Warcraft Roleplaying Guide: Tense, Perspective, and Attempts

Previous Section - Part 7

A lot of players starting off with Roleplaying tend to have the problem of not understanding how they can interact with other players. I briefly mentioned this in the last section, but I feel it should be expanded a little bit, and that I should start with the very basics of Roleplay Etiquette: Writing.

What I intend to cover in this section is mostly what sort of Etiquette comes with writing and engaging with other players. Roleplaying on World of Warcraft – and any MMO really – is an extremely text-heavy hobby. Both when it comes to reading, and writing. It’s not uncommon for Roleplayers to both read and write an entire Novel’s worth of text in an entire day depending on how involved you are with events and other players.

I’m not joking either. An average event of 20 Roleplayers writing 2-3 paragraphs of actions every 5-10 minutes produces nearly a standard novella’s length of words in around 5 hours. That’s ~30,000 words on average. If you include Server Events and more players to that specific event, it gets astronomical to how much players read and write.

So it starts to get overwhelming for new Roleplayers, especially those that just started to pick up writing and reading as a hobby. You don’t need to be a good writer to enjoy this hobby but you do have to be a good reader at least.

Mostly, I intend for this section to just be a small primer on writing techniques that most of the Roleplay community follows. What I intend to do is show what sort of techniques you should incorporate into your writing, emotes, actions, and even dialogue to help you better understand other Roleplayers and lessen their confusion when interacting with you in return.

So let’s get to it!

Tense

So what exactly is tense? In fiction writing, tense denotes whether things happened, are happening, or will happen. When it comes to writing out a story, it’s suggested that authors stick with ONE tense to be uniform throughout the entire work and keep readers from getting confused because it’s easier to understand the flow of action if the tense is uniform throughout the work.

When it comes to writing for Roleplay though, players tend to have a little bit more leeway, and often you’ll find Roleplayers who like to have a certain tense that they like to write in. Either through the past tense to seem that everything they had done already happened, current tense to make it seem like the action is happening now, or future tense where it seems like whatever they intend to do will eventually happen.

Here are some examples of a simple emote that a player would write out using the different tenses.

“*He looked towards the door with a sigh before his hand reached down to his side, pulling the dagger from its sheath. His eyes turned, looking towards his foe in front of him* “I guess this is how it’s going to go.”

“*He was looking at the door before he sighed: His hand lowering down to his side to pull the dagger from its sheath. He looked towards his foe in front of him to speak* “I guess this is how it’s going to go.”

“* He would look at the door before he sighed. His hand eventually moving down to his side to pull the dagger out of its sheath. He would then look at his foe, and speak* “I guess this is how it’s going to go.”

See how the above example played out differently depending on wording and intent? One denoted action already happening, one denoted action happening now, and one denoted action that will happen.

As a beginner, which one should you go with?

Typically it's suggested to stick with past tense to avoid confusion with other players, because technically every action that a character would do would be considered an 'attempt" (more on that in a minute). While you can write in whatever tense you want - since it's pretty clear in the above examples what the flow of action is - the past tense is often considered the easiest for other readers to both read and write in.

Perspective

When it comes to fiction writing there are two perspectives that authors typically write in: First and Third-person perspectives.

What’s the difference between the two?

Well, First Person Perspective is done from the perspective of a single character all from their Point of View and is often characterized using terms such as “I” “Me” “My” and other language like that. Often it’s used as a writing device to get in the head of a singular character to experience the story from their perspective.

Here’s an example:

“ *I stepped up to the crowd of people and smiled, waving my hand to greet them all before I opened my mouth to speak; hoarse from having to yell earlier in the day* “Hello everyone!”

Third Person Perspective is done from the perspective of an outside force looking onto the scene itself. Whether it’s from the focal point of a singular character (Limited third person) or the viewpoint of all the characters (omniscience third person), this perspective is often characterized using terms such as “They” “Them” “Their” language and is used as a writing device to have the reader experience the story from an outside perspective looking in, rather than from a singular character's point of view.

Here’s an example:

“*He stepped up to the crowd of people and smiled, waving his hand back and forth before he opened his mouth to speak despite being hoarse from having to yell earlier in the day* “Hello everyone!”

Notice the difference? One perspective you’re in the character's head, and the other you’re an outside viewer looking in.

So which one do you go with as a Roleplayer?

People will tell you that it doesn’t really matter, but from my own experience it’s best to stick with the Third Person Perspective when it comes to writing your character's actions. The reason for this mostly has to do with non-fiction writing perspective from other players who are observing your writing.

When you write in the First Person, you're often putting yourself in the position of the character on how they feel and act, and having to experience what they feel and experience to get through the scene.

This can - and often does - cause conflicts down the line when players feel themselves becoming heavily invested in the character's thoughts, and wellbeing and blend themselves in with the character's emotions. Which, you can imagine, makes it hard to separate In Character and Out of Character thoughts and actions. When you're invested in the character and want to experience yourself as them, it becomes less of what the character would do, and more about what YOU the person would do instead.

When you write in the Third Person perspective you don’t often have that sort of connection with the character since you’re writing it from an outside view peering on into the character, and their actions tend to be more of a response to what THEY would do as opposed to what YOU would do.

Of course, it still happens no matter the perspective you write in (Which I'll be going over in a future section). It's just that players tend to feel more at ease with approaching newer players who can separate themselves from the character that they play. Nothing makes players more hesitant to approach and meet new people than worrying if their actions will upset both the character and the player behind the screen.

So remember: As a Roleplayer, always stick with the Third Person Perspective

Attempts

So when it comes to Roleplaying, what is an attempt exactly?

When it comes to fictional writing, the author of the work usually has the flow of action happening and planned out from start to end, and typically moves the story from Point A to Point B. Roleplayers of course don’t have this luxury of knowing what’s going to happen from start to finish, because scenes and events and all are determined by your actions and how you reply to them. That’s the fun of the hobby after all and why interactive and dynamic storytelling draws players into the hobby.

So what this means exactly is that as a player, your character does everything with the belief that their actions might, or might not succeed.

Now, this isn't for EVERY action of course. If your character performs a simple gesture or action towards themselves - such as nodding, scratching their chin, or walking from one spot to another - then it's assumed that those actions that they did were successful because it's towards yourself and therefore don't need to be attempted or contested.

Attempts are typically expected when your character's actions affect another player’s character. Here’s an example:

“*Sarah scoffed at the notion, and pulled back her hand to slap across John’s face for daring to make such a suggestion.*”

See how the emote there is worded? Sarah didn’t SAY she successfully slaps John’s face, but that she simply moved her hand back to do so. The player who controls John then can either accept the slap, or write an emote that explains that his character either moved out of the way, blocked it, or any other action entirely, and the scene moves from there.

GodModing

So what happens if a player decides to bypass the idea of the attempt entirely? Usually, these are often ignored by other Players because they can come across what many call “Godmoding” (God–Mode-ing). Godmoding is a form of Roleplay where a player dictates the actions of another player's character and controls the scene as if they owned those characters.

As a beginner, you should always try to avoid Godmoding another player’s character because that violates the biggest rule of Roleplay Etiquette: Consent (Which I’ll be getting into with the next section). When you roleplay, emote actions or do anything that can affect other players in the scene, you should be aware that you only control your character and the way that they react to the developing story.

In summary: Always word your character's actions in a way that doesn’t outright say they succeed so as to leave room for other player’s characters to react, or perform an action themselves in return.

Final Words

Honestly, this section was mostly a brush-up of writing techniques that are typically used by other Roleplayers. It’s the first section because a lot of beginners typically jump into the hobby with their own writing style, and find it hard to incorporate themselves into the community right off the bat because they have to adjust how they write around other players.

Which is perfectly fine actually: Fiction writing is not the same as writing for Roleplay even though both are derived from wanting to do creative writing. You can develop skills in both hobbies. In fact, my Fiction writing style is different from my Roleplaying writing style, which is both different from my Non-Fiction Writing style, and that’s not even counting how casual I am when it comes to writing on Social Media or Discord or in general discussion.

Plus, the best part about Roleplaying is that you don’t NEED to be a good writer to enjoy the hobby either. As long as your grammar and spelling are understandable, and you have an imagination, you’ll do well at it. I’ve seen Roleplayers enjoy themselves from those who write one to two sentences, to those who write three to four paragraphs and everything in between.

Just remember all of the above though when it comes to writing out tense, perspective, and how you word your actions in attempts when it comes to interacting with other players and you’ll do fine.

See you in the next section!

Start of this Guide

Part 1 - Introduction