-(The Gaian's Guide to Everything About Role Playing)-

[Amida Lune]

Welcome to the Gaian's Guide to Everything About Role Playing. This is just a handy little guide for our inexperienced RP'ers to understand the lingo and rules that our experienced role players like to use. This includes explaining obscure terms, definitions of genres and giving examples on what all these things mean.

-(Table Of Contents)-

-(Post One)- Introduction
-(Post Two)- Genres? What the heck are those?
-(Post Three)- What Is a well-made Character?
-(Post Four)- What Do I Need to be Literate?
-(Post Five)- When Did That Rule Become Normal?
-(Post Six)- Terms and Definitions
-(Post Seven)- Reserved
-(Post Eight)- Reserved

 

[Amida Lune]

Genres: What The Heck Are Those?
Genres are the categories that role plays are sectioned into. They're like subjects for role plays. The following are the most common role play genres found on Gaia.


Yaoi
Yaoi is a genre of japanese entertainment that has become very popular in North America in the past ten years. It involves the romanticized relations between TWO MEN. This means that it is a homosexual romance. It does not, however, generally involve R-rated relations unless the RP'ers decide otherwise.

Yuri
Yuri is a genre of japanese entertainment that has become very popular in North America in the past five years. It involves the romanticized relations of TWO WOMEN. This means that it is a lesbian romance. It does not, however, generally involve R-rated relations unless the RP'ers decide otherwise.

Fantasy
Fantasy includes anything that isn't in this world by Nature's hand. This includes magic, magical creatures and definitely magical worlds.

Master/Slave
Master/Slave is a dominance RP. It involves one person holding total power over another person. Personally, I wouldn't recommend trying this one on Gaia. Things can get a bit out of hand with these when people aren't careful.

Drama
Anything involving heavy angst or tragedy, or serious situations that happen in every-day life. Drama can also involve serious illnesses, death, dying, abuse and other serious things.

Romance
Everybody should know this. Romance pertains to dating, couples, marriage, and anything in the field of 'love' in a role play. Almost all RPs contain a shadow of romance, no matter how thinly veiled it is within the story. Romance and Drama often go hand-in-hand during role playing.

Angel/Demon
This genre usually involves war-like scenarios between angels and demons, but it is commonly seen paired with romance as well. There's just something about dark demons falling in love with their pure counterparts that makes us feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Battle
Anything involving fighting, war, assassinations or combat falls into this category. There's not much else to say about it but that it often violates the ToS of Gaia and is rarely ever seen in public forums unless the Mods luffle you lots and lots.

Paradise
This genre is pretty rare on Gaia too. It exists, but it is barely ever recognized as the genre that it is. This is where all of your heaven/garden of Eden/Elysian Fields/Avalon-based role plays fall into place. This is basically just a setting genre, and rarely ever an actual role playing emotion/technique.

More will be added as questions arise.

 

[Amida Lune]

What Is A Well-Made Character?

A well-made character all depends on the specifications that a thread creator has posted. A character can be anything from a n00b doing nothing but chatspeak to a well-formed character with a background and a well-made biography. The following is a good example of a well-made character:

The Scarlet Woman

Character Name: Charlie Walker
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Preference: Gay
Position: Uke/Submissive
Eye Colour: Blue
Hair Colour: Blonde
Personality: Shy, quiet, loving, gentle, secretive, bubbly
Likes: Dancing, doing the hair and makeup of the other girls in the ballet school he attends (he is the only boy), reading, chamomile tea
Dislikes: His abusive, emotionally distant parents, his little sister whom his parents dote on and love, bigots, idiots, the colour black
Appearance:

 

[Amida Lune]

What Is Literacy?

Literacy is basic grammar, spelling and punctuation. What you are reading now is a literate explanation. n00b speak is tlking lyke thE!@ss a!! TsE tImE, which will get annoying eventually. Below is a good example of what LITERACY REQUIRED in a Role Play means:

The Scarlet Woman

Sai rested his hands on his knees. He was doubled over, panting hard. His slender form was covered in water, as rain was pouring down from the heavens and soaking everything on earth. He put his headphones back in his ears and began running again, despite the sleek concrete beneath his feet.

 

[Amida Lune]

When Did That Rule Become Normal?
~The Guide To Obscure Rules~

You've probably all seen the following rules somewhere in your time.

[1] NO GOD-MODDING
[2] LITERACY REQUIRED
[3] NO n00bs!
[4] If you don't post in a week, YOU ARE OUT!

The first rule, no god-modding, means no controlling another person's character, killing them off without discussing it with the person, or doing anything to a character that the creator does not want. This ties in to the respect rule.

The second rule ties in to the post above this. Some role players do not like role playing with people who don't have any respect for grammar, spelling or punctuation. If you see the 'Literacy required' rule, be considerate of the thread-creators wishes and try to be as literate as possible.

'NO n00bs. N00bs are anybody who talks in chatspeak, or uses asterics to denote movement. *starts typing* is a movement in asterics. If you'll check the above post, you will see how literate RP'ers type out everything they do, down to the heavy breathing and the rain. They don't just do *istotallysoaked* or *starts running*. Think how a book describes things, and that is what literate non-n00bs are.

The final rule means that the creator wants an active RP. Keep up-to-date with the posts and the like. If you're going to be absent for a long period of time for whatever reason, be respectful enough of the person you're RPing with to let them know this.


More will be added as questions arise.

 

[Amida Lune]

Terms and Definitions:

((OOC: Blach)) : this is out-of-character chatting that usually happens at the very beginning or the very end of a post. It is common courtesy to place this chatting in double brackets so that nobody gets confused as to what the chatting is, and what the character is doing/saying.

newb: A person who has never role played before, but is willing to learn

n00b: A person who uses chatspeak and usually tends to disrupt more than they contribute

Literacy: (see Literate)

Literate: To use proper grammar, punctuation, spelling and paragraphs.

One-liner: When somebody only posts one line.

OnexOne: A one on one role play.


More will be added as questions arise

 

[Amida Lune]

Reserved

 

[Amida Lune]

Reserved