Tips for a newbie to roleplaying?

[Togath]

After playing in the first sessions of a skype campaign, I begun to wonder,
first; am I meta gaming too much?, I attacked the bushes because my perception check said I saw nothing, and I(ooc, and maybe ic) thought that it might be an ambush, as the text used for my success was the same as another person got when he rolled a result of 4(which made me think that I either rolled low, or that I failed to see something), the other two incidents were first, me assuming that following the map along a road shown on it, that didn’t exist when we reached the spot where it should have started(and the map was very old so i thought the road was either hidden or overgrown), and the second thing was me trying to figure out if the skins of the enemies we killed(gnolls) would sell for anything back at the town(and the entire party was non-evil), though I did get talked out of skinning them when the healer threatened my character(a good aligned elf wizard), I also tried to set the forest on fire at one point as a diversion but was talked out if it.

Because of those incidents I thought I might need some tips for rping, as this was only my second time rping(unless you count my fourth wall breaking, genre savvy, alchemist/herbalist/carpenter/chef/mummy/zombie/hermit/artificer in minecraft)

[Serafina]

Yep - unless you are roleplaying severe paranoia, that was too much metagaming.
Even if you did it would be a bit of a stretch - a paranoid person might shoot at a bush because he heard a rustle, but not if he doesn't notices anything.

WWMCD (what would my character do) doesn't have to be totally separate from OOC-knowledge. You know that certain ideas are a bad idea due to game mechanics - so don't do them. You may know that certain tactics work due to OOC-knowledge, so your character can try them. That can just be explained as heroic intuition - depending on the campaign and DM though, sometimes it doesn't fit.

But don't let your character take actions that no real person would. They just break immersion and only annoy your Gm and other players. Prodding a door because it might be trapped is fine - a real adventurer might do that. But standing in every corridor for a minute to take 20 on your spot-check, always declaring an attack action at the end of your move-action in a corridor at a random spot near you because someone invisible might stand there, or things like that - can you really think of any in-character justification for that?


Bottom line:
Only do stuff you can justify in-character.

[Hylas]

am I meta gaming too much?

as the text used for my success was the same as another person got when he rolled a result of 4

Yes. Doing anything because of what the number on a skill check said is meta-gaming.

Here's my favorite example. Let's say you're lost in the wilderness and dying of thirst. You roll a survival check to find water and the result is a 2. The DM says "You find a pool of water." Do you drink from it? If you said "no" then you're meta-gaming because your character is dying of thirst and found a pool of water but is now refusing to drink.

As for the rest, skinning any sentient humanoid creature is like skinning a human to sell on the market. Poor taste and kinda creepy. This may change based on setting but it's a good rule of thumb. When in doubt ask "would this be okay if I were doing it to a human?"

Setting a forest on fire for funsies is pretty crazy too.

But overall you're doing an excellent job at being chaotic evil.

[Togath]

I'll try to meta game less , and try to make decisions my character would more likely make then.
If it helps, I only attacked the darkness once, and didn't actually end up burning the forest.
Also, was it rude of me to try to resist when a character pulled me out of line of sight of some archers because I wanted to attack them?, I was mostly going by the fact that I thought I wouldn't be able to peek around the tree and fire a spell at them(though it did turn out i could snipe them from the tree, so i didn’t actually have to resist)

[Knaight]

After playing in the first sessions of a skype campaign, I begun to wonder,
first; am I meta gaming too much?, I attacked the bushes because my perception check said I saw nothing, and I(ooc, and maybe ic) thought that it might be an ambush, as the text used for my success was the same as another person got when he rolled a result of 4(which made me think that I either rolled low, or that I failed to see something), the other two incidents were first, me assuming that following the map along a road shown on it, that didn’t exist when we reached the spot where it should have started(and the map was very old so i thought the road was either hidden or overgrown), and the second thing was me trying to figure out if the skins of the enemies we killed(gnolls) would sell for anything back at the town(and the entire party was non-evil), though I did get talked out of skinning them when the healer threatened my character(a good aligned elf wizard), I also tried to set the forest on fire at one point as a diversion but was talked out if it.

The bushes: That was metagaming, yes. However, given the level of caution Idemi was pushing, the paranoia fits. Plus, that and the second incident (shouting then running off into the forest) were hilarious taken together.

The gnolls: That was seriously creepy, but I figured it was in character. On the other hand, I wouldn't have placed your elf as anywhere near good.

The fire: That was careless, but that happens. I'd already run through a similar strategy in my head, and would have gone for it if it weren't for the minor sticking points of us not having a way to get rid of the fire, and it not making sense for Idemi given his previous demand for no light and little sound.

In any case - practice will help, and you were roleplaying a lot better at the end of the session than you were at the beginning. Don't worry about it so much.

[Togath]

I had been thinking of going with a different approach to dealing with the corpse with the session later tonight, I was thinking of giving them a burial, at that would fit my character better(though I cant decide whether to cover them with dirt, or dig a pit toss them in along with some branches and set them on fire to remove evidence that we defeated them/give them a burial by cremation).

[AgentPaper]

One tip: Don't worry if people yell at you in-character. That doesn't mean that you're bad at roleplaying, more likely it just means your character is in conflict with one of the others. As long as it doesn't end up causing really big problems like the party splitting up then conflict just adds to the flavor of the RP. If you're not sure about something, don't be afraid to ask the other players about it OOC. We're all here to have fun together, after all.

[Togath]

ok(needed ten letters)
edit: also aparently the entire of last night's session is still there, I've coppied it to a word document so i can archive them.

[Hylas]

Also, was it rude of me to try to resist when a character pulled me out of line of sight of some archers because I wanted to attack them?, I was mostly going by the fact that I thought I wouldn't be able to peek around the tree and fire a spell at them(though it did turn out i could snipe them from the tree, so i didn’t actually have to resist)

Nah, that's fine. That sounds like conflict of interest, like one guy wants to be sneaky or whatever and you wanted to blast things. Every group deals with things like that and it keeps everything interesting.

Really, you aren't that bad and everyone struggles with meta-gaming the dice rolls.