# Skyrat Guide to Roleplaying Excellency

## What is Roleplay
Roleplaying is a collaborative social activity where players interact with one another to create a cohesive story like actors on a stage. Due to the collaborative nature of the activity, players must abide by a set of expectations and standards for it to work, otherwise it becomes more like improv rather than roleplay. At the core of these expectations, each actor must react in a reasonable way to the actions of other actors in order to create a coherent storyline, and each actor must abide by a set standard so as to not break immersion.

Players must understand that they must interact with others and add onto the story, all without breaking immersion. Due to the social and communal nature of the activity, they must be willing to listen, adapt, and improve to conform to the community and its standards. However, one must not mistake the social nature of the game to think that it is a place solely for them to hang out with friends at the expense of roleplay or others. If they wish to OOCly hangout, **they understand that the ghost cafe is most suitable for OOC social activity.**

## Roleplay Standards

Failure to follow the social contract can result in immersion breaking, most of which can result in **low Roleplay (LRP)** behavior. The most explicit derives from a lack of intent in roleplaying in good faith. These individuals are more interested in acting in ways that entertain them OOCly, typically at the expense in others that break immersion. **These individuals are subject to immediate bans.**

However, not all LRP come from a place of bad faith necessarily, as it can come in other forms done entirely in good faith. Even good players with the best of intentions may come off as LRP through slip-ups, bad ideas, or sometimes bouts of thoughtlessness and laziness, so they should always be prepared to make changes and adapt when given critique by others including staff. While we are not interested in punishing good players for mistakes anyone can make, we may have to take action if a player is consistently making these mistakes without improvement.

### Employability
* **Meeting Minimum Requirements**

Characters must meet the minimum requirements for their jobs in a way that is realistic. All skilled jobs, such as those in science, medical, and engineering, must know how to read, write, and have the skills needed to perform it with relative competence. **This means no illiterate engineers, scientists, and so on.** Unskilled jobs do not have this requirement.
* **Believable Background and Backstory**
* **Cooperation with Co-Worker**
* **Following Chain of Command**

### Believability
* Realistic Behavior
* Grounded in Lore-Based Realism
* Believable Skillset with Occupation

### Sincerity in Roleplay
* Taking Roleplay with Seriousness with Respect to Others
* No Meme Behavior or Acting Like a Meme
* IC Goofiness is not Meme Behavior
* No Meme Slang Outside of PDA Messages

### Consistency
* Consistent in Character Principles & Value
* Consistent in Character Personality
* Consistent in Character Skill

### Sensibility

* Responsiveness to Others
* Responsiveness to Consequence
* Being Considerate OOCly of Others

## Types of Low Roleplay

### LRP by NRP Intent

A player may be LRP due to having no desire to roleplay at all. Sometimes, decent players may engage in this behavior out of boredom. These individuals may act off of an OOC desire to entertain themselves and will act LRP as a result. **This is not tolerated at all.**

### LRP by Implausibility

A player may be LRP by having a character that lacks a basis in plausible reality, i.e. LRP by Implausibility. Skyrat is home to a highly flexible setting with wide usage for making 'extraordinary' characters. For instance, our server takes place on the frontier where employment standards are loose. Criminals, undesirables, and less than suitable individuals may work at the station, due to NanoTrasen overlooking many crimes due to physical distance from the core worlds of the Sol Federation, making their PR in the frontier a near non-factor. We are additionally very loose about sexual interactions on the station, as the company does not crack down on employees taking some 'personal time.'

However, this flexibility cannot be stretched forever. Sometimes there's traits that might seem super fun or unique, such as 'my character is actually hundreds of years old,' or 'my character is mentally unstable and has destroyed planets,' or 'my character cannot die and will always find a way to return to life.' However, it's important to make sure that these traits don't take away from both immersion, and that they don't feel wildly out of place. Uniqueness on its own does not endear characters to people, and it's important to keep them sympathetic, relatable, and 'human.'

If your character is leaps and bounds above and ahead of the rest of us, why are we supposed to latch onto them? If your character wasn't a seven hundred year old demon dragon that can shapeshift, breathe fire, never die, and can always pull strings to never get fired by the Company, if those traits were taken away, what's left that would make this character interesting to watch or fun to be around? Or, why are they even here out in the sticks sweeping the floors?

### LRP by Poor Execution

* **Despite best of intentions, a poor execution can still come off as LRP and be LRP**

A player may be LRP despite the best of intentions due to a poor or lazy execution of an interesting idea. **If you are doing an interesting gimmick that is out of the box, the onus is on you to show people you are, in fact, roleplaying and not being a meme.**

For instance, you may be roleplaying a character that does not understand human norms, i.e. you are playing a felinid with the tendencies of a cat. It might seem interesting to pick up certain feline characteristics such as gifting people dead animals, but unless you execute this well, there is a high chance you may come off LRP.

* **Remeber to show. You need to demonstrate you are roleplaying and be interactable.**

To elaborate, if your character is going around killing random animals and giving it to your co-workers, you better make the effort to show that it's not to be random or LRP, rather the onus is on you to show that you are roleplaying. If you came across someone that just randomly dropped a body on you, there is no context clues, no emotes, or any writing to show that they were doing and why. It just seems random and therefore LRP.

Efforts must be made to highlight why the character is doing this and to roleplay it out. You must make an earnest attempt to make it feel like you are from a different culture, trying to adapt. You must be reactive to what others do and must adapt and develop your character henceforth.

At the end of the day, if it looks LRP, feels LRP, and does not make sense, it is LRP, despite best of intentions.

### LRP by Lazy Assholery
* Assholery for the sake of assholery is LRP
* Effort must be placed to roleplay as an asshole so that people have something to interact with
* Putting effort into being an asshole makes it so that people understand you are being an asshole for roleplay
* Lack of emotes to roleplay out assholery is not very compelling and appears more OOC than IC

### LRP by Acting Like You're in Single Player

* **Characters do not exist in isolation.**

Roleplaying and interacting with others while working is not only allowed but encouraged. You should not act as if you're playing a single player game. As stated before, roleplaying a social and communal affair.

* **Characters must react to others and consequences.**

Players need to react to others and understand that their are consequences to their actions, therefore they should roleplay as if there are consequences.

### LRP by Lack of Effort
* **Not using emotes enough in normal roleplaying situation**

We do not expect pargraphs of emotes. In fact, casually throwing in some emotes to help characterize your character and help show what they're doing and what they're like helps. Much of what defines a person to another is not just the words they say but their body language as well.

Throwing in emotes in between dialogue like "rolls their eyes", "fidgets back and forth on their shoes", "slams their hands onto the table", and so forth can add a lot to the experience, and it shows effort on your part to roleplay.

We do encourage players to do longer emotes as well when time permits. ***However, if you are not the type to ever make an emote that is longer than a couple of sentences or even a sentence, this may not be the server for you.***

* **Relying too much on mechanics and not enough on emotes**

If you constantly need to rely on the shove, grab, and other mechanics to roleplay, you are not a roleplayer. Yes, mechanics are part of roleplay, however, it is not the only part of roleplaying. Roleplaying is also about expressing yourself creatively. If you are confined solely to mechanics and refuse to do any sort of writing, you will not fit in the server. We are not interested in your ability to spam the scream quick emote into the chat.

* **Not spending the effort to show how your character is acting**

Ultimately, if you are not going to put in the effort to emote and show what your character is doing, this is not the server for you. We are not asking much besides some effort with writing.

### LRP by No Value for Life
* Have a sense of self-preservation, no matter who you are playing as.
* If you roleplay as if your life and body has no value, i.e. you are completely lackadasical about dying, you will face a DNR or server ban.
* If you roleplay as if other peoples' life and body has no value, i.e. you are completely lackadasical about dying, you will face a DNR, pacification, or server ban.

You do not need to roleplay as if you are a coward, but you must have a sense of self-preservation. Being fool-hardy does not make you look cool. It just makes you look like you can't roleplay.

### LRP by Protagonist/Sore Loser Syndrome
* You are just another employee.
* You won't succeed. That's okay.

You're going to lose sometimes. Roleplay is all about going with the flow. Otherwise, it's just another railroaded story.

### LRP by Mixing OOC and IC
* You are roleplaying a character. It is not you.
* IC and OOC must be kept separate, as you are engaging with a whole new world ICly.
* Self-inserts are not encouraged at all.

When it comes to self-inserts, people often take any sort of negative events aimed at their character in a very personal and toxic way. This brings OOC into IC too often which kills roleplays in their track.

Learn to separate IC and OOC. If someone is playing a character that is a specist, i.e. "racist against other species", it does not necessarily mean they are racist OOCly.

## Roleplay Assistance

**Third Party Roleplay Guide:** https://springhole.net/writing/general-roleplaying.htm

## Character Creation

### Your character must be functional and capable

Your custom species and character must be functional and capable of doing their job, even if they are incompetent. Hiring standards on the frontiers are nowhere near as strict as those in the core worlds due to manpower shortages, but they are not that desperate.
For instance, your character must be able to operate independently as an adult and be physically and mentally capable to do their jobs. You can be slightly less than competent, be a criminal seeking a new start, and so on. However, you cannot be insane, a serial killer, a dependent, a person who is unable to work with others, etc.
A character cannot be excessively primitive if they are part of a civilized faction such as the station crew. For example, you may play a formerly tribal Ashwalker, however, they cannot be so primitive that they cannot work with their peers or function to an acceptable capacity.

**Note:** Character Guideline #2 and #3 does not mean you cannot play these characters. Rather, we want players to conform to the setting to allow for a more cohesive and coherent experience for others.
For instance, if we have a gargoyle character that turns into a statue upon being in contact with light or being seen by others, you should either keep it mysterious or have an ordinary explanation ready at hand. SCP Foundation, for instance, encounters the mythical, the mystical, and the mysterious, but they keep it grounded.

### Your character must fit the setting in a grounded way

Your custom species must be adapted if they are of supernatural or cartoonish origin that is ill-fitting to the server, i.e. Demons, Angels, My Little Pony, etc. To clarify, you can play custom species based off of the aesthetics of demons or angels, but they cannot be called such or be supernatural in the typical fantasy or cartoon sense. Instead, take a page from SCP Foundation. You can still be mysterious, dark, and mystical, but you must keep it grounded and make it fit the setting.

**For example:** if you want an imp, incubus, succubus, and so forth character, you may if you avoid the whole "demonic" angle, i.e., have more of a less magical explanation so they fit the setting and not have direct references to Earth demons. Same goes for bipedal, anthropomorphic MLP characters (Quads are not allowed. You need hands).

You must eliminate any MLP references, i.e., change cutie marks to tattoos. You must then convert your character to being a proper alien or splicer/genemodder. Names must be changed to fit. There must be no association with MLP, rather you must be a horse character. The main thing is that it should fit the setting.

**Note:** Possessing cartoony art of your characters is completely fine.

### Give your character a proper name

Give your character an acceptable name. Do not name them after real-world people (historical, political or just general popular figures) or pre-existing fictional characters (Don't just name your lawyer Phoenix Wright, be creative!).You should avoid giving your characters titles in their names.

### No mary sue characters

Your custom species and character should not be what is colloquially known as a 'Mary Sue'. We highly encourage players to focus on creating 'background characters' for the corporation. They cannot be heroes or stereotypical protagonists with deep connections or effects on the lore.

Simply put, remember that you are playing an employee for a company so much bigger than yourself, and that you are probably a little bit irrelevant. On top of that, you should not be good at everything as specified by Server Principle #7.
If you do want to play a character that has lost their former glory, that is allowed, given that you keep it grounded and serious. Additionally, their former position should not be anything that would make them noticeable in the lore.

### No feral-like custom species

Your custom species and character cannot be a talking four-legged animal with no arms. They also cannot be anything too animalistic to the point they are difficult to distinguish from an actual animal. Taurs are allowed, and borgs are not a custom species.

### Flavor is encouraged within reason

You are allowed to be flexible with your character, even if they have abilities or features that cannot be fully depicted within the game. However, it cannot be anything that may influence mechanics, even if it is only for emotes.
For instance, you can say your character has minor psionic abilities, given reasonable constraints. You can use this in emotes to describe flipping a coin or pulling out a cigarette from a pack hands-free with your psionic powers, but you cannot do anything that would have a significant mechanical impact. However, you cannot say you can crush people at will, as that affects in-game mechanics and also falls in violation of Character Guideline #3.

### No purely fetish characters

Your character or custom species cannot revolve solely around a fetish and should instead be a believable, fleshed-out individual. The fetish should not be the focal point. You can build up a character around a fetish, but you must make it so that they are more than the fetish and the fetish becomes a mere backdrop to the character itself.
For instance, if you have a vore fetish, the character can have physical designs to accommodate for your preference, but the focus of the character should not be based around vore. Rather, it can be a physical component of the character that is not overly emphasized to the point of being "in your face"

Another example are latex characters. As long as the character is sensible with a reasonable backstory on why they are the way they are, i.e., are experimental androids or was involved in an experiment gone wrong, they are perfectly acceptable.
This does not prohibit characters that are designed to allow for whatever fetish you may have, rather your character must be well-balanced in their personality and appearance. Again, avoid being "in your face". That's it!

**Remember:** While this server allows for ERP, it is not its central focus. For any NSFW detail, please write them under an "incoming NSFW" warning. If you want to show off your interest, please put a disclaimer and be reasonable. You should not shove your fetish into people's faces. Conversely, this is a server that does allow for ERP. If you cannot handle seeing any NSFW details or action, this is probably not the server for you. People on both sides should have consideration for each other and be able to exist alongside each other.

### Adults only

Your custom species or character must follow the adults-only rule. Attempts to skirt past this rule will be dealt with harshly. To keep it simple, they must look like adults, and they should not act like a child either. Short species like dwarves, goblins, kobolds, and so forth are allowed, however, they must be physically mature. Age play within our community is explicitly forbidden and will be met with a community blacklist.

### Custom species can not affect lore

If you play a custom species, they cannot affect the lore. They must be distant or insignificant enough that they do not impact the lore.