RP Guide and Forum rules

Please follow the regular forum rules which exist forum wide:

FOUND HERE!

This is the Role-Play Corner forum.

Threads that belong here include:

Role-plays of the sorts that will be listed in the next post

The Character

A good character takes time. Sometimes lots, sometimes only a little. Here's the Basic Character sheet:

Username: (Helps you keep track of who's playing who.)
Character Name: (The name of the character that's being played.)
Description: (Always a good thing to have. Usually a picture, but sometimes a written description is a better choice)

and then you have the added parts for your character....
Age: (How old your character is. This is good to know.
Gender: (Helps with those situations that are sometimes awkward.)
Race: (In some fantasy settings, this may be important.)
Weapons: (Fighting Role Plays usually have these.)
Extras: (These are other things you'd like the other players to know. Not important, really, but who knows if you might need it?)
Bio: (The Biography of your character. If it's not required in the thread, it doesn't mean it's not important. It's usually a good idea to have one for all your characters, so they are easier to play. It doesn't have to be much, but it should be more than 3 sentences long.)

Also if you are doing a Pokemon RP you may need to add in your Pokemon Descriptions too.

Setting up a Role Play

This isn't a guide part, but here are some tips to setting up a Role Play:

1: Make sure that the story and the title are relevant to each other.
If you want to join an RP that says "OMFG DARKRAI" in the title and it turns out to be about little Pichus that aren't Darkrais, you're gonna be disappointed. But also make sure it's a creative title.

2: Storyline VS no Storyline.
Some RP's have a storyline--a basis that the RPers use. Like an apocalyptic one. Others don't. Most of the ones that don't have a storyline are Tavern, Inn, or school RP's. What should you choose? Which ever one you think you'd enjoy running more.

3: Character sheet.
See the character sheet in post 2? The Basic one? Use that. Then, add in whatever you'd like to it. What I have listed aren't the only choices, so be creative.

4: Members
Getting people to join may not be easy, but some role plays don't need lots of people to be good.

5: RULES
As a general rule, the rules laid down in an RP are sacred and should be adapted to, so long as it doesn't break Poketherapy's rules. Poketherapy's rules come before anything else you do, so if in doubt, follow the higher rankings. This means if it says right in the thread there are only so many people allowed, or it's a limited number, it stays that way!

Types of Role Play

(STILL BEING WORKED UPON)

--Literate Versus Semi Literate
Many Rpers prefer to be literate in their rping rather than semi. This is due to the fact they get a little more thrill from it.

~Example of Literate: Stalking quickly down the halls, Kima heard a soft noise behind her. She stopped, and called out softly, "Who's there?"

~Semi-Literate: Stalking down the halls, she hears a soft noise behind her. Stops, says quietly. "Who's there?"

See the difference? One reads a lot smoother, the other you have to say more of what you or the other person is doing. The better you type, the more likely someone will want to Role Play with you.

--Romance versus Fight
Romance and Fighting are the two most common type of role plays. However, they could be combined to make one heck of a Role Play.

~Romance example: Blushing softly, she ducked her head. "I....um...love you..." Her voice trailed off into a whisper as she turned and ran, embarrassed that she had confessed her love.

~Fighting example: Ducking the foot swung at her head, she threw a quick sequence of punches into his stomach.

Romance tends to have a lot more speaking and blushing, where as a fight is a lot more action oriented. Sometimes it's tricky to balance the two, but everyone finds their own happy medium.

--Elemental versus Superhero
Elemental and Superhero Role Plays are just as common as the High School Romance and the Fighting ones. Elemental tend to be more frequent on Forums, though. And usually, people tend to stay with the four most common elements: Water, Earth, Wind, Fire. However, anything that exists has an element. There's Chaos, Shadows, Light, Metal, Order, Neutral....anything can be an element. It's the core of an object.

Superheroes tend to have more over powered characters. The best way to make a super hero character is to have one main ability, a few natural flaws, a few natural strengths, and one main weakness. Otherwise, your character comes out too over powered and no one wants to role play with you any more.

--Powers Versus Normal
A power role play (one with super powers, or supernatural abilities) are about as frequent as ones with normal teenagers. (more to come on this one.)

--Why God-Modding is Bad
No One likes a god mod character. It's an overpowered character that is way to extreme. You can't kill them, is overpowered, no weaknesses, and a general annoyance to most role plays. If your character seems too extreme, then it probably is.

--PG-13 ONLY!
Cybering is not only against Poketherapy's Rules, it's just stupid and annoying. DON'T DO IT AT ALL. You just seem really childish when you do that. Everything on Poketherapy needs to be kid friendly. We will have users under the age of 13 so set a good example.

--Keeping your Role Play Alive
Keep it interesting. If you're playing an NPC (Non Playable/Player Character) then you should probably have different events happen almost immediately after your players figure out the last one.

--Turn-Based versus Regular Posting
Turn-Based is usually what you see in Table top games. You take your turn, another person does, so on and so forth until it's your turn again and it starts all over. Regular posting is just posting a reply regardless of who just posted, except yourself.

--Other Types of Role Play
Forum role play isn't the only kind of Role Play out there. There's Live Action (frequently called LARP or Boffing depending on your area) and Table Top (dice rolling D&D stuff)
If you do live action (as in actually dressing up and going out into the world) feel free to post up photos ^w^ We love to see enthusiasm!
Hell, even make a Youtube video!