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Author Topic: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.  (Read 27023 times)

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Offline [Sov]

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The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« on: September 11, 2011, 05:16:25 AM »
Maybe you've looked over the threads in the "Training Grounds" board and noticed they're all fight sparring, and thought "I don't want to fight," and were afraid to post to it. So instead you went into the Fun RP section and saw that it's really just fellow furs being silly, which is very fun, but you want to get into a Serious RP.

But maybe you've never roleplayed before in your life, or maybe you're not real sure how to go about roleplaying in general. I saw on the training grounds board there is the sticky of common RP terms, which are still common, and there is the how to creative an effective character sticky thread as well, but none really TEACH you how to RP.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and when I first started RPing I got slapped in the face with a large trout pretty often for doing things that I didn't even know I was doing wrong! Here's some basics laid out:

First, you should really take advantage of that nifty little spell check button at the bottom of the black thing you type words in. It's incredibly helpful when you're not sure if you've spelled a word correctly or not, and can help you find grammar mistakes as well.

Second, in general your posts should be longer than 2 sentences. Roleplaying is like an interactive book, or movie if you're not into books, and you're not really sure how others are going to react to what you say or do in your portion of the RP. That's what makes it really fun! When you post a message that says something along the lines of "Waits for x thing to happen." and that's all you post, it's really not painting a picture for the people who are playing with you, or to the people who are reading it.

Third, be as descriptive as you can possibly be. If your character is walking through a garden, and stops to smell a flower, describe the flower, what caught your characters eye about the flower, how it smells, what else is around it, and of course your characters feelings throughout this whole garden-walking flower-smelling experience.

Fourth, don't jump ahead of everyone else! Some RP's will have a strict posting order, but others will not, and it can have several different aspects going on at one time. What I mean by don't jump ahead is if you know that your character is about to be able to interact with someone, or do something, don't prejudge the situation because you haven't actually learned about it yet in the game. You may have discussed it on your OOC board, but that doesn't mean your character knows about it in the game, so don't post about it!

Now, that's about how you should run your own character in an RP, but there is more. I've played in several different RP's in my time, and one of them had a strict no powerplaying rule, so I'm kind of weird about powerplaying. What is powerplaying you ask? Powerplaying is when you control someone else's character, however there are some exceptions, and I'll throw out a couple examples below.

You're walking down the hallway at school, and you have your headphones in your ears, all of the sudden you feel someones hand grab your shoulder and turn you around.

You're with a friend, and they suddenly grab your hand, and start pulling you towards something.

These two situations are like real life powerplaying, because it's something that's happening to you, without your control. There are other examples, but I'm tired and can't think of anymore.

So what's an example of powerplaying? Let's pretend this is a spar, between two unevenly matched characters. They happen sometimes.

"Zanar the gryphon swoops down from the tree and grabs his opponent with his talons and forces him to the ground instantly breaking his opponents collar bone."

Basically, what happened there was that Zanar, our example character, grabbed his opponent and forced him down, and then stated that he broke a bone in his opponents body. This is wrong! You cannot ever determine what kind of damage has been done to your opponents body. The grabbing and forcing his opponent down, could be possible depending on the characters differences, but it would be pushing the lines of powerplaying.

How that could have read was, "Zanar the gryphon swooped down from the tree and grabbed his opponent with his talons, and forced him to the ground. His sheer size compared to his opponent was phenomenal."  At this point you should leave it alone, and wait to see what the opponent will reply with. An acceptable response would be, "Jackos the buck was caught off guard as a gryphon swooped down from a nearby tree, grabbing him and forcing him to the ground. The gryphons weight upon landing was overwhelming and he felt his collar bone snap. 'Release me now, you beast.'" This would be a great start to a spar that could possibly go either direction depending on the buck's strength, and the gryphons weaknesses, despite their size difference.

God-modding is very similar to this, except god-modding basically creates an indestructible character, or one that never takes any damage. It's severely frowned upon, and can get you ban-hammered from some sole-roleplay communities. (Not talking about TFF here, just any other roleplay community.)

There's something that kind of crosses a bit of terms with powerplaying, but not really. It's called a non-player character or NPC. Playing an NPC means that your character is interacting with a character that isn't being controlled by another player in your game. Examples could be your character buying some food from a merchant, and the merchant telling your character how much money it will be. This is all controlled by you, because the merchant is not being controlled by another player in the game. This is fairly common in serious RPs.

Rounding this message out I'd like to say that for those of you who have just jumped straight into your first RP, don't be afraid to tell the people you're playing with that it's your first RP. They're likely to be less harsh on their judgement of your style then, and they will also give you tips on proper playing techniques. If anyone has anything they'd like to add to this, feel free, I just felt like typing it up because I have seen a lot of new RPers just getting their toes wet, and I love RPing to bits.  :*

Happy RPing!

xo,
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Offline Boone Zofox

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #1 on: September 11, 2011, 07:45:22 AM »
Here Here!

Offline Fly Boy

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #2 on: June 17, 2012, 12:51:23 AM »
This.... needs to be required reading...

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Offline [Sov]

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #3 on: June 17, 2012, 04:15:29 PM »
If only more people read the whole thing.  T_T
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Offline Wolfgirl46

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #4 on: July 29, 2012, 05:07:53 AM »
I read the hole thing.
RAWWWRRRR!!!!!

Offline ShiroTenshiRyu

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #5 on: January 02, 2014, 07:48:10 PM »
Well I read the whole thing and I love the advice but I'm curious how do I approach a group fun or serious about RPing? I really want to get into it again I'm just not sure how to go about approaching people about joining.
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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #6 on: July 10, 2014, 11:58:18 PM »
The best way to 'approach' a group, if you mean via the forums, is to post a given topic on the OOC board for that particular style of roleplay and let them judge for themselves (whether under Fun or Serious). Many of the forum members will read the OOC boards as they are the gathering point for the beginning of new roleplay ideas and threads, and given a proper detail and a willingness from the OP to work with their understanding or ideas, is a great way to bring new people into RP.

If you know specific people, you can politely ask them via PM if they'd want to join in such an RP--but the most general form is to work up a detailed method (moreso for Serious than Fun), provide a framework with rules, and let people decide for themselves.

I hope you did get back into roleplaying, as my answer was a little late.
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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #7 on: October 24, 2014, 08:44:30 PM »
A good starting point!

When you post a message that says something along the lines of "Waits for x thing to happen." and that's all you post, it's really not painting a picture for the people who are playing with you, or to the people who are reading it.

That was super-common when I used to roleplay on Neopets as a teen. We'd get half a dozen people in a new roleplay, and all their characters would just be wandering around aimlessly.

People can always communicate in OOC if they want to negotiate something specific, so there's no need to be hesitant, really. A roleplay can also be a little like a book in that you can give specific background or contextual information to open up possibilities, like saying that your character is waiting on the road for a traveler to pass in order to ask for directions.
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Offline coolcoyote

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #8 on: January 19, 2015, 06:15:48 AM »
If i may take the liberty of adding a few items to your already rather impressive list. I only do this because these subjects keep cropping up on any forum, muck or mud requardless of player experience.

---Stitching: self made term to describe a player who 'stitches' themselves into anothers background or history with out their consent.  These are the characters who appear from no where and say, "I am your long lost brother". Bonus points if the player already has a writen and posted background showing that he is in fact an only child.

---Tweaking: this was already touched on but certainly deserves to be expanded on. Tweeking is simply using ooc information icly. An example would be telling your players to expect action soon oocly and have them all suddenly sense danger approaching.

Or let's say your main villain commits a crime away from view of others and the other player somehow magically knows he commited the crime or another player appears down the road and claims to have witnessed the crime...even though they just joined the story.

---Antagonizing the antagonist: a form of tweaking. Where your character instantly knows the other player is a villain upon meeting him for the first time or treats a generally harmless antagonist as evil incarnate.

Unless the villain is using the bones of his slain enemies as armor and named Baron Bloodgutter it is generally rude to instantly identify the villain as it puts the person running him into a bind. And always treating the villain as the villain simply because he is the villain is also generally considered rude...unless your character has a personality flaw or a good reason to justify it. :3

---solving problems in one post: a subtle form of god moding where the player provides a solution to every problem in a single post.

 Villains get away with it from time to time simply to make the villain more challenging, heroes do not.

---Acting crazy: oocly. The definition varies from player to player but be assured that if you throw a tantrum oocly, start making lewd remarks or begin to make people uncomfortable with your behavior the number of people willing to play with you will drop.

Some icly actions, depending upon their nature can also make people uncomfortable. As a rule of thumb if you have to ask if something will offend someone, then ask.

Truth be told there are ways to preform the above mentioned list successfully.it takes skill and experiance though to pull them off.

There are of course more social taboos that role players have, and dont feel afraid to run into them because every player will at least once make one of the above mentioned mistakes. Its part of the rp learning process ^^

Its when you make the mistake continually that it becomes an issue...

Otherwise, thank you so much for posting this here! Every forum needa a post like this!

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #9 on: February 03, 2015, 12:38:29 PM »
I just watched a godmodded fight happen. It wasn't intentional, but it made me angry.

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #10 on: June 07, 2017, 07:40:04 AM »
 :) Cool! Thanks for the help! :)
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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #11 on: January 01, 2018, 09:25:25 PM »
I have done rps where I set the scene and have ooc notes either before or after the post.


Tips for doing rps here, correctly?


I am asking cause I am playing a character that starts out as a slave.

Offline Vosur Aekira

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #12 on: January 01, 2018, 09:53:09 PM »
For one, remember that these forums still abide by the rules here: https://www.thefurryforum.com/forums/index.php?action=ezportal;sa=page;p=5 (click on each one to see further details if needed)

Second, most Serious RP's here actually follow a set pattern. A Out of Character thread being made in the Serious RP Companion board to keep Profiles and OOC chat in an orderly manner while the main thread would be put in the Serious RP board to contain the action/dialog of the story.

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #13 on: January 02, 2018, 01:14:53 AM »
I have read the rules, and I am trying to get into the adult section as of right now.


I don't want to break rules, I'm just trying to see where my rp would fall under.

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Re: The Basics of Serious Roleplay.
« Reply #14 on: January 02, 2018, 08:42:53 AM »
From the sound of it, it may be a Serious type at the least.

 

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