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The Official RP Tips & Tricks Thread
Topic Started: May 30 2012, 09:35 PM (211 Views)
Enigma
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that fabled superhero

Alright this is optional, but it would probably be greatly appreciated by your fellow members, so remember these are optional and are just for the better of the forum.

1. Alright when you are posting for you character try to include the following...
~Mood:Your characters mood can greatly help the person or persons you are role playing with by helping them to know how your character is feeling, they can try to a.)push the topic, tell another joke, etc. or b.) back off and give you your space.

~Actions:By telling what your character is doing you can help your character decide how to react or counter whatever it is your character is doing.

~Be as descriptive as possible: Whenever you make a new topic somewhere try to describe the environment, weather, sounds, and anything else you feel obliged to include, because it can greatly help the people who role play with you by giving them an environment to imagine and work with.


2. Although you may not find a profile for your character to be a good idea, and just useless. You're wrong, a profile helps the other people who plan to role play with you. They can determine your appearance, height, weight, age, hair color, and anything else that might be included in you profile. So please make one for it will not only benefit you but also your fellow role players.

3. When posting be sure to use the name of the character you are using so that the other people who plan to join in the role play know who you are using and can look at your profile so they can write the best response they can with the information given to them.

4. Alright this is the most difficult thing for the other role players role playing in your topic, and it's what your character is saying and thinking. Be sure to use italics or a different color for your text when posting your character's thoughts or what your character is saying.

5. Avoid god-modding or power-playing. "God Modding" is in essence when someone’s character has the ability to do practically anything without limits or boundaries. And example is when they simply cannot be harmed by any and all means other RP-ers try. Power-playing is when they make out another character to be what they’re not, just to make their own character seem superior. They make others seem weak, screaming for help, when they’ve made it quite clear about their advantages and strengths.

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This topic isn't closed because various people have their own tips and tricks. I'm leaving it pinned and open for others to add their own tips and tricks to the list.
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Geoffrey
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I <3 Christmas
Might want to mention something about power playing / god modding.
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Enigma
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that fabled superhero

I'll mention something about it in the list.
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Dapper Snazzy
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The Autodidact
Alright, the following isn't as much tips & tricks but trial-by-error learned etiquette that isn't really written down enough these days.

RP Etiquette

Writing Tense
Third-person, past tense. Although sometimes it pays off to stray from this for a wanted effect or to give choices for the next player to pick up on and describe in his/her post, try to stick to third-person and past tense.

Actions & Spoken Text
Jake already touched on this pretty well.
Differentiate between your character’s spoken words, thoughts and actions. Some people put spoken in bold or a colour, others don't and that's fine as long as it's easy to comprehend it's spoken. Thoughts should be italicized.
Don't use unnecessary asterisks (*), tildes (~) or other decorations to indicate character actions. You may use any sort of text decoration in order to indicate telepathy if such a thing is allowed in the RP.

Out of Character Chatter
Please keep out of character notes in threads to a bare minimum. OOC belongs into the Q&A subforum, chatbox or Private Messages. If the Q&A forum does not have a thread about the RP for discussion purposes, make one.

Timely Replies
Try to reply in a timely manner. While we understand that everyone has their own writing speed (not to mention time zones), please do your best to keep your threads alive. There is absolutely nothing more sad than the death of a thread due to dwindling activity. Although it's common courtesy not to hound your fellow RPers about their posting speed, there are limits to that. If there hasn't been activity for around a week or you have seen the player on the forum for a significant time without posting in the RP, sic 'em. That's what I tend to do at least.
If you're gone for several days, it's common courtesy to let the folks know you won't be around for a while, just so they don't end up waiting for you to post without any kind of reply coming their way.
The same goes for if you discover you don't have enough time on your hands to keep up with the RP. Let others know so they'll slow down and give you time. Or if you so choose, you can also abandon the RP if you see no near future where you have enough time and the RP is progressing fast.

Non-Player Characters
Roleplayers often utilize Non-Player Characters (NPCs) in order to help progress and add extra details to a plot. This is useful when creating random characters for your character to interact with and essential to building crowd scenes. As a general rule of thumb: if a player introduces an NPC with a name, please ask before you utilize that NPC in subsequent posts. Usually named NPCs deemed important supporting characters that end up being integral to some plot - so don’t make them do things unless you have permission from that NPC’s creator. Nameless NPCs are generally considered to be free-for-alls and you can do whatever you want with them. There's generally no limit to the amount of NPCs you can create. However, if you find yourself using a specific named NPC a lot, you may want to consider creating them as a fully-fledged character.

The Mandatory Grammar Nazi Section
Try to use proper capitalization and punctuation. The use of fragmented sentences for style and emphasis are okay.
Absolutely no “chat speak.” This includes, but is not limited to, substituting "y" for "why," "r" for "are," "u" for "you," "ic" for "I see," "thanx," "l8er," "luv," etc.
Please spell check your posts. Both American and British variants of the English language are acceptable. Despite the lack "u" in words such as armour and colour, we understand you.
If you don't have a spellcheck, then FFS get one. Chrome, Firefox, Word, OpenOffice, spellcheck.net, whatever as long as you have one. The occasional slip is cool, there are typos that the spellcheck doesn't notice due to the typo being also a legitimate word in by itself, but if the post is riddled with typos, it's not fun or productive to read.


Now that we have the grammar and format part done with, let's talk about other players and attitudes.

General Code of Conduct
Relax and have fun. There's no need to bring stress and anxiety from your own life into the game. The whole idea of roleplaying is that you can play other roles, feel different emotions though them and letting go a bit of your daily problems in RP can be cathartic.
Incorporate and be friendly to new individuals. Help them out, give supportive criticism of what they're doing right and wrong. However, if they act in a manner that is disruptive to your group, offer them the chance to make an attitude adjustment and if they refuse to then use the ultimate trump card; remove them.
Communicate, communicate, communicate! Don't break up a game or an RP group, because of the inability to express how you're upset about the RP direction or character interactions if you haven't even tried to talk about it with the players or with the group. This goes the other way as well; if you have something big planned, let it be known to the other players so it doesn't come straight out of the blue for them and screw up their own ideas. Of course, the OOC should not stall the IC, but let your thoughts be known. This does not compel the GameMaster to let the players know if he has a part of the bigger picture he wants to introduce that does screw up the current situation of the RP though.

GameMaster / DungeonMaster
The GM is god. He is the originator of the plot and setting you're RPing in. If you have something to add that might enrich the world, keep it either to the spirit of the initial setting or discuss it with the GM if it's a big addition. Even in roleplays where the GM is active as a character and doesn't actively moderate the flow of the RP, he has the right to replace gravity with goo if he wants to. Of course, no good GM wants to alienate his players, but he is still god of the RP so show some respect.

Powerplaying and powerplayers
If you are being out of character, crude, cruel, or even disruptive to a game, do not expect to be liked, or have folks take your side. It's important to remember that people generally have social norms, and breaking them can get you trouble. This ties heavily to godmoding and cheating. Do not control other people's characters, NPCs or try to rule what they can and cannot do. Don't cheat, for example don't have your character as a mortal human being jump from the 40th floor and survive the landing unless it's an RP in a setting where that's possible. Nobody is perfect, everyone has flaws and that goes for characters as well. Even if they have perfect characters, you don't have to; they're already disliked for it, you're not.
Remember that playstyle gives more insight into the player's mind than the character. People are not their characters, so scumbags ICly can be very fine people OOCly. If they powerplay, godmode and cheat with their character and refuse to stop it when they're notified about it, then they're the scumbags and their characters are more like victims being played by a horrible horrible RPer. Don't make your fellow RPers look like douches = don't make yourself look like a douche.
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