it, have a plan for them. In other words generate characters as required. I usually generate them with an initial story line in mind, after that it's a bonus. For example Fleur was initially generated in detail for the Seaforth Eugenics War, having survived that conflict when I then needed an armored corp officer for the War of the Enlightenment I was able to use her again.

4) Try to be original - When devising character backgrounds and personalities try to, while being realistic, be original, in short make this your character not a copy and paste of someone from real life or other mediums. I accept not everyone has the time to do this but it helps encourage less predictable RP.

Also remember these two key principles about characters:

1) You as the creator of the character have the final say over what happens to them. Generally speaking this is "No one can kill/permanently wound/seriously harm your character without your consent." however this should be used realistically and carefully, for example if there's a bomb blast and you happen to have a character in the vicinity chances are they're going to at the very least get hurt, potentially seriously. If you've got a military character doing humanitarian work in a war zone and a helicopter comes overhead and opens up then it's good practice to be aware your characters squad will take casualties, generally though in that situation the player who puts the helicopter overhead (assuming it's not you) should not be RPing any casualties inflicted.

2) No one should maneuver a situation to deliberately create a no-out scenario. It should always be possible for a character to get through situations presented to them because the whole point of the story is to write their story though various events of the situation. Creating no-out situations is the easiest way to lose people willing to RP with you. It's a delicate balance which is why communication between various people involved on an OOC level is highly advised.

Achkaerin:
Villains

Useful Contacts Achkaerin, Libby, DaveIronside

As we've just discussed Characters in general I want to hone in on a specific type of character that of the villain, some will refer to them as bad guys, some will think of them as bad guys I don't, I prefer to think of them as antagonists, within the RP villains come in two forms nations and characters, the most common form of villain on Mundus tends to be terrorists the most famous being Kyle Barren leader of the Borland Separatists. The point of a villain is  to generate a story arc, to spark interest, to create something. They should be the product of a similar thought process as other things you generate, they should not be deliberately created red shirts i.e. just there to be shot at and killed because that is not good RP.

If anyone remembers the film Shrek you may remember the line "Ogres have layers." well it is exactly the same with a villain they have layers, this makes them more three dimensional,  more complex. It may sound cliched but heroes and villains are two sides of the same coin a good villain is therefore every bit the equal of the hero for example I love the Sherlock Holmes stories and they wouldn't be as good as they are if Moriarty was not on the same level as Holmes. The point is a developed and believable villain is better than a pin up villain.

So some tips for a good villain:

1) Avoid one off villain's - a one off villain is a villain designed for one event by definition they essentially become useless once that event is over so whether they survive it is irrelevant as they then become lame ducks. Therefore I urge anyone developing a villain to avoid designing them for specific events, yes a villain needs to be introduced and an event is the best way to do that but theme the event around what the villain stands for and then keep the villain around, evolving, developing and then bring them in on another event.

2) Give them a cause - in other words what do they stand for? If you've got a villain opposing a government then the question that will be asked is "Why?" when generating a villain ask yourself that question and if you can only answer with "just because" then you probably need to think about it a bit more.

3) Grey is Good - This is probably the best bit of advice anyone can give about a villain. Do not make it blatantly obvious that they're a villain. If you're going to introduce a villain and with them bring tensions leading towards a potential civil war that's fair enough but avoid making them out as the bad guy because that way you can potentially split the international response which will generate more interesting RP, so employ moral grey as the foundation for the villain, that doesn't mean they don't torture, kill or do other things it just means they're careful how they do it.

4) Villain's are not all bad - in short everyone is different just because someone happens to be lumped in with the bad guy side and therefore a villain does not mean that they are necessarily a villain to the same extent as others, the scale of beliefs are different as is the case in many movements throughout history. It's entirely possible for a villain to have a conscience and to find some things abhorrent they are after all still human.

Villain Nations

I'm going to touch on these very quickly - a villain or 'bad guy' nation should follow similar principles. In villain nations moral grey is an absolute must! If you as a villain nation act in a very overtly bad guy way then you will be treated as such and this will in turn have the knock on effect of limiting your RP opportunities. For example there was a nation called Zachachevania, there was no issue with the nations statistics and such once it was all sorted but the fact that the nation was obviously overtly antagonistic created circumstances where when things did develop there was the 'pile in' effect - whereby all the major players ally against. By comparison consider Kaitaine the way it is RP'd is such that the Truthsayer's may be terrorists or they be innocent victims. This in turn means that the Kaitaine leadership is either heroic in combating what would be considered the greatest terrorist threat on Mundus or they're carrying out a mass genocide. The simple fact that it is a grey area allows for Kaitaine to have a solid standing internationally with similar minded nations while those nations that are skeptical have very little to work with.

Going 'evil' - let's say you've RP'd a reasonably standard everyday nation and now you want to have that country go to the dark side as it were. Sim ple question is how are you going to get there? If you're a Presidential Republic a shock election victory for a party that shares the ideology of where you want to go is probably the best way. If you're a monarchy you've got two options either the overthrow of the royal family or a coup from within the royal family. There are other examples but these are the most obvious.

Let's take as an example the Presidential Republic one - how would you go about it? Well it's all in the planning, obviously you need to create the basis for the eventual winners to have an appeal, this means you have to create the circumstances where the incumbent government is negatively viewed. So a dark secret suddenly being exposed, ministerial gaffe's etc are the order of the day there's also the option of having the eventual winner inspire a movement so stuff like "This government is for the few not the many." and "Banker's President not People's President." then close the polling gap maybe have them debate each other and then spring the surprise.

That gets your villain faction into power you then need to consider how to convert what you have into what you want - this isn't going to happen overnight, do it slowly and gradually remember moral grey is your friend in this let's say this new government wants to suspend certain freedoms - find a plausible reason for doing so, such as clamping down on protests that have turned violent. The more sense there is to the reasoning the easier a time you will have to the point where you may even be able to accomplish it all under the RP radar.

My final bit of advice with villain nations is this - pick your battles, Icly look for situations which are universally accepted as bad but very little is being done, acting in such circumstances strengthens your hand and in theory gets your nation friends.

Achkaerin:
Vignettes

Useful Contacts Achkaerin, Libby, DaveIronside

"What is a Vignette?" I hear you ask. Well in simple terms a Vignette, which we post in this forum, is a short story or series of short stories that add to the RP, usually this is by portraying events behind the scenes as it were, I generally think of them as opportunities for character development and laying the foundations of future story lines, in this way they allow you to RP an event that would if put in Diplomacy and Events otherwise be a one hander (i.e. you're the only person posting). So this would be for example the death of a King or Queen, the assassination of a President etc, in short anything that would not normally require another nation or player. Also if I may refer back to the concept of a Villian a Vignette is a useful tool to introduce and develop such a character.

There are many ways of writing Vignettes, you could have a specific story line in mind and use the thread simply for that story line, alternatively you could focus a thread around a specific group of your characters. My approach to Vignettes is the latter because it suits the way my mind works I compartmentalize so I have a thread for stories about the Achkaerin Royal Family, another for the politicians, one for the space agency etc. Importantly this is my personal preference there is nothing wrong with either approach, what matters is that however you write a vignette works for you.

So what should I write about?

Ah yes the million pound question. The answer is actually quite simple - whatever you like, provided it falls within the RP rules so for example writing a story about a detective in your nation would be fine, something out of the Famous Five would be fine but obviously something out of the Chronicles of Narnia in terms of the wardrobe effect is a big no no.

Are there rules as to content?

Yes there are - some of these may not be as hard and fast since the switch of forums but these should still be decent guidelines.

1) Be fair and respectful to the audience - this is more a guideline than an actual rule. It's common sense that not everyone is going to have the same stomach for violence, torture etc as others. So I encourage people to get into the practice of putting "SPOILER ALERT - POTENTIAL UPSETTING CONTENT" at the top of posts (put in a different color and bold it if necessary) if you're writing something that is quite graphic, this allows the reader to know that there may be something in the post that may upset them, now before you think 'Nanny state' let me explain why I encourage this - many years ago I did character based RP in a different genre, part of the story line we were running at the time involved plenty of 'darker' elements, I 'd been having my evening meal, I came back to the computer and played catch up ten minutes later I read a specific post and felt quite ill because of some of the details contained within. Don't get me wrong it was a quality post but the content was such that it would not agree with everyone hence why I have since advised such things as Spoiler Alerts, this is no way means you can't write such things (provided they fall within the terms of service) it just gives the reader the awareness that the content may be a bit too much for them personally.

2) Sex Scenes - Ok let's get one thing straight right from the start, romances between characters have no issues, there's nothing wrong with characters going on dates, no problem with them kissing, no problem with them touching (within reason), this point is not about the romance element it's about how far you can take things when they get intimate. Now in this regard I want to make something clear this is not I repeat NOT Fifty Shades of Grey, from a story point of view there's nothing wrong with that sort of dynamic existing however as with all sexual elements when you put characters in the bedroom I advise people to be very general about it and avoid being overly graphic.

So what is overly graphic? That's a matter of judgement, what I will say is that I've written erotica style stuff for ten years and I've written in my time a lot of detailed posts is this sort of setting and I have never put anything like that in any vignette here, firstly because it was when we were on Zetaboards a breach of their terms of service, secondly if I could do that here would I? In all honesty I probably would, but I wouldn't do it every story because that degrades the characters involved. Ultimately with this kind of scene focus on the characters thoughts and not necessarily their actions too much. And remember use a Spoiler Alert if you're worried about things.

3) Language - Do characters swear? Yes of course they do. But not to Malcolm Tucker levels, general advice would be one maybe two major swear words per post but swearing rants? No, please don't while it's not against the rules it's a major readers turn off.

Now a point for readers of Vignettes

This is quite important to bear in mind - don't take things personally. It's entirely possible that in another players vignette you may see your characters or nation referenced in some way, now depending on how that persons characters view your nation or characters which means it's possible for such views to be negative, so please remember that. I cannot count the amount of times I've had people messaging me to flag up something they've viewed as unfair when it is simply understandable from an IC context. All characters will have IC opinions of various things and they won't all be positive, so to be blunt this is not a harmonious utopia of a world.

Achkaerin:
Organisations

Useful Contacts Achkaerin, DaveIronside

Naturally as nations develop ICly it's inevitable that they'll make friends with each other, establish close relations, find that they're like minded in certain ways etc. It's also possible that a group of like minded nations, or a group of friendly nations may seek to form what I will for the purposes of this explanation term an 'alliance'. If we go one step further a larger scale organisation is also potentially something that may develop.

Now I want to be clear about two things from the start here

1) No one is obliged to join an organisation - ICly it doesn't mean anything to your nations standing if you're not a member of an organisation. Consider the example of the former nation Union of Nordic Peoples, a nation that had ICly a good standing in the international community but was in terms of alliances and such completely neutral.

2) Please develop organisations ICly - what I mean here is don't allow an OOC viewpoint to shape something. For example the so called Mundus Supreme Coalition was clearly put together OOCly with a clear OOC devised aim. The best way to do this is to ICly develop relations with other nations and then float the idea of something bigger.

The Big Two: CTO And CMA

The Commonwealth Treaty Organisation and the Cross Mundus Agency are what I term the big two organisations, in short think of them as United Nations equivalents. They are both open to all nations to participate in, they are a place mainly for debate on issues. The main difference comes in approach, the CTO historically speaking has taken a more direct approach to situations whereas as the CMA works with nations affected or potentially affected - so for example just over a year ago there was major fracturing of a nation on the continent of Alba Karinya, the CMA effectively went to East Moreland (the nation coordinating the localized response) and asked "Have you got this?" so we see the difference the CTO is a more direct intervention element while the CMA is more supportive element.

Now everyone should be aware that both the CMA and the CTO pass resolutions i.e. decisions on certain situations, regarding what a course of action may be. These resolutions can mean, in the case of the CTO, that a member state is bound by the resolutions terms, so for example let's say that the CTO imposed a strong set of sanctions on Rokkenjima including the ceasing of trading relationships with Rokkenjima, that would mean that every CTO member state was required to cease trading with Rokkenjima and this would be regardless of any other existing treaty or principles of any other organisation. This is an important point because it does add a level of caution to any IC negotiations involving member nations of the CTO especially with characters who place great stock in their word, because it becomes very difficult to give absolute guarantee's of things.

How do I draft a Resolution?

The CTO has a Topic with templates for you to use, the CMA doesn't but as can be seen from this post it isn't that difficult. To all intents and purposes drafting a resolution is basically answering the question "What needs to be done to handle this situation?" so for example if there's a situation where two nations have rising tensions towards each other you may wish to submit a resolution calling for diplomacy to be pursued, peace talks etc. So the first point of that resolution would be the proposal of peace talks, the next question is when, where and who chairs? So that would form the second point.

You would then need to consider "What are you asking the CTO/CMA to do to ensure that the talks happen and are meaningful?" so for example consider this hypothetical resolution along these lines:

1. Requests an immediate cease fire for the purposes of administering humanitarian aid, evacuating non combatants and the wounded.

2. Further Requests that both sides in this conflict meet to negotiate peace

3. Agrees that the negotiations should take place at Wyvern Castle, Gowu on the 10th of April, the talks to be chaired by Sakura Sheppard.

4. Resolves to take other action as deemed necessary by the CTO/CMA to ensure a resolution to the conflict if the negotiations do not take place.

The key point is the fourth one, that's in theory a bit of strongarming to get both sides to the table, it's the sort of thing you hope not to need to trigger but if you have to then you need to be ready with a resolution spelling out what action should then be taken this could be sanctions, military intervention or something else. I advise anyone who ends up drafting this sort of resolution to remember the value of a proportionate response.

How do I create an Organisation?

Exactly the same way you would any other treaty but you'd probably do this sort of thing in the Convention Centre forum. However bear in mind that more nations in the room means more viewpoints so it's possible that you may have to compromise a little more on things. Also when you've negotiated your organisations governing document so Treaty or Charter make sure to post a topic in the International Organisations sub forum titled as the name of the organisation containing as content the governing document and a membership list.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page