Edinburgh is a role-playing village, so those who wish to join with our village need to understand what that means. First off, role-playing is a lot of fun. It gives you a chance to step outside of your everyday life and create a character and live a life that is very different from your own. You can interact with the characters of others and weave a wonderful story together, but how does one get into the fun of role-playing?

1. Think about the appearance of your character. Your character will have physical characteristics. What are they? What race are you—a human, elf, dwarf, etc.? Are you tall or short? Are you plump or wiry? Do you have any distinguishing characteristics—a scar, a limp, is your skin leathery from years spent sailing the seas of Britainnia? This can be written in your character profile, so that others know how to react to you. If you are a giant, 7’ in height, other characters will respond to you in a different manner than if you are a dwarf (i.e.--*peers up into his face* *leans down to whisper in her ear*)
2. Think about the personality of your character. Are you a bit of a hot-head? A simpleton? A naïve youth? A war hardened veteran? Think of your personality when you respond to situations. Respond as one with that personality would respond. Faced with a stranger to the village, a naïve village youth would be more trusting than a war hardened veteran.
3. Give your character a history. Is she the sadder, but wiser girl? Do you have children? Have you lost a spouse? What were your parents like? Where did you grow up? What are the experiences in your background that make you the person you are today? Think of it as creating a character for a novel. Every person has a story.
4. Act like a person with these characteristics would act in real life. In real life, we don’t go around with our name and title over our head. Act accordingly. Introduce yourself to people and act as if you do not know their name or occupation until they tell you. Look at their profile and respond to those characteristics if it works into the story line. Do NOT kill NPC’s unless you are playing an evil character and it is part of your role. If you ran up and killed an unarmed shepherd in real life, people would be horrified and run away from you, seeing you as a psychopathic monster. Role-players will respond in the same way if you do this in UO.
5. Learn the symbolic speech used by role-players. Try not to use internet shorthand like cya, roflmao, =-), afk. Instead use speech (farewell) or emotes * chuckles *. Icq messages are referred to as pigeons, as in *she releases a pigeon* or "I will send him a pigeon." Lag is referred to as the winds, as in "The winds blow hard today." This tells others you are having trouble with lag while staying ic (in character). If you need to be away from your keyboard you can tell others that by indicating *nods off* and indicate your return by *blinks awake*. If you are in a party, you can share ooc (out of character) comments in party while keeping what you say in the game ic.
6. Have fun with role-playing. Everyone slips up from time to time with a cya or lmao. We forget and use a person’s name, even though they haven’t actually introduced themselves. No biggie. I don’t think anyone in Edinburgh is going to jump down your throat if you slip up once in a while—learning to role-play is a gradual process. We just ask that you try and keep trying to be the best role player you can be. The more you do it the easier it will become, the more developed your characters will be and the more fun you will have.