Once again, I'm going to go open my mouth and give people my silly thoughts. First, I want to let you know, the system of making two characters related before hand has been implemented in other sites and, in my humble opinion, it was an abysmal fail.

If you know the other player that much, you may be able to pull it -- I RPed Mercurio was NIC's cousin because, silly and unoriginal as that sounds, the player was my cousin (Gero). But if you ask for random strangers to be your distant-cousin/half-brother/evil-aunt, it rarely plays. The best RP relationships are formed through RP.

But if you are still interested in making those relationship-deals through OOC - darktimes usually set a forum for people to post their character family/friend requests threads. It usually went like this:

But I don't think Background is all that important. And even if it is, other players have no business knowing that OOC if you are not going to reveal it IC. Per see, Diane has a beautiful background, if I may say so myself... which is exactly why I'm not going to tell you. (If you really feel like sharing, you can always have an NIC-moment and blurt out his/her past experiences IC to anybody who would hear.)

So I don't feel clashing background is really such a big deal either. I've found you can either 1- compromise, 2- ignore each other (like with the play-by list) or even 3- decide everyone is right in a way or another. The real credibility relies in other aspects -- I mean, verosimilitude is achieved by making the reader follow the character's logic, no matter how twisted it may be, and by making the character bound to the realm and obey the laws of the wizarding world. All these bindings usually make it all the more challenging, but I digress.

Also, you can make characters with little to no background. The most experienced fiction writers will disagree with me in that, but a main difference between writing fiction and RPing is that you may not have the opportunity to have the background of your character play out. I know that can be quite frustrating :/ But you will find the making of a background doesn't make you any more 'advance' or a good player so, unless you are feeling really creative, you can do without it.

First things first, I suppose I would like to draw the attention back to the questions posed in the OP (not that the previous posts haven't provided me with stimulating reading and many issues to think on).

I think it's important for me to first address how I establish credibility (in a general sense) before I answer anything else, so here I go: In order to establish myself as credible, I try to make sure that I strictly act how my character would IC, not basing my RPing off of what I know OOC. For those of you who don't know, using OOC knowledge IC is called 'metagaming,' and I will now use that term in continuation/further explanation of myself.

I believe it is important, as RPers, to NOT partake in metagaming because it ruins the integrity and the spirit of the RP (at least, in my opinion). I find it incredibly annoying and disrespectful to the other RPers when people metagame because metagaming completely ignores the nature of the multi-player text-based role play, which is that the players must react to each new post pertaining to their character. If someone is metagaming and taking thoughts of another character and responding to them out loud, then that takes away from the experience of the other RPers. It comes off as very over-bearing, like the metagamer is trying to control everything, which is certainly annoying to deal with, and could possibly make the victim of said metagaming feel unappreciated and not valued.

However, in order to create and maintain credibility in reference to back-stories, I think the only issue is the usage of canon names/canon characters as jumping-off points. As several people have mentioned, there are a lot of Potters and Weasleys in the RP. I used to have a major problem with that because I took it as people just wanting to be the next Harry Potter, but I think it is mostly newbies who partake simply because they're not sure where else to start. We can't penalize them for being new, and as a result, slightly ignorant.

BUT, I do have to say that I think establishing the family tree could be very beneficial to establishing a sort of credibility in the RP. Like Anna said, and I remember thinking about this when she started getting a lot of cousins in the RP, it sort of distracts from the role playing experience when you suddenly have tons of members coming up to you talking about how your characters are related when you had no initial intentions on being related to half of the school (I'm exaggerating, of course). While I do think it is important (but not absolutely necessary) for other characters/players to invest in your character, I do not think it is conducive to the RP to have that investment manifested as lots and lots of SS!Relatives. I mean, if that's how you build your character, then certainly go for it, but if you don't intend to have a lot of relatives, and then you are surprised by how many you actually do have, I can only imagine how distracting that may be.

One way to combat the aforementioned issue, though, I've found, is leaving my back-story fairly open. Like Ari mentioned, I don't like to entirely plan out my character, because I find it incredibly binding and restrictive. I don't feel like my character has room to grow, and perhaps that would have been more appropriate for my current character since he's older and probably carries a lot of his past with him (in terms of memories and experiences and whatnot), I don't like feeling like I'm stuck with something. I like my characters to grow and evolve. I absolutely hate stagnant characters. Like I mentioned earlier, part of the way I view the RP is as reacting to what other people post. In order to do that, I like having room to be flexible. However, I do not intend to say that characters should have absolutely no background and can be however you feel at the time.

I admit that sometimes Ian has mood swings because I still haven't completely figured him out (for which I apologize), but I think it adds to his character dimension to a certain degree. And I do have some sort of a skeleton bio for him. I know he has a wife (Marigold, I believe I named her), and 3 kids? See, I've forgotten anyway, but I think it was two boys and a girl. Other than that, I know he used to work for the ministry (since I actually played him as my MoM character for a while), played quidditch with I don't even remember what team, and was the Ravenclaw captain in his Hogwarts days (a bit of a shout-out to my former alias, Ryan Lee, I'll admit). I also know that he likes to be the "cool" guy, likes to play pranks on Kapoor, who is his old friend from Hogwarts, and as far as personality, that's about it. From there, I have so much room to grow, but I still try to maintain consistency with my basic character structure. Above all, I try not to contradict myself, because that is probably the easiest way to destroy credibility....that and hypocrisy.

I'm not saying everyone needs to adhere to this philosophy, but it has worked for me, and I wouldn't be opposed to other people trying it out.

I haven't really run into conflicts much, because I try SO hard to maintain consistency, so I wouldn't really say I'm qualified to address that.

I think in order to play a relative of a canon character or to make up a back-story involving such grandeur as being rich or noble or whatever, you have to go in expecting to have to jump through hoops and bend over backwards in order to be able to adjust to everything, and you better be pretty darn creative to be able to react to everything and explain everything so it all makes sense in the long run. My best solution would be to avoid it completely, but for people who are looking for a challenge, maybe you could try it? Haha. It's 3 AM and I'm sort of losing track of my words/thoughts (I totally just ruined the credibility of this post).

So to sum up:

Ways to destroy credibility:
- Metagame
- Contradict yourself/let go of consistencies
- be hypocritical
- leave no room for change/growth/adjustment

Ways to maintain credibility:
- be open to the ever-changing RP
- attempt to maintain consistencies
- have a basic idea of where you want to go with something (this is just a good rule of thumb for life in general - do with purpose)


Aaannnd....that's my more-than-two cents on the issue. If you choose to read this novel of a post, thanks! I hope I was able to make you think.

EDIT: I would like to pull one thing out of Nadia's (I believe that's your name....sorry if it's not! ) post that I feel she explained rather eloquently (and I wasn't sure how to word it):
This is one direction I was trying to go with the whole metagaming thing and sort of lost sight of.


And another thing I just thought of: I also do not think it is really that important to have a background laid out; I think it is more important to have a personality outlined so that you will have an easier time maintaining consistency.

I just want to say, I've read your post throughfully, from start to finish, from top to bottom, and... cake.ninjak, where have you been all my life? We're made for each other - just see the lenght of my post here. Reading through yours was a piece of cake. No pun intended.

But you see, my post, well, I was about to post something twice as big and then I decided against it, and it was going to be about what you just said - in fact, you said everything I ever believed - and, gosh, I'm jealous. How come you put it all so crystal clear? I struggle with every word! -.-

Yes, my name is Nadia and it's acceptable if you forget it lol. Feel free to call me Psycho or something. I really feel for those who want to address me but are faced with the prospect of writing my whole username... Guess that is why people remember my name. I ramble. I'll stop.

But you know, you just said so much of what I think it's almost scary. If I could add something is that, there is this thing about Background-oriented characters that are naturally tragic. Not so much by the tragedy itself, but as the way the character reacts to its past: ever present, ever haunting.

See Harry Potter as character: as an orphan, you may expect a lot of drama from him but he didn't act like the character who goes on about how he feels bad about himself and the fact that he has no parents - even if it is undoubtfully tragic.

Some may say it's a characterization flaw. But background tends to take the place of, well, that: background. So I think this was Rowling's major hit. I thought, as I read through the second book (the first book I ever read), it was actually for the greater credibility that the background did not take a major protagonism in every detail and decition with Harry Potter's life. I thought, it's true: when you are talking about your own life, you rarely see it as tragic - after all, they have to live with their reality every day.

On the other hand, past 'scars' that are worth mentioning are those more traumatic events that undelies in every of the character's most prominent traits. For example, Nadia's compulsive need to find truth and the belief that everybody is lying to her was something that came natural to her, and rarely does she remember her parents hidding from her the fact that she was a witch when she was a kid. (This is an important narcissist wound that constitutes also Nadia's first adventure.)

As for SS, I've seen people develop characters focusing on behavior more than background -- at least it's what I've seen here in the last term period. By behavior I mean, concentrating on how the character is going to react to certain stimuli. These characters are nice, very nice, and I think every character should have at least some programmed behavior in them.

The programmed behaviors can be something like this: always cranky, always smiling *cough*, always freaking out. It can be something less obvious. The behavior is the 'outline' indeed: it's there from the begining usually, if maybe by means of the 'traumas' mentioned above, but background isn't necessarily necessary. Behavior characters can be created with little to no background.

These are usually the silly characters and the ones who will always react the same to almost everything going on, and make good fanfiction as well as comedy character. (However, strong behavioral characters are a bit dull unless you can always find a way to pour your creativity in each response.)

AND yet there's another option, of my preference, and I call this RP-oriented attitude "player's performance". NadiaIC was a player's performance character, which means a character that adapts to the creativity of the player -- in other words, the character was open-ended enough for me to chose the reaction according to what I find more entertaining.

It can very well be described as whimsical That's its best virtue. And I think this is the character type you were trying to describe in your post, cake.ninjak? In this type, the credibility relies in a number of things, most of which you already described in your post.

Heh. I realize I ramble but maybe somebody will find this information intresting in some way. It is really an extension of my previous post: the credibility of the RP can be achieved with no problem despite the clashing of background (which can be dealt with by either compromising or ignoring each other), but you can also very well make characters whose background is not such a major part of the character composition and still be credible and entertaining. Er, sorry if I made it a bit long and confusing.

I think it's been hard for me to find "credibility" with my past charrie, Aislynn. That's why I'm starting over and doing a fresh approach by starting with a first year. I have found it difficult to go into detail every time I RP, to explain why she did the things she did, and in the end it kind of came across as arrogant and heck! I wouldn't even want to be friends with my charrie. I felt completely out of place. But, with time and watching how other people RPed I'm gradually understanding ways of going into detail with your charrie, without overdoing it.

I think it takes time to find out what's everyone's history, but in a way it's our responsibility as RPers to make an effort to find out new things about people. I think I jumped the gun and dove right into my characters "ways" without explaining it gradually, through thought and conversation.

I, personally, am a very visual person and like to see people's backgrounds and I admit go to people's profiles so I can better understand their charrie. But, with 500 characters, it's kind of hard to understand every detail.

I'm hoping this time around starting over with a new charrie, I will be able to expand my RPing skills and go into thought and explain some things better in detail because that was definitely something I was lacking with Aislynn.

Would it be cool to have a Bio thread? I think it would be. Like a "filing cabinet" the Ministry has. Will everyone look at it? Probably not, but it's a good reference and again, I'm a visual person, so if I'm RPing with someone and they're acting kind of strange, I can go and look at their profile and get a better understanding of theirs charrie, so I don't steal their thunder for being the way they are or "hurt" their creativity.

I really don't know if any of this is relevant. But, there's my two cents.

-----

Wait, so isn't this thread meant to be used to show our charries backgrounds?

I think credibility is hard no matter what approach you take. For example my MoM charrie and Sakura, who was my first school charrie and is set to return term after this, are Japanese and English and they both grew up in Japan with Sakura attending Hogwarts due to the fact that her parents moved to England for business. The problem there would be that they were Japanese. Now I know quite a bit about Japanese culture even though I am not in fact Japanese but Caucasian, the problem would be if I didn't know anything about Japan when I made them. Then you get where in Japan did they come from, if they use small Japanese words or even speak in Japanese occasionally is that Japanese correct? When translated does it make sense? Then of course we get to the part of the English side of their family.

They are both related to the Malfoy's with their mother having been Scorpious' daughter, yet they've lived in Japan basically their whole lives and never really met the English side of their family so is it then credible to have them meet a family member and become extremely close to them in a short period of time? Some people would say not but that happened with my charries and ONE of their family members. However this only came up while RPing and I think arranging a family beforehand can be a difficult thing when you have to RP with others unless you know the person OOC. Of course if you're just having your MoM charrie and school charrie being related that's easy because you already know what both of them are like.

Now onto my current charrie Reid. He's American with an English background and only came back to England due to his grandparents being sick and a request from a friend who is one of my own charries. There are some credibility issues with him though and I know that. So first of all he's a famous model and actor yet when he gets to Hogwarts he has to explain that to people, hence making a hole in the I'm famous world wide story. So I had to come up with a way to fix that and I did. Something that hasn't come out in the RPG yet is that he actually uses a spell to make people not realise that he is an actor and model with the spell only being valid during school time. This is so he could get some peace with only those he trusted knowing about his actual identity. He can also speak to animals through his mind but I limit this to animals that he has a bond with.

I think the only way to help with credibility is to create threads where people can show how they are related to different people and maybe places where they can get information about other backgrounds besides their own because I know that some people find it easier to RP a background that they already know. Really though I'm not sure we can do much about the credibility issue because not everyone will look at the threads that inform you about another charrie and even if you do it can be way too time consuming to look through every post just to find out what their charrie actually is.

@___@ Such long posts. Lol.

Well, I feel I don't have to do such a long post since everyone else's has pretty much explained my side and my belief.

I'd like to emphasize Kelvincake's point over there, where he says that personality is more important than background. I wholeheartedly agree. I've only played thrice in the School RPG, and for my last two characters, I didn't lay a background out for them. Rather, I just went along with the flow and dropped a few details on their families as best I could whenever that certain topic would pop up with someone I was RPing with. They always remained to be minor details, though. I don't always base the way my character acts on their backgrounds, as well. Again, personality is key. Usually, no one ever asks IC why one's character acts that way, and then he/she responds and says that it's because of their family upbringing, and either rambles on about their whooole family life, or links them to some post somewhere. OOC, this is a good thing, at least RPers know what to expect. Otherwise, this is a text-based Role Playing Game where people are supposed to figure out things as they go along, with minor alterations here and there, and some sideline information to help you get along. Where's the fun in it if you're so omniscient? D:

I have a character for the next term, and he's going to be the son of gods, Eros and Psyche. That's basically it for him. I don't want to go into detail on how he was born and how he was raised, how he ended up in Hogwarts and how he became a Wizard instead of a god. Again, I just drop details on this as I go along in the RP, only if the person I am RPing with asks about it, IC. Otherwise, they don't need to know. My character is my own creation and I can make him/her whatever I want to be.

And besides, if most people are like me, I'm too lazy to go visit other threads and read such information, when I feel that such info wouldn't be needed for me to have a great time RPing.

There. That wasn't so long, was it? =D

*skips off*

Ok well I'd just like to say that I do agree with Harmony about leaving room to grow in the background and not having it completely made up. A lot of the stuff I now have for Reid and my MoM charrie Mei Lin is what I learnt by RPing them and by reacting to situations. So I guess consistency is key but if you can't be entirely consistent, and lets face it no-one remembers every single detail 100%, at least try to remember the basics that you laid out and not try to be too over the top in your character. I'd also like to point out that when I referred to background in my last post it wasn't meant as the history of the character but more the cultural background of them.

Think I mentioned it in another thread, but I think establishing some family trees might benefit some of us. Not just for the Potters and Malfoys, but the original characters as well.

You might be giving the noob the break they need when they ask to be part of your family line.

This can help keep things organized, as well as letting any potential Weasleys or what-have-nots have a refrence that they can be made aware of before jumping into a canon descendent.

That is brilliant! And thank you for highlighting the point of this thread. I would have to agree with the lot of the things you list.

That is not exactly what I mean. Unless you mean by having your story straight you are practicing the technique of being consistent and organized? I'm speaking more of techniques. Not so much the things you do with your story, but the reasons behind why you do them. Does that make sense?

I actually had some of this conflict when the Ministry first started up. Originally Armand had a friend that worked in the Ministry, and he would do odd jobs for him. But as the Ministry grew to be a much bigger thing, it was hard to fit that in properly. Particularly since the person to play that friend wasn't even on SS! Though typically, people can be fairly good natured about that sort of thing. Sometimes it was as easy as having been a rather quiet individual that kept to themselves, which was fitting for Slade. Then both he and I applied for Ministry positions to lock us in at the Ministry.

There are other things that seem to crop up and are handled fairly easily. I wound up roleplaying with two Malfoys. I don't know if they started as such or they just went with it along the way, but they were just cousins. I have no idea if they went for any family history beyond that.

Lina is something of a difficult one, but there is one thing that I've noticed beyond anything else: You time roleplaying with others builds your character's credibility. I've been roleplaying online since I was 16, and I'll be 27 in November. I started in the Klingon chats at the Star Trek site, went to a place known as Phoenix chat, or TrekkerNet (I went from one to the other, but that was a long time ago), to Guinan's Bar which was connected to the UEP, then from the UEP to MU. I started with simple characters, and as we all grew to know each other and role playing styles, we accepted different kinds of characters, backgrounds, and odd abilities of many sorts. But we also know whether the other people were going to play the characters well, or abuse them. God-moding was simply ignored, and a newbie would be too if their character was too extravagant (much like our grandson of Harry Potter and Voldemort both who is a werewolf vampire dementor house elf). It was a very sink-or-swim environment, but a good deal of us learned how to swim very well. Not that we discouraged bad role-players. We have our share that are welcomed and taught, but it was still through this basic process.

Lina is probably going to be my hardest where credibility is concerned. She does know things she shouldn't, she is a very young potions 'master' *coughexperimentercough*, and she's interestingly light-of-foot. Though for the most part, I think she's been accepted fairly well. This might be in part due to the fact that she can also be very entertaining. But it might also be in part because some of the older players here know me and my style, or know that I played one of the professors, or have simply played with me a term or two ago. And if you even have a few that view you as credible, especially those who are known to be older players, then you often catch the attention of the newer players and those you haven't played with before.

I think the best way to really say it is, start small, get a little attention just by playing. Heck, play yourself. As people know you, you gain credibility for yourself and your character.

Another thing that can help us maintain credibility is being realistic. And I don't mean the whole "don't make your character have every power of amazingness" issue, but I'm talking about in terms of the timeline and your character's own personal timeline.

As a professor (and I'm really sorry if this comes off as a mini-rant), it bothers me when I see older characters who have trouble with simple spells in my class that they would have learned in their earlier years. Now I know I teach blanket lessons because I don't have time to split the lessons the way the other professors do, but honestly, it's nice to read that characters have an easy time with spells and can perform them flawlessly while all the other characters are flailing about and starting fires.

In the HP universe JKR built, would a 7th year have trouble with Alohomora? Probably not, unless they just really stunk at magic. So why would almost all the 7th years have trouble with Alohomora here? (Just an example).

And in the future, maybe to help combat this, I'll try to come up with more complex things to teach.



But yeah....be realistic in terms of the timeline.

I think that, one of the reasons that happens a lot is that people are kind of scared to RP their charrie being really amazing at spellwork. Since it isn't realistic for EVERYONE to get a spell on the first try, a lot of people assume that they SHOULDN'T get it the first time, since then they may seem like they're trying to make their charrie super super smart. I think they're afraid of being judged by other RPers, especially the new ones, who don't want the other RPers to look at them look "Ohh, look at that new member acting like they know all this already *ignore*" or something stupid that would NEVER happen, of course. Plus, if someone gets the spell right away on their first attempt, they don't really have anything else to RP until the Professor gives them another task to do. And being bad at spells often provides for creative RPs when spells go badly wrong That is, unfortunately, one aspect of the RP I don't think can really BE canon, ya know? Kind of like having points for homework--if we didn't have it here no one would do it, but we have to even though it isn't canon or there would be no incentive to do assignments.

One way to combat this, in my opinion, would be to draw a little history about your character's relatives...for example, Cale's mum was HORRIBLE at magic, where as his dad was only average. Therefore Cale would certainly never get a spell right the first time. I think it's a bit genetic, to be honest, just like IQ's are based off of genetics as well. He was pretty much the same as his dad--it took a couple of tries and then he got it. For charries who had really smart parents who were particularly gifted with spellwork, it would make more sense for them to be a bit better at magic than some of their peers. That would be a good way to establish credibility, I think

Maybe some are starting 'too late.' We can start at any age we want, and I believe Storm couldn't play anyone younger than... 15? 16? I don't remember. But he just couldn't get into the mindset of a child. But the reverse of that is you have less time to get comfortable in an rp setting when you're starting out as a 6th or 7th year.

Some of us who have been doing this for a long time can show up with confidence and know what the character should and should not be able to do, as well as how to put one together. It's beneficial to start of younger, where that low confidence could easily be reflected in their character, and they could grow more comfortable with each term. Though I know much like Storm, some people have trouble playing younger characters.

I think it's easier to equate it to... If you start an rpg, I guess. If you start at level one then it's not as sharp of a learning curve as if you were to start at 10 or something.