Welcome to Role Play Gateway (RPG). As we all know, it’s hardly ever easy to get started in a community. It only gets harder to do so when the community grows.

This guide was made to keep things as easy as possible for you. There are several small parts to this guide. Just keep in mind, it is well worth the read. It will teach you how to use this site to your best advantage. Just click one of the following links to be taken directly to that section.

How to find a role play.
How to start and join a role play.
The out of character (OOC) parts of the site.
How to manage and keep up with your posts and topics.

As always, if you have questions beyond this guide you can always ask in our help section. Or message a member of our staff. We are all glad to help in any way possible.

The best place to get started in this site is in the Out of Character section of the forums. People tend to post their new role play ideas there, also; they’ll hold their sign ups for new role plays.

This doesn’t mean that is always the case, sometimes it is easier just to go into your favorite genre and look over what people have started.

If you aren’t sure whether you can join or not, just private message one of the role players, typically the person who started the role play (the first poster). You can always just click the PM icon under their name and avatar (picture).

There is also a nifty feature at the top of our website. It is called New Topics. It gives you the names and links of the five most recent topics on this website. That allows you to catch new role plays as they just start.

Joining a role play can be rather simple. Everyone has their own rules. As long as you abide by those rules you should be fine. We have plenty of content and ideas lurking around this site to help you get your own characters started and stories for you to come up with. So joining a role play can be simple, just find the one you like submit your character sheet or story; whichever is preferred. Then, you just have to hope to get in, so always check up on it!

Starting a role play is just about as easy as finding a role play; the trick is to get members to play. Here are a few tips to help get you started.

First, post in the OOC area. Give people a chance to discuss some ideas around the role post your ideas or story and rules up first. Then let people join or talk about it. This also becomes extremely useful after you start the role play. Why is that? People won’t have to private message back and forth or interrupt the role play with OOC comments. They’ll have a place already made to discuss and ask questions about what is going on.

Make sure to always post a bit of story and history about your role play, along with a goal to be solved or attained. That way people will feel that they can accomplish something throughout your role play.

Another useful tip is to always provide that extra content, images, cool art that you might have made. That kind of stuff can go a long way when drawing people in. Everyone loves content, and easy to get to content. So when it’s all in one nice area, they tend to want to join that over the role plays that mix playing, OOC, and content all together.

So now you’ve joined or started your first role play. Now comes the hard part, waiting for people to join or post. That is why our site has so many other sections. We have a general chat, a place to write and submit art. We also have our own chat room. So please, in the mean time, always use them! We have fun contests and forum games going on at all times. That’s one way to get to know and meet other great people in our large community!

Our site has a few great features that have been built into it. We’ll go over the most used three. All three are right at the top of our site, just above the first forum, Welcome Desk.

View unanswered posts - This allows you to look at any posts that have not been replied to yet. One quick way of getting to role plays that have just been started up.

View new posts - Much like unanswered, this one displays posts sorted by age. The newest replies or posts are displayed first. This lets you catch up on the latest stuff going on anywhere on the site.

View active topics - This one allows you to view posts sorted by how active they have been. Most recently active posts show up first.

These are just a few features you can use. The best way to keep up with your posts is to subscribe to them. You can set up your profile (User Control Panel) to send email alerts when people have replied to something you have posted or responded to. That way you can quickly get back to them.