Thar Shaddin

Disagreeable characters are quite agreeable to most of us. Welcome aboard.

Hello everyone. *takes a deep breath . . .*

I'm Mimi, or Mary, or Hey You Person Over There With The Face. I enjoy long walks on the beaches and candlelit dinners, oh, and also, I suppose, colorful socks, chocolate of any kind but especially truffles, and using the little star marks to tell people online what I am doing behind the computer screen *rubs head sheepishly to prove her point*. And I tend to babble on in run-on sentences when I'm nervous or jittery, but I suppose that's obvious.

I haven't role-played for, oh, ages and ages; three or four years now, I think. That was back when I was a young rapscallion who thought an apostrophe was a French pastry with nuts, and typed with wild abandon and poor grammatics all that came into my head, and occasionally stuff that didn't. Obviously I am now more mature and worldly and in possession of good grammaring skills. Really, I am. Stop looking at me like that.

In any case, I look forward to playing here (you people seem nice and friendly and mostly sane) and to shoving my little idealist headfirst into Thar Shaddin. It'll be fun seeing how reality slaps her in the face.

. . . I'm not evil at all.

Elsha--if the smileys get out of hand I will have to impose rations. I am the smiley rationer.

Aniseed--I like licorice.

Just saying Hi I guess... I'm Ayden, nice to meet you all!

Hey all you crazy people -- good to have you here! I tend to use a lot of smileys too (I sneak them in when pagusel isn't around >> ) . Hee, we do have a lot of disagreeable characters here, and oocly we appreciate every single one of them, even if icly they tend to be a bit less amiable.

Do be sure to stop in chat, as that's where we tend to congregate and that'll let us get to know each other better.

I hope all of you enjoy your stay with us!

Hello everybody.
I am yet another new member introducing themselves here in a vain attempt to meet the current writers here. I like using analogies, methaphors and similies while I write, so if you ever notice something random in my post, just go back over it and hopefully you will understand the point I'm trying to make.
I like some smilies, and luckily, none of the ones on offer at this site. (no rabbit?)
As a result, I hope to enthrall you all with my sometimes mixed up, and off topic writing - afterall, when I muse about something I generally end up with a random conclusion, so my character is likely to do the same on occassion.
Either way, I will repeat, hello. And I look forward to role playing with you all!

Hello everyone! I'm new here, obviously.

I like to RP, I haven't in a long time though.
I like to talk to people.
I like cats.
I dislike toast.

I'm hoping to better develop my new character, Illae. I'm not sure how much I like her right now, but I'm sure I'll get to see how she is as stories unfold. Looking forward to meeting/rping with you!

--ME!

Hello my name is Sean.
I'm new to the collaborative writing style of RPing and am overall rather limited in my role playing experience. Although I do find myself quite excited to exercise my fledgling writing talents and am looking forward to being part of a supportive community that will nurture my creative role playing tendencies.

My character's name will be Rhys Silvorin Varchakh. He's a were-lynx, with some psychic powers, from a well established gypsy tribe which is broken down into smaller clans of five to twelve families. Rhys has recently found himself a refugee and fugitive due his tribes attempt's to marry him off to a murderous rival tribe and the rival tribe's genocidal betrayal.

I do have a few questions though and I'm not sure whether or not this is the place to post them.
Guidelines strictly state "START SMALL" which is what I'd like to do but at the same time when I create a character think of his family, society, heritage, upbringing, health and well being, and all the things that go into making a person who he is. So my question is how much of my created origins and back story should I include in my character sheet and should I send any of the cultural information to any one, thus far I have an unfinished five page document just on his gypsy tribe.
Another issue is that while I don't think I'm having a problem with overpowering my character I might be creating too many weakness. But I guess for this I'd have to actually post my character sheet.

OK well that's me and mine thus far please let me know if you have any advice or info.

Sean/Rhys,

I created an entire population/culture/country to provide back story for this character. Background and anything in his history integral to making him a real character is always encouraged and given the very small percentage of this world that has actually been written out, your limit's the sky... within reason. I.e. don't go making a chinese-based culture that comes from "Africa" wielding super awesome samurai swords and ninja stars just because it sounds cool... unless you have some grand back story of a long-lost shipping company that got stranded on the ivory coast during an incredible expedition to circumnavigate the globe ... you get the point, i hope.

"start small" more referred to being over powered, and I'd urge people not to be boxed in to thinking "well, I'll just balance each strength with a weakness" OR "have 1 super dooper awesome power and ten zillion little weaknesses". People here are going to be more likely to want to write with you if you create somebody somewhat "real" ... it's easier to write with someone if you can kind of identify with them.

Anyway, I'm not a mod, but i've been here for a while and i've been around the block as well so there are just some tips. It doesn't sound like you'll be doing the stuff I've pointed out, just wanted to throw it down on the table for the record.

Thank you very much Mei Le.
I have a slightly better idea as to how I should do Rhys' back story now that I've read your character sheets, which by the way I love that your sheets are long.
But I'm still not sure as to how I should balance strengths and weaknesses. Like I said Rhys is not designed to be overpowered but he might not be acceptable without the right amount of weaknesses. And I mean really how can a person be interesting unless they are flawed?
Now I really must adjourn as it is past my bedtime being nocturnal by nature and I am slightly sleep deprived do to an all night writing bender last wake cycle.

http://www.tharshaddin.com/rp/viewforum.php?f=40

I also dunno if you noticed this or not, but ^ there is an entire World Development forum for backstory ideas that you'd like incorporated into the overall lore of Thar Shaddin.

As for family, etc., I don't think it's generally required to have approval for cultural information as long as it's on a small scale. For example, two rival tribes of gypsies wouldn't be that big of a reach. If you wanted to create two rival gypsy nations, that would be a different issue that you should take up with Frug.

I'd like to second what Mei Li wrote about interpreting 'start small,' and add that it's generally more difficult for people to get characters with very powerful abilities approved, even when appropriately balanced by crippling weaknesses, unless they are more established on the board.

That said, good writing skills and an interesting backstory can help to allay fears among the moderators about potential misuses of power, and I've not seen many shifters who met with strong opposition because of their abilities... with the notable exception of this one:

http://www.tharshaddin.com/rp/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1639.

Hi Rhys.

Pretty much what Mei and Daq said. Come up with what you like when it comes to the setting and I'll read it over to see if I think any part of it conflicts with either something that's already been written down somewhere, or some unwritten idea I have in my head about how the world is supposed to be. It should be easy enough to avoid both cases by keeping whatever you come up with somewhat congruent with the real world, and limited in scope. Gypsies are fairly easy to fit in because of their nomadic lifestyle. Just don't make it a massive tribe of thousands or something like that, because then I'll have to think about it and discuss it more and it'll stretch out...

Actually we have two gypsies currently. Chrishton was raised by them, and Jasmina is a bellydancer. Rawr.

Also you can never have too many weaknesses. The more flawed your character is, the more writers here will think you're cool. Trust me.

Weaknesses are always good. I love weaknesses, especially unique ones that tie into the character and their history.

Also, Chirish is totally hawt and anyone who says differently gets no more cookies.

Well then!

'Lo. The name's Rosina, or Zina if you will, as I go by that online everywhere. I've been roleplaying for about four or five years now, though I have always been strongest in the world of realistic wolf roleplay. In fact, this character here *points* is a revamp of an epically old, fail-neopets character. He is the only character that was at all decent in that time, though back then I was awful at writing anyway.

...Tovia lured me here with candy and exotic chocolates. So blame her that you have to deal with by bum.

This character is made of fail and is supposed to be made of fail. Fail is far more easier to write than nonfail, I say, and so he really doesn't have any real powers and can't even control his shifting because he sucks too much. Now, apparently flaws are good here but, I always end up with the most fail characters ever because everybody else seems too scared to touch them or even poke them with a stick to check if they're still alive.

Anywho, as much as I hate to apologize with disclaimers you do need to know that I haven't written anything human-related in four or five years. I also haven't really ever so much as touched fantasy sites, but this one was neat. I enjoy gigantic burn-your-eyes rulebooks and guides and settings and things. They make me smile a lot.

Aww, pfft, blame me. Did I force you to join? Nooooooo. Would I like it lots and lots if you stayed? Yes. And your character may be fail but fail is fun.

This is your official welcome from me. Now give me back those chocolates and candy.