Post by Aduial on Oct 30, 2004 1:38:01 GMT -5
A guide to roleplaying via text written by my friend Ruku
Ruku’s Guide to Role Playing
©Ruku 2003-2004
(bwee mah beloved Ruku ^^)
Introduction
Roll playing online is like acting in a play or movie, except for a few key differences. The first is that you are doing this online, not with a real “audience” watching you. Secondly, you can make up your own rules, and there’s no need to buy special effects or props. Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to “RP correctly” and start off just like I did. Here’s a set of suggestions to help you start off on the best method of acting this side of the Internet.
Basic Posting
The first thing to learn about is this. I hope you all like Redwall, because I’m going to give you a little passage from it.
“troan shrug. ‘im tu old 4 that sort fo thin. leave it 2 d kids’
Carrul snorted ‘2 old? 2 big in d tmummy u mean. If ur 2 old then what about me eh? I wuz ur teacher when u wer a tiny dibun @ abby skool’”
(This passage taken From Loamhedge by Brian Jacques, p.15. Slightly modified content.)
If you are a fan of Redwall you’re about to kill me because of blasphemy. One looks at that passage and says, “Good grief, Brian Jacques wouldn’t write like that. His book won’t even get published!” Well if you go to many forums or chat rooms you’ll see that most of the people talking like that. That stuff’s just dainty for instant messaging, but on a forum, most likely people are not waiting for you. Just type it out, and use punctuation.
Continuing on that subject matter, I’m going to show you some more things about posting or chatting. Here’s a little bit of what my early RP was like.
Ruku: What do you mean?
Arora Vesper: Just what I said Ruku, now be quiet.
Ruku: Ok so when are you going to tell Ruku about the thing?
Arora Vesper: [I’ll tell him about it when its time.]
Arora Vesper is © her player.
Another point to make is that if you’re going to talk OOC, or Out of Character, keep it in brackets or parentheses. It’d be similar to watching Lord of the Rings and hearing Peter Jackson shouting in the background to his crew and cast. This was taken of a chat room so for posting there was no need to format the text. On a forum, however, it is better to format your text in book style. Such as “Ruku says, ‘Lets go guys!”
Finally, I would like to go over one final thing. Shouting. If you read any book, you will rarely find people shouting in ALL CAPITAL LETERS. That is just annoying and harsh to the eyes. It would be best to have them add an exclamation mark to the end of the sentence if in chat room format, or if in book format, something like, “‘Be quiet!’, shouted Ruku.” Its much easier to look at. Try reading this and not seeing the capital letters above. Its very hard.
Fighting
Now that we’ve done the posting part, we’re going to move onto everyone’s favorite thing to do. Fight! Here is how I started to fight… Except I think I’ll use a movie this time. Here’s the famous scene from “The Matrix” where Neo dodges the bullets.
Agent Smith shoots his gun a lot at Neo.
Neo bends over and dodges all the bullets. “Trinity, help!”
Trinity comes over and shoots Smith in the head, killing him instantly. “Dodge this.”
I can hear your heart pounding from here. I know it was exciting but really that’s how most people start of posting. I know because I started out exactly like this. Lets rephrase that shall we?
Agent Smith coolly draws his pistol and levels it at Neo, firing the gun rapidly at him.
Neo stares at Agent Smith for a minute, time slowing down. There is no sthingy… He bends over almost backwards, just in time for a bullet to pass over his head. An eerie trail left by the wind distortion follows it, catching his attention. He quickly glances back to find another bullet coming towards him and jerks his arm back in a windmill form…
Ok now that was much better. Now you can see what happened more clearly. But notice the first part with Trinity’s head. She shot Agent Smith and he died. Well that wasn’t very fair… That’s like me posting that I broke your arm in three places, kicked you in the head and then shot you. Lets rewind just a bit. For the sake of time I’m going to shorten the posts.
Neo bends over and dodges all the bullets. “Trinity, help!”
Trinity comes over and puts her gun to Smith’s head. “Dodge this.” She then pulls the trigger.
Agent Smith turns around hearing her speak, just in time to see her pull the trigger. He jerks back as the bullet…
If you notice, Agent Smith decides whether the bullet hits or not, Trinity shouldn’t decide that. Finally, I would like to go over a last thing. Now that Smith has the power to choose whether the bullet hits him or not, lets see what he does.
Agent smith turns around hearing her speak, just in time to see her pull the trigger. He quickly grabs at her arm and twists it around to get the bullet to veer off in a different path.
Now there’s nothing wrong with that post, right? He said that he grabs AT her arm, that doesn’t mean that he grabbed it, thus giving Trinity a chance to say whether she was grabbed or whether she wasn’t. But wait, that didn’t happen in the movie did it? No! It didn’t because that’s totally unrealistic. Smith wouldn’t have the time to react to something like that, even though he’s a computer. When you do something that is totally unrealistic, such as dodging an attack that should have hit.
Developing your Character.
No RP is complete without a character. When developing your character, keep things in realistic proportions. This means that you shouldn’t develop a six foot five character with fair skin, blue eyes, spiked hair, a perfect body etc. If you go and look at the world, not everyone is tall, dark, and handsome. There’s a difference in every person. Now before this turns politically correct, I’m going to say that its not wrong to create a tall, dark and handsome character. Its just that’s a stereotype and you should at least try not to be stereotypical.
Ruku’s Guide to Role Playing
©Ruku 2003-2004
(bwee mah beloved Ruku ^^)
Introduction
Roll playing online is like acting in a play or movie, except for a few key differences. The first is that you are doing this online, not with a real “audience” watching you. Secondly, you can make up your own rules, and there’s no need to buy special effects or props. Unfortunately, most people don’t know how to “RP correctly” and start off just like I did. Here’s a set of suggestions to help you start off on the best method of acting this side of the Internet.
Basic Posting
The first thing to learn about is this. I hope you all like Redwall, because I’m going to give you a little passage from it.
“troan shrug. ‘im tu old 4 that sort fo thin. leave it 2 d kids’
Carrul snorted ‘2 old? 2 big in d tmummy u mean. If ur 2 old then what about me eh? I wuz ur teacher when u wer a tiny dibun @ abby skool’”
(This passage taken From Loamhedge by Brian Jacques, p.15. Slightly modified content.)
If you are a fan of Redwall you’re about to kill me because of blasphemy. One looks at that passage and says, “Good grief, Brian Jacques wouldn’t write like that. His book won’t even get published!” Well if you go to many forums or chat rooms you’ll see that most of the people talking like that. That stuff’s just dainty for instant messaging, but on a forum, most likely people are not waiting for you. Just type it out, and use punctuation.
Continuing on that subject matter, I’m going to show you some more things about posting or chatting. Here’s a little bit of what my early RP was like.
Ruku: What do you mean?
Arora Vesper: Just what I said Ruku, now be quiet.
Ruku: Ok so when are you going to tell Ruku about the thing?
Arora Vesper: [I’ll tell him about it when its time.]
Arora Vesper is © her player.
Another point to make is that if you’re going to talk OOC, or Out of Character, keep it in brackets or parentheses. It’d be similar to watching Lord of the Rings and hearing Peter Jackson shouting in the background to his crew and cast. This was taken of a chat room so for posting there was no need to format the text. On a forum, however, it is better to format your text in book style. Such as “Ruku says, ‘Lets go guys!”
Finally, I would like to go over one final thing. Shouting. If you read any book, you will rarely find people shouting in ALL CAPITAL LETERS. That is just annoying and harsh to the eyes. It would be best to have them add an exclamation mark to the end of the sentence if in chat room format, or if in book format, something like, “‘Be quiet!’, shouted Ruku.” Its much easier to look at. Try reading this and not seeing the capital letters above. Its very hard.
Fighting
Now that we’ve done the posting part, we’re going to move onto everyone’s favorite thing to do. Fight! Here is how I started to fight… Except I think I’ll use a movie this time. Here’s the famous scene from “The Matrix” where Neo dodges the bullets.
Agent Smith shoots his gun a lot at Neo.
Neo bends over and dodges all the bullets. “Trinity, help!”
Trinity comes over and shoots Smith in the head, killing him instantly. “Dodge this.”
I can hear your heart pounding from here. I know it was exciting but really that’s how most people start of posting. I know because I started out exactly like this. Lets rephrase that shall we?
Agent Smith coolly draws his pistol and levels it at Neo, firing the gun rapidly at him.
Neo stares at Agent Smith for a minute, time slowing down. There is no sthingy… He bends over almost backwards, just in time for a bullet to pass over his head. An eerie trail left by the wind distortion follows it, catching his attention. He quickly glances back to find another bullet coming towards him and jerks his arm back in a windmill form…
Ok now that was much better. Now you can see what happened more clearly. But notice the first part with Trinity’s head. She shot Agent Smith and he died. Well that wasn’t very fair… That’s like me posting that I broke your arm in three places, kicked you in the head and then shot you. Lets rewind just a bit. For the sake of time I’m going to shorten the posts.
Neo bends over and dodges all the bullets. “Trinity, help!”
Trinity comes over and puts her gun to Smith’s head. “Dodge this.” She then pulls the trigger.
Agent Smith turns around hearing her speak, just in time to see her pull the trigger. He jerks back as the bullet…
If you notice, Agent Smith decides whether the bullet hits or not, Trinity shouldn’t decide that. Finally, I would like to go over a last thing. Now that Smith has the power to choose whether the bullet hits him or not, lets see what he does.
Agent smith turns around hearing her speak, just in time to see her pull the trigger. He quickly grabs at her arm and twists it around to get the bullet to veer off in a different path.
Now there’s nothing wrong with that post, right? He said that he grabs AT her arm, that doesn’t mean that he grabbed it, thus giving Trinity a chance to say whether she was grabbed or whether she wasn’t. But wait, that didn’t happen in the movie did it? No! It didn’t because that’s totally unrealistic. Smith wouldn’t have the time to react to something like that, even though he’s a computer. When you do something that is totally unrealistic, such as dodging an attack that should have hit.
Developing your Character.
No RP is complete without a character. When developing your character, keep things in realistic proportions. This means that you shouldn’t develop a six foot five character with fair skin, blue eyes, spiked hair, a perfect body etc. If you go and look at the world, not everyone is tall, dark, and handsome. There’s a difference in every person. Now before this turns politically correct, I’m going to say that its not wrong to create a tall, dark and handsome character. Its just that’s a stereotype and you should at least try not to be stereotypical.