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A short lesson in role play posting: 'If one can't read it, one can't respond to it!' Hello there. My name is Rich, I am about to turn 22 years old and I have been role playing since 1998. I am now returning to my world of role playing as our favorite short-lived Half-Brachen demon, Doyle. But before I can get started, there's some things I need to bring up... Mainly it has to do with the way people are posting on Myspace these days, and perhaps other sites as well! I fear it seems my hopes that, in time, RPers would only improve had led me astray. It almost seems as if spelling incorrectly and just doing short, meaningless, nothing posts has become some kind of fad, and certaintly not one that anyone should follow. So, I bring this to you now, a short guide I've written to hopefully help you to improve your skills as a role player, and thus making role playing a very fun game for us all to eagerly come back to! LESSON TO BE LEARNED! First of all there are a few questions I have, like how old are you? Are you in school? Basic stuff. I just want to know if you're putting more effort with grammar and punctuation in English papers when you think you might be graded on it. Because people tend to slack off when they're just doing something for fun, and its true, RPG is meant to be fun, but a good role player will still be grading you on the way you present a post to them. Most people get the whole novella/paragraph thing totally wrong. It's not about how much you say in a post, it's about what you're saying in the post that counts. You could write an entire page in length, but if you're not saying much of anything in it, it doesn't matter much. Rambling on about irrelevant facts just to elongate a post will bore the reader. You'll want to make your post much alike how this brief lesson is constructed. A good para post has personality. If you try to hit the five senses, of what your character is; Seeing, Feeling, Thinking... Then Saying and Doing, you'll find your post is much longer and much more personal. Most people just tend to write what their characters Say and Do, Quote and Action, which could be done in one line and isn't very fun to read at all. When presenting a post, people call it Novella style because it's constructed in the form of a novel, strict, proper, in short but detailed paragraphs. Full of character personality, valid information and overall is something fun for someone to read and respond back to. For this, perfect grammar and point place punctuation is a must. Now, there is no reason to fret over having one or two little typos. Everyone has them! Our brains have a way of thinking faster than we can type and sometimes an incorrect word is left in the dust. That's fine, it's forgivable. For that, I'd recommend a good Spell Check program to run through your post and catch all those little, easy to miss typos. Problem with spell checker sometimes is, while words are often spelled correctly, people use the wrong word for that context. Like to say "They're here," is correct for saying "They are here." but you could also incorrectly spell it as "Their here," which isn't an incorrectly spelled word, it's just the wrong spelling of an otherwise correctly spelled word. Careful for those! Using numbers in words to describe other numbers is fine, like to say "It's 2:30 PM," or "I've just turned 24," is fine. But when you start using numbers to describe actual words that sound the same as the numbers do, then it becomes a problem. Look at the "two's" of the world. There's many different variations. You can go 'To' somewhere, you can like something "Too," you can have "Two" of those... But to say "I went 2 the store" just looks amateurish and annoying. Also, something you may notice is that in my posts especially, I spell some words rather oddly and they look I suppose, fairly misspelled. But I assure you, they're not! When you are playing a character who speaks in an accent, sometimes it's fun for both the writer and the reader to see some of the words the character says, spelled out in a way that would read as the characters accent. "Aye, it's really den when da true personality o'yir character can truly foind a way t' shoine!" As said above, "Yeah, It's really then when the true personality of your character can truly find a way to shine!" See what I did there? I think we're at a point in our lives where as typing in Novel-form, we don't need to use ((bubbles)) or [[brackets]] as if we have something to say out of character, we can just do that elsewhere, like in a message or something. Surrounding your posting actions in *stars* or -dashes-, or even ::dots:: is so grade-school, isn't it? I think the only words we need to separate is are spoken words, in "quotations." Some good punctuation is in order. Without commas or periods, sentences look run together and jumbled. Without capitalizing names or certain words, it's hard for some readers to follow what it is you're trying to say. So, don't overdue it, and add, comma's, all through-out the sentence... But to have it ever once in awhile makes your work a lot easier to take in, now doesn't it? While you should definitely hit certain details to describe some actions, what you shouldn't do is carry on with too many details for one little description. How many details could honestly be said about opening a bag of crisps? No, what matters is that you do it with some style. You're playing this specific character for a reason, so stop and think, "How would this character do that?" Type it out in their style, as if you are acting as them, because that's really what Role playing is! Giving your post the perfect personality that your character shares will bring you lots of fans and friends eager to start up a Storyline with you! I understand that RPG is meant to be fun and that you're in no mood for another English lesson, but what you have to understand is that RPG should be fun for everyone doing it, not just yourself, and typing in newbish style posting isn't going to be fun for anyone who is actually looking for a good, decent RPG, now is it? So, take my lessons as you will and I hope to see you out there, in the world of good old fashioned Role Play Games. I'd recommend suggesting this short guide to anyone else who you feel may not be posting with the full potential they have. No need to be rude to them about it, keep it proper and positive, just let them know that RPG can be really fun when you insure both people in the game intend to have it! :) Cheers! Just Doyle Post a comment in response: |
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