I will be brutally honest here. Most of the role playing community can not stand low quality role plays, especially in the forum based communities. The most common types are one line role plays and speed based role plays. When I say speed based, I mean when a small group of people huddle around one role play and instantly respond and continuously refresh their pages to see a new response. They leave OOC (Out of Character) responses like; be right back, talk to you tomorrow, and the such. This kind of chatter really kills the quality of a role play; especially when the longest and most detailed post in the role play is five sentences long.

Now, please do not think I am bashing anyone. As a matter of fact, I am here to help. I understand, most of these people are new to the concept; if not most simply haven’t been interested or willing to spend time making an attempt at heightening their skills.

I am providing you with a few tips that should help you role play, get better standings with the community, as well as better ratings. (With our new rating system that is a huge bonus.) The following information will be summed up into a few categories. Please read through them all if you are big on one line role playing, or love hit that refresh button and practically chat role play.



Refresh, nothing, refresh, nothing, refresh, A POST! Quick Reply…
Yes, I used to be the same way, you see… I derived from a chat based community, and then got into forum based role playing. To be blunt, waiting for a response is a complete pain in the ass. So, instead of spamming that ol’ refresh button, what did I start to do? Easy, I began planning out a role play of my own, or another; I started joining other role plays. In fact I started chatting with people on the sites, as well as posting in other parts of the forums. Heck, in our own community we have an ENTIRE art community. So, if you like doodling, writing, or showing off your music/video, skills that’s one way to kill time. If that isn’t enough for you, start working on a post to respond to anyone who previously responded to you, so when someone does post a reply, you will only have to add a small amount to what you have typed up.

Another problem with everyone responding so fast is, you get lost. Honestly, it's easy for these speed role plays to jump to four or more pages in just a few hours time, that's at least twenty posts per page. That's eighty posts in four pages. It's hard to keep up with at a high rate of speed, for those who only post in a role play maybe three times a day. So remember to let others have a chance to respond to. It's not fun to come back to a whole page of two people interacting with each other, when five other people are in the same role play. It's easiest to just make a larger post and let someone else have a chance to respond to the situation, the respond again after some people have had some time.



Well, to be honest, so do I. However, a few paragraphs, maybe just one; that’s great. Most of the time all you need is one paragraph in a forum role play. So how do you go about doing such a thing? Easy, let’s say you are a one line role player. Let’s look at that one line first.

Evan laughed, “No, Kay; just call me later.”

With that one line, you get information that you need. Evan is telling someone to call him later; this is probably a response to a previous post. Although, where is the information we want? What is going on around him? Has the scenery changed some? Ask yourself a few questions about his location and what he is doing.

The sky had turned to shades of red and violets. Evan barely heard Kay mutter something out to him. He glanced back to Kay. “No, Kay; Just call me later.” He spoke, and turned back down the sidewalk, dodging gum someone had previously rid themselves of.

We’ve taken this little one line and turned it into a decent little post. It is no five star post, but it isn’t a waste of time, we see an actual interaction. Evan hears Kay, he responds, and then he walks off. This is just a small example, please try and expand some!



That is perfectly fine, look at the above example, we took a whole one minute more; and turned it into a longer line. Imagine what you could do if you already have multiple lines planned out! If you don’t like waiting or just don’t like spending time on things, then hop into the chat room or hop onto an instant messenger and start a chat role play. Not only are they fast paced, they are short; or long pending on how everyone gets into it.

One thing I always suggest, never use OOC in a role play. That is why we have an OOC forum, to allow you to make a thread for the OOC you may have in your role play.

As always, you can find extra help and tips at http://www.roleplayacademy.com.
Or, you can contact on of the staff for help as well!

*Applauds* See that's why you should be winning the vote Vex But i do have to say , one-liners really get on my nerves. I used to do it quite frequently but now I always add that extra few lines in there if i really have to do a one-liner ,so It's not just as bad. I remember from a previous article , something about using your character's five senses to write a deeper post. Something like that.
Anyways well done , great tips man

Thank you, and yes. Always use the senses, not only does it give a great way to add lines to the role play; it increases the overall quality. You get the chance to see and feel what the character does.

"Roleplay Your Way" -- if speed roleplay is your thing, that doesn't mean you shouldn't continue to enjoy it. If people aren't into it, they don't have to participate. However, instead of refreshing the page rampantly, perhaps you should look into subscribing to our RSS feed or go into your personal settings and enable the "email me when a thread I post in is responded to" option so you will automatically be notified when somebody responds! That way the time you spend refreshing can be put to better use thinking up ideas for making your post better. :)

Right, however I am offering some help for people who need it ^^. Options other than trying to hover over one role play or another. As I said, I'm not against anything really, I'm just offering help to increase the quality of such role plays.

Thanks for that Vex =D
It's really useful stuff, and even though most of it is kind of obvious, it's good to have someone point it out sometimes. I try to get long posts when I can, but most of the rps im in are full of people who post constantly, so the only way to keep up is to write short posts back. I'm actually thinking of quitting quite a few of them, to try to give myself more time.
But yeah, thanks. ^^

It's no problem ^^. Some times things aren't as obvious as they seem, some people truly don't think of a character's senses in a role play. They just think and feel what the character does.

Well done! I know exactly what you mean when you talk about those one-liners... it's like... going back to preschool after you've graduated from Harvard (or something along those general lines).

And when you mention the five senses, you seem to forget there are actually six senses. The last one is common sense. The proper ability to appreciate the five senses correctly. If it weren't for the sixth sense (common sense) the other five senses would be rather dull and boring.

The sixth sense: Common sense. (To be).

That is useful stuff, I've been guilty of one liners, thouse mostly in a lot of dead roleplays that seem more two sides. >.< But still.

I have to admit that I have been guilty of one liners and speed post when I first started roleplaying. That was quickly changed once I tried to get into my first trully literate roleplay. I learned so much from it.

I have not really been using the five sense in my rping much. I have to keep that in mind partially because my style of writng always seems to be mostly focused around the thoughts of a character.

While thoughts are a grand thing to have; you shouldn't over project them and give too much away. Using the senses can be a great way to express your character's mood or thoughts without giving away the thought as well.

Highly useful; the RP sites I've frequented previously were very high-speed/action-oriented, so I was kind of wondering how I would be able to adjust to having a minimum word limit, as opposed to a quasi-maximum where people would get hacked off if they had to read too much besides the bare bones of a character's actions. To be honest, if it weren't for the limit, I'd probably be guilty of one-lining quite a bit, at least in my first couple RPs; but if I have to write a paragraph just to post at all, it may as well be a good paragraph.