| Faramirs_first_kiss |
 Everything you need to know about RPGs on Council of Elrond
on: June 16, 2004 12:33
|
|
Effective January 1, 2008:::Moderators' note.
Please take into account as you read this thread that it is dated from 2002. The general rules and guidelines have been amended and edited many times since then, though some of the 'basic' guidelines here are still very applicable. We advise you read this thread with that thought in mind and then also read the most current rules and guidelines at the top of each of the three forums (TT, TR and OOC) before posting either in the threads or the data base. Thank you.
The comprehensive guide to RPing
The RPG boards are my favourite places on this site but it took me quite a long time to work myself into them. There are a couple of existing threads and articles around that can give you pointers on what makes a good RP which I’ve mentioned later in this thread, but I intend to provide you simply with instructions on how to do it. The first thing to do, however, is make sure you’re familiar with the rules and decorum that you can find here. These rules are put in place to make the boards a safe and fun place for everyone and are really not too strenuous to follow.
An introduction to RPG
Okay, let's get down to business. An RPG is a role-playing game, where you take on the role of a character and you control what he she or it says, does, thinks and feels. The RPGs on CoE are NOT the sort of computer game you might buy in the shops so you won't be controlling a little animated figure on screen. Nor are they like some online RPGs where you are given a description of a room and asked if you want to go left or right, pick up the gold coin or kill the orc. These are forum-based RPGs and the only things in it are what the participants provide. People take it in turn to write a little bit of the story that makes up the thread from their own character's point of view, reacting and responding to what other people say to develop the storyline, the relationships between the characters and the characters themselves.
So how do you start? Well, the first thing I'd suggest (after reading this thread, of course  ) is taking a little look round. Visit the four sub-forums at the top of the Roleplaying Forum mainpage and have a quick look at the threads, see if anything catches your eye. It might be that you decide to join an existing thread or you might want to start one of your own, instructions for both of which are given later, but either way you're going to need a character.
Making a character
Take a little trip to the character database. This is where we keep information about our characters. You may want to browse round for a while and see the characters other people have come up with before starting on your own. Often, the character you choose to make depends on the thread or type of thread you want to take part in. For example, a lot of threads set in the fourth age will not want elves in them in the interests of staying close to Tolkien's intentions, while other threads are reserved only for elves.
When you're ready to make your character, click the Add Character link. You can have (within reason) as many characters as you like, but I recommend you start off with just one and get to know him or her really well, as this will make your posts most realistic and entertaining. The database lets you enter information under the following headings:
~ Character Name
~ Gender
~ Race
~ Height
~ Age
~ Place of Residence
~ Family
~ Special Powers
~ Weapons
~ Animals
~ Personality
~ Appearance
~ History
~ Active in Threads
The first ten allow you to put in fairly short pieces of information for quick reference about your character. The next three let you write much more, but a lot of people don't, at least at first. The last one will be filled in later when you have joined a thread. You copy the URL, or web address, of the thread into a box and this puts a link to your thread on the character's profile. You don't have to have something for all of the headings and you can change anything in the profile whenever you want. This is useful, as you will probably find that things about your character grow or change over time and you might want to put them in the profile to keep it up to date.
You are given the option of uploading a picture of your character. Some people use pictures of celebrities or just people they've found on the internet, while others choose to draw their own. Make sure you get permission if you want to use a picture belonging to someone else. Again, you don't have to have a picture and you can upload a new one later if you decide to change your mind. To upload a picture, click the "Browse" button next to the "Picture (350x350 max):" heading. Pictures can be no larger than 350 pixels wide or high and must be in the format .gif or .jpg.
This is just a brief introduction to how to make a character profile, not how to make a good character. Lots of people have written guides to that effect which you can find here and here. These are just other people's opinions on what makes a good character and it is totally possible to make one without following them, but they're a great place to start if you don't know what to do.
Oh yes, and a quick tip from a person who learned the hard way: give careful thought to your character's name. There is an elvish name database on the site and extensive elvish dictionaries, a huge dictionary of Old English (Rohirric) words here and hundreds of other Middle-earth language resources all over the web. You don't, of course, have to use Tolkien-based names at all. My favourite family of characters all have real-world names although I have tried to choose unusual ones. There are also random name generators available including a particularly good one called EBON which I highly recommend. However you choose to find your character's name, I would advise following these simple guidelines:
~ pick something pronounceable. People like to be able to hear the characters' names in their heads.
~ pick something short. More than four syllables is almost always too much.
~ pick something that can easily be shortened. You don't want to type that four-syllable name and nor do the other characters want to say it.
Threads
Right, now you have your character let's talk about threads. RP threads on CoE are found in three separate sub-forums. These are the definitions for them given in the RP rules and decorum thread:
~ Totally Tolkien (TT):- in this thread you will find RP's set in Middle earth and the characters will be only races found in Tolkien’s books. This sub-forum will not allow god modding. more info
~ Tolkien Related (TR):- These threads will be loosely based on the races found in Tolkien’s books and may be based in ME or if the races are Tolkien based may be situated else where. more info
~ Non Tolkien (NT):- these threads will be any that are not Tolkien based for example Harry Potter. These threads are now to be found on our sister site; MokeyGames.netmore info
The fourth sub-forum, the Out of Character Discussion forum, holds discussion threads where people plan and come up with ideas for threads for their threads in the other three sub-forums.
IT SHOULD BE NOTED THAT NON-TOLKIEN NO LONGER EXISTS AND HAS BECOME OUR SISTER SITE LOKI'S PALACE. THE THIRD FORUM NOW EXISTING IS THE OOC FORUM.
There are also different types of threads:
~ Free threads have no specific plan for the plot. Often they simply start with one character in a situation then wait for other characters to join and see how the situation resolves itself and what leads on from that. Often, especially in the early stages, ie. before there are twenty posts or so, you can simply introduce your character to these threads. They generally don't have an out of character thread (or OOC thread) until they have progressed and people want to discuss what happens next.
~ Scripted threads have more structure and plot and as a result often have more rules about who can join. These quite often have an OOC thread to begin with in order to tell everyone a little bit about the plan and let them see how their characters might fit into it.
Joining someone else's thread
First of all, obviously, you need to find a thread you want to join. Take a look at the title and read the first post and, if one is mentioned, the OOC thread. The person who starts the thread usually lays down their own rules about who can join and what is allowed in the thread. Once you're familiar with them, you can get on with the actual joining. Some thread owners will ask you to PM (private message) them before joining, which you can do by clicking the PM button at the bottom of the post. Others ask you to post in the OOC thread. Either way, you should introduce yourself briefly and ask if you can join the thread. Tell the owner what character you will be playing and make sure you give the right name to find them in the character database. If you're PMing you could copy your character's profile into the message, but don't do this in the OOC forum as all posts have to be read and checked. Then you simply need to wait to be accepted. If you are not instructed to ask permission then it is safe to assume that you can go ahead and post. You might want to put a little out of character message in your post in double brackets ((like this)) saying hello and introducing yourself briefly.
It can sometimes be a little tricky to know if it is reasonable to join a thread after it has so many posts. In my experience, even after fifty posts the characters are often still just getting to know each other and it is rare for the characters in any thread to become so isolated that there is no possibility of meeting another person. Here are some tips:
~ read the thread. Some thread owners are happy to give you a summary of events so far and let you in, but others see it as a sign of respect and good will for the thread and its participants if you read the thread and may feel you have missed too much to join without reading it. All in all, this is the single best way to decide if it is feasible for your character to join the thread.
~ have a sensible reason for your character to be there. If you have to create exceptional circumstances to get your character to the right place at the right time then it might be that they shouldn't be there at all.
~ look at the number of posts. It's not always the best indicator but it can give you some idea. After about 100 posts the writers are used to RPing together and the characters have formed relationships, so it might be more difficult for you and your character to integrate into the thread. The obvious exception is the Stay Awhile Inn, which has been in existence since September 2002 and has well over three thousand posts at the time of writing this, and is always glad to welcome new members, and doubtless there are others.
~ PM the thread owner. It's the simplest thing to do and if you're polite and show a genuine interest in the thread then people will respond in kind.
Starting your own thread
On CoE there are no rules about who can start a new thread so that means you, yes even you, can be a thread owner right away. There are a few things to think about before you start, though.
1) Does the thread you're going to make (or one very similar) already exist? If the answer is yes then you should consider joining that thread instead of starting a brand new one, because it's in nobody's interest to have dozens of near-identical threads on the boards. The mods don't want to read them and they give the impression that people on the site have a pretty limited imagination. There's a rule to this effect in the NT forum: only two or perhaps three threads are allowed on any particular topic, like Harry Potter, vampires, YuGiOh, etc. You can find a thread mentioning some of these over-popular topics here.
2) Which forum does your thread belong in? Well, if you have fanged blood-suckers or adolescent boys with wands running around your thread, chances are it should be in the NT forum, as should Tolkien-esque threads in a more modern setting (electricity, plastic, etc). If you want to have lots of elves in the Fourth Age, magic powers beyond the very elementary ones Tolkien described, or creatures such as unicorns that do not appear in his works, or you want to fiddle with canon in any other way, do it in the TR forum. If you want to follow the world and history of Middle-earth closely then you belong in the TT forum. The boundaries between these definitions can be quite unclear sometimes and a little deviation is acceptable, so don't worry over much about it. If you want to be sure, ask a more experienced RPer in the Rusty Pail, by PM or in the OOC forum.
3) What type of thread is it? Do you have a plot or perhaps just a general direction you want the thread to go in, or do you simply want to get together with other people and see what happens? If you have a plot then you might want to start off with an OOC thread so you can tell RPers something about your idea and meet them and see how their chars fit into the story before you get started. Otherwise it's common to put an OOC message in the first post to give people an introduction before you start and to tell them what you'd like them to do before joining. You might also do that if you're starting a thread that is semi-scripted to tell them that this is going to be a quest RP or a battle RP or that it will revolve around a love story. Alternatively, just put "free" or "all welcome" or something to that effect in the thread tite and wait to see what you get.
Okay, so that's all very well, but how do you actually start a thread? It's simple: just go to the forum where you have decided to put the thread (or the OOC if you're starting one) and click the "New Topic" link which appears at the top and bottom of the page on the right hand side. Put the thread title in the "Subject" box and write your opening post in the "Message" box.
As the thread goes on
Different threads are written in different ways. Some are written in first person (I, me, we) and some are written in third (he, she, they). Some are in the past tense and some are in the present. Some use short, simple posts that mainly explain what the characters say and do and some go into a lot more detail of thoughts and feelings, but how much you write ought to be dictated by the general average length of posts in the thread. Over time, you'll develop preferences: I like to write in the third person past tense and I feel I'm only getting the value of my seven posts per day if I write in-depth posts with plenty of feeling and character development.
In order to do that, though, I sometimes have to write other people's characters in my posts and there's a certain etiquette to what you can and can't do. Basically, you should avoid making someone else's character do anything they wouldn't. At first it's very difficult to know what they might do because you don't know the other characters well enough, so you should concentrate on writing lots of detail about your own character, aiming to tell everyone what they are like and why and how they react to different things. That way, when it comes to another person writing your character into their post they will know more about them and be more likely to get it right. Until you know the other characters very well indeed, I would suggest that a good rule to follow is never to write more than about three short, obvious lines of dialogue for another character, and only if they are necessary to bring the post to a sensible point to finish at. It's usually okay to write some actions and facial expressions in, but try to stay close to what you think the character's owner would want and be ambiguous, so the character's expression could be interpreted in different ways for example. It should be pretty obvious when it's okay to start writing a little for other people. Often it starts when one person goes away for a while and entrusts their character to another RPer to write. Sometimes people know other RPers in the thread from real life or over PM or a message service and these people might write each other's characters quite regularly.
Other things to bear in mind
Moderators
These are the great people who give up their free time to patrol the site and keep it a pleasant place for us all to spend our time. If a mod asks you to do something then do it with good will because they are asking on behalf of the site. They read every single post on the site and it's only fair to return their hard work by giving them something good to read. They're also really helpful and if you're stuck you can PM them, but they are after all only human and have a lot of other things to do, so I would suggest only asking them as a last resort. Take a look at the "getting more help" section of this post for other places to try first. The names of the moderators can be found on the link to the forums they watch, or on the list of all the mods on the site here.
Post limits and how many RPs to join
One feature of the RPG forum is a post limit so you can only post seven times in twenty-four hours in each sub-forum. This is so we don't generate a huge amount of posts for the mods to check and it means you should put as much thought as you can into the posts you do have. It also means you have to think about the number of RPs you can be a member of: if you like the sort of RP where it's feasible to post twice or more in a day then you cannot sensibly be in more than two or three in each sub-forum. Even if you do have spare posts at the end of the day (most people do, you certainly don't have to use them up) you still have to be careful about the number of RPs you join. You make a commitment to each of them and if you don't have time to post in them then you're letting the other members down.
Leaving threads
Sometimes, for whatever reason, you may have to leave a thread. In this case, the polite thing to do is to write your character out, finding a plausible reason for your character to leave the group, and add an OOC message to the post telling everyone why you have to go. There is nothing more annoying that people vanishing without a trace and leaving you with a bunch of superfluous characters that you don't know what to do with. Anyone who does that in a thread of mine beware! I once ditched a load of characters in a cave-in in Moria.
Spelling, grammar and presentation
A good post is well-spelled and makes sense. It is tedious and unpleasant to sit there and attempt to work out what an RPer meant by something they wrote. The site now has a spellchecker (the little ABC button above where you write your messages) that should help you with every day English words. It might take a bit of work on your part to check the Tolkien terms and the names of characters etc in the thread, as well as to read the post through and check it's easy to follow, but this is all part of being a good RPer. Also, don't be afraid to hit the enter key between people speaking. CoE is displayed in a sans serif font and that means it's really difficult to read anything that isn't spaced out too much. If you don't like doing that because you're left with more space than text, then perhaps you should try and write in more detail.
Plagiarism
This is copying someone else's work or idea without giving credit for it, and is never acceptable anywhere on the site. Anyone who has put effort into anything deserves to have this recognised as their own achievement. You should get permission for anything you want to use and say where it came from and who created it. Some definitions in this site's policy on plagiarism are:
1. Taking someone else's basic idea or a plot of a story and writing it in your own words
2. Taking sentences from someone else's story and fitting them into your own
3. Making a copy of someone else's drawing/painting
4. Taking someone else's creation (story/image) and claiming it is yours
Plagiarism will absolutely not be tolerated on CoE. To read more about it, go here.
RPing over chat
In the chat section of this site there is a channel devoted to RPing in real time. It isn't to everyone's taste but it can suit people who like to write short posts and get instant feedback from other RPers. You write basically very short posts, saying what your character does or says, and everyone else does the same so you get conversations and situations developing. You could just go on and see who else is there, or you could arrange to meet the members of your thread here, but remember to take time differences into account. Also, if you plan to use your real-time RP in the thread it's worth noting that the chat on CoE doesn't keep a record of the whole conversation, so you can't just copy the lot into a post when you're done. It you want to put it in a post, you should just use it as an idea of what happens and then write it up.
To get started, go to the chat page. Instructions of how to get onto the chat and the rules once you're in are given there. Once you're in the chat room, set your name to you character's name. For these examples, I'll use my own character Ewen. To set my name to his I would type /nick Ewen. To enter an action for him I would type, for instance, /me eats cookies, which would be displayed in the chat room as Ewen eats cookies. To enter something he says I would simply type the message, for instance hello! and it would be displayed on screen as [Ewen] hello!. To type and OOC message, I would simply put double brackets round my message like I would on the forums.
Getting more help
There are loads of places you can go to find more information about RPing her on CoE. I've put all the links from earlier in this post together in this section so you can find them easily.
Rules and decorum; the most important link here.
The Totally Tolkien forum and more info.
The Tolkien Related forum and more info.
The Non Tolkien forum at Monkeygames.com and [url=http://www.councilofelrond.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=XForum&file=viewthread&tid=3544]
The Out of Character Discussion forum.
Chat on CoE.
The Rusty Pail, a great place to ask questions.
The site moderators.
An article about plagiarism.
The character database where you can make character profiles.
Aisheeya's and SadisticYoda's guides to making good RP characters.
An amusing little test to see if your character is a dreaded Mary Sue.
The invaluable elvish name database, elvish dictionaries and Rohirric dictionary, and the EBON name generator.
Eledhwyn's guide on how to become a well rounded LOTR RPer, well worth a look!
This is intended to be a pretty comprehensive guide to RPing on CoE. If you have any questions that you think should be answered in this thread or you think I've missed anything out, then post a reply to it and I'll answer it and try to incorporate the answer into the first post so you don't have to read the whole thread before you get started.
I hope that this has been helpful to you, now all that is left for me to say is good luck and happy RPing!
Kiss
[Edited on 12/6/2005 by PotbellyHairyfoot]
[Edited on 5/7/2008 by BerethEdhellen]
[Edited on 6/7/2009 by BerethEdhellen]
|
|
| KatHeiman |
|
| CarolP |
|
| AranelOfLorien |
|
| SilverLoom07 |
|
| Adrian |
|
| PotbellyHairyfoot |
|
| Lady_Elbereth |
|
| Boromirs_Gal2007 |
|
| legolas_luvr |
|
NenyaGoldLegend of Lothlórien & Head Chocolate Thingywidget of YavannaPosts: 14316 Send Message |
|
| Ireth_Telrunya |
|
| PotbellyHairyfoot |
|
| SirKenneth |
|
| Faramirs_first_kiss |
|
| BerethEdhellen |
|
| ladygaladrielrox |
|
| BerethEdhellen |
|
| Almerúvë |
|
| BerethEdhellen |
|
| BabidiBuu |
|
| BerethEdhellen |
|
| BabidiBuu |
|
| BerethEdhellen |
|
| BabidiBuu |
|
| gwagadoeboe |
|
| BerethEdhellen |
|
| LithonielGreenleaf |
|
Author
