The Guide to Great Roleplaying
Ever feel overwhelmed by how awesome some others post? Ever fall in love with characters but feel like you can never quite reach that level yourself? Trying to get friends into roleplaying and they don't know how it works? This guide aims to help with each of those. Feel free to add any points or start a discussion here about what you think makes a great character, or helpful ways to quickly build interesting plots.
Beginners Guide:
Start here if you've never roleplayed in your life. This section covers the basics, the essence of what roleplaying is.
What is roleplaying?
Roleplaying is when two or more people write stories together. It's all about the interaction of characters that you and another person have created. People can roleplay on websites, via chat messengers, or even through texting on a phone. If you can type on it, you can roleplay on it.
Roleplays - or rather, collaborative story writing, comes with a lot of variety. Think about your favorite book or movie genre. Just because you don't like one genre of movies, doesn't mean you dislike all movies. You simply find the genre of movies that you do enjoy. The same can be said of roleplaying.
Some roleplays have little to no plot, focusing solely on character interaction. Common ones of these are high school roleplays. These kind of roleplays are easy places for beginners to start with.
This is what roleplaying looks like:
Darius hated math class with a passion. The numbers always dulled his mind, his thoughts always on other worlds, places where numbers did not exist.
Marcy sat behind Darius every day. She watched the back of his head with a growing smirk while quietly removing the staples from her mini stapler. Once the teacher had his back to the class, Marcy launched a staple at the back of Darius's head.
Darius quietly cursed, rubbing the back of his head where the staple had hit. He didn't even need to glance behind him - he knew Marcy had nailed him, and not in the fun sort of way. He turned to glare at her, seeing that smug look plastered on her face.
Roleplaying Jargon
Ever feel overwhelmed by how awesome some others post? Ever fall in love with characters but feel like you can never quite reach that level yourself? Trying to get friends into roleplaying and they don't know how it works? This guide aims to help with each of those. Feel free to add any points or start a discussion here about what you think makes a great character, or helpful ways to quickly build interesting plots.
Beginners Guide:
Start here if you've never roleplayed in your life. This section covers the basics, the essence of what roleplaying is.
What is roleplaying?
Roleplaying is when two or more people write stories together. It's all about the interaction of characters that you and another person have created. People can roleplay on websites, via chat messengers, or even through texting on a phone. If you can type on it, you can roleplay on it.
Roleplays - or rather, collaborative story writing, comes with a lot of variety. Think about your favorite book or movie genre. Just because you don't like one genre of movies, doesn't mean you dislike all movies. You simply find the genre of movies that you do enjoy. The same can be said of roleplaying.
Some roleplays have little to no plot, focusing solely on character interaction. Common ones of these are high school roleplays. These kind of roleplays are easy places for beginners to start with.
This is what roleplaying looks like:
Darius hated math class with a passion. The numbers always dulled his mind, his thoughts always on other worlds, places where numbers did not exist.
Marcy sat behind Darius every day. She watched the back of his head with a growing smirk while quietly removing the staples from her mini stapler. Once the teacher had his back to the class, Marcy launched a staple at the back of Darius's head.
Darius quietly cursed, rubbing the back of his head where the staple had hit. He didn't even need to glance behind him - he knew Marcy had nailed him, and not in the fun sort of way. He turned to glare at her, seeing that smug look plastered on her face.
Roleplaying Jargon
RP - An abbreviated way to say roleplaying
Post/Posting - Your turn in an rp is 'your post'. It's what you write then submit to another person.
OOC: - Out of Character. This is when you want to speak to other people as YOU and NOT your character.
OC - Original Character. This means you have come up with your character on your own, it does not exist already in any book, movie, etc.
Canon
Profile
Skeleton
IC
PM
Roleplaying Etiquette
Godmodding
Mary/Gary Sues
Multi-Posting
Now that you know what roleplaying is, lets go over what not to do, and what are common courtesies.
Multi-Posting
The unspoken rule is that you post once and then wait your turn. While it can be frustrating sometimes to wait for another to post, it's rude to keep posting before you get a response.
Intermediate Guide:
Advanced Guide:
Resources and Links
Rp Glossary
Wikihow Rp Guide
Wikihow Rp Guide 2
Blogspot Rp Guide