The Green Company Roleplaying Guide
Introduction
Intended Goals
Roleplaying is merely another word for acting. The player builds a persona and acts so that they present themselves as that person within the universe of their game world. Some people are intimidated by roleplaying because they believe it is too complex or advanced for them. It may, however, become incredibly accessible and successfully executed for newbies with the correct introduction and recommendations. This guide aims to demystify roleplaying for beginners and provide practical tips on creating a persona, acting out a scenario effectively, and embracing escapism.
While some details may be exclusive to Ultima Online, most strategies are universally applicable. By following examples within this guide, readers can confidently explore roleplaying and potentially unlock new aspects of enjoying their game worlds by understanding these practices.
Reasons for Roleplay
Many gamers lose interest in an MMORPG after a while because the content becomes repetitive. You can improve your skills, battle foes, complete builds, collect cash, and develop resources, but the dopamine impact diminishes with each repetition as activities feel repeated. This monotony might diminish enthusiasm for logging in and possibly lead to quitting the game. Some people find a fresh spark by exploring social ties through player-vs-player unpredictability or by joining guilds with like-minded people. Roleplaying provides the right stimulant for many seasoned players by giving innovative new channels for escapism intrinsically linked to social connections. Those accustomed to tabletop and text roleplaying tend to adopt a persona firmly tied to the game’s setting, acting out deeply immersive stories and scenarios that revitalize their environment by offering a different level of play. Roleplaying provides unparalleled escapism for many players by offering close character identification in dynamic scenarios, reigniting their passion, and extending their desire to remain within a setting.
Preferences vs. Best Practices
When you get advice from someone, chances are it will be presented in a format substantially influenced by personal experience and opinion. This guide is no exception. Technically, there are no “best” roleplaying techniques. However, there are strategies that are highly effective at conveying your message, creating a credible image, and effectively portraying it while you act out scenarios with others, which is the intended purpose here.
The Character Profile
Backstory Generation
Developing a solid and believable backstory is one of the first and most important aspects of creating a believable character persona. A backstory will typically consist of the birthplace, family members, and relationship dynamics within the family structure, one or two milestone events in the formative years that were instrumental in the development of the character’s growth or personality, with or without family members being story catalysts; think about the characters social status, and how that will affect training, and their developing career; reference a transitionary period between early years to the current profession, status, or affiliation with relevant power groups. Suppose this is a new character or persona you are developing. In that case, your backstory will end here, with the completion of initial training, apprenticeship, or trials to describe the current life position.
Although we have all done this at some point, especially when starting our journey as role-players, please avoid creating a backstory where you are an orphan, your family is slain in some horrible mishap, and now you are utterly alone. This may be fine for an NPC, but one of the valuable aspects of a carefully thought backstory is that it can be used as a tool to further develop storylines for your character if your roleplaying group is utilizing story arcs being generated in the scenarios you play out. Being the sullen lone wolf with ties to nothing, saving the gear on your body doesn’t provide much fuel to ignite further personalized scenarios originating from the backstory.
Another thing to avoid is setting up a backstory containing epic storylines and describing what amounts to the life of an experienced adventurer. You’re a newly created persona. Those epic adventures and encounters should be happening organically with your roleplaying partners and perhaps part of a developing journal or current events posting, not your origin story.
Furthermore, please note that you don’t need to write a short story to provide your character’s rich and substantial backstory. Between three and five paragraphs of information should provide more than enough reference for you and others to get the details of your persona across. More than this generally ends in all but the most avid readers either skimming it to get the details or ignoring it entirely, which is not what we want. Provide enough information to get your point across and move on.
By identifying and using elements that already exist within the world, you can use them to shape aspects of your developing character logically. The character profile will be a reference for you to roleplay with. It will give roleplay partners information to think about before interacting with you so that effective and efficient collaborative storytelling can flow. But how can you create a believable persona tied to the existing lore and avoid being a generic construct? You will need to do a bit of research on the setting. In our case, that will be Britannia and the world of Ultima Online.
Research
Developing a compelling persona in Ultima Online roleplay starts with familiarizing yourself with the world’s established lore and places within Britannia and beyond. Read available history and details on the virtues, races, geography, towns, and other facets that have depth in canon resources or wiki archives. This knowledge grounds your creations in the setting rather than inventing concepts that may conflict with existing facts. An excellent source that will quickly get you up to speed on Britannia’s setting and culture is ultimacodex.com.
https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Britannia
Like countless fantasy roleplaying games, Ultima Online is set within a medieval culture with magic, supernatural creatures, and abundant otherwordly phenomena. The link below explains the governmental system used in Britannia, considered a monarchial republic, with representatives from each of the eight major cities to form a more progressive form of feudalism. In such a system, there would still be nobles who own the lands, gentry who operate the businesses and lease property from a noble landowner, freeman commoners who generally populate the cities and provide skilled labor to businesses, and peasants who work the land in an agricultural capacity. They provided labor for their noble rulers in exchange for protection and the right to work a small plot of land for their subsistence needs. Consider these things when creating your backstory and roleplaying within the world.
https://wiki.ultimacodex.com/wiki/Great_Council
Physical Appearance
There are three ways to provide a physical appearance for your character: the in-game graphical representation, a representational graphical image, and a written description. For some, all that may be needed is the in-game image, and what is seen being worn is how your character is described. Our guild, The Green Company, utilizes character profiles in Discord and the guild website.
Optimally, having the graphic image and written description match as closely as possible is a good idea. The written description will come before or after the visual representation, depending on how you select the graphic image. However, finding an image you like and crafting your description may be more straightforward.
For the written description, envision physicality, clothing style, and other aesthetic attributes that communicate disposition and vocation without explicitly mentioning them. The goal here would be to present a description where the viewer, seeing you for the first time, can only guess your character’s physical characteristics, profession, capabilities, etc. Create a paragraph with complete sentences that flow like the description would be presented in a novel. Write in present tense and third-party perspective so the reader experiences the description as an active observer. Avoid wording things in the description that force the reader into acting or forming an opinion, such as using gorgeous or frightening as descriptors, for these are both subjective and mean different things to different people. Example:
Physical Description: The middle-aged man stands six heads tall with a sturdy, wide-shouldered frame. Close-cropped brown hair crowns a smooth, unblemished face with angular features, light brown skin, and high cheekbones. Stern brows crown a pair of brown eyes, an aquiline nose, and full lips. A neatly trimmed Van Dyke beard adorns his lower face.
Trappings
The physical description also includes your worn items. Include a description of your adventuring kit, as well as everyday clothing. No one is realistically wearing armor 24 hours a day. Worn clothing and equipment develop the character’s style. Example:
While not wearing kit, his typical garb consists of a black, hooded, wool traveling cloak over his shoulders. The back of the garment bears the snake and shield coat of arms of The Green Company. Upon his torso is a black, high-collared wool doublet with puffed sleeves and green slashes. He wears flared, black leather gloves on his hands that extend halfway up his forearms. A pair of green wool hose and black leather thigh boots adorn his legs.
Fully armored, he wears a visored close helm upon his head and a suit of fluted Maximillian plate mail armor, complete with steel gorget, pauldrons, spaulders, vambraces, gauntlets, breastplate, tassets, cuisses, greaves, and sabatons. Upon his person is a longsword, dagger, and a kite shield bearing The Green Company snake and shield coat of arms.
When a written description is supplied, it allows both the player and the reader to envision the character more thoroughly in their mind’s eye, which assists in getting into an immersive mindset when interacting with them. It is another layer that works toward an expressive completeness to a persona.
Personality Traits
Determine emotional dispositions, quirks, manners of speech, and other unique personality signatures beyond skill capabilities. By defining these aspects, you supply another layer of depth to the character and begin to shape it into something uniquely yours, adding interest to the persona beyond what a generic profile might entail. Example:
Personality Traits: (Character Name) is conscientious, stoic, honorable, and doggedly adherent to protocols, structures, and planning. He tends to talk formally, generally addresses everyone with respect, and uses appropriate titles and names when known. His resting face is neutral and characteristically devoid of emotion.
Later on, when I develop emotes for the character, I can further show his personality based on the traits depicted here, such as how the character speaks, his body language, and his reactions.
Motivations and Goals
Motivations are the short- and long-term aims, fears, obsessions, preoccupations, and moral codes guiding your character’s path. They are primarily for your notes, consisting of logical aspects developed from the backstory, but are not common knowledge. This information will be revealed subtly through roleplay, which may affect the character’s actions, interactions with others, and the environment around them. It is recommended that you record this information somewhere for easy reference, do not utilize it within a public character profile, and reveal it in parts during your actions in roleplay. Example:
Motivations: Weary of unrooted uncertainty, (character Name) now quests for stability by upholding the order’s righteous mission. Having reconciled good ends sometimes requiring controversial means from his personal history, (character Name) focuses on honoring lives already sacrificed by achieving long-term strategic victories over petty short-term wins.
Behaviors and Relationships
Behaviors and relationships are defined as the character’s public conduct, interaction preferences, tendencies when forming or avoiding connections, and overall social values. Unlike motivations and goals, this category could be something commonly known about the character if they are a public and easily accessible entity or kept secret, only revealed via roleplay. Example:
Behaviors & Relationships: Charming yet guarded, (Character Name) prefers the company of fellow scoundrels reformed through service but generally relates well with most. He often builds camaraderie by subtly pricking the more imperious nobles’ egoism with clever gibes while upholding formal propriety. However, his criminal past fosters wariness with entitled personalities.
Complexity
Complexity is defined as contradictions, ironic habits, or philosophical tightropes walking between conflicting poles of the character’s psyche. These aspects add further character levels, but motivations and goals are generally not commonly known and kept under wraps until revealed through the character’s roleplay. Please keep them in a notes section and introduce them slowly into your interactions. Example:
Complexity: Derren secretly empathizes with antagonists driven to extremes by desperation, aware he narrowly escaped a similar fate. He sometimes walks a razor’s edge, dismissing the need for certain objectives without entirely condoning former allies’ unlawful methods. This philosophical tightrope taxes his conscience, leading to drinking to numb lingering doubts after issuing harsh judgments against people once considered friends.
Secrets
Secrets explore buried pain, hidden vices, or personal struggles, charting an indirect route toward redemption or damnation. They are not things that would be common knowledge, and the character may go to great lengths to keep it that way. You don’t need to have any burning secrets, and the level of seriousness can be as trivial or significant as desired. Still, it does help in adding an extra layer to a character to bring it further toward realism.
Secrets: In his final mission redeeming besieged compatriots before joining the order, Ludra discovered her mother’s murder resulted from her involvement in fencing black market relics to afford to live in the city. The knowledge that her duplicity caused her end is still painful, making Ludra hyperaware of how morality frays under strain.
Once arranged in a layered profile, our characters achieve enhanced dimensionality as described above. Their choices become comprehensible through their goals, experiences, and disposition. They become more interesting and lifelike, and we have a plan or guide for effectively presenting them to the world.
Chat Color Preparation
Overhead text allows the character to type their spoken words and have them appear on top of their heads, like a form of chat bubble within a comic. This instantly identifies the speaker to the players nearby. Customizing the color display of your various chat modes, especially say and emote, can enhance your in-character portrayals.
Colors can convey feelings or emotions. However, that may vary from culture to culture. Customizing how your words and emotions appear on the screen can enhance the type of personality you are attempting to project. From a Western perspective, consider utilizing the following color schemes to suit the nature of your character better:
Kind, earthy, empathetic - Green to yellow helps convey the feeling of a gentle spirit speaking.
Cold, indifferent, stoic - Grey to blue conveys seriousness, business-like demeanor, and detachment.
Aggressive, hostile, menacing - Hot colors like red, orange, and red convey a bold or aggressive feel.
Emotes - I prefer orange for emotes.
Narration - Depending on your guild affiliation, narration text should go on a private channel, such as a group, so that you aren’t disrupting other people with extensive descriptions. During a scene, I would typically change my channel of choice to an orange or yellow color.
Accessing Chat Settings
In the enhanced client, right-click the round button on the lower left of the chat window and select chat colors.
In the classic client, click options and speech, and select the color boxes beside each chat category.
Roleplay Conventions and Formatting
Determine Role-play Methods
Text-based role-playing has been around for a very long time. Modern games have ties to earlier platforms like MUDs (multi-user dungeons). To communicate effectively, especially in scenarios where collaborative storytelling was being conducted, they devised structure rules in how their words were formatted. We will address some of these structure rules and how they pertain to our current platform. Furthermore, two types of role-playing are commonly used within the MMORPG space: impromptu and narrated.
Impromptu Role-play
Impromptu role-playing involves a scenario where two or more role-players act out scenes and react as their characters would within the environment. Besides knowing your character details, this role-play method is not pre-planned and can be initiated on the fly. Just doing this can significantly enhance the feeling of immersion, especially if you are part of a role-playing guild. It is commonly used during travel, at lulls between fights or pulls, and simply when relaxing within civilized spaces.
Narrated Role-play
Narrated scenes are akin to a scenario run by a dungeon master during a tabletop session involving one or more people. One player acts as the narrator, outlining an adventure beforehand and inputting pre-generated scene information consisting of expressive environmental text. They are also responsible for acting out the parts of any NPCs introduced within the scenario and determining whether or not the actions of players and NPCs involved in the scene are successful. This type of narrated role-play is typically used for events to simulate an adventure and often consists of multiple locations, with each scene revealed by the narrator upon arrival.
Steps to create a narrated adventure are beyond the scope of this particular guide. Still, in general, the narrator would create an outline of the adventure event, write descriptions of each location change to reveal to the players upon arrival, and generate basic profiles to act as part of individual NPCS encountered at the location, if any are present.
The number of chat letters available to UO is a bit restrictive compared to many other games. The classic client has 100 characters possible within a single chat message, while the enhanced client has 119. Thus, if you have a paragraph of text describing a scene, you need to break it into smaller sentences or use succinct descriptions.
As a template to help you keep track of your character counts, open up an application like Notepad, which doesn’t alter text with formatting in any way. Type out 100 zeroes at the top of a new document and adjust your sentences until they are under the 100 count. Use a dash at the end of a sentence to signal to the characters involved in the role-playing that you are continuing to speak.
To format a scene, enter the sentences of a longer paragraph and end with a dash if there is more. Below is an example of a narrated scene using a 100-word chat string in party or guild chat:
Incoming Scene Description… (prep command announcing scene set-up so characters aren’t talking over.)
The only sounds heard within the meadow are the faint patter of rain and the occasional whinny- or snort from horses. As mist rises slightly from the ground, a mild breeze gently ruffles the- long grass. A moon gate, rippling and buzzing with energy, stands in the heart of the meadow - its surface, a flowing blue-white ellipse undulating with power. The air has a faint ozone odor.- A detachment of heavily armored mounted warriors and infantry soldiers on foot wait nearby.
End Scene description…
Note: Out of common courtesy, select either party or guild chat to broadcast scene descriptions so that you aren’t spamming all over a public channel and disrupting the service for other people. Emotes and say are fine, but string after string of text used to describe an area fully would be seen as disruptive to the space.
Timing
It’s relatively easy to throw in some impromptu role-play in lulls between combat while traveling or when arriving at a dungeon or scene to add flavor to the environment while adventuring. However, narrated scene descriptions are best done outside combat or in a busy spawn location. There will be way too much happening for players to be able to process information dumps. Provide scene descriptions outside the danger area, such as arrival at a dungeon, outside a town, or a safe location where you won’t be engaged until after the scene setting has been revealed.
Emotive Acting Format
For immersion, we want to convey the feeling that the players are active and living out the scene in real time. An excellent way to create that is to use emotes written in present tense and third person perspective so that all readers process the action as if they were spectators watching from a position nearby. Word the action like an attempt, not an automatic success. The narrator will inform you whether or not the effort succeeded, and either the narrator or the target (if another player) will type the result of the action in their own words based on the level of success or failure. Example:
Dasien, astride his midnight-black destrier warhorse, rides up to the towering gates.
Example 2: the character can also mix written words along with the emote.
Dasien grins as he rides toward the gate. “Greetings and well met,” he says.
Emote (Classic Client): to enter emote mode, press the colon and the space car. Emote (Enhanced Client) use /e and the space bar to enter emote mode.
Out-of-Character Format
Out of character is used when the narrator needs to convey mechanical scene information or when a player needs more clarity than what would be possible if they stayed in character. To include out-of-character details or comments, enclose them within double brackets. This helps distinguish them from the in-character narrative and ensures that players can communicate with each other without disrupting the flow of the story. For example:
((Dasien, you have been severely poisoned. Please act this out.))
Narrator Etiquette
The narrator acts as the story engine, describing the environment using sight, sounds, smells, temperature, weather conditions, etc. In other words, they set the environmental stage with description. The narrator also determines whether or not the character’s actions succeed or fail.
Because it is collaborative storytelling, you can communicate this to the player and have them emote the resulting description. However, just like other players, the narrator is not supposed to act or take over the actions of others outside of NPCs. Let the player act out their reaction after you inform them of a condition affecting them somehow.
It is also the narrator’s job to control the pacing during a scenario. If you are waiting for a player to finish their action, verbally express that so everyone knows what you expect before continuing the story. Exercise patience while the players take their turns and draft replies. We all have different typing speeds, but if they take excessive time to post a reply, give them a nudge and inform them that you need to move on.
Player Etiquette
Players either speak as they would in say or communicate actions via emote, in the form of a present tense, third-person action string. A player character should only control their character’s actions and that of minions. Do not craft an emotion to control another character’s actions or reactions. DO craft your strings so they read like an attempt at an activity rather than succeeding. The narrator will inform the parties involved whether or not your actions succeed. At that point, the affected character types an appropriate response. For example:
(Action emote from Darius)
Darius strides past the carriage, removes a glove, and uses it to slap towards Rola’s face.
(Narrator Modifier)
((Darius misses with the glove, badly))
(Rola’s reaction)
Rola quickly moves his head to the side, avoiding Darius’ clumsy attempt at slapping.
Armed with our detailed character profile, knowledge on how to alter chat colors to enhance our ability to express our character’s personality, and how to utilize emotes to act out facets of our character’s persona, its time to move on to creating a library of categorized emotes for quick reference and utilization in scenes.
Emote Library
The emote command allows you to act out parts of your character’s persona in expressive ways. Combined with the personality traits and mannerisms that you defined in your character profile, you can portray the character in a way that is uniquely yours. Some of us are talented writers with photographic memories who can recall every minute detail of our character and type at lightning speed. For those of us who do not possess any of these qualities, it is beneficial to have a pre-generated library of emotes to pull from that you can alter on the fly and deploy as needed to add your character’s unique personality to the scene and bring it to life. To do this, we create a text file, or series of files, containing emotes based on aspects of our character’s personalities and mannerisms.
Why Create an Emote Library
The emote library is a tool to help define your character’s personality as you portray it during scenes. It’s one less thing to think about during roleplay, and you can use them to copy, paste, and alter on the fly to save typing time. Although you can word the emotes so that they can fit into a scenario without alteration, it is often best to use them as a guide that you can quickly reconfigure to interact with the specifics of a scene appropriately.
Starting the Emote Library
Just like the technique described in pre-generating scene descriptions, start a new text file in a program such as Notepad that doesn’t automatically format or distort text in any way. Then, create a string of 100 zeroes (119 if using the enhanced client) as a length guide. With this template as a reference, start brainstorming emote categories your character would likely use during your adventuring, travels, or idle times. Below are example categories and what might be contained within:
Armored Greeting Emotes
Metal rings as he crisply pounds a plated fist to breastplate in greeting.
Expression stony, he pounds his breastplate with an armored gauntlet in salute.
Jaw set, he pounds a steel gauntlet to his breastplate in greeting.
Making eye contact, he raps his breastplate with a steel gauntlet in salute.
With a grin, he raps his breastplate with a gauntleted fist in salute.
With disciplined precision, he pounds a steel-clad fist across his breastplate in salute.
Countenance grim, he salutes, steel-clad fist pounding across breastplate.
He acknowledges with a crisp salute, pounding breastplate with his gauntleted fist.
Pondering Emotes
He purses his lips, pausing to assess the situation.
His eyes narrow as he pauses to ponder the situation.
He ponders, the silence heralding deliberations unspoken.
Humor Emotes
His stern visage cracks, mouth spreading into mirth that lights his stoic features.
Belly laughs, double him over; hands clamp stomach while building chuckles escape.
Smile emerging, his eyes shine before releasing a burst of laughter.
Agreement
Wordlessly, he nods grimly, arms resolutely crossed over his chest plate.
Brow furrowing, his head bobs once in agreement.
He nods almost imperceptibly without shifting his stone-faced expression.
Nods his head in agreement.
Disagreement
He strokes his beard once, sharply, eyes narrowing as he shakes his head.
He frowns and shakes his head no.
Hand waving the notion away, he shakes his head no.
Assessment and observation (Mounted)
Eyes scanning the area, he surveys the landscape alertly astride his mount.
Reigns held loosely in one hand; his gaze sweeps the area as he sits firmly in the saddle.
Sitting very still in the saddle, his gaze sweeps across the area.
He scans the area, prompted to follow his destrier’s gaze as something grasps its attention.
Mounting
He strides to Sevaliir with purpose, grabbing reins and swiftly mounting.
He dismounts, releasing reins, and graceful as he lands by steadfast Sevaliir.
Raylen approaches the destrier, caressing his coat, and then easily hoists into the saddle.
Dismount
He dismounts seamlessly, sabatons thudding as he lands.
He swings his leg gracefully over the saddle and dismounts, armor clinking as he touches down.
He dismounts fluidly with grace, relinquishing reins, regal Sevaliir standing nearby.
Mounted Halt
He tugs the reins, the destrier responding gracefully, muscles rippling as it halts.
He pulls back, Sevaliir obeying to halt in a cloud of dust.
At his rein-tug, Sevaliir gradually slows his resonant steps to a stop.
Mounted Walk
He rides the destrier forward at a walk, metal glinting, armored frames working in harmony.
Knight and steed move as one, armor rustling, at a walk, their strides filled with grace.
With a squeeze, he nudges the destrier into a walk, iron-shod hooves clopping.
Mounted Canter
Raylen spurs a canter, the destrier surging forth, massive form a blur, intense yet controlled.
Raylen urges a graceful canter, the duo becoming fluid motion, barding aglow, presence powerful.
With a nudge, the graceful destrier canters, propelling them on, sunlight catching metal.
Mounted Gallop
He spurs a thunderous gallop, the ground trembling as the destrier’s surges.
He leans, the destrier erupting in a mighty gallop, armored forms trailing dust in their wake.
He presses a gallop, destrier unleashing astonishing speed, massive hooves trembling.
Closing Remarks
The purpose of this guide was to provide tools and tips to help you construct and effectively present a credible roleplaying persona. We focused on planning out your character’s personality traits, ambitions, and attitudes and organizing your roleplaying content so that everyone participating understands and is on the same page with your character’s actions. This level of planning will generally produce a more collaborative, immersive experience.
While no universal “best practices” apply to every roleplayer’s unique preferences and needs, adopting some common group expectations and rules for character development and scene structure can help to enable more coherent, consistent roleplay. A richer roleplaying environment is often promoted by carefully contemplating your character’s goals and how to portray them properly and discussing OOC formatting and writing style preferences with your other players.
Take what you find most beneficial from this guide for creating your own memorable identities and conducting fascinating roleplay scenes. Apply them to develop your roleplaying style as you and your group see fit.
Thanks for reading.
Sir Raylen Avernn
Master of The Green Company
Reference Sources
MULTIPLE MUDS from back in the day
Various MMORPG role-play guilds
Creating Unforgettable Characters: by Linda Seger