I plan to have my character obtain a questionable item

[Snagla-argent-dawn]

What are some tropes or cliches to avoid? He’ll be wearing the item and I haven’t planned anything for the piece of gear only for it to be from some questionable source for my guild members to speculate about. Have you seen a character arc like this before?

Again I have nothing planned out what the item will do, maybe it’s just nothing at all. Is it evil or not, is it sentient or just a piece of metal? Maybe other people are looking for it? I want to brainstorm some ideas for what could happen

Let me know!

[Syelia-argent-dawn]

Often a fault I’ve seen in RPers is creating stories/characters that rely on specific behavior from other characters. But, thing is, other characters rarely react the way you want them to.

For this specific example, it’s possible that the other characters won’t care a single bit about your suspicious item. You have to accept this possibility beforehand.

Secondly, you need to have something planned for it, otherwise it will be terribly boring to deal with and, eventually, everyone will accept that you have it and move on.
“Oh, yes, Snagla has heart of an infernal that he carries with him always, but it doesn’t do anything besides keeping his socks warm.”
“OK.”

Thirdly, if you decide to do something with it, you should be willing to accept consequences. If others demand Snagla gives up the heart of infernal that causes him to enter mad rage (after fifth time it happens) and attack his allies, he will either have to give it up, have it taken from him or leave the group. I’ve seen RPers getting angry after their characters faced consequences for stupid things they did caused by some dark corruption/artifact and it has always been a headache for officers.

[Consumer-argent-dawn]

I much agree with Syelia above. (Who has her own guild, holy heck!)

As for clichés to avoid, here’s my two cents:

• Avoid having an item that makes your character super OP. Instead, I go by the rule that how more powerful the item would be, the greater the drawback of having it in order to balance out the scales.

• Think of a good reason for your character to have something. It would be a tad odd to claim having a fragment of Deathwing which was found just lying around in some pile of socks. Maybe host an event or even a chain to get people involved in retrieving the said artifact!

• If you plan to have some sort of cursed item that can spark a lot of drama, make sure you involve people that you know don’t mind a big dose of sadness and monologing, because preaching to the wrong crowd will leave no one satisfied and folks are less likely to interact with your concept.

Overall, I’m a big sucker for cool artifacts that spark RP. Get people involved! Give them reasons to interact with you, be it for better or ill. Divide them and then whey they least expect it, str- Have fun together!

And remember:
The real treasure is the friends we made along the way.

[Aranagi-draenor]

Some of these things have been tsated above, but I’ll add a little to it, and throw in an example of my old, but since retried, RP main.

Gimmicky & Questionable items can be very hit or miss. If you make something that is very lore-breaking, it can feel equally immersion breaking. If you make something OP, it’ll likely deter interest, becase it seems gimmicky and unfair. When done right though, it can be a fun and creative addition to RP for sure.

For my own example, many years back on the server “Earthen Ring,” When it was still a thriving RP community, I had a cat RP character - Yes, I know it’s seen as cringe, and it was indeed rather cringe the first while.

However, I eventually grew attached to the character and the idea of playing a cat, to a point where I decided to up my game, by reading up on anatomy, behavior, body language and other useful info, and started using this with detailed emotes, rather than “meow” my way around town.

That being said, there was still people who, at first glance, saw my character as a joke, because “Lol cat rp,” some of which would do… Well, rather nasty things like straight up kill it, although there were also many that thoroughly enjoyed my RP.

Moving on to the questionable item, I reached a point where I took RP rather seriously, and didn’t want to just scuff at, or ignore other people, even if they were rude like above, so I decided to add a feature to my cat / saber, which was an enchanted crystal in its forehead, that harbored fel / shadow magic. On death, the crystal would turn my char to stone, crumble and rebirth it as a newborn, that would mature over a few days, somewhat like a phoenix, effectively making my character immortal.

This was obviously more than a bit lorebreaking, but I think people found it interesting & non-intrusive enough to ignore the less RP friendly aspect, and simply saw it as a fun, little mystery gimmick.

Later down the line, I decided it was some sort of hyper enhanced soulstone, etched in place by some manic warlock that sought eternal life, but that was my headcanon, knowing no one would know IC.