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,
Kay
Topic: The Basics of Serious Roleplay. (Read 40777 times)