ZOMBIE THREAD WANT BRAINS...
I've felt a little guilty about this thread, seeing as I just linked to someone else's guide and did no work of my own. If it's okay, I'd like to use this space to share advice -- on the rare occasions that I actually have any worth sharing. XD It's open for discussion and contribution, too. After all, what's the "roleplay discussion" board for?
Disclaimer: These are just my opinions, observations and advice on roleplay. The thoughts expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the management. I may be full of bunk. Talk to your doctor to see if Epesi is right for you...wait...---
Roleplay is not writing a novel in turns. That would be a round robin. Roleplay is a little more like improvisational acting. It's right there in the name: you play a role. You are the character, not the omniscient narrator. You're not telling the whole story all at once, just the actions of your character. The actions of all the players combine to make the story.
Personal note: This is half of the reason I prefer to roleplay in the present tense. To me it feels more natural to be "in the moment". A roleplay is a story that changes and unfolds around you, like you are there, and it's not natural to me to write it as though it already happened.
The other half is simply that I'm used to it. I got my start in online roleplay through MUCKs, live text-based RPGs. MUCKers roleplay in present tense; it's like an unspoken rule. I never thought about it until I moved into forum-based RP and noticed the difference, and it was a very jarring change for me. Perhaps it wouldn't bother me so much, but I've actually seen forum RPers arguing against the use of present tense because they feel it is limited
. It is limited only by your ability to write in English.Roleplay is about interaction. First and foremost, you want to interact with the other players through the characters. Give them something to react to, something to bounce off of --
but not too much. Don't swamp them with information and leave them playing catch-up -- their posts wind up reading like a checklist of replies and reactions, and it leaves them very little room to act. If you are playing more than one character, be very careful not to get lost in their interactions and forget the other players.
Take turns. As a general rule, never post twice in a row. In a one-on-one roleplay, taking turns is simple enough, but when more players are involved, things are a little more complicated. You should try to maintain order as much as possible -- pay attention to the order in which people post and don't take someone else's turn. However, it's not practical in this sort of roleplay environment to keep a strict posting order, because if one person is late, it drags the whole thread to a halt.
I'm going to backtrack a little bit here: don't worry about each person posting in the same order every time. Pay attention to the character interactions. Roleplays with a lot of characters will tend to split into groups and scenes, and even a few characters can have different conversations running at once. It's okay for you to "cut" in front of someone who's not even talking to your character. Just be fair to the people you are interacting with.
Don't leave them in the dust. Don't always post just because you can. Give everyone time to keep up with you. If three people are in a scene interacting with each other, then they should go in order. If two of the three keep posting back and forth while the third is away, it's going to hurt the third when they get back. This often happens to me.
When none of that quite works, try to at least give the slower posters a grace period (at
least a day) before taking their turn. Trying to keep up can easily become a vicious circle when you're busy or you write slowly and everyone else has left you in the dust.
The courtesy goes both ways, of course. You should try your best not to hold people up. If you know you're going to be unavailable for a time, try to tell the other players in advance.
There is one rule that is basically universal in roleplay: never take control of someone else's character unless they have given you permission. You can't decide what they think, feel, do or say. In combat, you can't decide the outcome of your attacks -- they decide whether they dodge, block or take the hit, and only they can decide whether they live or die.
I think there are some rare exceptions. First: if someone is playing a character from the movies, then disappears without warning and is gone for a very long time, I think it would be fair to give that character to someone else. With original characters, you can't just give the character away, but you can assume some small action on their part to excuse their absence -- something came up and they had to leave, etc.
Don't worry too much about making your posts "long enough". A lot of roleplay sites seem to value quantity over quality. Or rather, they mistake quantity
for quality. Some even impose minimum line counts to weed out "bad writing", but what usually results is a lot of fluff. In the worst scenarios, I've seen enormous, rambling novels of posts containing long soliloquies and barely any
interaction between two characters. If you ask me, that's not really roleplay.
Some of the best roleplays I've seen have been short and snappy, fast-paced. Two or more characters interacting naturally, letting their personalities bounce off each other.
That doesn't mean long posts are bad, and I'm not encouraging the dreaded one-liner. Be descriptive. Give us detail so we understand where you are and what you're doing. Have fun with your writing, give it character. Just don't feel pressured to "pay up" with big paragraphs. Like I said, we're not writing novels.
Relax, be courteous, and have fun!---
That's all I can think of for now...I hope something in here proves useful to someone, and not just irritating. XD
