Association and Interaction in Role Playing
I’ve been role playing for a long time and one of the biggest things that I have seen that sabotages great games and awesome characters is a complete lack of interaction. Interaction is the key to character development, story telling in a post by post setting and most importantly, having fun! Without it, you get two characters that have nothing to say or do with one another and countless threads of the same thing, over and over.
To solve this and create better, more interesting role playing threads you need to be aware of the environment your character is going into. Associate your character into the environment and interact with your fellow role players.
Character Association A common pitfall is creating a typical ‘lone wolf’ type of character, who has no connections at all. This character has no family or friends and is often in a new location all alone. It’s a very popular way of designing a character, histories are easier, you don’t have to worry about friends and you won’t have any pesky family members reappearing the in the near future. But this makes your character hard to associate with as they have nothing in common with anyone.
How often, when you’re walking down the street, do you end up having a meaningful conversation with a random person you’ve never met before? How often do people honestly bump into you on the street? Honestly, not often. Now think, where does all your social interaction happen and who with? Not random, scary strangers on the street I would guess but people you meet through school, work, family and friends.
You can not just grab a character and pin him in to the world without thinking about what social circles does he exist in. Give your characters ties to the world around them. Make them into real people, people who wake up in the morning, do things and go places. You don’t have to make your character belong to a business or a group, but just look at the other characters that have been joined to the game, see what is already being mentioned and integrate your character into that.
It can be as simple as someone mentioning their character lives on Fifty first street next to the church, and guess what, your character goes to that church every day! Or a character who was raised at Quiggley’s Orphanage, where many other played characters were also raised! This gives you opportunities to interact with these characters without make some unrealistic stretches.
Another example is to look at the information we have supplied about the world and see where your character can fit in. Algemin Daim has pirates. So someone with things to do with pirates, such as a whore on the Pirate Island, an Inn owner, a ship builder would have things to interact with the pirates about. There are many nobles in the game, so a servant would have a lot to do, a cook, a groom or even someone who happens to live across the road.
Associating is very broad and can be anything you like, but it gives you a link to the rest of the world and allows you to have less random and more interesting thread in the game.
Character Interaction Another big problem is that once you have two characters that have an association they just sit there and do nothing. Soon enough the thread gets boring and disbanded. This is because you are not interacting. The biggest tip I can give here is NEVER assume that the other person’s character is going to take the lead in any situation. If you want something to happen, do it. Don’t just complain that nothing is happening. Role playing is a two way street, both players need to interact with one another in a way that suits them both.
Of course sometimes your character’s personality means that they are unable to do anything but wait around for interaction, be aware of this. Don’t go stick them in threads with other passive characters, because it just won’t work.
Another thing that can get increasingly annoying is passive aggressiveness. Unless your character is intentionally written to be passive aggressive, just stop it. If your character gives a threat, carry through with it. Feel free to have you character storm off and leave a thread if you want! Just be true to the personality of your character and stop worrying about stepping on people’s toes. Sometimes thread just don’t last longer than five posts, that is just the way they are.
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