15.6 ROLEPLAYING and OOC

(See also: HELP ROLEPOINTS, HELP INSANITY, HELP LANGUAGERULES, HELP RPWHO)

To roleplay means to play a role. In the context of Achaea, roleplaying means
that you play as if you were your character. Achaea is a roleplaying game: some
level of roleplaying is expected. Minimally, please don't seek to disrupt other peoples' roleplay with out-of-character talk.

If you're having a hard time finding roleplaying, check out HELP RPWHO.


RP required: where?
-------------------
Roleplaying is expected on/in all public venues except the newbie channel.
- shouts
- yells
- news groups
- house channels 
- city channels
- order channels
- oakstone channels
- market channel
- party channels
- army channels
- some clans (particularly org-owned clans)


Some few clans may be explicitly OOC (out-of-character). This will be explicitly indicated somewhere in the clan helps. The publicly accessible clanhelp scroll (i.e. CLANHELP <CLAN>) must always abide by the ooc and language rules even if the clan is an ooc clan. Tells may be ooc, as they're not public.

All channels are subject to HELP LANGUAGERULES, except clan channels.


Staying IN CHARACTER, and Other Restrictions
--------------------------------------------
Always try to stay in character (IC) on channels - you are playing the role of a
person in a magical world called Achaea. Talk about real life, other muds, or
your favourite singer - this should all be done outside the game or, if you
must, use TELLS. Be advised, however, that you should not go OOC with anyone that has not explicitly agreed to do so. 

Be most careful with shouts and public posts - stay in character, watch
language rules. Market channel is only for buying and selling: no chatting
please. Newbie channel is for questions and answers about how to play the game:
no chatting please.  Most other channels have their own rules, but are
generally more tolerant of chatting and general conversation.


Approaching Roleplaying
-----------------------
Perhaps the best way to roleplay your character is to first create a coherent
"life philosophy" for your character, and then follow that with your actions in
Achaea. You might even want to write out a summary of your character's
psychological makeup in order to make this process easier.

For example, imagine a character named Valtre, who is a young mhun monk.
Valtre was raised a street urchin in Hashan and was bitterly unhappy
until he began following the way of the monk, and began to experience
moments of inner peace. His primary motivation, currently, is to increase his
knowledge and power, but his long-term goals are not those of domination over
his fellow mortals. Instead, he seeks to rise to political power in order to
help the beleaguered and down-trodden. He chooses not to worship any particular
God, and his primary loyalty is to his race. He despises, perhaps irrationally,
all dwarves, due to mistreatment he experienced at their hands as a child.
Finally, Valtre has recently discovered poetry and is given, somewhat
pompously, to quoting his favourite poets at what others might consider to be
inappropriate times, such as the heat of battle.

With just this brief biography of Valtre, we have an interesting character with
well-defined motivations and some indication of his psychological status. You
would not find Valtre out slaughtering his fellow mhun in Moghedu, nor would
you find him killing most sentients for no reason. He would be extremely
interested in practicing his skills in order to master them, and would perhaps,
as a hobby, hold poetry readings. While Valtre is open-minded enough to accept 
dwarves in the same guild as him, he definitely would not socialise with them, 
and would likely be quite terse, though not overly rude with any dwarves he was forced to deal with.

UPCOMING
--------
Upcoming is a massively useful tool to allow the administration and your
organisations to inform you when something fun is going to happen that you
might want to be logged in for. It is an OOC tool, so please refrain from using
it to foretell the future within In Character arena.

THE GODS
--------
Unless you are explicitly invited to do so, it is never appropriate to be OOC
with a God, this is says, tells, and messages. Gods are IC characters only. If
you have feedback or concerns about a God's actions, please email
Makarios@achaea.com or Nicola@achaea.com and they will investigate.

CHILDREN
------------
While some may choose to roleplay pregnancy and childbirth, please note that we will not tolerate any explicit roleplay involving children anywhere in Achaea.



(See also: HELP ROLEPOINTS, HELP INSANITY, HELP LANGUAGERULES, HELP RPWHO)