Roleplaying Tips for Shy Characters

From FiranMUX

So your character is a shy child and you're not sure how to engage other characters in exciting role-play? Here are some tips.

Be Available

Don't sit around waiting for role-play to come to you. Conceive of reasons for being out in public or near situations that might accidentally get your character into some adventure or tinyplot. Remember, even if you just hang about, follow people, or tag-along, a situation is likely to come along that will require a reaction from even a shy character.

Create Coincidences

Remember that on a game like Firan, things "coincidentally" happen all the time. Use the @where to find out where your character can "just so happen" to be. If you want, arrange Out-of-Character with other people to "just so happen" to be in the right place at the right time. Perhaps you can trip and fall over someone that you want to role-play with. (Clumsiness is a useful, passive-aggressive trait for any shy character to possess.)

Write Your Own Stories

Perhaps, you can decide that your character was just pick-pocketed in the forum, and needs some help. Maybe you just saw what you think is a religious omen. (Like, a feather fell at your feet, not that you saw Uf in the clouds. Use common sense.) Use your creativity to cause angst for your character that would force him or her into human interaction, in spite of his or her shyness.

Be a Sidekick

Shy people tend to glom onto their opposites. Find a character on the grid who is as extroverted and adventurous as your character is shy, and work to contrive a relationship between the two. The extroverted person will inevitably conspire to put the shy one into social situations that you wouldn't normally seek out. Remember, there's nothing wrong with arranging the scenes out of character before-hand. You can always say things that your shy character wouldn't, such as, "I'd love it if we could role-play a scene in which your character tries to set mine up on a blind date."

Use Anonymity

Perhaps your character can't say certain things aloud, but they might write them down. Send secret messengers. Use a surrogate. Become a secretive cult of personality who is flamboyant when masked, but subdued when revealed. Lots of shy people are capable of being much more social if no one knows who they really are. Go to masked balls. Nag others to have masked balls. Insist on hosting masked balls. You get the idea.

Meddle

Perhaps your character is too shy to go after what he or she wants in life, but there's no reason that they can't project their desires onto others. It's always easier to push someone else into heroics that your character might not be capable of, and it's also good RP.

Get Drunk

Even shy people can become the life of the party with a few drinks in them. Perhaps your character needs social lubricant whenever you go out, and perhaps you develop a drinking problem. More story for you to role-play!

Be Emo

Perhaps there's a reason for your character's shyness. Plumb those depths, and occasionally let them out in uncontrolled emotional outbursts. Put your character in situations that push all his or her buttons so that the usual quiet facade comes crashing down. It all gets stored up until your character bursts one way or another: a sudden deluge of talking, a temper tantrum, dramatic crying. Shyness can be a kind of control freakism, and those people lose control occasionally and fall to pieces. Use this to create good story.

Act Out

Perhaps your character is bitter about being the only one who feels awkward and shy. Have your character do things to make others equally uncomfortable. Become someone's nemesis. It doesn't require a lot of talking or social-butterflying to make other people miserable.

Cause Trouble For Yourself

Nothing tends to bring out more role-play than to find your character in peril. You don't have to fight Shamibelians or fall down a well for this to be the case. Your shy character could accidentally wander somewhere they shouldn't, or say the wrong thing to the wrong person, or get themselves implicated in a crime. If you can't think of ways to do it to your own character, ask other players to get you into trouble that you can role-play your way out of. They'll likely be happy to help!