How To Roleplay

Started by Emily, October 12, 2019, 03:45:58 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Emily

Hi friends!

This post is to give first some basics on how play-by-post (or forum) roleplaying works, and then afterward to give some details on how CalRef's forum RPs work specifically.

Play-by-post roleplaying is a type of collective creative writing exercise where multiple people interact with one another through characters in a pre-determined or agreed upon environment. The environment or play space is usually determined by the person who made the thread and started the story, and changes are maintained either through that same top-down structure or through a collective agreement. Play-by-post roleplaying is a unique method of roleplaying in that it has almost no restraints save graphical interfaces, whereas other methods (video and tabletop games specifically) are limited by the systems contained therein.

In a roleplaying scenario, it's entirely up to you to create and maintain your character. While those of us who have been doing this a long time might play around with minor adaptations of characters from other RPs, it's always an interesting experience to start from nothing. Consider the world you're playing in, the limits you want to impose upon yourself, and start writing! Because your character is your own IP and entirely under your control, it is not allowable for anyone else to determine your character's actions or behaviours without your consent and acceptance. Occasionally, we will game out posts between two characters in the OOC threads or over private messages, so that eight posts of single lines of dialogue can instead be one long post submitted by one of the two players involved. If your character has something to say to or interactions with another character, contact the player before writing! (09/11/2019)

Calamity Refuge has some specificities to how we approach roleplaying, and I think in those are where we find the most interesting avenues to explore. First of all, each thread on the roleplay subforum is a singular story and setting. While there might be related threads afterward or alongside a roleplay, for the most part each thread is a standalone story. This is the least-unique angle of CalRef's RP structure, as many other roleplaying forums do the same thing.

One of my favourite unique aspects of Calamity Refuge is that we provide a recommendation in structure where the world isn't entirely filled out at the start. When you write your first post establishing both the world and your player character, the idea is to describe only what is needed for the scene. This way, everyone can join in. No matter what happens in the RP, everyone else involved incorporates it into what they're doing and runs with it. If there's a hyper-realistic modern world and someone introduces a dragon, it's generally more fun to figure out what that means in the context of the story than to get upset about how it shouldn't have been there in the first place.

Finally, we have a roleplay wiki! Once a world gets filled out enough to start writing articles, feel free to create pages for your cities or countries or characters. We even have helpful how-to articles pre-written to give you the tools you need to write up your page. There are no restriction on this, so feel free to start right away!

If you ever have any questions or feedback, please feel free to post in this thread, send me a private message, or post in the roleplaying room on our discord server. I hope to expand this how-to as we find things that I've overlooked, and make this a comprehensive guide soon. Thank you so much for reading :heart:

-Emily

P.S. New additions will be included in bold, along with the date they were added. (09/11/2019)

Emily

Update 09/11/2019: Added a few lines about character/player interaction and building posts cooperatively.

Emily

Update 25/06/2021: Updated the wiki links to be correct (I should have done this ages ago, I just never noticed, sorry!)