.:+ The How to Roleplay Guide +:. [1.]
What is Roleplaying?
Roleplaying is, in the most basic form, story writing with other people. There is usually a main plot that everyone contributes to in one way or another using their characters (See: What are characters?). The most basic plot is usually Good vs. Evil, but that can be expanded in many ways (See: What is plot?)
[2.]
What does Literate mean?
Literate is a form of writing that includes proper spelling, no chatspeak, commas and periods in the right places, capitals where they belong, stuff like that. Literate also entails the length of posts: Most literate roleplays will require 2-4 good paragraphs, with as few one-or-two liners as possible.
Now, most of the time, a 'Literates only' title will scare people away, so most people will put something like 'Semi-lit to lit'. Lit is the short version of Literate, if you didn't know that. Semi-literate means that the posts don't have to be -as- long, but lengthly-ness is a good thing.
[3.]
What is plot?
Plot is the storyline. It usually has some twists or drama, depending on the type of roleplay it is (See: What are the different types of Roleplays?). A good plot is one that keeps people coming back, and a good roleplay will have the roleplayers attached to their characters and wanting to know what happens next. It's always a good idea to have a general idea of what happens next if you started the roleplay. No one likes it when the person (or persons) who control it have no idea what's going on.
[4.]
What is a character?
A character is a person that the roleplayer created. It can be anything the roleplayer wants it to be: mean, nice, funny, serious, fat, thin, smart, stupid, part animal, all animal...the possibilities are endless. Most roleplays will have certain rules like "No anthros!". Anthros are generally half-human/half-beast, or humans that have animal characteristics (ears, tail, etc.).
[5.]
What are the different types of roleplays?
There are many, many, many different kinds of roleplays. Some are fan-fiction type things, based around a show or movie (i.e Naruto, Harry Potte), or even animes. There are a few roleplays based on books, but these are few and far between. Others include fantasies, high schools, vampire roleplays, sci-fi and modern day.
[6.]
How do you roleplay?
There is a very specific way to post in a roleplay. Almost all the time (there are a very few exceptions), it needs to be written in third person (Example: Cody walked down the hall, waved to someone he didn't know, then sat down.), most of the time in past tense; none of this present tense stuff (Example: Cody walks down the hall, waving at someone he didn;t know, then sits down.). This is largely at the preference of the creator of the roleplay. It is largely prefered that if you have multiple characters you post them in different colors so it's easier for other roleplayers to find certain characters (Example: Cody always posts in indigo, while Adaeze always posts in dark red. The colors you can pick are not limited to the colors Gaia provides; there are a few very good sites for HTML color codes. Posts usually need to be connected to the main plot in some way, or else people will start to get mad at the person who isn't writing anything reasonable.
If you have any questions/suggestions for what to put here, please PM Juliette06!
