Roleplay
Roleplaying or RP generally refers to any effort to develop and express your character's personality.
Roleplaying in GemStone IV is enforced by policy in the sense that you are expected to remain in character (IC) and reserve any out of character (OOC) communication for whispers or a private room. To be IC means that you are speaking in the voice of your character and GemStone mandates that anything said in public must be IC. This is a minimum requirement, a requirement to avoid disrupting the environment by communicating out loud about game statistics, your favorite song lyrics, or the latest football game.
Many GemStone players choose to explore deeper and more complex roleplaying by developing and expressing a sophisticated understanding of their character's background and worldview. This activity is encouraged by the broad possibilities of text gaming as a medium and GameMaster efforts to produce elaborate IC lore documents and storylines.