Post by Moon on Nov 8, 2016 13:21:55 GMT
Welcome to the role-play guide written for beginners in mind, but it's also a decent refresher for more advanced role-players! Here you'll learn about the nature of what role-playing is, have access to outside role-player resources and be able to brush up on some tricky role-play terminology. Let's begin!
www.wikihow.com/Roleplay
skyrates.wikia.com/wiki/Roleplay/Advanced_Tips
www.wikihow.com/Roleplay-Online
Here are some role-playing guides for beginners. They're a lot to go through, but if you're interested in writing your own immersive stories, they're definitely worth your time to read. You don't have to look through those to get a grasp of what role-playing is, though, since we're also going to explain it ourselves in this handy dandy little guide here. With that out of your way and some extra information at your fingertips, here we go.
First and foremost,
What is role-play?
To put it as simply as we possibly can, role-playing is a lot like becoming an actor or actress on the big screen - but through text! You take control of a character (preferably characters that are different from your real life self) and begin writing. You write their actions, reactions to other players. You write their goals, dreams, feelings - everything is at your fingertips since it's your character. It's like contributing to a story book, but as a group effort with other people writing other bits and pieces. It can be tough to get the hang of at first, but it can be very immersive and fun. If you like choose your own adventure type stories, then role-playing may be for you!
Next,
How do I start role-playing?
Simple! First, you have to create a character. They can be as simplistic as you want to as detailed as you want. You should think of some things about your character. What do they like? What do they look like? Do they have any goals? What's their family life like? Your character is considered a real living, breathing human being in their world - so these are things you should put thought into. Of course, you're free to make these up as you go along and you don't have to plan everything out in advance. A lot of people like to role-play with amnesia backstories or as kids if they want to get a feel for the role-play world or role-playing in general. Whatever pace you're comfortable with is fine!
After you create your character and have their personality figured out, you can immediately jump into the world! It's as simple as walking up to another character and starting a conversation as your character. Are they a rude character? Nice? Looking for friends? You can convey that through writing and meet other people's characters! It's ultimately up to you what your character does and how they'll react to anything another character does, they're essentially a person - so remember to try to treat situations with a sense of realism for better story telling! It's also worth noting that people have different styles of role-playing. However, most people like to use third person when typing about the actions their character does. I'll give you an example:
Kaguya, Atsuki struts into the town with a scowl on her face. Her emerald gaze leers from left to right as she surveys her surroundings, lips pressed into a hard frown. She decides to approach a the black-haired male, speaking in his general direction. "Do you really think you belong here, trash?"
That's just one example. Some people like first person, too, but, it's really up to whatever you're comfortable with! You can be as simple as you like. My personal rule of thumb when it comes to role-playing is that as long as you're able to convey your point, you can use as few or as many words as you like when role-playing!
Now that we've covered how to get started, let's cover some other things such as...
Role-playing Terms
As role-players, we've created some pretty interesting terms for all sorts of things. Here you'll find a list of what they mean. It's good to brush up on these since some of these things aren't good to do and are against the rules.
IC -- In Character
OOC -- Out Of Character
RP -- Role-play
Metagame -- A term that refers to using out of character knowledge in character. If you figure out something OOCly, don't use that knowledge as your character just because you, the player, know something. Your character will only know what they've learned from interacting in the game world, not what YOU know.
Godmoding -- When you role-play your character's abilities as god-like. This means doing things they'd be unable to such as dodging every attack, over-playing what they can reasonably do and just outright ignoring attacks from other players. This can be avoided by reading perk abilities, being aware of your stats and using common sense. This also means you cannot control the actions of other players in your role-play, do not assume what they can do - focus on your character alone. If you're uncertain of what another player is doing or planning to do, you can ask them or post a short role-play that's vague enough for whatever reaction the other player has to be acceptable.
Cybering/ERP - ERP stands for Erotic Role-play, it's also commonly known as 'cybering' in this community. It's when you write out the details of sexual acts between one or more characters.
Blackscreen - A word commonly used in place of writing out ERP. You use a 'blackscreen' to denote skipping a period of time.
Playby -- A word used to refer to a person's picture in their profile that they're using as a reference for their in-game character.
Those are some of the most necessary and basic bare bones words to know so you're not out of the loop, yo! You'll be a cool role-player in no time as long as you brush up on these. Next, we'll be moving on to something a bit fancier.
Profiles
Profiles are one of the best parts of making a character (for some people). I'll be explaining the basics of what a profile should include, some resources and also a basic template for making a profile so you don't have to struggle. In general, a profile should describe your character. You can be as simplistic or as in-depth as you like! If your character has a certain eye color? Include that. Height? Weight? These are also important details to add. Maybe they have a birth mark, maybe they have freckles, maybe their hair is a certain length -- it's up to you!
After you have a description, you should get your main profile ironed out. A picture, a fancy background, or anything else! I'm not going to detail anything too complex in this guide, but there's definitely limitless things you can do in a profile for your character. Here's a really simple template.
Simple, but confusing. Body background? Pick your favorite wallpaper that you think will look cool! The img src thing? That should be your profile picture for your character. The final link at the bottom? That should be for your profile music. I'll also be explaining how to do that.
Here's a few resources for profiles --
www.zerochan.net/
safebooru.org/
www.pinterest.com/
www.pixiv.net/
imgur.com/
BACKGROUND AND FONT COLORS
This is for extra flair for your profile and pretty simple, thankfully. To change your profile font colors (whether it be in the physical attributes description, or in the profile tab where your profile picture and song are located), you'll simply copy one of the following for your font/background, paste it into your profile, and then go to this (link) website to get the html for the color you want.
For background color: <body><body bgcolor="#<<INSERT COLOR CODE HERE (Ex: #0B0303)>>"></body>
For font color: <font color="#<<INSERT COLOR CODE HERE (Ex: #0B0303)>>"> TEXT GOES HERE </font>
For font styles:
Italics = <i> TEXT GOES HERE </i>
Bold = <b> TEXT GOES HERE </b>
That covers just about everything for beginning stuff! I hope you were able to learn something and if there's something that needs to be added to this guide, don't be afraid to tell me about it!
- - - - - - - -
www.wikihow.com/Roleplay
skyrates.wikia.com/wiki/Roleplay/Advanced_Tips
www.wikihow.com/Roleplay-Online
Here are some role-playing guides for beginners. They're a lot to go through, but if you're interested in writing your own immersive stories, they're definitely worth your time to read. You don't have to look through those to get a grasp of what role-playing is, though, since we're also going to explain it ourselves in this handy dandy little guide here. With that out of your way and some extra information at your fingertips, here we go.
First and foremost,
What is role-play?
To put it as simply as we possibly can, role-playing is a lot like becoming an actor or actress on the big screen - but through text! You take control of a character (preferably characters that are different from your real life self) and begin writing. You write their actions, reactions to other players. You write their goals, dreams, feelings - everything is at your fingertips since it's your character. It's like contributing to a story book, but as a group effort with other people writing other bits and pieces. It can be tough to get the hang of at first, but it can be very immersive and fun. If you like choose your own adventure type stories, then role-playing may be for you!
Next,
How do I start role-playing?
Simple! First, you have to create a character. They can be as simplistic as you want to as detailed as you want. You should think of some things about your character. What do they like? What do they look like? Do they have any goals? What's their family life like? Your character is considered a real living, breathing human being in their world - so these are things you should put thought into. Of course, you're free to make these up as you go along and you don't have to plan everything out in advance. A lot of people like to role-play with amnesia backstories or as kids if they want to get a feel for the role-play world or role-playing in general. Whatever pace you're comfortable with is fine!
After you create your character and have their personality figured out, you can immediately jump into the world! It's as simple as walking up to another character and starting a conversation as your character. Are they a rude character? Nice? Looking for friends? You can convey that through writing and meet other people's characters! It's ultimately up to you what your character does and how they'll react to anything another character does, they're essentially a person - so remember to try to treat situations with a sense of realism for better story telling! It's also worth noting that people have different styles of role-playing. However, most people like to use third person when typing about the actions their character does. I'll give you an example:
Kaguya, Atsuki struts into the town with a scowl on her face. Her emerald gaze leers from left to right as she surveys her surroundings, lips pressed into a hard frown. She decides to approach a the black-haired male, speaking in his general direction. "Do you really think you belong here, trash?"
That's just one example. Some people like first person, too, but, it's really up to whatever you're comfortable with! You can be as simple as you like. My personal rule of thumb when it comes to role-playing is that as long as you're able to convey your point, you can use as few or as many words as you like when role-playing!
Now that we've covered how to get started, let's cover some other things such as...
Role-playing Terms
As role-players, we've created some pretty interesting terms for all sorts of things. Here you'll find a list of what they mean. It's good to brush up on these since some of these things aren't good to do and are against the rules.
IC -- In Character
OOC -- Out Of Character
RP -- Role-play
Metagame -- A term that refers to using out of character knowledge in character. If you figure out something OOCly, don't use that knowledge as your character just because you, the player, know something. Your character will only know what they've learned from interacting in the game world, not what YOU know.
Godmoding -- When you role-play your character's abilities as god-like. This means doing things they'd be unable to such as dodging every attack, over-playing what they can reasonably do and just outright ignoring attacks from other players. This can be avoided by reading perk abilities, being aware of your stats and using common sense. This also means you cannot control the actions of other players in your role-play, do not assume what they can do - focus on your character alone. If you're uncertain of what another player is doing or planning to do, you can ask them or post a short role-play that's vague enough for whatever reaction the other player has to be acceptable.
Cybering/ERP - ERP stands for Erotic Role-play, it's also commonly known as 'cybering' in this community. It's when you write out the details of sexual acts between one or more characters.
Blackscreen - A word commonly used in place of writing out ERP. You use a 'blackscreen' to denote skipping a period of time.
Playby -- A word used to refer to a person's picture in their profile that they're using as a reference for their in-game character.
Those are some of the most necessary and basic bare bones words to know so you're not out of the loop, yo! You'll be a cool role-player in no time as long as you brush up on these. Next, we'll be moving on to something a bit fancier.
Profiles
Profiles are one of the best parts of making a character (for some people). I'll be explaining the basics of what a profile should include, some resources and also a basic template for making a profile so you don't have to struggle. In general, a profile should describe your character. You can be as simplistic or as in-depth as you like! If your character has a certain eye color? Include that. Height? Weight? These are also important details to add. Maybe they have a birth mark, maybe they have freckles, maybe their hair is a certain length -- it's up to you!
After you have a description, you should get your main profile ironed out. A picture, a fancy background, or anything else! I'm not going to detail anything too complex in this guide, but there's definitely limitless things you can do in a profile for your character. Here's a really simple template.
<html>
<head><center><title>Character Profile</title></center></head>
<body style="overflow:hidden">
<body background=link>
<br><br>
<center><img src=link>
<iframe width="0" height="0" src=youtubelink?autoplay=1 frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
</body>
Simple, but confusing. Body background? Pick your favorite wallpaper that you think will look cool! The img src thing? That should be your profile picture for your character. The final link at the bottom? That should be for your profile music. I'll also be explaining how to do that.
There are multiple ways to embed music onto your profile, and each have their ups and downs. In the above example you will find how to embed Youtube links, but let me go over the pros and cons real quick.
Youtube
+ Very simple, few step process
+ Autoplay and loop readily available
- Videos are not in your control, and can be taken down at any moment
- Videos may not be available for everyone due to copyright notices, other such claims, or region locks.
- Youtube videos are both music and video. Despite being unable to see the video, you are still sending and receiving it, meaning it costs more data.
For any non-Youtube alternatives, you're going to want to pull up your desired song on youtube, and then copy the link to it in your search bar. From there, you'll go to a website called YTMP3. Upload the song to the website, and then save it somewhere on you're computer that's easily accessible (desktop, downloads, it's up to you). Then you can choose your desired host. Here's a few examples. Feel free to suggest other alternatives!
Vocaroo
+ Supports most audio formats
+ Autoplay readily available
+ Up to 50MB upload, letting you do long songs
- No looping
- The host might still decide to take your upload down due to copyright. However, this is rare.
- Uses Flash Player, which can cause people to crash when opening or refreshing profiles
Just press the "Or upload" link, put in your song, and click on 'Embed' under sharing options. From there you'll see a large block of code. Worry not, you only need a little bit of it. Find something that looks like this:
<embed src="https://vocaroo.com/player.swf?playMediaID=numbers&autoplay=0" width="148" height="44" wmode="transparent" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed>
Change the autoplay=0 to autoplay=1 and both the width and height to 0 to hide the player on your profile. That's all you need! Put it somewhere within the <body></body> tags of your profile and you're set.
Picosong
Unfortunately, this wonderful little site has been shut down.
Here's a few resources for profiles --
www.zerochan.net/
safebooru.org/
www.pinterest.com/
www.pixiv.net/
imgur.com/
BACKGROUND AND FONT COLORS
This is for extra flair for your profile and pretty simple, thankfully. To change your profile font colors (whether it be in the physical attributes description, or in the profile tab where your profile picture and song are located), you'll simply copy one of the following for your font/background, paste it into your profile, and then go to this (link) website to get the html for the color you want.
For background color: <body><body bgcolor="#<<INSERT COLOR CODE HERE (Ex: #0B0303)>>"></body>
For font color: <font color="#<<INSERT COLOR CODE HERE (Ex: #0B0303)>>"> TEXT GOES HERE </font>
For font styles:
Italics = <i> TEXT GOES HERE </i>
Bold = <b> TEXT GOES HERE </b>
That covers just about everything for beginning stuff! I hope you were able to learn something and if there's something that needs to be added to this guide, don't be afraid to tell me about it!