| The Land of Avalon is a freeform medieval/fantasy roleplaying site loosely based on Arthurian lore. Avalon is home to many friendly members, administrators, and position holders, most of whom are always willing to RP, no matter how new a person might be to the site. With a large shop system full of various spells, items, and equipment no two characters are the same. With character races ranging from elves and humans to dragons, chimeras, and demons Avalon welcomes a wide range of races and RP skill levels. From the Northern Lands holding word limits suited for beginners to the West for the more advanced, no one is too inexperienced to join in on the fun. With a variety of deities and elemental guardians, kings and nobility to pledge to (or oppose) there is no shortage of roleplaying opportunity. Avalon is full of great members and staff with a great sense of humor, friendly welcomes, and a love for roleplaying. Avalon invites you to experience the magic, today! |
| Role-Playing Guide | |
|---|---|
| Topic Started: Oct 21 2007, 10:09 PM (392 Views) | |
| Sir | Oct 21 2007, 10:09 PM Post #1 |
The Dead One
|
I realize that this may be in need of some editing. But since my fellow Admins and Mods said nothing but 'good', I am putting it up as it is. If you have better examples for the 'detailed paragraph' part and the 'fluffed up' post, send them along! I know that mine are not exactly the best examples, and a Guide like this should have the best examples! Any edits? Ideas? PM them to me and I'll take a look at them! Forgive me for any mistakes and the general crappiness. Hello there and welcome to Avalon – a gateway to the world of RPing! And welcome to Sir’s RPing Guide, your key to unlocking the gateway. First and foremost: Why should you read this RP Guide and trust me? Well, you don't have to. Avalon does not require you to read this RP Guide. There used to be a link to another RP Guide, and when I hunt it down I shall put it here. Why should you trust me? Well, I'm just an Admin on Avalon. I've only been RPing for about four years, most of that time here on Avalon. I have been on only a handful of sites, and currently am only active on Avalon. I have had about twenty characters. I enjoy reading and writing (short stories, poetry, random crap), and English is one of my favourite subjects. I haven't finished school, I'm not an English teacher, I'm not an uber mistress of RPing, I make mistakes. But I know something. I know how I've developed. I'm not claiming to be a briliant RPer - far from it. But I am claiming that I've improved. My average word count used to be about 15 words, give or take a few. Even on Avalon, my word count hovered around the 50 word mark. I've even been warned (verbally) for posting below the word minimum. But over the years I have improved, I've watched people improve, but most importantly, I've watched myself improve and I've looked at how and why. This is an incomplete Guide that I've written, using the techniques that I use. Now it's a little Guide on Avalon, my dream is that I'll write up an RPing Guide site to share with the whole world of RPing. Buut if you don't feel like using my RP Guide, here's a good one: RP Guide! What is RPing? RPing is short for role-playing. Because Avalon is a play-by-post, word-based RPG, RPing here means WRITING! All the handsome men, the beautiful women, the sparks of magic, the clashes of swords, the delicate kisses of lovers, the rusty red of blood comes alive in your head through the words that you write and read. You could say that RPing is like writing letters to each other, or acting in a play where only one person can move at a time. First one person goes, then the other person reacts, then the first person reacts and off you go. What do you need to RP? Apart from the obvious (computer, keyboard, internet access, Avalon). You’ll need a character, imagination, a word-counter, a spell-checker and maybe a dictionary/thesaurus. Also a good command of the English language would be helpful, since Avalon is an English-speaking (or writing) RPG. A word-counter is needed because all the role-playing boards on Avalon have word minimums, and you have to write above these. A spell-checker is needed because role-playing is writing, you need to have good spelling and grammar to be understood. A dictionary and a thesaurus are a writer’s two best friends, look up the words you are unsure of and find attention-grabbing synonyms to replace your boring words. But of course, the two most important things are a character and imagination. How do I make a character? The process starts in your head. There are many different ways to come up with a character, but always in the beginning of you have to get a taste for your character. Some people think of a name first, some people decide if it’ll be a she or a he, some people decide on profession while others decide on alignment. Once you have some sort of idea, try writing a very short sentence to describe your character. For example, my character Sir: A smelly, sardonic dead guy who can’t leave this world. Or my character Lady Evil: A melancholic widow whose life ended when her husband died. Short, simple, effective. Both sentences sum up the main points of the characters. The next step is to start filling in a description. The one available in the description forum is quite good. Think of name, age, gender, alignment, appearance, personality and history. And think in DETAIL! Make sure your character is balanced, not too perfect, not too strong, not too powerful. Flaws can make your character very interesting to RP with. And don’t forget the detail, you are the only one who knows your character at this stage, and you have to know everything about him/her. Nobody else on this site can tell you how s/he’s going to react in a certain situation, only you can. It’s like building a tower out of legos, each piece counts. You can’t start building in all directions and having the tower collapse, you have to keep going up. How do I RP? Let’s start right from the basics. The bones of RPing: A role-play is an interaction between two or more characters. It’s like watching a film recorded on two different tapes, first you watch a bit from one tape, then the same part from the other tape. Take this diagram as an example.  It looks like a bunch of lines, right? Wrong. Let’s say it’s a timeline, every millimeter represents a minute or something like that. The green line is the time that passes in the first person’s post, let’s say that person’s character is Malgorth. The blue line is the time that passes in the second person’s post, that character’s name is Ellyn. In Malgorth’s first post, it’s about how Malgorth walks in a forest and stumbles upon a clearing. He looks at the trees and shouts out “I hate beautiful trees!” when he walks out of the trees. Ellyn’s post tells how Ellyn is in the clearing as well, and she hears Malgorth talk. She watches him first to see if he’s dangerous and then when she hears what he shouts she is offended by what he says because she’s a wood elf. Then she walks up to him and says in her most beautiful voice “That’s a mean thing to say!” Then she stands and glares at him. Malgorth’s second post will include when he first caught sight of Ellyn walk up to him. He is thinking, ‘Gods above, that woman is beautiful! Look at her walk! She’s like a Goddess, so beautiful!’ Then he hears what she says, and he’s sad that this beautiful woman is glaring at him. But he really does hate beautiful trees, so he says, “No it’s not a mean thing to say. Look at them! I hate them! I hate them!” In Ellyn’s second post, Ellyn reacts to Malgorth. She crosses her arms and thinks that he’s an idiot. She looks daggers at him and then asks him why he hates them: “So what makes you so good that you can hate beautiful trees?” Then Malgorth and Ellyn could argue about it and maybe have a little sword fight about it, and then Malgorth might say that he hates beautiful trees because they’re like pale lights against Ellyn’s beauty. And that would turn out to be a soppy (but intriguing!) RP. (Remember that what I wrote are not POSTS! They’re just little summaries of what might be the main points in the post). Do you see what happens? The posts overlap! Your character reacts to what the other person says and then carries it on a little. Then the other person reacts and carries it on. Start your post by reacting to what happened in the other person’s post and then carry it on. So that things don’t get confusing, when you have something important to say or do, leave it to the end of your post so that the other person doesn’t have too much to react to and the timing doesn’t go funny. That’s the bones of an RP post. The muscles of RPing: Here come the muscles. To move your posts you have to have detail. Eloquent adjectives, fear enticing verbs and magically powerful adverbs. Here’s an example of a ‘bone post’. The man walked down the street. He entered the bar and ordered a mug of ale. He sat in the corner drinking it. When he took a sip he spat it out because the thought it tasted bad. He walked up to the barman and told him that his ale tasted weird. The barman asked if he would like to have another mug of ale. The man said, “No!” Then he threw the contents of his mug at the barman. After that he left the bar. It’s over 50 words, it has correct spelling and grammar, and it has an action in it that the other person can reply to…what’s wrong with it? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, it’s BORING! Okay, throwing the ale at the barman was pretty amusing, but seriously, that only amused me for about 0.75 seconds. When you write something, a sentence, a paragraph, a post, think of these questions: WHO, WHAT, WHERE, WHEN, WHY, HOW? Take the first sentence for example, that could be made into a whole paragraph, for example: The streets of Velkyn were deserted, which was rather strange since the streets of Velkyn were always filled with beggars sitting against the walls of the houses. But now nobody was out, not even the stray cats wandered these streets. What had driven these people to their homes was the cold weather – a harsh wind blew stinging snowflakes against the ground and the streets were slowly being covered in a slippery carpet of snow. However, one person had not been frightened off by the weather. He was a young man, cloaked in a coal-black cloak of finest velvet and wearing leather boots tailored to his feet. He marched through the snow with his smart boots tapping against the cobblestones and his chin up in the air. You could write another paragraph on ‘he entered the bar and ordered a mug of ale’, including a sentence or two about how he sat in the corner to drink it. Then another paragraph on how he took a sip and spat it out. Then a paragraph on how he went up to the barman and talked, then another paragraph on how he said no and threw the mug of ale. Then a paragraph on the barman’s reaction and how the man left the bar. And somewhere in there you could have a paragraph on the man’s thoughts, why is he in the bar, what was he thinking of before he was distracted by the bad ale? Remember that detail is your friend! And your RPing partner’s friend. You have to open a window into your mind, because remember, only you can see what’s happening, you have to describe what’s happening, keeping in mind that the other person knows pretty much nothing. When you’re replying to someone’s post, make sure you read it carefully (from beginning to end!), and if there’s something you’re not sure about, don’t hesitate to ask the person to make it clearer! You won’t guess how many times I’ve seen people make a small mistake like think the other person is standing when they’re actually lying on the ground, or something silly like that. The skin of RPing: The skin of RPing is basically the finishing touches: spelling, grammar and word count. The streats of velkyn were deserted which was rather strange since the streets of velkyn were always filled with beggars sitting against the walls of the houses but now nobody was out not even the stray cats wanddered these streets. what had driven these people to their homes is the cold weather a harsh wind blew stinging snowflakes against the ground and the streets were slowly being covered in a slippery carpet of snow. However one person had not been frightened off by the weather. he is a young man, cloaked in coalblack cloak of finest velvet and wearing weather boots taylored to his feet. he marched thru the snow with his smart boots tapping against the cobblestones and his chin up in the air. That’s worse than the 50 word boring post. No punctuation, full of spelling mistakes, change of tenses, no grammar. It’s terrible! Of course you won’t die and be kicked of Avalon for a typo here and lack of a comma there. But really, your mistakes shouldn’t disrupt the flow of your post and shouldn’t change the meaning of what you’re trying to say. Try to use interesting, new words that you might not stumble upon in everyday language. The dark side of detail: Yes, there is a dark side to detail. It is known as ‘useless and boring detail’ or ‘fluff’ or basically just ‘crap’. Here’s an example of a too detailed post: The beautiful, handsome man swaggered slowly down the deserted streets of Velkyn. He was feeling thirsty, so very thirsty! As if though his throat was going to fall out and his tongue was drier than the arid deserts of Avalon! He walked into a pleasant, little, cosy-looking inn on the right of the clean streets. The door was a warm chestnut brown colour, and seemed to be made of oak. The inn inside was filled with scarlet silk chairs that had gold tassels, sapphire satin chairs that had silver tassels and plain, brown wooden chairs for those people who couldn’t afford sweet, good, expensive wine. The very good looking man walked quickly up to the bar with a wide grin on his pale face. He felt like having a large, warm mug of sweet, golden ale that he could dribble into his very dry mouth and be re-hydrated. He waved his long, muscular arm to hurriedly call over the fat but grinning barman…etc Does that make you want swap the page to a nice killing game? Don’t make it too ridiculous. Just add necessary detail, and there’s quite enough necessary detail to make your post as long as a fluffed up one and fifty times better! The End Yep, so far, there’s nothing more to add. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to PM me or someone else. For inspiration and examples, just go through some of the very exciting topics all over Avalon. You’ll notice that quality doesn’t always mean quantity, that quantity doesn’t always mean quality, that a topic with very long posts in the beginning might end with short ones, a topic with short posts might gradually turn into a topic with very long posts…And remember, RPing isn’t just about the writing and the word count, just like a video game isn’t just about the graphics. RPing is about adventure, fun characters and exhilarating plots! If you’d like some practice, maybe you could take this sentence ‘The man walked down the street’ and try to make a paragraph for it, then carry it on, where does he go to? Who does he meet? Maybe he’s not even a man? Or you could go over to the Description section and edit your description, adding more detail and developing your character further. Whatever you decide to do, I hope this Guide has been of some use to you! Have fun RPing! If you still have a few questions and don't feel like PMing me, you could check out this great RP Guide: here. |
|
Spoiler: click to toggle
| |
 |
|
| 1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous) | |
| « Previous Topic · General Help · Next Topic » |
4:54 PM Mar 16
