Imelza's Nifty Guide to Egg Hatching Roleplay

Egg hatching roleplay is a fun, imaganative type of roleplay that lets you dream up any kind of creature you like. Basically, a Hatcher finds an egg, and hatches in into a fantasy creature. You can roleplay an egg, or a Hatcher. if you rolelay the egg, you can decide what it looks like, when it hatches, in some cases who it hatches for, and what it hatches into. If you are roleplaying a hatcher, you pick in egg (though sometimes, like I said, the person roleplaying the egg gets a say in who hatches it) and start talking to it. If it likes you, it will hatch into a creature that is perfect for your character.
Of course, if you play both, then you get to pick what creature hatches for your Hatcher, but usually it's more fun to have someone else match you up. I like this better, because it lets you see what other people think of your character, and also lets you learn about other peoples' roleplaying skills. If your Hatcher hatches an egg that you play, you don't get as much interaction.

So, want to learn more? Read on!

Getting Started
First things first, you're gonna need to make a homaniod character. This means someone who has two legs, two arms, and walks upright (unless of course you want them to be a mutant, and in that case they could crawl, or only have one arm or something...but you get what I mean). They can be an elf, a morpher, or just plain human, but they have to be something human-like... Here's some bio examples:

Name: Sharna
Gender: Female Elf
Age: 12
Hair: Dark brown, shoulder-length
Eyes: Bright blue
Looks: Wearing a dark green dress, brown belt, and brown leather shoes. She also wears a white crystal pendant on some string around around her neck.
Other Info: Is polite, and always careful in whatever she does. Is shy and quiet, but quite smart.

Name: Donan
Gender: Male Homan Morpher
Age: 17
Hair: Black, short
Eyes: Dark green
Looks: Wearing brown cargo pants, a black T-shirt, and a necklace of black stones.
Other Info: His necklace alows him to morph into any animal that he can pitcture in his mind. Is secretive and secluded, and uncomfortable around many people.

Get it? Good. Okay, so you make a character like this, and this person becomes your Hatcher character. This is the person who hatches an egg in the roleplay. Now you must find an egg to hatch. To the next phase!

Choosing an Egg
Now that you have your Hatcher character, you need to find an egg to hatch. Most eggs are abstract, and talk. Here's some examples of an egg description:

The first egg in the group was a deep blue color, like a midnight sky, and had bright stars dappled all over it's surface. A soft, lonely singing could be heard faintly if you were to press an ear to it's shell, and the egg was cold to the touch.

The second was bright golden, with silvery horizontal rings of color striping its shell. The egg was large and magestic, and warm on the surface. It seemed to glow, and laughter was coming from beneath its shell.

Cool, huh? Okay, so remember our character Donan? Just take a wild guess, and see if you can figure out which egg he would have more luck hatching. Did you pick the first one? Yup, this is the most intelligent guess, because egg shells usually portray the character within's personality.

Okay, so say we are roleplaying Donan, and he finds a clearing in a forest with an Egg Guardian and some eggs in it. (An egg Guardian can be just another Hatcher character, but one with eggs, or even a dragon or mystical creature who layed the eggs...who knows, it's up to the one who started the roleplay). Donan would walk up to the eggs, and ask if they could be hatched. If the Egg Guardian said yes, then he would usually pick one, take it to his own little spot in the clearing, and start talking to it.

In some cases, though, the Egg Guardian or whoever is plaing the eggs will want to pick their Hatchers. So this is where we get into a whole new idea:

Having a history and personality of your character.

It is good to have some particular emotions and a reason for them to go along with a character, to enhance the egg choosing proccess. If your character is always cheerful and loves to lay in the sun, and the egg is darkly colored and mysterious, this is probably a bad match. If the same Hatcher character came upon a bright yellow egg with sun-flowers growing from it's shell, they would probably get along better. Think of this when choosing your egg (if you are aloud to choose it) becuase it could have effect on the outcome of your roleplay.

Hatching your egg
Now that you've picked an egg, you need to get to know it more. Let's go back to Donan and his night-sky egg.

Here Donan is with his egg, and what does he do now? He gets to know it by talking to it. Once again, this is where having a history and personality can come in handy- not only for a Hatcher, but for an egg as well.

When the egg is ready, it will hatch into a creature that fits it's personality. So if Donan's egg hatching, it might be a small dark blue dragon with stars on it's scales, that likes being out at night, and sleeping in secluded caves. Perfect match, right? Right.

Naming your Egg
Okay, so now Donan has a creature. But it hasn't got a name. You usually get to pick one, unless it comes with a name made up by the roleplayer of the egg. When picking a name for a creature, it would be good to reflect the personality, or it's coloring, or one of it's features that stands out to you. Or it could be something completely abstract and origanal - it's really up to you.

What Next?
What happens next to your character depends on the circumstances. If it's an ongoing roleplay (like on a guild board or something) and if the roleplayer of the egg wants to keep roleplaying the creature, you can decide on a plot, and go off on adventures. If the egg roleplayer leaves the character to you for roleplay, then you can pick what happens next - I've gotten you through the hatching part, and now you get to decide what happens next.

So, think you have a better idea of how to roleplay Egg Hatchings now? Great! Then you're good to go! Go find a board, and try out this awesome type of roleplay- I hope this little guide helped!

—Imelza