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If you know me well enough, you would know that I'm often highly critical (not unique of someone of my star sign, apparently) of everything, myself, and others. This includes roleplaying, and how others (and I) roleplay. But this time instead of (only) complaining, I'm going to try to disseminate some material to help friends and strangers alike improve themselves or at least become more self-aware.

If you roleplay with me, have ever roleplayed with me, or might roleplay with me in the future (or even if you won't roleplay with me ever in your life's timeline!), perhaps have a read through of these. This website has a lot of good materials on roleplaying besides the ones I've listed below too.

Let's start with the article on Common Problems In Roleplaying Characters. As it says on the tin, this is a good read on general common problems with RP characters. Unfortunately, the folk who ought to read this are often the ones that lack the self-reflection necessary to realize when these cases apply to them. But at least with this list in place, everyone can have some baselines with which to match their characters to help them better adjust. Sometimes some awareness is all it takes.

Maybe in the future, I will write a more thorough reflection of this article. For now, I'll touch on the ones that I particular empathize with. One is the supposedly needing to interact with/go along with points (there are two in there). I know RP is make-believe, but while that means a departure from reality is allowed, there is a limit to the amount of unbelievability that can be exhibited before it becomes that much more off-putting to RP with a person.

Second is the point about not making any real effort to have a character interact or drive a story. This type is what turns me off (or reject, in the case of being a GM) characters that are emo, quiet, shy, withdrawn, introverted, etc. You get the idea. I've actually played/play some characters that fit into this trope, but you can trust me to be proactive in helping my characters make connections.

Something I did learn about is the crashing into people trope under the "irrelevant to the other characters" point. I don't usually write my characters into those situations, since my characters aren't typically the clumsy types. But for sure I have (and I'm sure you have) experienced these types of interactions to hit it off, and it is nice to be made aware of this stretch from reality.

But what does all of the above mean really? It's one thing to be told what to avoid, but it's something else altogether to understand how to identify and improve one's own characters and roleplaying behaviour. To help with the former... introducing the The RP Character Playability Test. We often include things in our characters that are fun, or are inspired by sources that are not roleplays in and of themselves (e.g. TV shows or video games). So, it's not always the case that such characters translate well to a roleplay. I've run one of my more recent anti-social characters through the test and scored a 9. I think I'll be doing fine with that one.

Next, I want to showcase this article: Reasons Your RP Characters Might Be Bad Friends Or Love Interests
Interestingly this comes to my awareness when some of my characters are getting involved on increasingly closer relationships. Will definitely be taking a closer look at this as they progress. The most interesting part of this article is that... it seems like it could be life advice as well for how to become better friends or love interests for real people themselves. Take what you will!

Lastly, to those newer to roleplaying in the crowd, here's a page on General Roleplaying Tips & Advice. Even for seasoned roleplayers, this article's a great mood setter. Something that caught my eye was the first point of apathetic responses such as "whatever", "anything's fine", or "I don't care" being unhelpful. Have a read, and then go forth and prosper!