── .✦ Welcome to the RPA Academy! ✮⋆˙

[Black Witch of Ra]

⭒ ༻✦༺ ⭒　˚⊱🪷⊰˚　⭒ ༻✦༺ ⭒

Welcome to class, everyone.

You may start a thread with a question that hasn't been covered in a guide. We can discuss things and swap notes with each other. We're here to learn to be better at what we came to this guild to do: to roleplay!

Now, as always, we've got to lay down rules as a reminder.

Quote:

• Gaia's Rules & Guidelines, and their ToS apply here.
  
• The guild's rules, as posted in the main library, apply here as well.
  
• Be kind and courteous as humanly possible.
  
• Do not spam topics in here. You do not have to bump up a thread to be seen in here. This subforum is small and barely moves, if at all.

If you're new to RPing, particularly RPing in a forum-based setting like Gaia, then this starter guide is gonna come in really handy!

Some things covered in here are going to be super basic, and some other things are going to be at least Gaia-specific.

I cannot confirm if other forum RP sites have the same terminology, but you'll get a rough idea of what I'm talking about.

This is not an end-all be-all guide; these are just merely common observations I've had over time.  

[Black Witch of Ra]

-(WIP)-

☛ Rules
Love them, hate them, but you really can't have a functioning thread without them. As long as everyone in the thread is on the same page about what is and isn't allowed, everything will be fine.

If you don't like the rules, obviously, the reasonable thing to do is just leave the thread alone. Don't post. Don't troll. Don't harrass/ do unhinged stuff.

☛ House Rules
Sometimes there's additional rules that's been tacked on top of the general/global rules. There might have been an incident in the thread, the PMs, the OOC threads or even off Gaia that led to the creation of that rule.

It might also be a pet peeve of the thread creator.

Again, if you don't like them, you do not have to engage with the thread or other posters of that thread.

☛ Suspension of Disbelief
If you want to enjoy a fictional piece of work, you gotta be willing to make believe. However, depending on the person in question, the threshold of the suspension varies.

To keep a sorta consistent suspension of disbelief for as many people as possible, your world-building, your story, your plot lines and your OCs have to follow some sort of logic.

In the context of the narrative, does the thing you're doing make sense? Yes? Congrats, the audience is still with you!

No? You might want to fix that. It's hard to come back to the immersion. UNLESS, you have a reasonable 4th-wall breaking OC. Easy in theory, but hard to balance. Usually the Rule of Cool is applied here.

☛ Rule of Cool cool

2/15

 

[Black Witch of Ra]

-(WIP)-

☛ Mary-Sue/Gary-Stu

☛ Power Play / God Modding / God Moding

☛ Railroading

3/15

 

[Black Witch of Ra]

-(WIP)-

☛ Literate
Writing in school-level grammar and punctuation. It’s 2025, there’s add-ons and apps to help with this if you’re struggling.

While AI-assisted tools like Grammarly and Hemingway Editor exist, it’s recommended that you try to minimize the use of AI for an RP response.

But why not use AI? It’s easier and saves so much time!

So we’re going to skip over the environmental and ethical concerns for this particular arguement.
Most AI-tools for language based models are trained primarily from very professional and corporate pieces of documents. Around the master/doctorate/terminal degree-levels of professionalism or a corporate email that you’d send to upper management about a multi-million dollar project.

Not great for RP material where you need to be playful with your language within the context of the previous posts above you. For a response, you’d need to consider the following:

question The context of which the environment of the RP takes place.

• Is it a dwarven tavern in a high fantasy?
  
• Modern slice of life at a high school?
  
• Grungy frontlines of a sci-fi war?
  
• A totally not haunted and possibly abandoned children’s pizzeria?

question Is the behavior/personality trait of your OC consistent?

• Who’s interacting with your OC right now?
  
• How is your OC reacting to them?
  
• Is your character stoic? Emotional? Erratic? Are they vibin' or having a full on crisis?

Each post doesn't have to be a whole exposition display of your OC in the most minute of details. There just needs to be enough to get the point across so that your fellow roleplayers can respond accordingly.

☛ Purple Prose

☛ Semi-Lit - Semi-Literate

☛ Illiterate

☛ Chat Speak / 1337-5p34k / txt tlk

4/15