~ Courtesy Guidelines for Roleplaying (please read)

Originally posted by enigma

Why do people like RPing, you ask? Well, as previously stated, RPing is a way for people to allow their creativity to escape from a monotonous daily life. It is a way for people to feel as if they are special in some way or another.

In general, it's a way to write yourself a more interesting, fun, and enjoyable life.
That doesn't mean the people who RP don't enjoy their life, but they find enjoyment in writing themselves a new one, in which they are something that they can not be in their day to day life.

I'm creating this thread as a guideline to those of you who are new to RPing, to help keep everyones experience enjoyable. Some of these are my own personal pet-peeves, and some are things that everyone would appreciate. Let's begin.

1. Never force another character down a path they don't wish to go down. A.K.A Bunnying

Reason: Being cornered in your own writing is quite annoying. When people don't understand the character you're trying to develop, and don't follow this simple guideline, your character can be forced into becoming something that you or others don't want them to be. For instance, if your character is generally reclusive, and someone writes that you smiled happily, it destroys a lot of the feeling of your characters back story.

Also, a lot of people, myself included, have long term plans for where they want their characters story to go, and if you force a fact on to their character, you don't know what kind of adverse effects that could create within their story.

In general, just let people write their own stories, don't try and take over a character because you want them to do something. If you want them to, PM them or leave them a visitor message and ask if they would be willing to do it.

2. Avoid the infamous WALL O' TEXT.

Reason This is one of my own personal pet peeves, but I know a lot of people dislike them as well. When writing, do your best to space out your story in an organized manner. A good place to space is when the subject or sub-subject switches, such as it is about to, here.

The main issue with the WALL O' TEXT is difficulty to read and comprehend.
When you create large walls of text, the human eye likes to get lost and skip sentences, causing our eyes to inadvertently create huge gaps in the story, which can become quite confusing as I'm sure you can imagine.

In addition, for people like myself with sub-par vision, it becomes even more difficult to seperate sentences and topics.

3. Use punctuation!

Reason Now this isn't really that big of a deal, but it can still cause the same issues as the wall of text. When you create large run on sentences, it becomes difficult to realize for instance, when an action stops, and speech begins.

I've seen a lot of people who write along these lines, and it's rather difficult to understand what the point is that they're trying to make.

"I stopped to think I know what I should do!" Of course, they don't have the quotation marks, but I think you can understand the issue.

Even if you don't know the proper punctuation, any sort of punctuation is better than none. In general, quotation marks separate speech, and non-quoted sentences are actions. Thoughts can be expressed in italics, or by simply saying something along the lines of "I thought to myself" after or before you've quoted your speech.

An example would be. "There's no way that could be true.." I thought to myself. Or, I thought to myself, "There's no way that could be true."

4. Use spell-check! (Rule courtesy of Vashnik)
Keep in mind, this rule only applies to those of you who truly do not know the proper spelling of a word, not those of you who choose to shorten words that aren't necessary to shorten. If you belong to the latter, quit being lazy.

Reason: Improper spelling and grammar can have the same effect as guidelines number two and three. It can make it quite difficult to understand what you are trying to say, and generally, unless you are an incredibly slow typist, using the built-in spell-check feature will take no more time than typing one word. Just a right click and a left click, and you're done.

If u chos 2 typ lyk dis but u no how 2 spel, den u r not welcum nd shud b shot n tha face.

5. Refrain from creating invincible/untouchable characters - A.K.A God-Mode-ing

Reason:I'm quite sure most if not all RPers who follow these guidelines naturally have come across someone doing this. The issue here is that the purpose of RPing is to interact communally, including during battles. When you're writing that nothing can hurt you, and you're the only one that can do anything, you effectively become the only story.

Rather than creating an unbeatable character, write an intelligent idea for your attack, and most people will allow your character to show his strength, with their own response.

Think back to when you were a kid, remember this?

"I got you!"

"No you didn't! I reflect all attacks!"

"You can't do that, that's not fair!"

Remember that? Remember how much you wanted to hit that kid in the face with a 2x4 and burn and pillage his home? Well essentially it's the same here. Don't do it. 'Nough said.

In short, be courteous, and don't forget that there are countless other people trying to RP and enjoy themselves too.

This is all for now, if anyone else has anything they would like me to add, let me know. I'll edit this post. Thanks everyone, have a good time.

ok ive notice this happening a lot recently and its making it hard for some people to keep up. so im posting this for everyone here in the courtesy thread:

Please try to refrain from posting several one/two sentence post if possible ESPCIALLY in threads where there are multiple RPers. If its only one or three people and thats how you all choose to RP then that fine, but bare in mind that if other member join in they need time to reply as well.

There are RPers in each thread that sometimes cant be on as often as others and when they come back after a few hours, or maybe a day (because they have to do things in RL) and have to find where they left off, it does make it hard for them to have to go back several pages of one/ two sentence post to find it and to be honest it does tend to get annoying. A few times i was in the middle of replying (which sometimes takes me a while), when i hit enter there was almost a page and a half of single sentence post.

Those types of post belong in chat RP's. Its ok to post them from time to time, but if those are the types of post your going to make constantly, please feel free to ask us to open the chat and we would be more then happy to do that. This saves the hassle of other members falling 5+ pages behind in their absence, having to try and catch up and then everyone getting irritated when a reply wasnt made to them.
if you have any questions or comments feel free to ask.

If you know a person has fallen behind, isnt going to be on, or doesnt have time to reply and youve notice that there are several pages from their last post and you want to be sure they reply to you. try sending them a PM with your last reply to them. I have done this for a few fellow RPers to save the from going back and trying to find the posts

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~ Courtesy Guidelines for Roleplaying (please read)

~ Courtesy Guidelines for Roleplaying (please read)

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