rpanons | Okay

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Rundown:

rpanons is an anonymous community for role-play related topics. This place serves as a forum for game discussions, canon discussions, RP solicitations (ATP, game ads, open memes), and advice. The occasional off topic comment is inevitable, but please keep heated social and political topics to their respective communities. Posting them here will only get them frozen. Subsequent threads made to bypass a freeze will then be deleted.

Rules:

Do not post pornographic or shocking images.
Do not share private entries, plurks, chat logs, etc.
Do not use this community as your social/political/hatespeech soapbox.
Do not be redundant. One page does not need three or more threads on one topic/theme.
Do not treat this comm like your personal Plurk or Twitter. Off-topic happens, but it should be open for discussion and not just a play-by-play of your life. No one cares.

CONCERNS | RESOURCES

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, here's a basic rundown on how roleplaying can work:

RPing or Role Playing means that you are acting "in character", writing prose as though you were narrating a character in a book. Unlike a book, however, you are only writing the details of what your character is doing and perhaps setting the scenery that your character is in - the part of other characters is played by other players. Through interracting with one another in "tags" (comments replied consecutively in what we call a "thread"), you and the other player are able to write the dialogue (and basic scenery/setting) for a thread. In DreamWidth RP specifically, we tend to favor characters from existing "canons" (i.e. shows, movies, video games, etc) rather than original characters (often abbreviated "OC"s), though OCs aren't completely unheard of.

There's several places that you can roleplay:

1. In a Game: This means you are playing in a setting where you will have to apply to join, you have to follow the rules and the setting plot, and you have to meet requirements. You will meet many other players, and the characters all share an experience.

2. On Memes: Individual posts in a meme community will have a theme; you can tag these whenever you'd like, adhering to the theme of the post and what basic rules are placed there. You will meet many other players, playing many different characters, and it'll be very one-shot.

3. In a Musebox/What Is A PSL for 500 Alex: If you organize with a group of friends, then you'll be able to talk to them about what you want to thread. You can do quick, random threads based on "dude this character needs to tag your character", or you can do long, convoluted plots that go on for ages (or until you get bored with the story).

Let's start with RPing in games.

This is probably the most complicated part of roleplaying, but it is how a good number of RPers actually get their start in DreamWidth-style RP.

Let's say that I want to roleplay Simba, from the Lion King (something that I've actually done): the very first thing you do is make a journal for the character. You might have a journal just for yourself (ex. my personal journal is here, which has a list of characters that I play on it), but it's not entirely necessary. When you select Create Free Account, you should brainstorm a username that applies to the character. I've got a few different examples for Simba usernames... "redheadlion", "onetrueking", or my recent favorite: "hamlion". You can have multiple accounts on the same email with no issue. Next, you will upload 100x100 icons of your character's expressions; icons are used as a short-hand for describing emotional expression. You can purchase a paid account to receive 100 icons until the paid expires, but 15 icons should also be perfectly fine. Here's what I upload for Simba's expressions; a decent range that I can use for pretty much any reaction. They're like tiny reaction images that you use in every tag.

Next, you shop around for a game that you'd be interested in playing in. You can check the RPanons Game Advertisement Thread or a community called App This Please. Look for the setting that you're interested in, and make sure to read the rules before you make a final decision. Here's a few common rules and practices that you'll be abiding:

•"No Godmoding"; this means that when you write your tag, you do not decide what another person's character is doing. Rather than "Cloud swung his sword and stabbed into Sephiroth's shoulder, knocking Sephiroth down"... you would write "Cloud swung his sword towards Sephiroth with great power and force, giving Sephiroth mere moments to respond!" This makes action threads a bit harder to complete, but usually what happens is that the players negotiate any dramatic injuries/consequences before the thread begins, or once the conversation suddenly turns sour and conflict starts. Make sure to contact the other player via Private Message, AIM, Skype, Plurk...
•The Strike System; most games will warn you well in advance of punishing you. If you break any rules or cause any drama, you'll get contacted by mods asking for you to stop. If things escalate, you'll get a few strikes before you're booted from the game. If you're toxic enough (promoting extremely explicit materials for the sake of harming players, causing serious rabble rousing, etc) you may be booted immediately. But if you live by the Golden Rule, you'll probably have no need to actually worry about these things.
•IC =/= OOC; One important thing to remember is that "In Character" is not the same as "Out of Character". If you're playing Simba, and someone else is playing Scar, don't assume that Scar's player has anything against you when Scar tries to backstab Simba. And remember that what you know as the roleplayer is not always what your character knows, so be fair and let your character be surprised when something truly comes out of nowhere/only has vague hints before happening!
•Application; not just for jobs, anymore! Usually, in a game, there can only be one of each character. Only one Simba, only one Ash Ketchum, only one Garrosh... the way that games usually decide which person can be "the one" character is through an application. Applications also are a test of how "in character" you are as the player. You'll be asked to describe the character's personality in detail, and provide examples of prose (and sometimes practice roleplaying with said character) so that the moderators of the game can see that you are capable of playing the character as though they were fresh out of their movie/game/book/etc. For an example, this is my Simba application to a game called Luceti. I save the application on the character's journal, but you'll usually post it on the application page or send an email. Read the "Application" page of the game you're looking at to see how to submit your finished application.
•Activity Check; Once you're in the game and you've gotten your application approved, you'll need to meet a required amount of activity! These are monthly, sometimes bi-monthly quotas that you will need to fill in order to stay in the game. They're rarely large; perhaps ~30 comments on average. Each activity check tends to be unique regarding its rules, requirements and leeways. If you don't think you are going to meet the expected activity for the month/are going to be gone for a time, you can always go on hiatus (fill in the form on a page titled "hiatus") and give yourself the chance to meet real life responsibilities. It's not super great to skip every other activity check with hiatuses, but it's technically something you can do if you're met with real life emergencies.

So, once you've gotten through all that, what do you do? Well, that depends on the game! Most games these days are community based, but some (like Luceti, where I applied as Simba) are journal based. What does this mean? It just means that when you make a post, you either write an entry to a community (like so) or in your journal (like so). When you write a post, you want to describe what your character is doing! That way, people can tag the post and describe what their characters are going to do about whatever your character is doing in the post. For example, in Simba's post, he's asking people about the strange time inconsistencies. He has conversations with several different characters, all of which start their own thread within the post in response to said post. Simba then responds to their comments, and the tagging back and forth creates a thread.

One thing that separates games from memes or museboxes, besides the existent setting, is the plot. There will be events, some relevant to plot progression and some simply for fun, where a large log presenting a general experience is posted. For example, here is an event in a game. It's an event where there's a zombie virus, and the characters have to battle in order to assist allies from another group. Players respond, describing what's happening with their characters within the entirety of the event; like a post, other characters then respond to the start of that thread, treating it like a post. Here is an example.

NOW FOR SOMETHING MUCH EASIER.

You will still make a journal and upload icons. But rather than writing an application, making sure you adhere to activity check, follow plots and rules and such... you can go to a place like Bakerstreet (a meme community) and look at the posts there.

Check in, see if there's a post you like, and just tag the entries. Sometimes you'll be asked to write details about your character for the meme, sometimes it won't matter. For example, I thought the get drunk meme was a nifty prompt to roleplay to. I didn't really have any characters I wanted to put in the post, but I decided to tag this guy with one of my characters.

It's basically that. You find a meme post (i.e. a post with a specific theme), and either tag with your character to maybe get someone else to reply or tag someone else's started thread. Proceed to roleplay. Tags will rarely conclude, but hey, popcorn.

And finally! When you roleplay with friends, you don't need to worry about activity or the lack of interest or whatever. You can do random threads of just one thing (we should totally thread Basil from the Great Mouse Detective and Mrs. Brisby from the Secret of NIMH I mean WHAT COULD GO WRONG) or you could be making some big plot-related thing (what if we made this character come from a whole other world and roleplayed out the whole plot).

This is also a great way to start if you've got a group of friends. You can get used to the tagging format and generally how to tag before trying anything fancy. These will usually be on dreamwidth communities known as "museboxes".

THAT'S THE BASICS. If you have any questions, I can answer them.

This is some quality A+ information. I approve of these posts.

now that i've read all this, can you give me a TM and a gym badge?

...So be it. This Badge is yours. By having the Fog Badge, Pokémon up to Lv. 50, including traded Pokémon, will obey you.

Here is another thing... I want you to have this, too. It's Shadow Ball. It causes damage and may reduce Special Defense. Use it if it appeals to you.