The Roleplaying Guide for Roleplayers and All Their Roleplaying Needs.

Introduction: It has come to my attention that the Roleplaying quality of some of you out there is what a lot of us would call “major suckage”. I prefer to call it “lacking mayonnaise”. This guide is being written solely for the purpose of helping those who need help. So we’ll get started with the basic Do’s and Don’ts of RPing.

Do’s and Don’ts:

Do: Make well thought out posts that have correlation to what’s going on around you and correspond with the current storyline.
Don’t: Think that the story revolves around your character and make everyone conform to your needs.

Do: Make rational decisions and realistic posts, or as close to realistic as possible.
Don’t: Be unrealistic, i.e. godmode.

Do: Try to keep up with the RP. Asking for summaries is frowned upon, though I tend to do so quite often.
Don’t: Join a game if you can’t keep up with it.

Do: Think out your characters. Do a mental analysis of them. Be sure you can relate to some if not most of their personality traits. If lacking that be sure to have a powerful imagination.
Don’t: Make your character into a tree hugging hippie when you yourself are some kind’ve prick with a broom up your ass.

Do: Make your posts worthwhile and contributive.
Don’t: Post for the sake of posting.

Do: Have good grammar and spelling. If it is really that hard for you, write your posts in a word program and let the built in spell check function do its thing. Also, proofread your posts. Many mistakes are blatantly obvious. Even if you notice something after it is posted, there is an Edit button for a reason.

Do: Try and read everything right/don't skim posts so as to not get everything right.

Do: Think outside the box; be creative with your characters/storyline/background.
Don't: Go nuts and become the ROLEPLAY ANARCHIST. It can be a pest to have one of those in an RP, especially for the host.

Do: Interact with your fellow RPers. That being said,
Don't: Control other people's characters, because it can be very annoying for other players. Let's see an example of this phenomenon:

Example: BadRPer: Bob walks over to Sally and grins at her. "Wow Bob, you are looking good!" Sally purrs. "How about you and I sneak off somewhere?" she suggests, winking slyly.

OtherPlayer: ((No! Sally doesn't like Bob! Stop that!))
BadRPer: ((Sure she does! All the fine honeys know that Bob is the mack daddy! )
OtherPlayer: ((RARRGH! *Beats BadRPer to death with the keyboard*))

If BadRPer had left off with "grins at her," it would have been OK. OtherPlayer's options would be left open: Sally could accept Bob's advances, or she could stab him in the eye with a spork. Still, if you really want for Bob to get some action, and Sally isn't interested, you can just conjure up another female character (or characters, you dog you ) to fawn over him.

Don't: Randomly appear somewhere. You can't be outside the town one minute then in the tavern the next.
e.g Bad RPer: <Insert character name> looked over the majestic town. He sat down, watching life surge throught the streets from the hilltop.

----(Next post)----

Bad RPer: <Insert character name> walked around the tavern. He sat down on a stool, and ordered a drink.

Do: Say how you got to a place. Unless the host made a story post in which you walk to the tavern, it makes no sense suddenly appearing. Even if it's only something simple, like:

"<Char name> walked through the town, looking at the ramshackle buildings. He saw a small tavern, and went inside."
Do: Develop your character. Don't stick to what the character sheet says. Slowly reveal more of your character's life, or experiences in the RP, and make it imaginative.

Don't: Make a wooden character. Someone who "Blah blah blah grew up in a town blah blah blah did this did that" (Also poor grammar.) is pretty boring. Try to give your character an exciting background.
Don't: Make RPs with no story and only facts about it. This is good...
In the land of Mundrindendrum, there is a great evil brooding. Four warriors have been summoned by the wizard Gandalpoggle to rid the land of this menace. They were called to the barracks in the city of Rumpelstiltsnervoussystem, where Gandalpoggle surveyed them. "Welcome to the barracks. I trust you had a pleasant journey. Are there any questions before we move on?"

Char sheet:

Name:
Age:
Sex:
Bio:

RATHER THAN:

This is my RP. You're supposed to beat an evil man. You're in a barracks.

CHAR SHEET (etc.)

In short, as a host, you should leave some end to which to allow your RPers to actually RP.

Don't: Make mundane posts such as: "Stamfrigga was awoken by a knock and opened the door and saw Glooble". Try to make them interesting! Go for something more descriptive:

Stamfrigga heard a knock on the door. He had not been expecting anyone... perhaps it was his daughter Flondilisia come to pay him a visit. He approached the door tentatively, being apprehensive as to who it was at this late hour, and opened it slowly. There stood Glooble. "It's you!" stammered Stamfrigga. "What business have you here? Where is the gold?"

Don't: Spam too much. It's annoys the host when s/he logs on and finds a page and a half of crap.

Do: When hosting, have a boss waiting at the end. Even if you never plan to fight him, everyone likes to have a boss they can hope to beat. It also gives your enemies as a whole character.

Do: Make an interesting character.
Don't: For the love of all that is holy, make a Mary-Sue

Example:
Name: Gwendolen Bella
Age: 21 (looks 17)
Appearance: Long, tumbling gold curls fall to her slim waist, and her cerulean blue eyes gleam with innocent beauty. She is a 32F and 5'3".
Background: Gwendolen (called 'Gwenny' by her many friends) is the princess of Fairytopia. She is loved by all and has no troubles.
Personality: HappyhappynicenicebutHUMBLE.

Name: Ravyn Shade
Age: 21 (looks 17)
Appearance: Black cloak, covering her beautiful body. Long black hair MYSTERIOUSLY covering one piercingly green eye.
Background: Ravyn's parents beat her horribly as a child, sometimes with a lemur, which traumitised her and forced her to kill them. She went to an orphanage where she was raped by the three head nuns and killed them, too.
Personality: AngstangstLEAVEMEALONEangstYOUDON'TUNDERSTANDMEangstangst

Do: Listen to the host. If don't say if you can or can't do something, assume you can not do it. Ask them if you can. Mostly, listen to the friggin' host.

Don't: make an rp that only four people can join, sure it's okay to limit the people joining, but four makes it a little boring.

Hosting

Hosting an RP is by far one of the most difficult undertakings an RPer could ever dream of. If you haven’t ever hosted one and want to, I advise making sure it is well thought out in advance. A good RP takes months of thought process to be successful and even then it might not hold the interest of your fellow RPers. The host has to be active, if you just make a few starting posts and then wander off to leave the RPers to their own designs your RP will most likely crash and burn. Only a few like that have been successful, but that’s because the RPers in it followed the rules stated above. Hosts have to continuously “spoonfeed” RPers. We are a breed that needs to be told what to do where to go and what to react to. If we don’t have even the most basic of plots to follow we will go astray and leave you. Do not leave us to our own devices. Also, be sure to have fodder bad guys available to pop out whenever you need something spicy to grab everyone’s attention. Nothing revives an RP like combat. A good RP does not necessarily need a long introduction, but it needs to hook the readers within the first few sentences to get them wanting more. A host must also have authority. You have to tell the RPers when something they’re doing is wrong or clashes with the plot. Don’t let them go on their own little side quests.

Character Sheets

While not entirely necessary character sheets provide a sort of organized feel to the RP in it's beginning stages. Some people, but not many, will refer to early character sheets for multiple RPs. I myself am prone to using a select group of 3 or 4 characters. But here's your guide for character sheets.

Name: Sir Arthur Wellesley
Age: 50
Weight: 200
Height: 6'5
Race: Human
Description: Blahblahblahblah
Background: Blahblahblahblah.

A description usually is a small description of what your character looks like, while a backround is your character's history. This isn't so hard, is it? I reccomend you follow these rules when making a character sheet:
Don't name your character something unrelated to the genre of the RP, like saying your name is Thandrax 5 when you are in a Fantasy RP.

Don't overdo your weight, age, or height.

Generally, your descriptions and backgrounds should be brief, about 1 or 2 paragraphs.

Unless otherwise specified, don't make up your own race for your character sheet.

Well for now that’s it. Feel free to post your advice and I’ll add it where appropriate to the thread.

Created By: Garbage Gnome

Contributors: L.R., WS7, IW, Ch40s_Sl4y3r, KittyKat, Coco, Gag, Yuffie, mainiac, Velkrin(for the RPing guide which I'm done with), Aubrecia, CJ, meep_the_loner(For I edited it slightly to make it take up less space and some spelling errors)

*Contributions are in blue*

This was created on another site.. One that I was mainly a RPer on. It's dead now or I would gladly give it credit for this. I would be "meep_the_loner". Please read this, respect it.. Best if you followed it.

I was given permission to post this. Enjoy.