RP Suggestions

Make sure to actually look at the description when you enter a room or object. If you RP racing in at 100 mph, and the room desc shows that the area is pockmarked with deep impact craters, you're going to look silly. You can get RP hooks from some descriptions, too. Maybe the room contains a mysterious crater or cave to investigate or explore.

Try to make at least three-line (80 characters/line) poses. Depending on context, a single sentence may sometimes be enough, but that is the exception, not the rule. Describe both your actions and words. Use adjectives to add color and greater meaning to your pose. Try to make it interesting to others. You can't always succeed, but it's good to try.

If someone is joining your scene, it would be helpful if one of the players already present made a setting pose so the new arrival doesn't pose greeting you when you're actually out of sight in a cave. They can't always get the information they need from +pot/last.

Conversely, if you're joining a scene, and don't see a setting pose, page someone and ask for one. Also, check out +pot/last to get an idea of what's going on before jumping in. Relate your opening/arrival pose to the setting and explain how you came to be in this location.

Try to tone down the OOC commentary; it tends to interfere with the scene. Most people are there to RP, and a lot of chatting can kill the mood, though this is an iffy point. There are times when the RP spontaneously breaks down into OOC chatter by unspoken mutual desire. However, that tends to be infrequent. Usually, OOC commentary should relate to the RP you're doing or announcements that you have to AFK from the scene for x amount of time.

If you are going to idle for more than a few minutes, tell your fellow RPers. RP is real time, much like talking on the phone. It's incredibly rude to wander off to fix lunch, or to text a friend, or to take a shower, or to work in another window without telling them, leaving them to wait in vain for your pose. Don't be an RP killer. Nothing drains interest in RP faster than waiting 10 or even 20 minutes for a pose from someone who isn't even there. Some of them may already have a great pose typed up and ready to go, but by the time they give up on you, the players are disgruntled, and the flow of the RP is disrupted. Informing them of your absence in advance allows them to skip your turns and continue the RP.

If you have gone AFK during a scene and return, do not interrupt the RP with an OOC "What did I miss?" It is not the other players' responsibility to keep you updated on a scene in which you're supposedly RPing. Read your backscroll, or if you don't have backscroll, then read +pot/last. If there's too much to keep track of, then you've been gone too long to rejoin the RP anyway. Use +pot/observe and try not to idle in the middle of a scene in the future.

Please don't power-idle while IC, even if you're alone. Other players, hoping to RP, get very disappointed when they check the IC grid for someone to RP with, are delighted to see lots of RP possibilities, and then find that almost all of those are actually idle. Or worse, they're idle or AFK and simply using a client macro that makes them look unidle. If you're not available to RP, then go OOC. You can idle there just as well as IC without confusing other players.

If you only want to watch a scene, ask permission. Or better yet, participate in the scene instead of just watching. It doesn't make much sense to join as an observer when you can RP, unless it's a scene you can't ICly join.

If a combat scene is badly unbalanced, check OOCly to make sure that everyone is okay with that. If they are, then go right ahead. If not, you can page people who are OOC/not present to even the numbers, or ask for volunteers to log in an alt, or have some players fight emitted gumbies or defenses.

Be aware: read IC Bboards and join IC channels. If the Decepticons just destroyed Iacon (again), and you're ICly chatting about picking up supplies there, you sound a bit ignorant.

What to do if you don't have much to offer to a scene... I'd like to see some suggestions for this one myself. ;)