One way to understand role-playing is by asking role-players to describe what counts as good role-playing and what the etiquette of role-playing is. Responses to this question were surprisingly similar, with a key set of attributes articulated over and over again by many players. These guidelines fall roughly into three aspects of role-playing: 1) character interaction, 2) textual communication, and 3) story-telling.

The primary set of guidelines that players articulated revolved around how a player's character should behave and interact with others.

Character Interaction

Stay in Character

The most common guideline given was that good role-players "stay in character". There are two layers of meaning in this phrase. The superficial one is that role-players should avoid making out-of-character comments (OOC).

But the underlying assumption is that good role-players can stay in character because they have a character personality that has sufficiently depth and can deal with a wide range of scenarios.

In this second reading, a player breaks character because of a limited behavioral repertoire. A good role-player is not only consistent, but draws from a coherent character story or psychology to react to a wide range of scenarios.