ATTENTION ROLEPLAYERS THIS IS FOR YOUR GIFS
If you’re roleplaying and you still need help putting gifs in the game, please look at this.
You need to go into the button on the top right that says <html> Click it and then go to the bottom of the html crawl and put THIS TAG THERE -
<img src=”path/to/image.gif” />
It’s the easiest way to get your gifs in there. You replace the path/to/image.gif part with the actual link to a gif, such as this
<img src=”http://media.tumblr.com/7c174604f09c7ae56ef0fdb93452c8ed/tumblr_inline_mftum4q6yd1r78azr.gif” />
LEAVE THE QUOTATION MARKS.
After that, click the ‘Update’ button at the bottom of the HTML Page and your gif will appear in the main post. If you need further proof, click the arrow next to Create Post and click ‘Preview on Blog.’ Serious guys, it’s not over for us.. it’s just harder to work at. Please get this far and wide, we’re not leaving tumblr over a layout change… that’s petty and childish.
How To: do oneliners and carry on conversations (especially with a shy/reserved character)
As requested by Anonymous
I’m sure that almost everyone has had this difficulty before: At some point during your roleplaying career, you must have found it hard to continue a conversation with at least one other RPer/character. This is especially true for people who roleplay shy and reserved characters as well as for other RPers who roleplay with them.
This how-to is a tutorial on how to overcome this difficulty. I’ve had a ton of shy characters in the past. One of them even stammered a lot and was definitely the most socially awkward kid I had ever seen. However, I soon overcame that problem and soon, my character could almost hold a decent conversation after almost two months (character development does take time, you know).
I hope this how-to turns out to be helpful for you!
ANNOUNCEMENT FOR ALL ERIDAN ROLEPLAYERS:
how about you not roleplay him at all if you dislike him? roleplaying him as a rapist will get you nowhere, and the only one receiving enjoyment from this is you. eridan rpers already have a bad enough name as it is; you don’t need to make yet another blot on their reputation. and newsflash: there are people who like rping him because they like him! there are people who don’t want to roleplay with an eridan who wants to molest them!
and there are people who will get annoyed by you, like me.
DON’T ROLEPLAY A CHARACTER YOU DON’T LIKE, DIPSHIT. IT IS AS EASY AS THAT. THERE ARE MULTITUDES OF OTHER CHARACTERS YOU COULD CHOOSE TO USE; IT IS NOT EXCEPTIONALLY HARD TO PICK ONE THAT YOU LIKE. IN FACT, I WOULD WAGER A GUESS THAT IT IS NOT DIFFICULT AT ALL.
there is no need at all for you to further sully eridan roleplayers’ reputation. there is no need at all for you to feel the need to do so. there is no need at all for you to be a huge idiot by deriving enjoyment from fucking up his character so royally that he is recognizable only by the color of his text and his quirk.
the only thing that makes me more angry than this is when you are confronted with this DURING THE SORRY EXCUSE OF A ROLEPLAY—the person tells you hey he isn’t actually like that at all, and explains to you how he really is, citing canon evidence, and you just say that you disagree.
let’s get one thing straight, everybody: eridan is not, and never will be, a rapist, nor will he sexual harass anyone. this applies to canon him, of course; i can’t speak for eridans of AUs. i cannot refute that he is an asshole, but this, this i can and will argue. he has flirted with people, yes! but there is absolutely no indication that he has ever gone farther than that.
this next point will shock all of you, i’m sure! listen closely, now: eridan actually stops hitting on people after the first time! he does not continuously assault them with flirtations!
he flirted with rose black, and after she blew up his computer (which, according to a fair lot of you, should have been taken as a black advance), he gave up. it’s quite likely that he never even talked to her again! he has attempted to hit on jade, but in the conversation shown between them, he has given up on that. he is mentioned to have tried to flirt with nepeta and equius, but both of them rebuffed his advances. karkat, at one point, demands, “WERE YOU HITTING ON ME? *ARE* YOU HITTING ON ME?” and, though it is questionable as to whether or not eridan actually was, in the conversations we’ve seen between them, eridan doesn’t actually flirt with karkat. he never once made a black solicitation to sollux—this is all assumed on feferi’s part, seeing as they clearly dont like each other and she thinks that eridan wants to pull her and sollux out of their quadrant, maybe because she knows that he likes her.
however, he does not pant after her like a dog in heat, begging for her attention and her affection. eridan may be lonely and desperate for company, but he does not sink that low.
maybe, one day, every eridan roleplayer—or anyone who even thinks of eridan—will realize/remember this, and on that day, it will be beautiful and joyous for everyone involved.
Writing Fight Scenes
Writing fight scenes can be very difficult, and it’s hard to toe the line between being a good fighter and god modding. When done right though, they can be great to roleplay and help advance your plot a lot! They can also be lots of fun, because who doesn’t like getting their character into a bit of trouble now and then?
Here are some basic things to remember during a fighting roleplay:
- When someone is hit, they totally feel it. Don’t forget that they are sore after a hit, they can get the wind knocked out of them or become dazed if they get hit to hard.
- Keep your characters experience in mind. If they get into lots of fights they’ll most likely be more calm then a character that doesn’t. Make sure that this reflects in your sentence structure as well.
- Don’t use to many onomatopoeia! Although something like ‘Her head hit the floor with a sickening crack’ sounds good when used in moderation, to many of these can detract form your response. Try using other descriptive words instead.
- Including some of your characters thoughts and feelings can really make the roleplay come to life! This is especially useful in paragraph roleplays, when sometimes it’s hard to match your partners reply length. Tell what your character is thinking, what they’re feeling, maybe even what they’re planning. A good partner won’t let these things ruin your next move, and it can help build up the scene.
- Stay constant but interesting in your moves! Try not to develope a pattern of something like ‘kick, headshot, stomach shot, kick’ ect. There are lots of things you can do, but remember that if your character is a poor fighter these things might not always land correctly.
- Leave your attacks open to your partners interpretation! Don’t just assume that your super hard kick to the back of the knees downed your opponent, let them decide how much damage it did. God modding can be a serious problem in fights and can ruin the experience.
- Show what happened after the fight! Did you win? Is your character happy, injured, proud, sore? Did you lose? Are you bed ridden, upset, angry? Let this effect your other roleplays for a while, you might make some new friends or push your plot somewhere interesting.
Profile Layouts
Your blog’s layout is so important when it comes to roleplaying! Not only should you make sure to have one that’s easy to navigate; it should have some information about your character, and it usually is nice when it seems to reflect that character itself a bit!
Now let’s say you’re a very fun, cheerful person in real life. You enjoy bright colors and soft animals and all sorts of sweet things like that. But maybe your muse doesn’t? As tempting as it might be to give your blog a nice pretty layout, it would give off the wrong impression about your character, and that could be a bit of a turn off for people who want to roleplay with you!
In general a good theme should show off both text posts and pictures nicely, have enough links, and have room for you to write a little ‘About Me’ for your character. It’s also nice when they layout shows your tags!
In the end you always have to go with what your gut tells you is right, but here’s a few sites I like to go to for layouts!
And those are just a few! If you don’t like them, why not search the Tumblr tags for ‘theme blogs’ and look around? There are millions of themes to be found! Just remember never to take off the credit.
Another issue can be what you should put on the blog. Aside from a good color scheme, a picture of your character is often appreciated, along with a few links that help people navigate your blog. The most common links I’ve seen RP blogs having are:
- Ask
- Submit
- Relationships
- Headcannons
- About
- Meet the Roleplayer
And sometimes a link to their ‘interests’ or ‘music’ tag, dependsing on what type of character they play!
Ask Prompts
I’m sure you’ve seen them- things like “Magic Anon Monday!” and “Leave a word in my ask for a headcannon about it!”, they flutter around RP blogs all the time. Sometimes the things people send you are great, they can be really funny or even help give your plot a push it needed. But they can also get very obnoxious.
A good general rule for reblogging ask prompts is to just send an ask to the person you want to reblog it from. It’s easy! That way you’ve helped ensure that they got an ask, and hopefully the same is done for you. After all, no one likes reblogging something like that and then not getting anything! Especially if you’re the one that’s started it. Sometimes a prompt will get many notes, but the original poster didn’t get a single ask!
Another good rule is to moderate yourself when it comes to posting those, you don’t want to post to many in one day, even if you didn’t get any thing first time. It’s good to space them out a little so you don’t get confused when people ask you questions, and so that the asks aren’t all that’s on your blog!
Sometimes it helped if you tag the ask prompt posts. Things like ‘I’d really like this’ can help give your followers a little nudge to actually ask you things instead of just scrolling past it.
Guide to writing characters with disturbing backstories
tw: rape, abuse, violence, eating disorders, etc
If the title didn’t tip you off, the trigger warning should have. I think we all know what I mean when I say characters with disturbing backstories. If you don’t, I really have to wonder where you’ve been writing, who you’ve been writing with, and how you’ve managed to use the internet so ineffectively. There are a lot of different schools of thought about this, but generally I find people fall into two categories: people who overuse disturbing backstories and people who shy away from them because they know how horrible disturbing backstories can go wrong. This is either to help you rein yourself in a little or to let you try out a disturbing backstory, because hey, they can be kind of fun.
Disclaimer: I am not the be and end all with regards to this sort of writing. In fact, part of the reason I’m making up this guide for you is to convince myself that I am handling a seriously disturbing backstory correctly and that my partner doesn’t secretly think my character is a super-sue and want to smash me in the face with her elbow.
Guides on writing biographies and creating characters
- Creating a character; a guide by the-hardyest-critic
- Making an original character by edwardkenwayrps
- How to write an original character by fat-amy-rph
- Writing character bios by writeworld
- How do you write a roleplaying character biography? by poewar.com
- How to write a good biography by georginakincaid
- Biographies (for dummies) by thetrolliestrpc
- How to balance out your character types by psychrph
- Components of your character biographies by shackleboltrps
- Need help with character creation? by hermajestyhelps
- Ash’s guide to RPG personality and background by ashami.com
- Character/bio template by rptheme-helper
Please note that some of these guides are oriented more toward admins of roleplays who need to write a lot of biographies, but they still contain useful tips for creating original characters and writing biographies for them.
[Ask RPedia] How Do I Deal With Other RP Styles?
ningyo-kun asked: This is coming from someone who loves roleplay very much, just doesn’t know what to think of her own personal style of roleplay. Just throwing that in the oven right now, not going to wait for the sun to kiss the fact purple. Okay, the mostly facty-fact. The way I prefer to roleplay is by simply making the posts sound like I AM READING THEM. It’s just my pathetic writing style, and then I come along to find someone who roleplays in a completely different way. What am I to do, and/or think?
Firstly wow I love your wording. That’s a little silly I guess to say when I should be answering your question, but “sun kissing the fact purple?” A+ mental image there.
Now I’m going to assume a lot on this post since I’m not sure what you mean by reading them. I’m looking at it and I’m going to assume you mean it’s something like third-person omniscient? You probably explain what the character is doing from an outside perspective with some wit and reaction from ‘someone’ reading it thrown in. Something probably like… “He tripped over the stone in his way, like a complete dork. Wow, he totally doesn’t know what he’s doing does he?” kind of thing? Oh gee I hope so. This is actually how I myself RP! So it makes a ton of sense to me, and it catches the eye really easily.
The thing is you’re going to hit a lot of people who do different styles. A lot of them. The simple way to react is to just go on as usual! You can respond to anyone in the same fashion and as long as you’re accepting of them, they should be accepting of you. One of my favorite things to say on here is to remember that you should be having fun, and if you aren’t there’s no reason to continue. If someone has a crazy weird style and you can’t handle it, go ahead and tell them. Tell them the truth, that you’d like to but you’d having trouble responding. If you want go ahead and send them to Roleplay Basics. It’ll explain the most common RP styles, and maybe they’ll choose one a little easier to read.
Otherwise it’s pretty easy to just ignore the fact they don’t RP like you, and just go along with it. Even if it’s someone who roleplays saying things like “I would talk to John, my voice rising, Hi John.” which is really really weird.
✍ Uragani Tip: Don’t use would for general RP unless it’s to give someone an out. You’re RPing right now, not in the future and it makes things really hard to deal with. Roleplaying with bolding for words outloud gets really old really fast. Use quotation marks, we have them for a reason. First person on top of that? Oh man… that’s… that’s special. Not necessarily bad, but awkward for other roleplayers because it IS extremely unique and can cause a ton of understanding issues. I’m not going to say it’s bad, but I will say I’d probably not want to RP with you myself. Sorry.
Hope that helps you out there! Sorry for taking so long to respond. I’m a little behind with my questions/answers here… Like 4 months+ behind urgh. Sorry everyone who gets a late answer.
