Introduction
I don’t feel entirely comfortable making this post. For the longest amount of time, we as a team decided that the atmosphere in MassiveCraft would be best if we allowed the players to determine everything in roleplay aspects. This was repealed a couple of months ago after we did a large player poll. The results were overwhelmingly that we should enforce the roleplay universe more and take away some power from the players. We did this, however allowed players to continue creating their characters in whatever way they wanted. This has lately been a bit of a problem. This guide is in no way the best or only guide you will need. It is simply how I (MonMarty as a Community Manager) feel you should roleplay on this server, to make it an enjoyable experience for everyone.

Character Creation
The biggest risk you have when making a roleplay character for youself, is to see yourself as a special snowflake and try to make your character as unique as possible. The problem here is, that the more characters become available, the more wild the traits have to become to stay unique. People with snowflake syndrome are also increadibly annoying to other people who do not suffer from the same problem. They are often regarded as attention whores and nobody wants to RP with them. The best way to approach creating a character is to start simple, an average Joe or Jane. Average people don’t have to be boring. There are several things you can do once you have your base character (looks and personality) to make them interesting.

You can define a character by history. For the love of god, do not ever rehash the history of another person. There are far too many players with “My parents died when I was a child and I was raised as an assassin” on the server. Your history doesn’t even have to be interesting. If somoene is interested in what makes your character your character, then they should also read how you are a patient person because you like gardening for hours on end. If you want to make your character interesting and still legit, take some already existing event in the roleplay universe and make an interesting twist. For example Joe Malcom used to be a farmer, but one event changed him. During an attack by Mrs Baver on Regalia, his wife and daughter were killed by zombies which bashed their way into his house. To avenge their deaths, he became a crusader for the church and trained for years  etc etc.

Try not to God-RP your character. Give them reasonable traits. Stuff that counts as unreasonable: Mind control (to a degree), invisibility, never missing arrows, indestructable skin, immortal, pretty much anything that (when roleplaying with someone else) makes you dictate their actions. This is called CC or Character Controlling. I will get back to this further in this post. Try adding reasonable abilities, like presence senses, trained acrobatics, extra accuracy on bow (but still able to miss) etc. If you want to make your character less lame, make these skills aquired trough training or an event. Characters born with superhuman powers are generally increadibly boring characters.

Remember to also not make a character that has no flaws. Flaws are just as much deciding for a person’s personality as their skills. A flawless character has nothing to learn, nothing to improve. Therefor roleplaying as them, is increadibly boring. Next to that, nobody likes Mary Sue characters. You really don’t want to become a Mary “perfect” Sue.

Generally as a fist rule, it is important to remember that authenticity, legitimacy and reasonability are the 3 corner principles of character creation. Many avid and decent roleplayers will prefer the farmer who is desperate holding on to the lifeless corpse of his wife over the super vampire who is triple wielding god swords and kicking zombie’s heads off as he is resurrecting over 9000 soldiers. The farmer doesn’t have any abilities or god powers to keep him busy during the event, and thus he can focus the full 100% on the emotions he has from the death of his wife, and not spend time on showing others how awesome he is, and how you all wished you were him. A character that is able to convey emotions, story and immersion over actually having alot of content, is a much more enjoyable character.

What not to do during Roleplay

• Do not force yourself onto others. For example: I am now your dad. Ask them if you can be a part of their family, and then let them determine your role.
• Force yourself into someone else’s roleplay. If for example Mrs Baver is the Banshee Queen, don’t decide to make yourself the officer of the Banshee Queen, or the person she once posessed without the permission of the character owner.
• Do not play to win. For example: refuse to lose a fight. Sometimes losing a fight is good for a learning experience or a different roleplay experience then you would normally have if you forced yourself to win.
• Control other characters without their permission. Do not ever do something like “X throws a tomahawk without missing”. Here you control the action of the other character. Now this character has to be hit by the tomahawk and most likely become severely wounded. The person should choose this him/herself.
• State yourself as better then another character. If for example there is already another character with super natural mind control abilities, do not say “I am much stronger at mind controlling then that person”. A much better solution would be to say “My mind control abilities are about equal or near his/hers”.
• Above all: Do not roleplay outside of the accepted roleplay Theme. Do not run around as a “PREGNANT VAMPIRE OMG” when the lore clearly states vampires cannot become pregnant or have a miscarriage upon becoming a vampire if they are already pregnant.
• Say stuff like “lol” and “l33t haxx0r” in roleplay. Do not use acronyms or “street language” during RP.
• Don’t say something to someone and then run away if they do not give you a response in 20 seconds. Give each other the time to write out a response. Not everyone is perfect at english and can type 5000 letters in 10 minutes.
• Force yourself onto someone with Erotic Roleplay or Violent Roleplay. If a person has boundaries against these you must respect them.

But perhaps the most important part of this post actually concerns people who do not want, or don’t roleplay. If you do not like roleplayers/don’t want to roleplay/are disturbed how people roleplay: -walk away-. Leave other people the respect you expect in return and give them the space to do what they want to do. The server and any world (even regalia) is big enough for you to go and not be bothered by these people.

Post may be subject to future changes, additions and references pending community responses, and my own reviews. This post will be moved under Server info later.