Post by Den on Jan 1, 2007 14:39:25 GMT -5
--------------------------------------
The RPG Bible according to Switchblade
--------------------------------------
In my opinion, grammar, spelling and punctuation are very important in your posts. good spelling make a thread a lot easier to understand, and punctuation can be used extensively to set the mood of a thread. a fast-paced, action-packed post, such as one detailing a gunfight, would contain a number of short action-filled sentences. for example, a Jedi Lightsaber fight might go something like:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He was already gone, running up the nearest wall at blinding speed. five blaster
bolts flashed towards him, but Murlon didn't even break stride. He leapt off the wall, deflected two of the bolts in mid-air, landed gracefully, and then leapt again to avoid a second fusillade. He hit the ceiling, bounced off it, and then swung his saber in a bright circle that intersected each and every one of the bolts, sending them searing through the air back towards the menacing droid. they impacted, and the behemoth fell over backwards with a crash.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Punctuation is very important in the descriptiveness of a thread. good RPing relies
heavily upon creating and maintaining the world your character(s) occupy, so you should take the time to set the scene, mood, and character where possible.
That's not to say you should be adjective-heavy. none of the esteemed readers of this magnificent forum are vaguely interested in laboriously picking their winding way through an endless labyrinthine maze of confusing, bamboozling, cryptic... you get the idea. likewise, while you should keep the language interesting and inventive, it is not good to mislead thy colleagues with superfluously intricate dialect birthed in thy stygian noggin. Keep it simple, but don't make it short and annoying, either.
Fonics ar a no-no, in my book, they just misleed peepol and mayk yoo tipe dum.
there are also some rules to follow if you want to avoid ticking people off:
1: Don't take over other people's characters, even in an indirect fashion. as a couple of examples, we will assume that "mr Richmond" is another player's character. An example of character napping would be, say, if Mr Richmond has been established as being somewhere else, such as his own office, and you post:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I pressed the intercom button, and asked Mr Richmond to come into my office. a few minutes later, the door opened, and he entered as ordered."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
maybe theuser had a reason for his character to be where he was, and you've just ruined that. a more acceptable example would be
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I pressed the Intercom button. "Mr Richmond?" I asked "Would you be so good as to come to my office please? +END POST+
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2: don't rapid fire. nobody wants a poster who just hangs around and doesn't contribute, despite a high post count. You should describe events, sure, but just events aren't interesting, we want to know what the character's thinking, and the consequences of his actions. here's a good example of a bad rapid fire post:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pietro finally got up and found that there was noone in sight so decided to look around and in a matter of 10 seconds he found them and asked if he could help at all
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As you can see, there is bad spelling, no punctuation, no description, the post is just devoid of content. it is a post that says "I want my post count to go up by 1, but I can't be bothered to do anything meaningful". its called spamming, and anybody with more than two brain cells to rub together hates a spammer.
3: OOC (Out Of Character) posts can really annoy some people. they can be used for good reasons, such as providing additional information to other posters, or
complaining/explaining with regard to an unpopular post, but it should still be minimised. where possible, send as much OOC information via Private Message.
4: this may sound obvious, but it happens a lot. READ THE THREAD BEFORE STARTING TO POST. I've seen a few threads where somebody has come along and given a character sheet that has had sweet FA to do with the thread. a good example is from "you taste like sin" which involves a shop that sells little "fortune chocolates" to its ordinary, human customers.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name:Sabin SoulCatcher
Age:21
Bio: In the late 19th century the vampires were a threat they hunted humans as sheep. Sabin is the last of this legacy changed over time to accept the humans and come to treat them differently.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
which has absolutely no relation to the thread. so make sure you're posting something relevant and sane.
5: Don't nuke the bad guys without warning. While you are part of the thread, and your actions will influence it, you should be careful what you do with a mass fight. If the thread has spent a couple of pages building up towards, say, a bit where your character is part of a team infiltrating a base that has been infested by alien critters, and suddenly you are attacked by a huge mob of them, it will prove a bit annoying to the other members if they don't get a chance to participate in the fight before you pick up your super-mega-killer-zapp-gun and blow away the whole alien swarm in one shot. It's an anticlimax, and a severe irritation to the people who where looking forward to kicking some alien tail with their buddies. there is, obviously, a reasonable limit to an alien swarm, and somebody does eventually have to kill the last one, but it should be after a well played fight, not because you hauled out some kind of bazooka and vaped the critters. Try dropping a few warnings that the fight is about to end as you go, along the lines of:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"the swarm was starting to thin, their numbers whittled away by the team's mass fire"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6: if you have an argument with somebody, keep it private. we don't want to hear about your grievances with another player while we're riding dragons across the sky.
Follow those and you and those around you should have a good time. However, you are your own player, and as such have your own style. You don't have to listen to me, and if you don't want to, there's nothing I can do about it.
That was "The Bible according to Switchblade", available on VHS, DVD or talking book from a Beginners advice forum near you. this product is not licensed or endorsed by anybody, and you can hurl it between your friends around to your heart's content. Switchblade won't care, it's all good publicity.
*******************
A few things other RPers have come up with:
If anyone is planning to be absent from and RPG for a length of time that will affect the storyline, make sure the RPG Moderator knows about it. Its only fair on the others after all.
For example in a fight scene, do not obliterate a character in one post. Post that you made a punch, not the contact... Some characters are quite capable of blocking a simple punch, so the actual contact should be in the post of the person you punched. Its all common sense really, and it has happend.
Make sure you read posts in the RPG you are participating in. You don't know if it
doesn't involve you until you have read it. Although some posts can be long, but the best way to avoid that is to contact the person that wrote it and get a version from word of mouth (or keyboard). This can be done by Instant Messanger, Yahoo or any other IM thingy out there.
Length of posts. Remember that poeple need detailed posts that have legible spelling and punctuation. I'm not saying you have to be a master storyteller, but rather than saying you went to the shops and brought a paper, explain how you got there, whic paper you brought, which shop you went to etc. Details. Obviously sometimes when time is short a smaller post is required, but this should be rare. The more you think about your posts, the better you will become at RPing.
remember to include a weakness in your Profiles and Bio's. It can be really annoying when someone is dodging all things thrown at them. As this breaks the god modding rule. Although it should also be said that if a weakness is viewable, that it should be remembered that it is a secret, as one wouldn't normally hav eit tattooed on their forehead. So don't use it on the first attack, as this also gets annoying. Role Play realistically!
The RPG Bible according to Switchblade
--------------------------------------
In my opinion, grammar, spelling and punctuation are very important in your posts. good spelling make a thread a lot easier to understand, and punctuation can be used extensively to set the mood of a thread. a fast-paced, action-packed post, such as one detailing a gunfight, would contain a number of short action-filled sentences. for example, a Jedi Lightsaber fight might go something like:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
He was already gone, running up the nearest wall at blinding speed. five blaster
bolts flashed towards him, but Murlon didn't even break stride. He leapt off the wall, deflected two of the bolts in mid-air, landed gracefully, and then leapt again to avoid a second fusillade. He hit the ceiling, bounced off it, and then swung his saber in a bright circle that intersected each and every one of the bolts, sending them searing through the air back towards the menacing droid. they impacted, and the behemoth fell over backwards with a crash.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Punctuation is very important in the descriptiveness of a thread. good RPing relies
heavily upon creating and maintaining the world your character(s) occupy, so you should take the time to set the scene, mood, and character where possible.
That's not to say you should be adjective-heavy. none of the esteemed readers of this magnificent forum are vaguely interested in laboriously picking their winding way through an endless labyrinthine maze of confusing, bamboozling, cryptic... you get the idea. likewise, while you should keep the language interesting and inventive, it is not good to mislead thy colleagues with superfluously intricate dialect birthed in thy stygian noggin. Keep it simple, but don't make it short and annoying, either.
Fonics ar a no-no, in my book, they just misleed peepol and mayk yoo tipe dum.
there are also some rules to follow if you want to avoid ticking people off:
1: Don't take over other people's characters, even in an indirect fashion. as a couple of examples, we will assume that "mr Richmond" is another player's character. An example of character napping would be, say, if Mr Richmond has been established as being somewhere else, such as his own office, and you post:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I pressed the intercom button, and asked Mr Richmond to come into my office. a few minutes later, the door opened, and he entered as ordered."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
maybe theuser had a reason for his character to be where he was, and you've just ruined that. a more acceptable example would be
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I pressed the Intercom button. "Mr Richmond?" I asked "Would you be so good as to come to my office please? +END POST+
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2: don't rapid fire. nobody wants a poster who just hangs around and doesn't contribute, despite a high post count. You should describe events, sure, but just events aren't interesting, we want to know what the character's thinking, and the consequences of his actions. here's a good example of a bad rapid fire post:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Pietro finally got up and found that there was noone in sight so decided to look around and in a matter of 10 seconds he found them and asked if he could help at all
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As you can see, there is bad spelling, no punctuation, no description, the post is just devoid of content. it is a post that says "I want my post count to go up by 1, but I can't be bothered to do anything meaningful". its called spamming, and anybody with more than two brain cells to rub together hates a spammer.
3: OOC (Out Of Character) posts can really annoy some people. they can be used for good reasons, such as providing additional information to other posters, or
complaining/explaining with regard to an unpopular post, but it should still be minimised. where possible, send as much OOC information via Private Message.
4: this may sound obvious, but it happens a lot. READ THE THREAD BEFORE STARTING TO POST. I've seen a few threads where somebody has come along and given a character sheet that has had sweet FA to do with the thread. a good example is from "you taste like sin" which involves a shop that sells little "fortune chocolates" to its ordinary, human customers.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name:Sabin SoulCatcher
Age:21
Bio: In the late 19th century the vampires were a threat they hunted humans as sheep. Sabin is the last of this legacy changed over time to accept the humans and come to treat them differently.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
which has absolutely no relation to the thread. so make sure you're posting something relevant and sane.
5: Don't nuke the bad guys without warning. While you are part of the thread, and your actions will influence it, you should be careful what you do with a mass fight. If the thread has spent a couple of pages building up towards, say, a bit where your character is part of a team infiltrating a base that has been infested by alien critters, and suddenly you are attacked by a huge mob of them, it will prove a bit annoying to the other members if they don't get a chance to participate in the fight before you pick up your super-mega-killer-zapp-gun and blow away the whole alien swarm in one shot. It's an anticlimax, and a severe irritation to the people who where looking forward to kicking some alien tail with their buddies. there is, obviously, a reasonable limit to an alien swarm, and somebody does eventually have to kill the last one, but it should be after a well played fight, not because you hauled out some kind of bazooka and vaped the critters. Try dropping a few warnings that the fight is about to end as you go, along the lines of:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"the swarm was starting to thin, their numbers whittled away by the team's mass fire"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6: if you have an argument with somebody, keep it private. we don't want to hear about your grievances with another player while we're riding dragons across the sky.
Follow those and you and those around you should have a good time. However, you are your own player, and as such have your own style. You don't have to listen to me, and if you don't want to, there's nothing I can do about it.
That was "The Bible according to Switchblade", available on VHS, DVD or talking book from a Beginners advice forum near you. this product is not licensed or endorsed by anybody, and you can hurl it between your friends around to your heart's content. Switchblade won't care, it's all good publicity.
*******************
A few things other RPers have come up with:
If anyone is planning to be absent from and RPG for a length of time that will affect the storyline, make sure the RPG Moderator knows about it. Its only fair on the others after all.
For example in a fight scene, do not obliterate a character in one post. Post that you made a punch, not the contact... Some characters are quite capable of blocking a simple punch, so the actual contact should be in the post of the person you punched. Its all common sense really, and it has happend.
Make sure you read posts in the RPG you are participating in. You don't know if it
doesn't involve you until you have read it. Although some posts can be long, but the best way to avoid that is to contact the person that wrote it and get a version from word of mouth (or keyboard). This can be done by Instant Messanger, Yahoo or any other IM thingy out there.
Length of posts. Remember that poeple need detailed posts that have legible spelling and punctuation. I'm not saying you have to be a master storyteller, but rather than saying you went to the shops and brought a paper, explain how you got there, whic paper you brought, which shop you went to etc. Details. Obviously sometimes when time is short a smaller post is required, but this should be rare. The more you think about your posts, the better you will become at RPing.
remember to include a weakness in your Profiles and Bio's. It can be really annoying when someone is dodging all things thrown at them. As this breaks the god modding rule. Although it should also be said that if a weakness is viewable, that it should be remembered that it is a secret, as one wouldn't normally hav eit tattooed on their forehead. So don't use it on the first attack, as this also gets annoying. Role Play realistically!
