pararambling:

felidae-charr:

Okay so first and foremost I’d like to get it out there that I am new to roleplaying on games in general. It isn’t something I’d ever done in my life before Guild Wars 2 - I was introduced to it by a couple of friends and have been getting increasingly more comfortable with it since.

That said, I have been creating, managing and participating in forum roleplays for as long as I can remember. I’m not new to roleplaying, I’m just new to doing it on a game. And you know, the difference between a forum and a game?

Not that big.

So after noticing some of those nasty roleplaying elitists running around giving people a hard time as if there was only one good way to roleplay, I’d like to share up a guide on how I personally roleplay. Better still, you can use this same guide for different kinds of online roleplaying, like forums! Maybe this can help a couple of people who are new to it, and hopefully it can spread the word that roleplay isn’t about being an exclusive club.

1. Golden Rule: roleplay is a collaborative experience… so involve people!!! I can’t stress enough how really off-putting it can be if you’re trying to roleplay with a group of people but you’re getting side-lined or outright ignored. Cliques do naturally happen, it’s true, but try to involve everybody who wants to be involved. If you and your friend are roleplaying and a third person comes along and tries to join in, let them! Why? Well… let’s cover this in number two.
2. Roleplay is dynamic, not static. You might find it more fun when surprises happen and more people get involved! Unexpected twists to roleplay can be really fun and can add some spice to what otherwise might have been a short and boring scene. For example, I was recently roleplaying Onyx with tyrianbutt’s Tavia, when a third player joined in as a drake! It was totally unexpected, and it only added a couple of minutes to the scene, but it was still really fun!
3. Remember that sometimes, unplanned actions develop your character more than a planned story ever could. You’re roleplaying with other people because you enjoy the collaborative experience, right? I don’t know about you, but I know that I roleplay because I love the added surprise and dynamics that characters not controlled by me bring. If I wanted perfect scenes every time, I’d write a story. Don’t be afraid to let your roleplay partners be creative, and don’t be afraid to be creative yourself! Did your character just fall off the side of the Grove because you accidentally dodged? (FIOOOOO!) Use it! This is the kind of dynamic you can never achieve when writing a story, so use it.
4. Keep your roleplay partners in mind, but don’t worry so much about them that you break character just to keep them happy. Nothing is more boring than somebody who is so concerned about what I as a person will say and think about their character, that they break character just to keep me happy. Give me whatever your character is. For the record, after over 12 years of roleplaying, your character isn’t going to disgust me and make me not want to roleplay with you. You breaking character just because you think I’ll appreciate it, though… that’s a turn off.
5. You do not own any one roleplay partner. Be prepared to be flexible. Nothing can be more frustrating than one person hogging all of your roleplay time, or wanting to hog all of your characters to themselves. I have different characters in different places with different personalities, they aren’t all going to be bumping into you every day. Beyond that, they aren’t all going to get along with your characters.
6. Please, no hamfisting relationships. Some people control everything their character does. Others, like me, often use the terminology that “our character decides”. Either way, if my character isn’t getting along with your own, they aren’t going to fall in love. End of story. Beyond that, relationships don’t always work out. My character can fall in love with yours; sometimes they can fall out of love too. My character could also be straight, gay, asexual, bisexual, pansexual, demisexual or any other kind of sexual you can think of, and nothing you try and hamfist is going to make me change my mind. Don’t force characters into relationships that clearly aren’t working. It isn’t healthy for either character.

And, finally..

There is no such thing as “one way to roleplay”!

I don’t always like the way other people roleplay, but that doesn’t mean they are doing it wrong. The only time you can be accused of roleplaying wrong is if you are trying to hog partners unfairly, or guilt people into only roleplaying with you.

Just because you don’t like what one person does, that doesn’t mean they’re wrong. It certainly doesn’t mean you can send them spiteful anon messages over Tumblr or harass them in-game! That makes you elitest and a snob and it also makes you a massive douchebag and you should feel terrible.

The only time you can tell somebody that they’re doing roleplaying wrong is when they are trying to force you to roleplay with them all the time or when they are guilt-tripping people into playing certain characters doing things they normally would not.

This is something nobody should do, ever. You don’t “own” a roleplay partner, and they certainly don’t owe you anything. Jealousy is really bad and it ruins roleplaying for everybody; please don’t be like that.

Great post for people who want to try roleplaying but don’t really know how! uvu (like me)

(via rytlockbrimstone)