I want to roleplay, but there's so much lore to study! Where to start?

I realize my first post came across pretty negative. I've given it some more thought since, and here are some workarounds I've come up with for how someone could RP a non-binary character within the mechanical limits imposed by the game.

Custom Poses
Use the command:

POSE ^ is here. They wield a [weapon/shield] in their left hand and a [weapon/shield] in their right.

You might want to trigger this to send automatically every time you log in (you can use the pattern "Password correct. Welcome to Achaea." to do this.) It will override the default message folks will see indicating your presence when they LOOK in the same room as you.

Custom Emotes
Use the fairly robust custom emote system in the game in place of the stock emotes. For example, instead of just typing SMILE, which would appear as "Person's mouth turns up as his/her face breaks into a smile," you can use:

EMOTE 's mouth turns up as their face breaks into a smile.

Note: You can use aliases to make this less time consuming. For example, the pattern ^smile$ would be your alias to send the custom emote above, etc.

Acting
In addition to customizing emotes, you can customize the messages that appear when you drink, drop, eat, give, kneel, lie, put, remove, sit, stand, take, get, and wear things. For example, instead of using EAT BISCUITS, which would give the message, "Person unwraps some biscuits from cheesecloth and crunches it up in his/her hands, compacting it," you can use:

EAT BISCUITS: unwraps some @thing from cheesecloth and crunches it up in their hands, compacting it.

Custom Descriptions
Though you can't change the fact that all personal descriptions (the text shown when you LOOK at a character) start with a binary pronoun, you can then customize the rest of the description. You could do something like:

DESCRIBE SELF + and upon coming into focus, is not a "she" at all. They...

Then when someone LOOKs at your character, it would read, for example, "She is an insectoid horkval and upon coming into focus, is not a "she" at all. They..."

Limitations
You - or more specifically, the people you RP with, won't be able to take advantage of certain emote features, particularly ones that can substitute "you" for the target of the emote and show a third person pronoun for others in the room (this is done with the syntax $name_he, $name_him, etc). In order for someone to use the correct pronouns to interact with you, they'd have to specifically type in "they/them," and so even though you are the target of the emote, it would read as a third person message, not as though it is directed at you specifically.

Additionally, you cannot customize or overwrite combat messages, so those would all still use the wrong pronouns.

And, as previously mentioned, when someone LOOKs specifically at your character, it will start "He/she is a..." no matter how you customize the rest. And of course, the matter that HONOURS will always show either "male (race)" or "female (race)" in parenthesis after name and title.

In sum, no, it's not impossible to RP a non-binary character, and I apologize for the knee-jerk reaction of saying it was. However, it will take a significant amount of effort to pull it off, and you should be prepared to handle less than ideal reactions from a significant percentage of the playerbase. That said, when you do find a solid group of people who can be mature and respectful about it, I'm sure it can be a very fun and rewarding experience!


[Edited a few formatting errors]