Ok since kaiser already made a post like this for maverick I guess I'll make one for apocalypse. Heres the things Kaiser thought would be a good idea to go over.

The art of combat with one enemy

The art of combat with multiple enemies

Character interaction with other players

Setting description and incorporation

The art of character growth

I think thats a good start, so apocalypse what stuff do you want to go over first?

Since Mav's starting from the top and working hisway down I think I'll start at the bottem and work my way up

Ok the art of character growth.

When you make a character its always a good idea to have a back story before you start playing. This is good way to start building your character because if they have a mysterious past this can be something thats explored in the story. If for some reason your character doesn't have too much back story, for example if they were just created or something like that you can still develop them in other ways.

A good way to go about doing this is to think about your character like you would a real person. And then think about how certain events would effect them. I think this is probably the best way to go about character development both in rpgs and storyteelling in general. When doing this you need to understand how people think and what motivates them. The more you do this the more realistic your character will be. This is easy if you base them off some aspect of yourself, if their really different from you, you still should think about what makes them tick. Something that I do sometimes is psychologically profile people I know. My motivation in doing that isn't really because I'm trying to make better characters, its because people in general seem kind of crazy to me and thats pretty much my attempt to understand their motivations better. But doing that has come in handy for character writing both in and out of RPGs. So psychologically profiling people could be something to keep in mind if you have trouble with making characters.

Ok so I can get an Idea of this could you possible put up an Example of good Character back ground

A character background would pretty much cover a characters motivations and. So it'd be important to take that into account when making your background. The characterizations in guyver are pretty straightforeward for example.
Agito wants to rule the word because of how his dad was crushed so easily by cronos. As a result of that he's come to despise weakness like what he may have seen in his father when cronos took his company. And as a result has done his best to accumulate more and more power.

Some characters are less straightforeward in how their background might influence their behavior. I'm not sure if you ever saw the anime flcl but a good example of that is in this. In Flcl Naotas older brother goes off to America to play baseball leaving Naota behind. His older brothers needy girlfreind latches onto Naota as a sort of substitute but thats all he really is to her since he's just a kid. This is pretty frustrating to Naota who wants people to see him as an adult. This influences even really subtle things in his behvior such as how he tries to drink sour things even though he doesnt like them because he sees that as being the sort of thing an adult would drink.


You don't nessecerly need to make your characters background influence as subtle as naota, something straigtforeword is fine too.

Ok great advise

No questions at the moment If I think off anything that are relavent I'll be sure to ask

but until then

What's next on the list

Ok next on the list is setting and description. This is alot more important then it sounds. As you know the setting is the place where the rpg takes place. If you don't post at leasta mildly detailed description of the setting it leads to confusion, another thing that leads to confusion is if people don't pay attention to settings and descriptions that were posted.Ffor example some people might start fighting in space when they should be on the planets surface, yes this really has been known to happen.

The more detailed the setting the more important it is to describe it, Magna, for example is someone who was very bad at this (if you don't know Magna is a guy who RP'd here before, but got scared off after his bad RPing pissed me and bloodstorm off one to many times)

Basically Magna would say something like "After me and (insert other characters name here) got the gundam working we flew around and blew some robots up"

If I remember correctly he did this inside of a building where there's no room for a gundum to fly around, never mind how he somehow managed to build an entire gundam in one day from a bunch scrap metal he found on the ground, thats a lesson for another time.

Anyway the point is, Gundams should not be able to do arial battles inside bases, on a planets surface should not turn into a battle in space with no explanation and a forest should not be a city or an ocean. This is why settings and descriptions are very important.

ok so no short rediculasly impossibe post's with virtually no detail got ya.

Got to keep them a fare length, enough detail and NO STUPIDITY

right ok I guess Character interaction with other players is next

Some text based rpgs actually have rules against doing anything with another persons character because they aren't handled properly in other peoples posts. I for one would never have the patience to play that sort of rpg, from what I've observed most people here share that sentiment with me. The fact of the matter is that for effective rpg storytelling to take place you must do things with other peoples characters in your post because other wise the rpg will stagnate or just plain suck (unless everyone playing is some sort of genious writer).

But there is a way around this problem ,when you do use anothers character you should have the character act and talk the same way as they do in the posts of their creators.If there isn't alot to do there you can read their DF's, sometimes these will give you hints on how their characters should act. If its the very begining of the rpg and no one else has posted yet you can do one of two things, either wait for them to post before you interact with their character or take a chance and have an interaction, I would advise against this unless its nessecery for your characters story. If you do this it might be a good idea to contact the characters creator if you have any misgivings about how things should happen. We havent had too many problems with this recently, only a few times where not much is known about a character because they arent a major player in the story. If there is a character like this who might not even have a DF yet because their so minor you should contact their creator instead of going off what little you know about them to avoid any possible problems.