How to Avoid Bad RPing

No introductions to be found here, just plunging straight in. These are the most well-known offenses.

Godmoding/Godmodding

Doesn't matter how it's spelled. Some people think that godmoding only has to do with having an overpowered, all-dodging, ever-successful character who talks endlessly about how mangly their opponents get before said opponents can post a reaction. It is true that this is one way to godmode, but it's not just confined to fights. It's everywhere.

Even in the most mundane of situations, godmoding can occur. Let's have a random scene here: Faris and Reina are travelling on Faris' ship.

Looks fairly innocuous, right? Wrong. I'm sure you all see it. It's right there in the last line, when I talk about Reina smiling. That right there? That's godmoding. True, all I did was say that Reina smiled at Faris, something that would seem natural for her to do. But that does not change the fact that I am controlling someone else's character. And that is completely and totally unacceptable. What's the point of RPing if you just describe everything the other characters do? It wrecks the fun of not quite knowing exactly what someone else's character is going to do, and it wrecks it for the person playing Reina because I'm taking away her control over her character, and it would piss her off.

The same thing would apply if I had Reina look up, or Reina still sleeping, or indeed if I described anything that Reina was doing if Reina hadn't actually done so yet. Never, never, NEVER say what someone else's character is doing if the player hasn't actually posted it, even if you think the character would do that.

Next.

Metagaming

Another generally common offense. Metagaming is when a player knows something about some character or plot element, and immediately transfers that knowledge to their character without any sort of IC explanation. This is annoying and ridiculously Sue/Stuish. I'm not too sure about that second sentence, so let's have another example starring Faris - this time with her as the victim.

'Kay, so this shouldn't happen. For one thing, Faris has essentially been raised as a man; she's not just "pretending." For another thing, if she kept Bartz, Galuf, Lenna and oh, her crew fooled for so long, don't you think she can fool Rinoa for five minutes? The same sort of thing applies if I was Faris looking at Rinoa and having her think "holy geez, a Sorceress." How the hell does Faris know? And if your excuse is "well, I'm not too familiar with x game so I don't know all this stuff," you shouldn't be dabbling in this kind of metagaming anyway.

And this is a relatively minor thing, too. Don't even think about clueing your character in about what's going on in some other world, or knowing about some plot device that hasn't happened or hasn't happened to them yet, even if a GM has been talking about it OOC. If there is no IC reason for your character to know, then guess what? They don't know! No matter how much you want them to. Save us all the trouble and don't do this.

Copycatting

On forums without linear storylines (i.e. a character can be in many threads at one time), this is more of an issue with people ganking each others' plots and suchlike, but since FFR is linear, that's not really so much of a problem. The copycatting I'm referring to is things like this:

That post is right after Faris', so there's really no reason for Krile to repeat what Faris said. Furthermore, that entire first paragraph is from Faris' perspective, blatantly copypasted from Faris' post. It's redundant, annoying, and thievish. Not to mention that we don't know anything else about what Krile is doing, since all we get about her are those three sentences and nothing else.

Repeating dialogue when there's a swath of posts in between yours and theirs? That's okay, as long as you don't just copypaste the whole thing. Do it from your characters perspective. But there's no reason to repeat every line of dialogue and prose when it's already clear what's going on and who you're interacting with.

So, that's it. Just don't do these things, and you'll be fine.

This post has been edited by Sephiroth on Feb 22, 2011 - 4:43 PM

Being In-Character

If you, like most people here, are playing a canon character, please make sure that they act, think, and behave the way they would in the game.

For example. This is Edge from FFIV. He is in a state of some distress as the Giant of Bab-il is emerging. As you can see, he is not bothering to hide the fact that he is very unhappy.

So if you are playing Edge, or someone like Edge, and the villain transforms into TEH UBER FINAL BOSS FORM ONOEZ, he (or she) probably shouldn't throw a careless remark and draw their weapon. There are characters who do that in FF, and it can be pretty cool, but a Typical Exciteable Hero is more likely to react like Edge up there.

Similarly, if you are playing Balthier and the FINAL BOSS TRANSFORMATION ONOEZ happens, Balthier should not say "s---! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!" Even if that's what you would say (and who could blame you), Balthier and anyone else who is Cool and Collected™ would keep a lid on it.

Garnet should not slap someone for insulting her macaroni-colored outfit. She can think all the snark she wants, but she is not the type to attack unless she is attacked. Similarly, Eiko is not going to be calm and polite if someone insults her outfit.

Please keep people in-character. It's extremely annoying to see someone who was brooding and quiet throughout the entire game suddenly screaming like a mad Blitzball fan. Although sometimes the exigencies and vagaries of RP put characters in a situation where there's no canonical frame of reference (Angsty!Aerith), it is still possible to keep them IC.

Common Post/Grammatical Errors

• U, O, and Y are letters, not words. Write out "you, oh, and why." It really doesn't take a lot of effort.
• Similarly, NEVER put netspeak such as "lol" or "wtf" in an IC post.
• Don't put emoticons into IC posts. This includes things like D: and xD. Express the emotion through writing.
• Never use the word "it's" as a possessive. The proper way to spell it is "its," sans apostrophe. Scalawags.
• A comma does not mean a thought is complete (i.e. the end of a sentence.) Writing "Faris enjoyed taking the masthead watch, he felt like he could see the entire world" is incorrect. In technical terms, that's a comma splice. A more correct way to write it would be to use a semicolon (Faris enjoyed taking the masthead watch; he felt like he could see the entire world), seperate it into two sentences (Faris enjoyed taking the masthead watch. He felt like he could see the entire world.) or reword it into a single thought (Faris felt like he could see the entire world from the masthead).
• "Your" is the posessive of you. "Your chocobo is looking a little beat-up there, mister." "You're" is the contraction of the words you and are. "You're better off eating that chocobo than riding it."
• "Their" is the possessive of them or they. She hoped their forged train tickets would pass. "There" is a location. The only way to get there was by train. "They're" is the contraction of they and are. "What do you think you're trying to do with these tickets? They're obviously fake."

Knowing Your Canon

It's no secret that the unofficial board motto is this:



However. There are a few stipulations. First is the sometimes. Second is that we usually screw canon in order to make it fit in with the overrreaching plot arcs, not just on a whim. Third is that you have to know your canon before you can screw it.

Usually for individual characters, disregarding canon is because of one's "interpretation" of the character. For example, say you want to play Yuffie but you absolutely despise the way she was portrayed in Dirge of Cerberus. You decide you want to stick only with how her attitude was in the original game and Advent Children.

Not a problem--but! You must know what Yuffie did in Dirge of Cerberus. Like it or not, that game was made, and Yuffie was in it. You can't act as though it never happened and Yuffie was never there, because it would interfere with others' interpretations of their own DoC characters.

This doesn't mean that you have to go out and buy Dirge of Cerberus and force yourself to play through it. There are plenty of ways you can inform yourself on games you haven't played without actually playing them. The FF Compendium has point-by-point plot summaries of all games that have been released in NA. The FF Wiki is also a good resource, although not always as thorough as it should be in character articles and game summaries.

Some games, mainly the newer ones with voice acting, can be found in "movie" versions on YouTube and some websites. Usually they cut out the random battles and running around on the world map. There are "movie" versions of FFX, X-2, and FFXII on this site. I've used them, and they're pretty good. For YouTube, this person has put up all FF12 and DoC cutscenes/FMVs, though without any battles.

For older games, this person has put up the GBA versions of FFIV boss fights and the entirey of V and VI. Unfortunately, you'll have to sit or skip through town exploration and random battles.

Game scripts can be found at GameFaqs for most every game, if you don't want to or can't watch videos. FFWA also has scripts for IX, X, and XII (which are easier on the eyes than GameFaqs' .txt files).

Character shrines can also be good resources, especially for personality, backstory, and character interpretation. A large number of FF shrines can be found here. However, shrines are based entirely on fan opinion and analysis of the characters, so you shouldn't neccesarily take it as read that every piece of information on there is accurate (though mostly it is).

There is no excuse for not knowing your canon. I haven't played through a single FF game, but I run an FF board--so I research. I read things and I watch videos. Yes, reading game scripts and such is time-consuming and can be tedious. Too bad. If you want to play that character, or even an OC from that game, you need to know this stuff.