rpanons | 008

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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.

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Yo. anyone have advice / links for a n00b RPer?

The culture / comms / plurk / acronyms can seem a little daunting, and the drama is prolific and both funny/intimidating, but I still sorta want to try this shit out.

Everyone was new once, right?

Anyway, thoughts? etiquette? sekrit rules?

1. just be yourself. don't try to conform to the OMDSHDLGJK BABY ;u; I-I'M SO BAD mentality so many rpers have if that's not you. believe it or not there are normal people here, and if you act natural you'll attract them to your friend circle

2. i'd get a plurk but try not to pay too much attention to it, it's sort of hit or miss with its usefulness

3. if you ever get wanked on, don't ever try to defend yourself. try to ask your friends not to whiteknight. that ALWAYS makes it worse

the climate has changed quite a bit since i started rping (it's been, gee, maybe 5 years?) but the best strategy i ever found was just to literally jump in right away. talk to anyone you find interesting and try threading with anyone you find even vaguely compelling and just see where it takes you. as long as you're decently courteous and not a huge jackass it'll work out fine. you have to come to other people and just get yourself involved where you god damn want to be involved, instead of just waiting for people to come along and pick you up. seeing an rper i thought was super duper cool and then just going to their journal and posting in their spam post (i guess that's outdated, huh?) has made me some really enduring friendships. it's actually way more freeing to rp without concerning yourself with the "culture" and blah blah blah. just follow the stated rules of the rp you're joining, but don't try too hard to figure out what the "unspoken rules" are or whatever the fuck, because everyone who does pay attention to that shit ends up miserable.

don't waste time with passive aggressiveness or talking behind others' backs or any of that shit. above all, be honest, both with yourself and with others. follow what makes you happy, and that's it.

> jump in right away. talk to anyone you find interesting and try threading with anyone you find even vaguely compelling and just see where it takes you.

I agree with this advice, and would even recommend playing an extrovert. Introverted moody ellipsing-type characters are a little hard to play off of, especially if you don't have any regular threading partners.

This is pretty useful for acronyms and terminology, so giving it a read will probably help: http://netherworld-rpg.livejournal.com/49784.html

When you app into your first game, let people know that you're knew to LJ/DW rp on your ooc post. People will then both give you more slack if you accidentally make a mistake, and will also know to help you out for the more confusing things.

Plurk can be a good thing or a bad thing: it depends on how you use it, and also who you end up friending. If you're interested in getting to know your gamemates oocly then plurk can be very useful (especially if your game doesn't have an AIM chat), but if you want to keep more distance then plurk's not so good.

Try to give the other person something to respond to. Asking questions is good. Dotting is bad.

I've only been rping for half a year myself, so as a fellow newb here's the advice I can offer:

- Don't invest a lot of time/energy into plurk. Use it for plotting and other RP/fandom related things and scroll by people's discussions of their personal life. Many RPers are immature, fickle and otherwise fairweather friends, and will defriend you in a heartbeat for little or no reason, no matter how often you comment on their plurks or how much CR your characters have. It's a waste of time - time you could have spent actually RPing instead. Keep chatter about your own personal life to a minimum. This way, if anyone ever decides to wank on you, they won't have any personal details to spill.
- Find a game that fits your tagging pace. If you're someone who always tags within the hour, join a fast paced game. If you take a few hours or a couple days, find a medium paced one. If it's even more than that, opt for slow paced. A fast tagger in an otherwise slow paced game or vice versa can be frustrating for everyone involved.
- If you're in any timezone other than EST/CST (timezones where the vast majority of RPers live), don't expect your threads to move quickly no matter how fast you tag. I'm in PST and only have time to tag in the evenings, when pretty much all other RPers have already gone to sleep. Just a heads up, since it kind of sucks.
- Tag around! Get your character out there and involved in as many things as you can handle.
- People dropping threads on you doesn't mean they hate playing with you or anything like that. 99% of the time it's because they're flakes in general, and it has nothing to do with you. This especially goes for open memes, where lots of people will drop the thread a few comments in.
- While you should have a "How's My Driving" post up on your journal for crit (and/or comment to game-wide ones) you should also not feel pressured to take every piece of crit to heart. If you disagree with crit and can support your point with canon evidence (or reasonable headcanon, if it's a minor character), then you should feel free to do that.
- On the flip side, if people give you compliments, just say thank you. None of that "omg no shut up I totally suck asdfhjkl u///u" bullshit.

YMMV on the plurk bit. i mostly use mine to talk about rl, and most people (even fellow RPers) use it for the same reason, and we're all pretty mature. it's all about who you choose to add and associate with. i much prefer to use it as a microblogging site than the major means of communication for rp.

of course, it's perfectly okay to use it purely for RP purposes as well.

I guess that's true. The fickleness seems much more common than the immaturity, at any rate.

Personally, I consider trying to get to know people OOC through plurk one of my biggest mistakes since I started RPing. I spent so much time replying to people's personal plurks and chatting them up just to have them defriend me for no reason later and it was such a waste. I wish I had invested that time in IC stuff instead.

This has been my experience with Plurk as well, but only after I unfollowed pretty much everyone from my game. The great thing about Plurk is that you can ignore the people who feel compelled to post eighteen times a day about nothing you care about without them ever knowing it.

ahh, i'm in PST, so that's good to know!

It's really arrogant how Americans assume everyone else in the world knows what "EST/CST/PST" means. At least put your damn country.

nope

because it's so hard to google the answer

Don't use plurk unless you really want to. It's completely overrated and unneeded.

Just play normally, do what makes sense. Don't antagonize other players, ignore drama if you can, actively interact with others.

That's all you need to do. Granted, playing male characters (especially LA) helps you getting CR (character relations), and I'd not suggest you to try OCs (original characters, especially females), because OCs get significantly less CR. This can be discouraging to a new player.

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