Roleplaying. It is an often misunderstood, and definitely under-used component of Mordor MUDs (historically).
Here at Realms, the staff has tried to foster an environment from which creative roleplaying and stories can develop and come to fruition.
In fact, if a staff member takes notice of you making an attempt to maintain character role, or otherwise encourage others to do so, you may sometimes be rewarded with gold or small amount of experience.
This is not to say that every time you roleplay you will be rewarded, or that the amount of reward that you may receive will make up for combat experience. But, it can be a nice supplement.

How to:
Have a master bard hiding inside of you just waiting to come out, but don't know how?
Learn your character and the characters that you group with.
What does your character look like? Does he or she have dark hair, leathery skin, brown eyes, etc.? More so, since looks can not be conveyed easily with text, how do they communicate? Do they stay quiet and lurk in the shadows as an assassin? Well, if that is the case, you can easily emote your actions [

input:
emote looks around the room at everyone deeply engaged in conversation
emote sheaths his daggers with ease, grins to himself as everyone else in the tavern reminds him of sheep
emote narrows his eyes and stares intently into your soul

viewed:
Mekila looks around the room at everyone deeply engaged in conversation.
Mekila sheaths his daggers with ease, grins to himself as everyone else in the tavern reminds him of sheep.
Mekila narrows his eyes and stares intently into your soul.

]

If your character likes to talk, he or she can sit in the clinic and weave tall tales about the latest and greatest adventure. I remember sitting in the clinic and tell stories of Bodhi and the original Seekers' discovery and lucky escape of Dracorethorius the Mighty Red Dragon, the slaying of the Beholders, and battle against The Arch-Daemon of the Firedrakes.

Dwarves and otherwise battle-forward characters.
These types of players and characters often don't like to "sit-around" and roleplay. Rather, they would like to make their fists and hammers to all the talking.
Well, it doesn't take much, but I have seen some creative emotes or exclamations after successful kills.
It is fun to see the gleam in a dwarf's eyes as he cleans orc blood off his battle axe and whipes goblin grime off his shining plate armor.
If he adds a little comment or shout of joy during or after battle, then he is doing some roleplaying.
You can also roleplay the anxious battle-frenzy that may overtake you.

input:
emote runs around the room anxious to get started killing trolls and orc children
say Come on guys! Let's get going. Enough sitting aroun' here! The only thing that will cure my wounds will be lopping the head off the goblin chief
shout let's go!

viewed:
Taj runs around the room anxious to get started killing trolls and orc children.
Taj says, "Come on guys! Let's get going. Enough sitting aroun' here! The only thing that will cure my wounds will be lopping the head off the goblin chief."
Taj shouts, "let's go!!"


So, I hope that helps anyone who doesn't "know how" to roleplay, or wants to see how others do it. Plus, if you're lucky, you'll see this:

You have been awarded 1000 gold coins and 500 experience for roleplaying!

Besides, it increases both your fun, the fun of your friends and others around you, and the depth of the game itself. Plus, who wants to play a game as many hours as it takes to get high level, and not have it be fun? I for sure don't.

For now,

The Bodhizatfa

Bravo Bodhi!

For those of you who want an easy start on roleplaying, choose a race besides human. Not to say you can't roleplay humans, as every human has a class as well as an individual personality, but it's much easier to be a grunting dwarf or a havoc-wreaking troll. The good and evil Enoch and Aramon are easy to roleplay as well. However, since we've all heard so much "good and evil" talk, it's hard to roleplay Enoch and Aramon well. Purely saying, "Die evil scum!" can get a little boring sometimes.

My favorite class to play and roleplay is dwarf. Now dwarves might not have the best stats for either fighter (-1 dex) or cleric (-1 piety), but that +5 piety bonus isn't going to mean anything if your character has no soul. Players remember other players who are 1) Really high level, 2) Amazing pkillers, or 3) Amazing roleplayers.

#1 takes a long time to reach and #2 is practically nonexistant right now, leaving roleplay as the primary option.

And Bodhi, I agree with you that roleplaying can be a way to gain XP and gold - but you should roleplay for the sake of making the game more enjoyable (and less of hourly perm runs). Never expect to get a roleplaying bonus, as no DM may be on, a DM might be busy, or he might simply not like your roleplaying. I remember when I was playing as a dwarven fighter - my roleplay bonuses were 0.5-1% of my total experience (some amount of gold). Well, 0.5-1% of 2 million experience is 10-20,000!

Not too shabby, I think.

P.S. Members of the the guild Smother Brothers, I expect that roleplaying will increase quite a bit. I mean, we are dwarves, and all we have to do is grunt and kill orcs, trolls, giants, ogres, etc...

Just yell out a dwarf-life message (see Bodhi's example). You can broadcast it, if you're hoping for a bit of a bonus, or even just yell it - it makes grouping a lot more fun (and loopy). When I'm playing in character, and my group members are as well, my out of character persona is grinning fiercely.

P.S. If the DMs are paying attention, they can see everything you say without being in the same room as you....this isn't so much of a problem anymore, as broadcasts are unlimited. But even so...

Don't forget "rae" and "classe" for race and class emote respectively.

also, use OOC and OS.