The way I see it, Roleplay boils down to Improv. The story is ultimately written by the various actors as the Roleplay occurs. Some general rules for good improv actually also boil down to good rules for good roleplay. Consider a few principals often used for improv:
Don't Negate
Hard refusals are scene killers. If your Orc turns to an Ailor and says "Come with Grognak to Grocery" and and the Ailor just says "Ew, you are an Orc, no" then the Orc is left in a very difficult position of having to try to convince the Ailor to go, even if this violates the very essence of the character. Or maybe the the Orc goes alone? But now the Ailor is written out of the scene and that's no fun either.
A better alternative to an Ailor character who is not okay with the idea of going to the grocery store with an Orc is to offer alternative dialog such as "I am a homeowner (baron) why on earth would I go to the store with a smelly Orc such as yourself?" This gives the Orc character something to work with, not stuck on Negation Island.
Closed Ended Questions
This seems counter intuitive as open ended questions are generally meant to obtain more information and trigger discussion in IRL conversations, but they are actually bad for Improv and Roleplay because they create an undue burden on the receiver of the question to drive all of the creativity of the scene. The less open ended a question is, the more the receiver of the question can divert creativity in the answer to making their character shine instead of pushing their creativity into creating the circumstance as well as displaying the character.
Consider the example of the Orc and Ailor characters. Let's say in this modern Ailor, they are unlikely roommates due to a craiglist ad. The Ailor turns to the Orc and says "Do you want takeout?" The Orc is now in the difficult position of having to consider the entire realm of all possible takeout food. They have to think of money, what is available to them, if their Orc likes any kind of takeout really, if he did what kinds would he like or dislike, etc. This is a lot to consider because the question is incredibly open ended. What if instead the Ailor who happens to be Dressolini asks "I want to order some Fazoli's takeout, but I alone won't meet the minimum order for delivery, do you want something?" Now all sorts of opportunities are open to the Orc. Maybe the Orc wants to argue about the food preference "Grognak want burger. Fazoli is for weakling with no honor!!" *rips shirt*. or Maybe the Orc says "Orc only has rat tooth in pocket. Is Fazoli paid by rat teeth?". There are a ton of possibilities really, and it is all because both players have shared the responsibility to narrow the scenario down to something specific enough the allow the characters to shine.
Overarching story lines
I very much like creating chains of events that draw various episodes together. This all boils down to breaking big things into baby steps. Imagine a chain is made up of various chain links. Take the example of the unlikely roommates in the above scenario. Maybe your Ailor is a college student trying to graduate military academy to join the Regalian Army as an officer. Just brainstorm What are the steps in that process? Sign up for classes? Save money? Pay for classes? Go to classes? Get homework? Pass or fail classes? Deal with teachers? Deal with other students? Graduate? Interview for the desired job?
All these questions becomes scenes and link to the next scene. As the story progresses the goals might change as well. Maybe during "Save Money" your Ailor get's a part time job at McDonald's. Now you have another whole set of links in a chain to follow in addition to the main thread. Just break things down into chains and each link is a scene. Don't worry so much about controlling the very end of the chain because since it is improv, things might change a lot before you get to the end, but the Main Ambition of a character sort of becomes a compass along their path helping to link one event to another.
Hope this helps! Happy RPing!
