Yes, I know that's subjective, please state your personal opinion about it .

How much does English-as-first-language matter? The best answer would be, not at all, but I don't think that would be entirely honest. I would think that, be it at a sub-conscious level, you're going to prefer fluently written roles over not so fluent ones. To speak for myself, I catch myself falling back into the same patterns of text, even if my vocabulary is pretty extensive. A native speaker would likely do it more fluently, and catch more attention in the process.

I had a shared third place once, but it was with two others, I believe I got 5 extra thief points. Much appreciated, but not exactly spectacular.

In all other cases I got a mention at best, even though I put a lot of effort in my roles and usually think they're pretty good and make for an interesting character.

Any tips on how to up the ante a little? Thanks!

For me:

1) After grading 100+ essays comparing the Spanish and English models of colonization, your role needs to be interesting enough to keep my attention for longer than five minutes.
2) If it takes four+ chapters to develop your backstory, I'm passing on your role.
3) That being said, if you feel the need to write that much, give me a summary chapter that outlines your role.
4) I want to know why you do the things you do; why your character acts in a certain way. I like when you outline a set of scenarios your character is likely to come across in life and detail how, in general, you will react.
5) I like good formatting and good grammar.
6) Roles should be written early, not at L45 or so when you know what your final forms will be. :-P

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English first probably does not matter a lot, so long as your english allows you to convey the message so that it could be understood by the audience. Really broken english for example, mighty make telling a detailed narrative a little harder to follow. But you don't need to be able to use 12 letter obscure words to tell a good story and describe your character.

Here is what I learned from my RCs, in two parts, the initial and updates. I'll include my first bard that got 2 honorable mentions. .Reading roles that win is often helpful, to get a feel for what those roles have that make them stand out. Can also look at contests page, where some imms have commented on entrants, can see what they looked for, and read the ones they thought were good.

Initial Roles:
Have a character concept that covers the basics. Who are you? Why are you class X? What motivates you? What are your future plans, i.e. cabal goals or personal goals? (does not have to be super specific) How does your sphere tie into your character? Are you planing on being religious? Are there any unique traits that can carry over IC? Basically, could an Imm read your role, log in as you, and play your character as you are? If he can, then you've written a good role.

- I design all my character with a general goal, but leave it open as to how they will try to get there, and then take actions IC to sort of move towards it without just doing it.

How my roles went:
Kalisda: You can read her role somewhere on the battlefield I think, but she was purged so no pbf. She was evil, unknowingly so, just by having a tainted soul or something and being trapped in the Abyss, and then being set free temporarily because her captor liked toying with her.

Lasentia: Minstrel that was part of a band of thieves, they all die or something, she gets taken in by a dwarf battlerager. I tried to weave some humor into the role. I won a RC for this initial role, maybe with only a few updates, because as Enlilth said, it made him laugh. This character ended up in Herald.

Salyeris: Escaped slave of a butchered Dark elf family. Was terrified of magic and was cursed and so was looking to try and free herself from it.


Role Updates:
Does this entry have a purpose? Does it expand upon the initial and show the character developing/progressing? Is it meaningful or just fluff for Imm XP? Are you tracking significant things that happen IC that would change your character in some way?

Kalisda: I did a role where Arrna comes in and bashes me without warning. She determines these "light" people are actually evil. Meanwhile, scions are friendly to me. End up having the chancellor basically induct me without me pledging, and she becomes a personal servant of the chancellor. Got two honorable mentions down the road for the role.

Lasentia: Won it before any real updating, but updates were just mostly about events that happened IC.

Salyeris: End up killing a mage, befriending and joining battleragers. Updates revolved around the character progressing, interacting with Neltouda to break the curse upon her, being named Commander and getting tattooed/freed. Won the RC down the road from Fjarn, my guess for having a decent background that had been played out.

- Lastly, on rewards, I view certain things as role rewards. Getting last named. Getting a custom title to me is usually role related. The mechanical rewards are nice, but not really necessary. Just getting acknowledged that hey, you're doing well and you have an interesting char so here's a little thing to make your character stand out, to me, is probably the best perk you can get.

The Soulful Siren of Sin to date remains my favorite title ever and was probably my favorite reward ever in CF, because I got it when I was really still learning CF and that was my first char to even seriously join a cabal.

That is followed closely by Neltouda basically immersing herself in my character's personal role when I played Salyeris. (And I've had some very nice things given to my characters) Again, it was a reward for my role and playing it out, without it being a RC win technically.

Lastly.
Format the role.
It makes it easier to read, which is just as helpful if not more than writing with perfect english/grammar.

I started with a background story that tries to be descriptive and explicative of what made my character who he was when he started out at the Academy.

I try to answer these important questions..

How did he get to be at the Academy.
Why was he this class?
Why did he choose this weapon/magic?
What make this sphere a guiding force in his life?
Is there a reason to his align or ethos other than class choice?
What is the goal of this character heading into the Academy and beyond?

After that background story each update from there are the actual life unfolding of that character...

Is it all going to plan?
Who have I met (both good and bad)?
What are my character's thoughts about situations?
What are my goals now? If they changed, why?

That's my process for building roles. How you write is personal style and subjective. Try to tailor to your chosen audience if able.

Hope that helps.

>Yes, I know that's subjective, please state your personal
>opinion about it .

As far as I'm concerned, a quality role comes down to two things:

A) It's a story that is relatively unique in some way. Maybe at its core it's as simple as "mages burned my village", but there is something about it that makes it special.

B) It explains various attributes of the characters, such as race, class, cabal, alignment, ethos, sphere, flaws, and so on. Some of this may not be super important for every character.

>
>How much does English-as-first-language matter?

Some. The role should be formatted in way that is easy enough to read. That means paragraphs, basic punctuation (periods at least!), capitalization, and proper spelling. ESL or not, you can spell check.

Having a mastery of the English language is not that important.

>Any tips on how to up the ante a little? Thanks!

While A & B are really the crux of it for me, I personally have a few turn-offs. Example of them are:

Roles that rewrite history or invent history that the player really shouldn't be meddling with. Don't assert in your role that god Xyz or character Abc did something or said something they did not.

Roles that have characters performing extraordinary feats that, at the time of writing (Academy time frame), those characters obviously aren't capable of, especially without good explanation. If after reading your role I'm questioning why your character is struggling to kill taglos or commoners instead of wiping out the Lich population of Thera, it probably won't be winning my role contest.

Some people write roles that are purely background. It's a story about how the character got to the Academy and while it explains a few key choices, it doesn't give me much insight into what the characters goals and ambitions are. These roles are less likely to appeal to me than those that not only tell me where the character has been, but where it's going.

And likewise, actually play your role. If your role says your character is going to do something or that something ought to drive his or her actions, I should see that over the course of the character's life. Role contests aren't a storytelling contest (in my opinion), and a good role is reflected in the life of the character.

A really good role for me gives me important/useful information about your character's RP that I cannot discern from simply knowing your race/class/alignment/cabal.

Ideally it's original and not too clichéd. I've had enough necromancers who are really demons or possessed by demons for one lifetime.

To some degree, what makes a great role comes down to individual taste, which actually is one of the big reasons we rotate who runs for role contests. Lots of winner roles have been picked that I hated and I'm sure other people have hated roles I really liked. After that prizes are largely runner's discretion and people have had different ideas about what power level is appropriate too (although we did experiment with getting quest forms and legacies out of there as they were the most frequent really good power-wise rewards.)