Roleplay Guidelines

[Selena]

Common Guidelines

• "What is known OOC is not known IC."
  What this means is that if you find something out about a character by talking to their player, reading another thread, or by reading their profile that does not mean that your character knows what you know. A character only knows what they've experienced through their "life experiences." In other words they only know what you've actually put them though, or things that you have agreed to with other players. So if a character has never met another character then they aren't likely to know their name. Of course there are exceptions to this rule, such as if they heard something from someone else, or picked up their name from talking to another character.
  
  
• "Separating IC from OOC."
  This saying as many different meanings to it, and it all varies on the situation, but most people can agree on a few basic guidelines under this topic. For example, you have a quarrel with someone's character during a roleplay and their character does something to yours that you do not like. This does not give you the right to blow up on the other person and go "RAWR, RAWR, RAWR I HATE YOU!" This is a major NO in roleplay etiquette. The correct way to go about this is to either A) Lay out your rules of roleplay beforehand, or B) Speak to them calmly that you don't like how a certain situation is turning out. Usually the other person will be understanding, and if they aren't and get all pissy about it then speak to an administrator about the problem, or simply end the roleplay and refuse to continue.
  
  
• "Use Third Person Past Tense while roleplaying."
  There are a few different ways that I have seen people roleplaying, one of which includes the dreaded "First Person", and another of which is the preferred and easily understood "Third Person." Some people do a combination of the two which is very hard to read and very confusing for the brain. Also, try to always use the "Past Tense" form of words in your posts. It makes it easier to read and to reply to. A few examples below of both good and bad "posts."
  
  
  Third Person Past
  
  "Hinata flattened herself to the ground, breathing heavily as she stared through the branches at her pursuer."
  
  
  Third Person Present
  
  "Hinata flattens herself to the ground, staring through the branches at her pursuer and breathing heavily."
  
  
  First Person Past
  
  "I flattened myself to the ground, breathing heavily as I stared through the branches at my pursuer."
  
  
  First Person Present
  
  I flatten myself to the ground, staring through the branches at my pursuer and breathing heavily.
  
  
  Exceptions
  
  Now then. You probably noticed that despite the different "Past/Present Tense" version that I used the words that ended with "ing" tend to stay the same. This is because of the way they are positioned in the sentences. In some cases you would want to turn the verb "Running" into "Run." For example: "She was Running across the field" to "She had run across the field", depending on the situation you may also end up using "She ran across the field." With words such as these all you can really do is to use your best judgment and what grammar syntax you know.
  
  
• "Provide adequate content to respond to."
  What I've noticed a lot here at Grand Shinobi Legends is that people will often-times put little into their posts that others can easily respond to. This is often the biggest "oop-sie" that roleplayers tend to make when they are new at roleplaying, but occasionally the more experienced make this slip-up, even I have before. One of the easiest ways to fix this is to add in dialogue that opens up an opportunity for another character to easily respond to. For Example:
  
  Bad: Hinata walked into the Ramen Shop and said "Get me a bowl of Miso Soup."
  
  Good: Hinata wandered through the area near the Ramen Shop, realizing that she was having difficulties finding it. After a bit more searching she stopped in the middle of the path, looking a bit bewildered. "But I thought the Ramen Shop was around here somewhere..." She spoke loud enough for those around her to hear, then she called out, hoping someone would offer her help. "Could someone point me in the direction of the Ramen Shop?"
  
  In a way "providing adequate content" can be related to "providing lots of detail." There are many things that a responder to my post could use to help make their post better. I have a little saying I use sometimes: "A post is only as good as the post before it." Meaning that if the previous post was short with nothing to reply to then the next person in line is going to have difficulties coming up with a good post for the next person to reply to. Thus making a chain of a quick-to-die thread.
  
  Now then, back to the examples. In the "Bad" example the only good choice of action would be for the Shop Owner to pass her bowl of Miso Soup. It leaves no room for interactions from others, and if others do interact it may end up being a bit awkward, both for the Original poster and the reactor.
  
  In the "Good" example there are many things to respond to.
  -Someone may be wondering why she was wandering through multiple areas over the course of a short-time period.
  -The dialogue also provides an excellent opportunity to reply to, as Dialogue is often the easiest way to provide content, and to respond to in a literate way.
  -If someone is standing in the middle of a walkway looking confused then someone else is bound to stop and ask her if she was lost, or if she was okay.
  
  As you can see the Good example not only offers more roleplay opportunities, but the Bad example doesn't really have any. Following this guidelines is one of the key parts to becoming a good roleplayer. You can have a flowery post describing every little detail around you and it may be considered a sucky and crappy post because the person after you can only get a small paragraph of response because you didn't offer adequate chances to respond to.