Illarion.org

i was thinking, instead of having people give you a story that you started, you should make them give you a story about themselves, it can be anything about themselves. I think this would boost RP'ing a little

Why do you think that? Give reasons, if you propose things. Never hold a report in front of a class?

On the other hand:
If the have to answer a story the Illarion-Staff gave them, they prove to think more complex and also show they can imagine different situation, even with characters they are not used to. which is very important for a multi-user Roleplay game.

Loki

I agree with Salathe, if you gave a story about your char then you are giving your char a role. The question could be something like: 'Write a story from your character's point of view about why you are going to Illarion.' Then people would have the begining of their role before they play Illarion.

I really like this ideal!
Let the story be their character's description. In a way this would force them to role play according to the description they give.
Good ideal Salathe.

YOUR character. But the intention behind this system is to enforce new players to think themselves into a foreign character, whichmight even be completely different from your own. This way you don't jusrt know how to play your own charactersm but also understand the rp of the others.

I think your idea is brill salathe it could get the new players to think about there characters background more.Brill idea.

Boremier

its pretty difficult to write a charakterstory for a game you never set foot upon. did all of you have a finished story before starting here??

I would have to agree with Galdriel on this one. The way the application is set up now forces you to think in an abstract way. To prove you know how to interact and understand other people's point of view by writing a story through some random character's eyes. This shows that you understand more than just how to think as a creation of your own mind but how to follow along with and tell a story, which is a major part of role-playing. You will not always be involved in your own stories in illarion but rather be involved in the stories others begin and you are drawn into.

If you write a story about your one character as Salathe proposed then you would also have to do this for each new character you create to prove they are worthy as well and this would be redundant and pointless work for everyone involved. Writing a story through your characters eyes for every character would prove nothing to the admins about your role-playing ability. It would only show that you had created a story at some point in your life and have retold it now. This could have been done over days, weeks, or even months. It does not show that you know how to think on your feet and in a timely and appropriate fashion as the current application requirement of completing a story of a random character in a random situation does, which is essential to be able to do if you're going to interact with other characters with other stories each and ever day in illarion.

A better idea is to continue with the application system as it is now by completing a story provided to you and to add to this system a portion in which you must provide a small description of each of your characters you wish to play. A paragraph or two minimum, to describe your character and why they are the way they are. This could of course change over time once you start playing (how they act not their background) because as we all know each day brings new experiences and new experiences bring new ways of thinking and acting.

This would force players to think of a reason why they're playing a dwarven mage or a friendly drow if they're going to do this. If they don't display in their description a very good basis for these out of the ordinary character types then the characters would not be permitted to play but others could from the same player. In this way a person could play a typical human and fit in very well in the town, then if they decided that that it would be nice to play a dwarf once in a while they would have to think of a description of the dwarf before they could play them. It would limit the number of pointless character in the game as well as provide another hurdle for the poor role-players to get over if they wished to play.

It would obviously create more work for those reading the descriptions and applications but the end result would be for a much greater pool of role-players and characters in the illarion community. Many of the weeds would be pulled before they had their chance to grow deep roots! There have been many offers to help if asked and if the added work is the main issue in why this should not be implemented, remember that there are others who wish to help and to take on the extra work proposed in order to make illarion better than it already is today.

yea i guess your right