Guide to Roleplaying

This Guide to Roleplaying will teach you the basics of character creation and roleplay, with a few tips added in.

Creating a Character

When you've joined the ship, you can name your character and give them a biography in the 'Player' tab on the right-hand side of the screen. Your name should preferably be a first name and last name (last initial if it's filtered).

Avoid your role title (Engineer, Navigator, etc) in your name, however, your rank abbreviation (ENS, PO, CDR) can be added into your name if you desire. Role abbreviations and their corresponding positions can be seen in the Guide to Starship Command.
Your biography shouldn't take too long to read and should describe your character's physical appearance, as well as contain public information your colleagues should know about. Avoid putting classified information in your biography.
You can use an external text editor like Notepad and copy and paste to make multi-line biographies.
Common first and last name combinations (like John Anderson) are filtered. If you want to have both a first and last name, make your name unusual.

Tips on Convincing Characters

Make your character an appropriate age. Having a 17-year-old Captain or a 78-year-old crewman shouldn't even be possible.
Give them some experience, especially if they're an Officer. Was your character in a skirmish? A rescue mission?
Your character should have a convincing background. All officers went to college. Older enlisted usually have plenty of experience handling firearms.
Officers should be college-educated. You would be trained in the respective discipline of your role and most likely even have a bit of field experience.

Tips on Roleplaying

Common Courtesy

A few things to keep in mind when roleplaying.

Respect other people. Don't treat them like trash just because their character is poorly written.
Avoid needless conflict. Don't shoot or attack someone just because you feel like doing so.
Respect your superiors. They outrank you in a military environment, and, if they're competent, you should treat them as your superiors.
Don't start a war in OOC and keep it going for too long. It'll distract everyone.
If you don't like how someone is behaving, block them instead of getting the server to rally against them.
Avoid meta-knowledge. If you see someone playing as a hostile with a name above their heads, don't immediately call them hostile and open fire.
Similarly, ask for the name of a visitor or unknown before automatically knowing what it is. You can know the names of all your fellow crew, but you should ask names for newer people who've freshly transferred.

Realism

Your character should react to and feel pain, hunger, thirst, rest, and other basic needs. Yell in pain if you're shot at, or head to the quarters if you're tired.
If you're a crew member of the ship, you're trained in military discipline. Know how to stand tall and proud, and remember that your character is a service member who went to an academy or boot camp, and should at least be hardened to an extent.
Your character should avoid injury and death. Get yourself to the medical bay if you've been shot, and don't stare a live gun barrel down if it means you're going to get shot.
Your character can't be experienced in everything. Being able to set up the core while also knowing how to shoot a sniper rifle and pilot a starship is unrealistic. Know your expertise.

How to Roleplay

Etiquette and procedures for verbally roleplaying in-game.

Talking

Use proper grammar when speaking and capitalize the first letter in a sentence. You should preferably encase statements where your character is talking in a quotation mark of sorts, such as "quote", 'quote', or ``quote``. Avoid talking without quotations--it'll get confusing.
Avoid putting an author's articles after your statement like "said John". It'll sound like you're reading a book.

DO: "Hi there."
DON'T: hi there
DON'T: "Hi there," said John.

Acting

Make verbs or have your character do something by stating, bluntly, that they're doing it, such as "He cleaned the counter" or "I cleaned the counter". First and third-person references are both allowed, as is past and present tense.
Verbs should also be relatively detailed, but not overly so.

DO: He raised his weapon and pulled the trigger.
DO: He fired two shots.
DON'T: *shoots*
DON'T: Raising the barrel of his weapon high, he aimed the sights down at the man, readying a shot and pulling the trigger.

Combat

Eventually, especially if you're Security or an infantry position like the Marines, you're going to witness combat. Combat is done verbally similarly to how you would read it in a novel, albeit with moving pictures and guns.

Tips to combat:

Assess the situation. Is your character in their current state capable of taking on your opponent?
State your actions. Nothing is worse than silently pulling out a machine gun and firing a whole magazine's worth into your opponent.
Be fast, but not overly so. Practice your typing speed so you can make the combat fast-paced, but give your opponent a chance to react and fight back.
Make your actions attempts rather than absolute. For example, saying He reached to try and disarm him is better than stating outright, He disarmed him. It gives your opponent a chance to react.
Don't be afraid to draw your gun. However, keep in mind that you usually don't need to unload your gun's entire clip or magazine to take down one person. You should only have to fire one to three shots at a time.
If you're Security, favor nonlethal takedowns over killings. Use a taser or baton if you can or, if you have a gun, shoot them in a limb to incapacitate them.
Play fair, or at least as fair as the situation allows. Having one side dominate the other without a chance to fight back isn't fun for you or them.

Playing Command

Main article: Guide to Starship Command

Command is an intensive job to play, as you have to coordinate and control while also simultaneously making decisions that can impact the whole crew. If you are the Captain or First Officer, you should delegate as many specialized tasks as possible to your department Officers so they can manage their own department.

Officers

As a department officer your job is to manage all personnel under your wing; for example, Doctors, if you're a Medical Officer. Tell them to do something and, if they don't know how, teach them how to do it. You act as a manager, coordinator, senior and mentor all at once, and people expect you to be able to handle this.

Officers are in charge of also bearing responsibility for anything that happens to their crew under their orders; their job is to look out for their staff and bear the consequences for issuing incompetent or poor orders.

First Officer

The First Officer is there to act as a simultaneous co-captain and executive officer (XO) to those aboard the ship. You are of higher authority than the department officers, but that doesn't mean you should assume control over them. It's better to leave the dirty work to your officers because that's what they specialize in. You're also in charge of making sure the Captain doesn't get the crew killed, and it's your duty to act as their advisor on critical decisions.

Captain

As the Captain you act as the highest authority on board, and as a result, you are the person with the most responsibility on board. Every blame of any incident that happens onboard the ship ultimately rests itself in your hands, and it's your job to manage anything and everything. Fortunately, you have your First Officer to act as your right hand and advisor, and your department officers to handle the micromanagement. Your job is to issue responsible and competent orders, and be around for people to look up to when the going gets tough.