Roleplaying

[Principal Johnson]

Roleplaying - Lesson 1

Principal Johnson took the large ring of keys off of his belt. The key ring was quite peculiar. There were all sorts of keys hanging on it, from modern house keys, car keys, chest keys, wooden keys, paperclip keys (Hey, you've gotta be prepared!), and keys shaped like moons and stars.
He found the one he was looking for, a boring modern-looking one, and inserted it into the keyhole of the door in front of him. The door swung open into a dark, empty classroom. Principal Johnson entered and flipped on the light switch. One by one, the lights up on the ceiling clicked on, extending to each end of the room and bathing it in a comforting sort of glow.
"First day of class, and the Principal is substituting..." the Principal muttered to himself. He had just recently opened his very own school, the Fandom Academy. New students were coming every day, but obviously, there were plenty of challenges he was facing with starting out a new school from scratch. One of those challenges was starting out with no teachers... besides himself.
Principal Johnson sat himself in the teacher's chair behind the teacher's desk. He picked up the teacher's pen, and examined the label on it that read, TEACHER'S PEN.
For the umpteenth time that day, Principal Johnson heaved a loud sigh and slumped in his chair. After a moment, however, he sat back up and straightened his tie.
"No, no..." he said to himself, "You've got this. Set an example for your students, who will be coming in..."
He glanced up at the clock on the wall.
"... About ten minutes."

Ten minutes later, the classroom was indeed full of students. There was still obviously plenty of room for more students who he hoped would eventually arrive at the school, but that aside, it wasn't that bad of a class, size-wise.
Among the chatter of the new students, the principal took his place standing at the front of the classroom, and begun the class.
"Good morning, students." he greeted them. He waited for the talking to die down before he continued. "My name is Principal Johnson. I am your principal at- well, obviously." he corrected himself. A few chuckles scattered across the body of students.
"Anyway," He continued, "I am your principal here at Fandom Academy. We are very pleased to have you here, and we hope you will be pleased to be here as well.
"Now, for today's class, I plan on just jumping right in. There will be time for introductions among yourselves later. This class, as I'm sure you already know, is a Roleplaying course. That means, we will be learning how to effectively role play.
"Now, there's some vocabulary terms we need to cover briefly to begin." Principal Johnson grabbed a piece of chalk from the chalkboard (he was just old-fashioned that way, he supposed) and began to write as he spoke.
"God-Modding... is a big no-no. God modding is where one roleplayer takes control of another's character or other NPCs, especially when not given permission."
A student in the second row raised his hand.
"Yes?" Principal Johnson prompted, gesturing to the curious student.
The student put his hand down and asked his question, "What are NPCs?"
"Ah, I'm glad you asked." Principal Johnson said, before writing the term on the board. "NPCs are Non-Player Characters. For example, if you were playing a... Star Wars role play with you and one other person, and the two of you are together in a spaceport, and you have a droid with you. That droid represents neither of your characters, so it is an NPC. Now, of course, players can take control of NPCs, but it's usually whichever player is designated the game master, or whichever player is closest to the NPC and in this case, most likely whichever player owns the droid."
Yet another student raised their hand.
"Isn't the game master the one who controls the game?" she asked.
"Yes and no." Principal Johnson answered, "However, I ask that you wait for me to call on your hand next time. Yes, because the game master introduces the scenarios, interprets the die rolls, and often controls NPCs. No, because while the game master controls all of that, he or she cannot control the player's characters.
"Now, back to god-modding. An appropriate example of god-modding would be something like this..."
Principal Johnson took a stance facing the left of the classroom.
"Okay, so the giant tiger is chasing us, so I try to run away."
Then he took a stance facing the middle of the classroom.
"Alright, Player One, I've rolled the dice, and you didn't roll high enough, so you accidentally trip on a stray tree root while trying to flee."
Then, he took the stance of a third player, facing the right.
"I run up to the tiger and I scare it so it goes away!" Principal Johnson looked at the class with an un-amused expression on his face. Almost the whole class laughed.
"You see? That just doesn't work." He continued. "If you really wanted to try to run up and scare the tiger with just your scrawny self, you would say something like, 'I run towards the tiger and try to scare it away.' That way, you're not being annoying to everybody else playing the game and ruining climax points."
The class laughed lightly again.
"An extension of god-modding is having a character who is considered 'OP'. Before anyone asks, OP stands for Over-Powered. I've been in a roleplay with someone before, where we were in Hogwarts, and my character wanted to put on a talent show since Hogwarts didn't have one. Well, this other girl decided to audition, and when she roleplayed her audition out, it went something like this..."
Principal Johnson took the stance of some silly teenage girl, and started talking in an annoying high-pitched voice.
"I magically produce my violin from my wand and then turn my wand into a bow, and then I start playing. The music is SO beautiful that from all around, you can see satyrs and centaurs and animals coming to the windows of the Great Hall, listening to the beautiful music. Flowers start to bloom around the great hall because of how beautiful my music is. It makes everyone in the room start to cry." Principal Johnson paused for the class' reactions, before finishing, "And then I start to sing EVEN MORE beautifully!"
Principal shook his head, remembering the awful situation, and wrote the term OP on the board. When he turned back to the class, he continued.
"Yeah, I didn't cast her in the talent show. While her post was lengthy and creative, it was invalid for obvious reasons. When roleplaying, you have to post, reply, say, whatever it is in the form of an attempt. I try to do my best to sing. I sing these words, I try to make sure that I use this and this technique... all of that. You can be lengthy and descriptive in your roleplaying without god-modding and aggravating everybody else."
Principal Johnson glanced at the clock, and saw that his time was almost up.
"Now, that's all the time we have for today, but I hope you all learned something. I cannot tell you how many people I have roleplayed with who don't know how to... "play nice". So, lesson of today? Don't be one of those people. Have a great day everyone, you are dismissed. I'll see you all next class!"
And with that, the lesson was over, and the students shuffled out, chattering excitedly.
Well, that wasn't so bad for a start, Principal Johnson thought to himself.