This page has been placed in a separate area of the links for this reason: it is not a mandatory read. It's a guide for those who don't know much - or in some cases, anything at all - about roleplaying. However, even if you've been at it for a while now and have a fairly good understanding, you might want to have a brief read anyways, just so you can see what kind of formatting we expect on the board - although, it is generally outlined in the Posting section of the Rules.

First of all, What IS Roleplaying? If you haven't got the slightest clue whatsoever, then it's moderately difficult to explain. Although, if you know what it is, it doesn't seem like it should be so hard, because Roleplaying is actually a very easy concept to learn, understand, and adapt to.

When explaining the idea to newbies, they've frequently come out with the same statement: So, it's kind of like acting? The short answer is yes. Essentially, an online Role-Playing Game is just that - through your textual descriptions, though, dialogue, you play your selected role - or in many cases, roles. The twist is that, unless you decide to take up the role of a Canon Character , you create your own role.

That is, you create your character.

Using the specified Application Template, you fill in all of the required areas to create a well thought-out (and hopefully believable if not likeable) person. Not only do you give them a name, age, and general appearance. You also give them likes, dislikes, ambitions and fears, a full personality, and even a history.

It's only after this initial creation process that the actual roleplaying begins. In your posting (I speak of forum-based RPGs such as this one, although there are uncountable ones that are held in chatrooms), you describe their surroundings, actions, give away secret thoughts for us players to know, but which other characters could only begin to hazard a guess at. You uphold your characters' side of conversation with others, interact in any way you can think of.

So, now that you know what roleplaying is, the next logical step is How do I do it?

I already said essentially what you do. The how is more about format, which differs from board to chatroom to board. The way you roleplay in a chatroom is infinitely different from the way you do in posted messages like this. So even if you've been chat-RPing for years, it would be a good idea to read this next section and make sure you note the differences.

First of all, unless you're writing out a dream-sequence or other alternate-consciousness style post, we ask that you keep all of your posting Past Tense. So instead of typing something like:

Josephine walks into the sitting room, and looks around at all of the lush decoration that had been set up for the party, utterly astonished.

You should be writing more along the lines of:

As Josephine entered the sitting room, she glanced about her at the decorations that had been spread throughout the spacious area in anticipation of the party that evening. The sight took her breath away, and left in its place a soft smile on her face.

A small variation when you look at it, for it's only really the active verbs that have to be changed around. But trust me, it makes a big difference. Constant useage of a particular tense is vital to the flow and general "feel" of an RP. Things look a mess when you have things thrown together.

Which brings us to the next formatting topic; Point of View.

However badly things will look and irritate you if you mix tenses, it will be infinitely worse when you start mixing the I' and She/He's. No, I don't mean transexuals. Although you are portraying your character, we still ask that you keep to the third-person point of view. Reverting to the previous example, rather than:

I walked into the sitting room, which had been lushly decorated in my absense, and shock overwhelmed me so that I had to take a seat in a deep crushed-velvet armchair.

You should have:

Josephine walked into the sitting room, which had been lushly decorated in her absense, and shock overwhelmed her so that she felt the immediate need to seat herself as her knees buckled beneath her frame.

Again, it's not a big difference at first glance, but when you really get into posting... Well, here's an example of how things would read and how the flow gets disrupted:


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It had been a long day, and all Tina wanted to do was go rest. Classes had seemed to drag on and on, and that was bad enough without the fact that she'd slept less than three hours the previous night. And it was only Monday! She had no idea what she was supposed to do for the rest of the week if her insomnia continued.

The plan had been to march straight through the common room and seek out her dormitory for a much-needed catnap, but alas; plans rarely ever go according to schedule. Instead, with both feet inside and the door only just closed behind her, Tina heard the shrill cry of her best friend Kate as she squealed in delight.

'Oh no...' she thought to herself, 'sounds like Kate's in gossip-mode. At this rate, I'm never going to get some sleep!

Nevertheless, she turned and fixed a smile on her face as she approached her friend.


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Wow, the day's just FLYing past so far. I can hardly believe that Monday is already over as I plop down onto one of the sofas in the Common Room. The female touch had been added months ago when the semester started, but I'm starting to get bored with it. Things, while they look girly enough, are getting drab and boring.

This is where my mind resides for a brief moment.

But soon I just have to return to the super-juicy gossip! I can't BELIEVE what Trisha told me during last period, and it's simply killing me that there's nobody to share it with yet!

But hark, to what person doth yonder door squeak?

I turn, and am simply delighted when I see Tina standing there. I notice that she cringes slightly at my squeal, but that's nothing new. We've been friends forEVER and I know by now that when I get excited my voice can get to a nails-on-chalkboard frequency. But then she turns and smiles at me, and I grin widely in return, half-skipping half-dancing over to where she stands.

"Oh my GOD, Tina, you won't BELIEVE what Trisha told me!" I say, hardly able to keep the excitement out of my voice. But gossiping is no fun when it's one-sided, so I pause and wait for Tina to drool more than I am at the smell of fresh blackmail material.


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Now, while the second post is longer, it's still lower-quality, don't you think? That alone would be enough to irritate me, but the mixing of tense and Point of view irks me to no end. And if it's this bad after just two posts, imagine what it would be like if you had five people in one thread, each using varying combinations of tense and POV.

No, it certainly is not a happy thought.

So, now that you know basically how to roleplay and the general form of flow, there are a couple other formatting issues to remember.

First, we ask that you keep your descriptions and general text without any formatting. That is, don't throw in bold, italics, and underlines unless it's to emphasize something, or use unrequired punctuation such as " or **s (and especially don't post your actions in the form of *jumps up and down*. Write it all out, and in the proper posting format!). Like I did in all of the examples.

When your character is speaking, then use quotation marks. If they're thinking, you can bold or italicize their thought-dialogue. And if you stick a snippet of a quote from another person in the thread, bold/italicize that as well so that it stands out and we know that it's not your character speaking or part of your description.

An example of this last part:

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Rose was incredulous. She shouldn't believe what Eric was saying to her. It's over? After he said those two fateful words, the silence dragged out, and she didn't know what to say. What had happened? Why what this happening to her? Again?

But Eric's next words made everything crystal clear, even as it made her heart explode in her chest.

'I've been seeing someone else, Rosie. And I love her. It's not that I don't love you, really... It's just that I love her more, you know?'

He had to be kidding. 'You know?' No she didn't know, damnit, that's why they were there in the first place!

"S.. W.. Eric..."

She was unable to speak, couldn't even think straight. But finally, one word fought through the lump that was gathering in her throat, and struggled free of her twisted tongue: "Who?!"

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That's basically it, although if you have any other questions you can feel free to contact us. I'll finish off with a few terms that you'll see frequently so you should know what they mean...

Canon Character / Canon: In this case, a character from the Harry Potter books.

Original Character / OC: A character you create. Somebody NOT in the books.

ISO: : This stands for In Search Of: . If you see it in a topic title, it means that the person who posted the topic is looking for somebody in particular and wants them to reply. You'll often have topic titles with a subject, and then "ISO: Anyone". This is just calling attention to the fact that it's an open thread at which anybody can reply.

ATTN: This one stands for Attention! If it's just ATTN, then it just means it's relatively important and everyone should read it. If there's a name/username after it, then it's used like the ISO - they want that person in particular to look at it.

OPEN: If a topic title is followed by (Open!), then it just means that the topic isn't meant for anybody in particular to reply to, that it's open to everyone.