I was thinking about this earlier, and was wondering how often, if ever, you see those cliche roles?

Do you still see the 'Mages killed my parents/Villagers killed my parents/Tribunals/Outlanders/etc' roles?

How about the person who is a god/demon/devil/cculgra trapped in a mortal body?

How about the great military leaders/generals who leave their village only to arrive in Galadon as a fresh Recruit?

Or the sickly necro with a deadly disease who only became a necro to learn how to avoid his own death?

How about the mage who was a brilliant researcher/unlocked some great secret/has nightly dreams about some strange new exciting quest form yet again, arrives in Galadon as a Scribe?


I know they were rampant before there was a role command when people would usually come up with their background during their cabal interview (and maybe even a bit after).. is it still this way today?


How many times do you guys slap your forehead reading people's roles?

The biggest nuisance in roles would have nothing to do with the story, usually.

Roles that just hurt the head because of poor alignment, punctuation and spelling pretty much get ignored. If you just type role read 0 and it looks like crap, to me it is crap and I won't read it.

A person who writes 20 5 line roles for each thing they notice.

And the worst one of all. The person who writes a single role for their entire life that has the basic message of, "I hate everybody and will kill anybody for any reason." And then they wonder why they get realmed for not rping their reasons for being a putz.

>I was thinking about this earlier, and was wondering how
>often, if ever, you see those cliche roles?
>
>Do you still see the 'Mages killed my parents/Villagers killed
>my parents/Tribunals/Outlanders/etc' roles?

Somewhat often. It's tough to set up a role about hating magic that doesn't involve magicians ####ing with you at some point in your earlier life. It's not always parents, but there's a lot of roles that involve past pain of some kind by the archetype that is now the character's enemy. I don't think of this as a bad role.


>How about the person who is a god/demon/devil/cculgra trapped
>in a mortal body?

Not that many, actually. Which is good. It's tough to do, correctly, in my opinion.


>How about the great military leaders/generals who leave their
>village only to arrive in Galadon as a fresh Recruit?

Very few - I haven't seen one like this in a long time.


>Or the sickly necro with a deadly disease who only became a
>necro to learn how to avoid his own death?

Haven't seen this general type of role in quite a while.


>How about the mage who was a brilliant researcher/unlocked
>some great secret/has nightly dreams about some strange new
>exciting quest form yet again, arrives in Galadon as a
>Scribe?

Most roles like this go more like "I had a vision last night/over all of my youth that prompted me to join a guild and learn about X." Roles that show up as something like what you've put above are hard, because of exactly what you said: "How did you discover that great magic when you can't even cast 'word of recall' yet?"

>I know they were rampant before there was a role command when
>people would usually come up with their background during
>their cabal interview (and maybe even a bit after).. is it
>still this way today?

Not so much - see, when you're telling the mortal who is interviewing you your life story, it's easier to suspend belief. Humans start at age 17 in the game - tough to say you were some former genius/general/whatever at age 17 (just as one example). Now, you're explaining your life story to a faceless Imm who can much mor easily call ####. :)


>How many times do you guys slap your forehead reading people's
>roles?

Not as often as you might think. Some keys for me as to whether I like a person's role:
1. Formatting. If it is one big paragraph, or the line wraps cause it to be tough to read, I may even just skip it and not even read it.
2. Length/number of entries. If you've got 20 role entries and you haven't even entered PK range, I'm unlikely to read your role. Similarly, if you've only got 1 entry but it's 3 pages long, I'm skipping and moving on to the next guy.
3. Well-written-ness. This is a tougher one to describe, but mainly what I'm saying is if you do a story-type role, make sure you write it well, otherwise it's a waste of time to dig through it to glean the details of what the char's role is going to be.

Hope that's helpful!

>How about the person who is a god/demon/devil/cculgra trapped
>in a mortal body?

Not that many, actually. Which is good. It's tough to do, correctly, in my opinion.


It's damn near freaking impossible. Or maybe I'm just not as good as Meagara(sp?). That's probably it :)

Almost all of my roles switch through perspectives. I have written roles which go through the eyes of the immortal, or a third party who is a fly on the wall. Then the same role switches to an impersonal narration and then weaves into the eyes of the character. I *think* the immortals like reading such types of roles where they can sit back and read a great story and also feel themselves involved in the role. (You watch as the battle scene unfolds...)

It makes a tedious task a bit more easy rather than X is the son of Y and Z. Y and Z died. X will kill. However, take care not to do this switching too frequently. Not more than once within the same chapter is a good rule of thumb.

If I have a battle scene, or a death scene, or a significant event, I will get down, bare my knuckles, and actually describe how the scene unfolds, the emotions of the characters involved and so on. A favourite trick I use is the "freezing time" concept at critical moments. That way I can ram in a lot more description that an immortal can grin/grimace over. (Flying intestines anyone?)

Some examples from the few roles I have read/written/elaborated on are Trurkrag screaming after he finds his todger missing, Drakgrag imagining being lain down on the shield after his death, the necromancer scene from Shoranur, the minotaur shaman who followed Qaledeus (I forget his name) and all. PBF's are a good way to develop your writing style.

There is also the *Bright flash of light* concept, that I think was first used by Romanul. It allows you to switch between scenes, and backward and forward in time. Perfect if you have a plot with twists, intricacies or politics.

(XYZ says "Yes, Let us kill him together, ABC."

* A Bright Flash of Light * (Scene goes backwards in time)

ABC is here alone in a cavernous chamber.
ABC mutters to himself, " Let us see if I can convince that fool XYZ to aid me."
}

Humour always helps. If you have a role which *winks* at the immortal, between you ooc and the immortal, in the midst of an impersonal narration, it will fetch brownie points. Inserting a little humour or pun or something which can make an immortal grin makes their job easier, and earns you an extra edge :).

One other trick I use is to always end every chapter with something which makes an immortal make a note to check back in a few days time for a role update.

This is almost always a last line corny dialogue, a teaser of a twist to come further down as the character develops, a suggestion of betrayal, or a hint of a possible secretive deviance from the the ideals that the character claims to follow initially, an unstated goal that will lead to more RP, or the defining trait of the character. A strong closing line will always add an extra 250 xp to an otherwise decent role.

I do not have a lot of time to CF so I am unable to devote as much time as I would like to the expansion of the role, so I usually end up with about three chapters. One or two describing the origins and what the character wants to achieve/believes in/hates etc. and one about 100 hours or so after a significant event (cabal induction/lich kill/50 mage kill/10 arial kills or whatever) as defined in the first two events.

Just to sum it up, imagine if you are someone who is on one side of a screen, reading a bunch of text for someone ELSE, rewarding THEM for your effort, and not getting ANYTHING in return for the TIME you invest, how short would your end of the stick be? Very short yes? So stop a moment to consider how your role looks to that guy before you upload it IC.

Divide your roles into paragraphs of 5-10 lines. QHCF has an excellent wrap/chop function for cutting down the lines to size. That will make it easy for the imms and help you get more exp for the same amount of work.