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About Types of Characters
A Book Child VS A City Person

Book Children are the focus of Paper Forest. It is a story of their stories, woven into a tale so grand that it can even change the whole fate of the shop itself.

If you are going to be playing a character, be it Book Child or City Person
Be aware of the shop setting, further down there are links to both the shop front and the the in depth guides. Read them before you start making your character profile. The shop is not going to build your character for you, nor, are we going to allow you to build your character in role-play if you don't have anything already set. The last thing any fellow role player wants to do is have to ret-con RPs because you failed to write out or clarify a point in your profile. Overall, just make sure your character is believable in terms of personality. No one is perfect, so why should your character be?

Book Children
Book Children needing approval will only be allowed to role-play once they have been obtained from the shop. This means quested Book Children can get approved but will not be able to role-play. If you have art and need approval, you are the shop's priority for getting approved for role play. Keep in mind a few things when you develop your Book Child character, such as the shop's canon. What they can and cannot do. How they will treat City People. The Forest. The Guards. Who they are and what they are. Book Children are as much a mystery to themselves as they are to the City People. As such, explore, play around, ask questions to shop staff if you'd like a point verified or something explained that is not covered in any of the guides. Each child is a story, how you as a player tell the story, is wholly up to your interpretation.

City People
If Book Children are the foundation and core of the shop, then the City People are the shell and the adornments that add a glimmer and sparkle to the world of Paper Forest. They have no shop art, yet are almost necessary in terms of keeping Paper Forest alive. Book children are in limited supply, and so many people would normally be left out of role play. City People allow players to get around this problem. The reward is nothing more the having fun, (but we do admit, later on things are prone to change) and being able to role-play. You are limited to how many city people you can play, and we ask that if you make a city person and role-play them, do not abandon them. It not only will hurt other players, but as staff, abandoning your character will not reflect well should you enter competitions for a Book Child. There are less restrictions in terms of who or what a City Person can be, as they are considered 'normal' to the world of Paper Forest. When making a City person don't feel limited to jobs just given as examples, get creative! Think outside of the box. After all, when your character's very words are the letters we see, the type of character you can make is all but endless.

How to Get Your Character Approved

Paper Forest Character Approval is done not by who gets done fastest or who gets first in que. It gets done when you as a player, have met all criteria and have submitted your character to the proper approval sticky. Still we do run by priority. Paper Children, being shop made and obtained characters will always have priority over City People. That doesn't mean City People will have to wait for all Book Children to be approved before they will get approved. Everyone has to go through the same screen.

Think of shop approval like an airport. First class gets to cut in line to board the plane, but if a First Class passenger doesn't have the right paper work, the economy passengers won't have to wait for the single first class person to go back to the check in gate and back through security. The shop won't neglect either side. Book Children and City People are both valid character types. To neglect either would be a bad move for not just players, but to the shop as a whole. Without players, without characters, nothing will change for the story. The shop is an open book and you guys and gals get to fill in the blank pages!

So How Do You Get Approval?
Easy enough! After you have filled out a character profile with all the needed and required information, you'll need to do is give one critique. These cannot be simple 'looks good' type critiques. One flaw or one in depth question must be asked. We are not asking you to go out and write someone an essay on their character, (though I bet the person would love the feed back), but a nice paragraph will do. We ask this as a show of dedication. Post a link to the critique you gave at the bottom of your character profile. After you have preformed this, you go to either the Book Child Application Submission Sticky, or the City Person Application Submission Sticky. There you fill out a small form and after that it is a waiting game. When your character is up for evaluation, staff will change the status of your Application to 'Approved!' or 'Needs to be Revised'. Once Approved, depending on you status (Book Child with art, quest, or City Person) you may begin role play or wait for semi custom or custom events. If your character profile needs to be revised, we will have left notes on what prevents it from passing, and from there, just fix the problems and re-submit! It's fairly painless, and you should get a response in a week.
If a week has passed and no one has gotten you your character, or, your character was passed by accident PM shop staff.

Also fun fact, sometimes I get extreme bouts of 'MUST STAMP ALL THE THINGS' or, your profile blows me away and I might just stamp it and approve it. It's not favoritism or slacking, it really is just me, in a good mood, wanting to stamp things. I like stamping, and often want to just drag everybody I can into the RP.

Meta-Plot Stamps are temporary approval stamps that allow you to roleplay a character in certain special shop events. This stamp is NOT a full shop wide character approval stamp. The purpose of the meta stamp is to allow players who might want to get a feel for shop RP a foot in the door. It also, if you're a quester, just allows you to RP a character you might be unsure about. You don't need to crit, you don't need to get a crit, you submit a basic profile and ask for a meta plot stamp.

A metaplot Book Child or City Person will not count towards the character limit. They will only be allowed to RP in Meta plots. There are several trade offs however, one is that after the meta, if you should desire to keep RPing them they will then need the regular shop approval stamp, along with the crits and such and will be considered quests. At that point they would count towards the character limit if fully approved.

Meta Stamps are also a means to obtain official artwork. Some shop events can double as flatsales, and questers with Meta Stamps who participate through the entirety of the event can win free semi-custom artwork for their Book Children or City People.

The only reasons you would be turned down a metaplot stamp is if your information breaks shop canon, or your profile is a cosplay. We want to encourage the use of meta stamps for the metaplot events, but we just can't stamp something if it's crazy and breaking the setting, or breaking the shop rules.


Who can get Meta Stamps:
Book Children and City People.

What you CAN do with a Meta Stamp:
Participate in RPs and events marked [META]

What you CANNOT do with a Meta Stamp:
Earn growth points or growth tokens
Participate in any event or RP not marked [META]

How to get a Meta Stamp:
xxx 1. Fill out a profile skeleton using the provided template. A profile skeleton basically means you know which traits you're planning to have on the character, but you don't have to elaborate on any of it. Just the basics. It's your incomplete profile, you don't have to have everything figured out yet but you should have an idea of where they're going. The purpose of the Meta Stamp is to take your character for a test run and see if you like playing them the way you currently have them written.
xxx 2. Post in the appropriate submissions thread for your character type and ask for a Meta Stamp!