Welcome to Gaia! ::

Characters:

Your characters should be as individual to you as you are to the rest of the world. We want you to stretch your wings and develop someone who you feel could exist in our world and who you would (potentially) love to know. Characters feel like family, and with all the role playing you'll be doing here in Grove, you should be as familiar with yours as you are with your own family. Take your time, work out someone you're proud of. Make a character that you'd want to read about if you were reading a good novel.

We encourage you to be creative, but there are some things we would like you to remember while you're creating your character.

1. Please give them creative variety. If you see another profile with a character that can fly, has blonde hair, and who grew up surrounded by a loving family, please don't make your character fly, have blonde hair, and grew up surrounded by a loving family. Think Original. If you're not sure your idea would be acceptable, or if you need opinions or assistance, please please don't hesitate to contact one of the MODs. You can also post your profiles-in-progress in the Main forum so we can all help refine any ideas your unsure of.

2. Your character will have their own special thread dedicated to them in the Character subforum. Your first action should be to post this thread making the pre-made profile skeleton your first post. After that, anything goes. You can post any picture references of your character in subsequent posts in that thread. If you make short stories or journal entries from that character's point of view, you can also put those in your thread and watch as we all "ooh" and "ahh" over your creativity and dedication to our world! Please remember, though, each character should have their own thread. Meaning, if you have more than one character, you will be in charge of the upkeep of more than one thread.

3. No Mary Sues or Gary Stus here please. While we all want to be the hero of the story sometimes, we have to understand that when working with a larger group of people it's more important to have a character who can interract well with others and give other characters a chance to shine too. I think (and I'm sure my crew agrees with me) that the best characters are those who make others shine brightly in tandem. That is, the people we like to RP with are the ones who have characters that are unique and individual, but allow other characters to be at their best at the same time. Please don't think we're discouraging you from making amazing characters! No no! Make them shine brightly, give them their own special talents, but also give them something that makes them vulnerable. Say, you have a girl and she's really beautiful, but she has some sort of eating disorder that weakens her self-confidence. Or, say you have a guy who is incredibly hunky and witty, but he's absolutely no good with women at all. That's the kind of thing we love. Complexity. Perfection is boring <3

4. Non human characters...ah yes. Well, it's true that the Gateway to the Realms offers up an incredible opportunity for our members to play non-human characters. We fully encourage you to as well...however there are some simple requirements we want you to meet before you can be approved to have a non-human character. What are they? Well, you'll just have to ask us. When I say us, I mean one of the MODs. You need approval to play a non-human character. Since the re-vamp, humans are privileged with a certain amount of power as well, but they are still humans, ne? You want the excitement of say...elves...or Angels...or vampires. Talk to us first, get approval. What's the worst we can say? No? Trust me, if we deny your request, we'll tell you how you can remedy the situation easily <3

Classes:







"Wait!" You say, "This is called Grove Academy. So where are all the classes?" Well there's an easy answer. There aren't any classes. No formal classes anyway. The very first incarnation of Grove required students to attend lessons. MODs would be in charge of posting activities in their classroom threads, and members would have to post as their characters to complete the activities. Members who did not post were penalized.

Very quickly we came to realize that we wanted Grove Academy to be an escape, a haven, from all those annoying real world things like classes. At the time, I was still in college and my mods were still in High School and we were all very very busy. We didn't want to come home and then have to go right back to school again online because of an RP. It took all the fun out of things.

So now classes run this way: I'll divide everyone up into a class. 1, 2, or 3. It will be completely random, I assure you. You may post in your classroom and interact with your other classmates. However, unless it is specifically requested of the members we will not hold formal classes or lectures. That just seems too much like a pain, doesn't it? <3

Role Playing:

A Good guide for Role Playing is something that could take up an entire thread on its own. In fact, when making this section, I searched Gaia for a good RP tutorial guide and...well, I couldn't find any. So! This is going to be a very abridged version of a Role Play Guide. I'm operating under the assumption that all of our members are fully aware of the mechanics of good writing (Grammar, spelling, comprehensibility, etc.) because I required you to have an RP sample or because I've RPed with you in the past.

Mechanics ~

Grammar - Most people are not nazi's about good grammar skills, but it makes your character seem less significant if you can't post with things like proper punctuation and tense agreement.

Probably one of the biggest Faux pas' that falls under this category is misusing words like: your, you're, too, to, two, there, they're, their.

Your = Possessive "This is your special day."
You're = a contraction of the words you and are. "You're a really nice person!"

Too = an adverb meaning in addition or also. "Wait up! I'm coming too!"
To = a preposition indicating direction. "We are going to the store"
Two = a number. "There are two cars parked outside."

There = an adverb indicating position. "I put the old newspaper over there."
They're = a contraction of the words they and are. "They're coming to dinner tonight."
Their = Possessive form of the word, they. "I didn't want to take their advice."

Speech ~

The only acceptable way to indicate speech in a literate role play is by using quotation marks ("") to surround the character's comments. Sometimes you may want to embolden the passage, also, if you are writing a particularly long and detailed entry or if you have elaborate posting styles. It can get hard to sift through a large post to find speech that a character can react to.

Action ~

In our RP we do not use asterisks (*) to indicate actions. Everything is to read as though it were an actual novel. Also, all action should be done in 3rd person unless the character is speaking. Don't know what that is? Here is a quick lesson:

Singular:

1st Person: I "I love her"
2nd Person: you "you love her"
3rd person: she/he/it "she/he/it loves her" <---- we use this one

Plural:

1st Person: we "we love her"
2nd Person: you "(all of) you love her"
3rd Person: they "they love her" <----we use this one

Some important terms:

Godmoding - creating unrealistic situations, or characters that can do anything. Example: a character that is a lightening fast super intelligent elf that can defeat anyone in combat. This is an all-time RP no-no.

Mary Sue/ Gary Stu - perfect characters. These are not permitted because it’s boring and doesn’t make for an interesting role play.

Powerplay - controlling someone else’s character. This is not permitted—you are only allowed to control the actions of your own character

OOC - out of character, when you are talking to other players as yourself not your character.

NPC - Non Player Character. These are usually either key figures in the RP that the GM needs full control over to aid the progress of the RP, or insignificant "other" characters that do not need a specific player.

Story Elements - The Realms:

There are many factions inside the Realms, and as many species as you can possibly imagine. Everyone their has their own ambitions, some good some bad, but all are in agreement that access to the Mortal Realms is an absolute necessity. Too long they had been cut off from access to that place, but now that they have had a taste of the Mortal World's warm sunlight they do not want to leave it.

Atlanthum is the hub of activity inside the realms. It acts as a capital city, taking in all of the Realms' governmental activities, and holding most of the population. Of course, there are other large cities scattered throughout the realms, but Atlanthum is the biggest.

A list of some species found inside the Realms:

Angels
Grigori
Fallen
Elves
Dragons
Giants
Faeries
Centaurs
Ghosts
And many many more...