002. Guide to Roleplay

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INTRODUCTION

What is RPG? First off, it stands for “role playing game”. Role playing is when you play the role of a character, kind of like in a play. Only the characters you play are ones that you create yourself and role play as on a forum. There are Warriors RPG Forums, Dog RPG Forums, Harry Potter RPG Forums, Pokemon RPG Forums, you name it. This will mostly be a guide for role playing in general, but I will also elaborate on a few things that are only in Warriors/Cat RPGs.

GRAMMAR, PUNCTUATION, & SPELLING

Grammar, punctuation, and spelling must always be used when role playing. Always use periods, commas, semi-colons, question marks, quotation marks, and all other punctuation in the correct places. You must always have quotation marks when your character is speaking.

You don’t have to use really big words to make your role play be exceptional, but spelling counts, nonetheless. If you have trouble spelling words, then it might be a good idea to write out your post in a Word Document first and then use spell check. When you’re done, you can easily copy and paste it onto the forum. If you have the latest version of Firefox, it will automatically underline misspelled words in red, and you can easily fix them by right clicking the word and choosing the correct spelling. It is a very useful tool, even for me.

Grammar is essential to role playing. Using the wrong there, your, two, etc may not be an obvious mistake when you’re typing it, but when someone reads it, it’s pretty obvious. Try your hardest to use the correct words in their proper places.

LENGTH vs. QUALITY

Your role playing post doesn’t necessarily have to be long; it just has to be well written. Although 200 words are the limit. Most RPG forums would prefer it if you had a short post that was written beautifully as opposed to a really long post that was written poorly and lacked inspiration.

Having a long post is always good, but don’t push yourself to post a page’s worth of role play every time. Everyone gets writer’s block every once in a while, so it’s ok if you post a short post once in a while. Try not to post really short replies all the time though, because that’s lacking creativity and effort.

Overall, quality is much better than length when it comes to role playing.

DETAILS

Want to know the best way to role play? Details. Most of those advanced, long posting role players are the ones who give the most detail into their posts. Details are like the sprinkles on a cupcake, the powered sugar on French toast, the salt on a pretzel, etc. (I must be hungry right now) The role play is dry and boring unless you have those sweet, juicy details to top it off.

How do you get details? Pretty simple. You have to pretend you are in the atmosphere that you are role playing in, and observe what is around you. Somewhat. It takes some imagination but it is also a poetic art. Instead of saying “the cat’s fur was dirty and matted”, you could say “the beautiful silver cat’s fur was soiled with dust, making it appear dull gray and tangled”. See how more detailed that was? Not only did I describe that the cat was originally beautiful but became ragged looking from the dirt, but I also described more full that it was dust that made the cat dirty, and its fur was tangled.

You can role play with getting the point straight across, or you can role play in depth. For example, here’s a poorly written sentence: “The cat jumped over the log and ran through the woods.” Here’s a better revision: “The energetic cat skipped over the scoffed up log and dashed through the misty forest.”

Word choice is crucial to how your sentences turn out. Like my examples above, I used “skipped” instead of the boring verb “jumped”. Instead of “ran” I used “dashed”. There are so many synonyms that are much more interesting to read, and usually give you a more descriptive look on what you’re writing. Since I said the cat was energetic, “skipped” is a much more appropriate verb than “leaped” or “soared”. The skip symbolizes the cat’s hyper nature.

Placing descriptive words in front of your nouns helps tremendously as well. Instead of saying “the log”, I said “the scoffed up log”. This gives the reader a better image of the log, because we now know it was old and eaten away instead of fresh, moldy, or falling apart. Same with how I said “the misty forest” instead of just “the woods”. This gets us into the perspective of the character’s surrounding areas better. If you start out by having a thesaurus with you or type out your posts in Word and look up synonyms, you’ll eventually get used to it and naturally make your posts more descriptive.

As a general rule, if you ask yourself, "What does the current surrounding look like? What does my character currently look like?" If your role play post can not answer those simple questions, the reader will not be able to imagine what is going on.

THE 5 SENSES

Sight, hear, touch, taste, and smell. These are the five senses that you use when role playing. They help you make your role play more realistic and imaginable. If you write what your character sees, hears, touches, tastes, and smells, it will make the post much more descriptive already.

Don’t just type what your character is doing. Describe what they saw, what they heard, what they smelled, etc, while they were doing it. For example, instead of saying “Dawnpaw trotted along the riverbank” say “Dawnpaw trotted along the riverbank, enjoying the feel of water spraying gently onto her face”.

Describing the five senses your character feels will give the reader the full perspective of your character and their point of view on what’s going on around them. It makes the role play much more palpable and interesting.

FEELINGS & THOUGHTS

When role playing, you’re role playing as your character, right? So write out what your character is feeling, what they’re thinking, and what their opinions are. If you just write out what they do, no matter how descriptive it may be, it still lacks the temperament of your role play. It lacks character.

Most RPG forums like you to make character’s thoughts italicized, so they know the character is thinking and not speaking. If you do this, don’t put quotation marks around it as well, just make it italicized – otherwise it’ll be confusing. Your character can be thinking anything, from a “hmm” to a “I wonder what’s for dinner?” or even a “Jeez, she sure is stubborn!” What your character thinks doesn’t necessarily have to have correct punctuation or proper English, because some characters may think things like “Y’all are a bunch of fools!” Having accents or incorrect English may be part of your character’s personality.

Being descriptive with your character’s thoughts gets the reader into the mood that your character is in. Using similes work great – for example: “Silverfall was solemnly depressed, and her heart felt like a rock heavy with sorrow” This gives the reader a similarity to what the character feels like.

EXAMPLES

Sparrow trudged through the snow, sorrow hanging in his heart like a stone. It was snowing ever so lightly, the large snowflakes dancing in the air as they swirled down.
He looked out over the landscape below him, the frozen waterfall and river in stunning silence. Snow covered everything, its whiteness nearly blinding him. The sky was a depressing gray, clouds covering everything. Sparrowheart was cold. So cold. Not only were his veins freezing from the outer coldness, but his heart was frozen solid. He knew he needed to get over his emotions but somehow he couldn't. Even since the incident, he couldn't stand thinking about her.
Her beautiful brown eyes and fiery orange fur, and her small white paws and bright pink nose. Her sweet smile and that playful glint in her eyes. Sparrowheart could see her image clearly in his mind, and it was always to be like that.
The silence of the scene before him was slightly terrifying. There was no sound of prey, no sound of the wind, no sound of life. It seemed the world had stopped, except the snowflakes continuing to fall, fall, and fall. Sparrowheart couldn't hear anything; he couldn't even hear her soft voice.

If you notice in this role playing piece, there are fragments (incomplete sentences). It’s ok to have some fragments in your role play, because that more detail and character into your writing. It makes it more poetic. I used a lot of similes in this example, how Sparrowheart was cold from both the snow and felt cold from his loneliness and sorrow. It doesn’t necessarily have to be winter in order for you to get the mood of your character being sad – it can be a cheerful, warm and sunny day. The better the role player you are, the easier it will be for you to role play certain feelings with high-quality despite the weather or surrounding environment.
I will provide more examples in the future.

CONCLUSION

You might be thinking that you’ll never be an elite role player, but don’t give up hope. The more you practice and the more role playing posts that you read the better you’ll get. Believe it or not, reading other role players posts do help, because it can give you inspiration for your next post.

The more you write in school or on your own will help too. Learning a few new vocabulary words here and there will replenish your role play ability. Reading books, especially long ones for young adults, will help you out a lot as well.

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