Welcome to Gaia! ::

exclaim Welcome to Element Guild

Hello to all newcomers and to all that is interested on reading some useful advices for doing a great roleplaying. The porpuse of this sticky is to guide people to they can make a good use of their imagination and to avoid the use of improper and ilogical words commonly used on gaia role playing.

exclaim About your character.

Role playing games give you the opportunity of developing an unique background and attitude for your gaia avatar. The tower of elements,like our RP is called, is based on a ranking system , designed mainly to mantain a control of powers and abilities for students and for teachers, always remember that archimage are in that rank for a reason.

You can create your character choosing your main element from the begining, for more reference about this matter please read the powers thread. If you choose an element that is already chosen for other person you can always talk to that other person for future reference or in case you have any doubt about the powers thread you can always contact golem.

exclaim The hints:

In my time here I have read lot of different ways of role playing , each one has his/her own way of doing. But as well I have seen certain “mistakes” that make our Role play to look as a videogame, you must remember that ayou are actually playing the role of other person, it is NOT you. Story tellers in RP games always advice to keep the line bertween yourself and your character very defined, so remember about that.

exclaim Common mistakes:

I will explain this with some examples:

A: “ hello “B” this is the first time we meet, as I understand you are an archimage of Fire and you have the following powers …bla blablaa”

B: eek

I know that this example may be a little extreme … BUT I HAVE SEEN IT!!. You are not supposed to know others powers, rank, name (you may ask around) or background. The powers thread was created to make a reference of the powers of people, so we could mantain an order between powers differences.

EG DOES NOT HAVE a library powers, just think about it…why would archmages or other persons want to have their powers archieved in a book or something so other persons could look at them? It is not logic.

Tough you may already know our names by visiting OCC thread or reading RP thread, your chracater is not supposed to know us. You have to RP when you meet new people.
If you want to know other people main element you can always ask them personally , but they have the right of not telling you.

As for ranking , well is it common to people to now the ranking of each other , but you CAN NOT know this , again, without asking around. You are not supposed to know other people backgrounds tought they are posted in bio thread.

(Hope you don't mind if I add this, Okami. -Golem)

A: *goes to classroom*hey guys wusup?*sits down*lets go!*

B: Please, no. When you RP, use quotation marks for talking, press enter between paragraphs, and use proper grammar. For example, instead of saying:
*uses super fireball attack*HAHA YOUR DEAD!!!

You should say:
He closes his eyes, concentrating on his inner element. Gathering his magic into his hands, he unleashes a stream of fire at his enemy, casting the super fireball attack spell. "Haha! You're dead!" He laughed.

exclaim About plots:

If you want to start a big plot, please go to OCC Thread and propose it to archmages. We will analyze your propose and we will see if we can proceed on that. Dont try to force people on your plots, if you want to RP with a certain someone please contact her/him directly so you can RP better together.

REMEMBER that you power has LIMITS and you may not surpase them for RP porpouses. Have that always in mind, want to face archimage? Want to beta them? You better have a very good explanation for that.

Dont be offended by certain advices, remember that first of all , you have to enjoy RP, is not like the archimages are “almighty” but just keep in mind what kind of RP Element Guild is, and I am pretty sure you will enjoy your membership here.


----This is the hints for now, I may add some links to it later or some other ideas, if you have any questions feel free to PM me baout more information-----

exclaim Okami-chan curriculum: domokun

Dungeon master and Story teller exp:
7 years already.. I want to be a player again crying

longest campaign mastered:
3 year… I will finally finish it soon crying

shortest campaing mastered:
2 weeks …. No good players. crying

Something I learned the hard way:
Don't do anything like jumping through a window when Golem is around.

Writing 1A: How to Write Passably

While we are not elitists here... (some of us anyways, heh heh) we would like to see a certain standard met. Laziness is not an option. If you are not a native speaker of English, we'll cut you a little slack (cause let's face it - learning any new language is difficult). There are still some things we would like though, since capitalization isn't really that hard.

Part One: The basics
Sometimes the basic things can make the biggest difference - especially when they are missing.

Capitalization: Capitals, unless your shift key has been ripped out and completely maimed and destroyed, should occur very often in your RP posts.
(*) Words are capitalized at the beginning of every sentence. Period.
Exceptions to this rule: 1) Your shift keys are broken. 2) You're typing something that comes after "quotations". I'm not quite sure how to explain this... so example: "Hot damn, I'm hungry," said Kai, noting that it was 11 PM and all she had eaten that day was a (very tastey) coffee cake. || Let us take the moment to point out two important things in that example. When using "quotes" (like when someone's talking), unless you have an exclamation point! or question mark? at the end of the sentence, OR IF IT'S THE END OF THE SENTENCE ITSELF, use a comma. But if you're using things like "blah blah" said/giggled/etc... you need to use a comma. You also don't need to capitalize the first word then. ^_^ It's like a trade off. If you use a comma, you can leave it lower case. No comma, that sucker better be Capitalized.
(*) The word "I" should ALWAYS be capitalized. There are no exceptions to this rule.
(*) Proper Nouns - the names of people, places, and things (like movies and books), should always be capitalized. Unless they have a weird name and specifically request you not to capitalize their name, then you should always capitalize proper nouns. Examples: Kairos accidently left her purse at the Hilton when she went to San Francisco. It made her quite sad because she had a whole box of Pocky inside of it that she was planning on giving to Tidorus.

Punctuation
Periods mark the end of sentences. biggrin Hooray! However, periods are NOT commas. Commas serve a variety of purposes. They are the pauses in sentences (think of every pause when you speak as a place where a comma would go). They go at the end of, and sometimes before spoken dialogue. Example: Kai looked at the sky and said, "Good night, moon."

Run-on sentences
Run-ons are essentially sentences that lack proper punctuations. If you read the sentence out loud (which is highly recommended) and everythingissaidinonebreathsortoflikethis and there is no pause or breaks in between thoughts, it's *probably* a run-on sentence. Use commas, periods, dashes, and other punctuation to fix this.

Part Two: Catching Spelling & Grammar Mistakes
Now, everyone makes mistakes every so often - and that's perfectly fine, since nobody here is a grammar/spelling Nazi like that. However, multiple grammar and spelling errors are not mistakes. But fear not! Such a problem is easily corrected.

First of all, if you are making a lot of spelling errors, you should not be typing straight into the Gaia posting window. When you graduate to making only a few mistakes, then you can do that. Until then, it is highly advised that you type in a window that has an automatic spellchecker (or any type of spellchecker for that matter). Nearly all word processors have auto spellcheckers that underline a word in a very noticable shade of red when it is misspelt or a shade of green when something is wrong grammatically, and even offers possible solutions. Right click the word to see the correct spellings of other possible words. Typing in things like MS Word is very useful, because you can also save your posts there as well. Granted, it's a bit harder to insert codes for things like bolding and italicize, but you can do that later. If you do type it into the post window, you can also copy and paste it over to MS Word and check your spelling there before you post it, make the changes, then copy and paste it back into the post window. Either way, checking your spelling is a must.

Another option - which is highly recommended, because then you actually learn how to spell the word yourself - is to look up the words you don't know hot to spell in a dictionary. If you don't have an actual dictionary with you, there are resources on the web (www.dictionary.com or http://www.m-w.com/).

Part Three: General Tips to Better Writing
(*) Say things "aloud" in your head (or actually out loud). If they don't make sense when you say them, they aren't going to make sense when you read them.
(*) Try to avoid using the same word over and over again in the same sentence/paragraph. Use the "synonyms" option in Word, or head over to www.thesaurus.com or http://www.m-w.com/ and use their thesauruses to look up alternatives.
(*) For the love of God, spellcheck. Weird spelling errors will make you look silly.
(*) Practice practice practice! If you're having trouble, ask others for help (though don't overly abuse this by ALWAYS asking. But please do ask.)
(*) Proof read your post before you post it. That's what the Preview button is there for. That way, if it looks weird, you can fix it before

Part Four: Resources
Dr. Grammar: Frequently Asked Questions (on the differences between using things like A or An, or Accept or Except and those sorts of things.)
http://www.drgrammar.org/faqs/

Dictionaries & Thesauruses
www.dictionary.com
www.m-w.com
www.thesaurus.com

And that concludes the course! Any questions? Post 'em here and we'll do our best to answer them!

Note: (Added) We're not going to KILL anyone if you don't follow them. If you try, hooray! ^^

-Disclaimer: This does not, by any means, make me an expert at writing. But if you follow these guidelines, you're guaranteed to become a lot better. 3nodding And if there are spelling errors in here, my apologies. I was a lazy hypocrite. blaugh -

eek advice of kai taken but ... sweatdrop It is recomendable to write english properly, but hey .. sweatdrop we are not killing anyone for not doing so. neutral