Giving Your RP "Sparkle"

Part I -- The Arrival Pose

 

If you hang around in this hobby long enough, you'll eventually run across two debates on RP style.  The first is a debate around pose length: short, fast poses or long poses that scroll down half the screen?  The second debate revolves around style: the narrative style in which it is ok to mention what your character is thinking, vs. the improvisational acting style, in which it's only alright to display dialogue and pure action.

 

I've spent about 9 years in this hobby.  Over the years I've been a real fixture on about 8 games (some still open, some not), with another 25 or so getting a few months of my time before I decided they weren't for me (or before the RP dried up).  During the course of all this experience I have made a startling realization: the truly great RPers, the ones who are getting the votes or applauds, the ones who have people clamoring to scene with them, and the ones that staffers try to woo into positions...do not spend a lot of time agonizing over either debate.  Instead, they concentrate on delivering RP that sparkles.  

 

Now let's talk about how to get your RP to sparkle.

 

The Arrival Pose

 

Every 4 minutes (note, all statistics are made up), someone someMU* enters a room and makes the following sort of pose:

 

Jane enters the room and looks around for a minute before finally settling on a place to sit down. 

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this pose.  It tells what Jane is doing, it lets the other players know Jane is there and ready to play, and it does not have any appalling faux pas attached to it to make everyone in the room groan, (though at least one person in the room is rolling their eyes because the pose barely reached two lines).

 

Then there are the long posers who might give us something like this:

 

The spring wind gusts warmly into the room as Jane opens the door.  The wind toys briefly with her hair and clothes as her emerald eyes scan the room, seeking a place to sit down.  She closes the door behind her.  She was not raised in a barn, after all.  She crosses the room and settles into the chair of her choice.

 

Again, nothing wrong with this pose.  It's very pretty, very descriptive.  It again serves the purpose of letting us know Jane has arrived.  No faux pas here either (though someone in the room is already rolling their eyes that it took four lines to tell us Jane walked in and sat down).  There are, by the way, folks who could make that pose longer.

 

Both of these poses, though, lack real sparkle, and here is why.

 

An opening pose, just like the opening lines of an article or book, serve as the hook for your character.  It serves to make the people in the room want to RP with you.  Though trying to craft the perfect opening pose can be silly when you're about to engage in a prearranged scene or a scene with someone you've been RPing with for years, it is invaluable for getting the RP to come to you with new people or situations.  It has to grab attention.  It has to make people ask why.  You do not need a disaster to do this.  You don't have to come in bleeding or limping, though either is perfectly valid for getting people to ask why, and probably in a hurry.  You just need something that makes people stop, think, and ask themselves a few questions about who you are and what you are doing.  How you do this will depend greatly on who your character is, of course, but that's all to the good, as having people get to know your character is all part of the process.  The easiest ways to do this are through emotions, through noteworthy actions, or through stuff. 

 

The Emotional Route: 

 

Again, you don't need angst, though angst is valid.  The character doesn't have to run inside in tears or be white with fear.  They don't even have to be angry, though again, anger is perfectly valid.  Any emotion works here, because if emotion is conveyed people tend to want to know what's behind the emotion.  Happiness works just as well.  Below I give you the method, both long and short.

 

Jane has a little spring in her step as she enters the room. She looks around for a minute, a broad grin on her face, before finally settling on a place to sit down. 

 

The spring wind gusts warmly into the room as Jane opens the door.  The wind toys briefly with her hair and clothes as her emerald eyes twinkle as they scan the room, seeking a place to sit down.  She closes the door behind her, very carefully.  She was not raised in a barn, after all.  She crosses the room with measured steps before settling delicately into the chair of her choice, a bright smile on her face.

 

Now the other people sitting in the room have an immediate question they can ask.  Instead of merely "approaching Jane's table" or "looks up and nods at Jane" which are the most likely outcomes of the first set of poses.  People in the room are invited to ask themselves, or Jane, "Hey, why are you so happy?"  A conversation has just begun.  RP has just been initiated.  The curmudgeon in the bar who normally wouldn't talk to Jane because he doesn't talk to strangers can feel free to snap at her because she's ruining his Miller time with all her goodness and light.  Or the bartender can look up and comment on how radiant she's looking today.  Nobody has to search for why they'd talk to this person: through the simple conveyance of emotion, and simple human curiosity, an immediate, simple hook is formed that invites people into the action in an unforced way.

 

Note that you can use "narrative" style for this as well as the improvisational acting style I just demonstrated, but it is best if you don't give anything substantive away if you use the narrative style.  After all, you're trying to make the other RP'ers ask questions, which they won't do if you tell them all the answers in your first pose.  Even in narration, authors usually hold a little something back. So, below, in narrative:

 

The world is Jane's oyster today, and, as she looks around the room with a broad grin, she can't imagine what is wrong with all these frowning, grouchy people sitting around in here.  There's plenty of bounce in her walk as she sits down; the day is young and there's plenty to be done!

 

Here you have a peek inside of Jane's head (she can't imagine what's wrong with the others in the room, which you wouldn't have known from the previous examples), but you still don't know what's making her so happy in the first place.

 

The Noteworthy Action Route

 

Someone comes in scratching themselves furiously.  Most people are going to say something: offer them some medicine, ask what's wrong, advise them that scratching only makes it worse.  If someone comes in clearly carrying more than they can handle, people might rush to help, tell them to watch out for the chair they don't see in their path, or, if they're particularly malicious, might trip the poor fellow.  And if you trip and fall, spilling something on someone, they're almost certainly going to have something to say about it, whether in anger or forgiveness.

 

In the emotional opener, you're trying to get people to ask themselves why, to figure out what's going on with you.  And this is sometimes true for the Action pose as well.  After all, if you come in and what you're doing is breaking the shaft off an arrow that's lodged in your arm, people are probably going to want to know why you were shot and who shot you.  But more than that, people will try to sit you down, scramble for medicine (or try to finish you off, but MU*'s are often full of very nice people who only want to help).  In the unusual action pose, your aim is to give people something to react to.

 

Jane races into the room, holding up a really big copperhead. Her little hands clench the jaws closed. She raises the poisonous snake high and announces proudly, "Look what I caught, everybody! Wanna see?"

 

If your character is sitting in this room, wouldn't he or she react?  I'd hope you would.  I'd hope your character wouldn't sit there like a stone, nodding or observing or blinking or doing any of those other really boring things that afflict MU* characters everywhere.  I hope your character would leap up in alarm, or run away because he's afraid of snakes, or try to get the snake away from Jane, or tell her loudly to throw it away outside and demand to know what she was thinking, anyway! 

 

Your opening pose doesn't always have to be alarming to get results people can react to.  It can be sultry, it can be funny, it can be sad.  Jane can come in and offer to buy drinks for the first man who kisses her right now.  (Poor Jane, she's undergone a lot of age and personality shifts through this article).  She can come in trying to teach herself to juggle and hitting herself in the head with the balls.  She could come in waving newly wet, bright purple nails in the air so that people can comment on the polish.  You're in this hobby because you've got an active imagination.  For God's sake, use it.  Try to figure out what your character was doing just before the scene you're going to RP in, and what evidences of that would be on his or her person.  It doesn't always have to be new.  My very first MU* character was a notoriously bad cook.  I used this device to open a number of scenes, from walking in to offer a basket of cookies to a guardsman who'd done me a favor (only to reveal they were little blackened paperweights), to bringing the innkeep a new doorstop (the attempted bread), to coming in with flour all over her and char in the hair and grumpily ordering dinner for herself and her two children, obviously having just tried and failed to do it herself.  Eventually someone decided to try to teach her to cook, and we spent many nice RP scenes outside of the bar while I milked that for all it was worth.  And eventually she got the hang of it, though she was never great, and I had to find a new RP device (though I eventually brought the guardsman one basket of passable cookies).  Not only did this give them something to react to, but it was something memorable about my character that other players could latch onto. 

 

The Glorious Path of "Stuff".

 

Stuff is great.  George Carlin once pointed out, quite accurately, that humans are obsessed with our stuff, and where to store our stuff.  Stuff can also be an effective RP generator.  The quickest example that comes to mind actually comes from another person's character.  He's long done with this hobby, as far as I know, but I can still remember 9 years ago when his character came wandering into the common room clutching a tiny sack like it was a lifeline.

 

When nobody immediately reacted to the sack, he just kept including it in his pose.  He hugged it close while drinking his drink, played with it, snarled at someone who got too close.  Eventually my character, a person who was as notoriously nosy as she was a bad cook, had to wander over and inquire as to what was in the bag.  The answer provided about three month's worth of RP.

 

If someone comes in with a bag, box, sack, or chest, people naturally want to know what's in it.  Sometimes what is in the box is obvious.   Someone who is carrying a suitcase is probably carrying clothes (probably).  But why are they carrying clothes? Stuff makes you ask why, and stuff gives you something to react to. 

 

Jane lugs two heavy suitcases up to the bar and drops them, one to either side of the stool. She climbs up to the stool and cries, "Bartender! One last cider before I run away from home!"

 

Of course, you don't always have to conceal what it is.  Stuff out of place works just as well.

 

As Jane walks into the common room, she turns the key on the tiny gold music box in her hand.  A slow, sad melody begins to fill the room.  She walks over to an empty table and sets it down carefully, in an empty place, as if there was someone sitting there.  Then she walks away from it, letting it continue its mournful melody.

 

What the heck is this girl doing with a music box in a bar?  Why is she acting so strangely with it?  To find out you'll have to do what you logged on to do.  You'll have to RP.  And thanks to Jane, you don't have to struggle with small talk, talk about the weather, or the notorious background share.  This is why Jane's RP has sparkle -- and you know it in just one pose.  Now go out, and be Jane.

 

Next Article:  The Scene Set