Being anti-social can be a great and interesting character flaw, but group roleplays tend to be over run with these kinds of characters and they all tend to fall in the same categories. Either “I’m extremely damaged and withdraw from everyone around me” or “I have a deep dark secret in my past and am also full of rage” or “I am smarter than everyone around me why would I bother ever speaking to any of you.” Guess what? If your character doesn’t want to talk to people, you’re not going to be very successful in an environment where interacting with others is basically required.

In a lot of roleplays I’ve been in, I’ve seen players rely far too heavily on the admins to create action. While, yes, it does fall on the admin to maintain a level of consistency within the world and the game and the overarching plot, it’s up to the players to keep the game interesting for themselves. Have goals that your characters want to achieve. Have bits and pieces of their story come out over time instead of revealing everything about them up front. Just have a story that you want to tell with your character other than “character in game. character make friend. character does thing.”

This one kind of goes hand in hand with the last point, because if you don’t have a story to tell, you at least need this: A PERSONALITY! It’s probably the most important thing about your character and how they’re going to succeed within the group. I’m not saying that you have to have the most unique character in the game, or the most dramatic or dynamic. I’m saying that your character needs to have something about them that makes them stand out from the pack. I see a lot of roleplays where the characters just end up being furniture. They’re really pretty faces and they have names, but there’s nothing to distinguish one sofa from the other. So find something that sets them apart from others because “Name, age, face, vaguely angsty background” isn’t going to make someone pay attention to them. Think about their speech patterns, their mannerisms, their ticks, and their inner monologue. Basically think about the things that make them a person instead of just a shell.

1. Is my character going to be able to interact with others?
2. What do I hope to accomplish with this character? What is their story?
3. What distinctive traits make my character a person?