Greetings, hello, and so on

Hey!

I'm new to this site, but have been on the Earth for a while. Writing is my thing, and collaborative, text-based role-play has always appealed to me in theory, although I haven't had much success with it in practice. Hopefully that will change! I've read a lot, so any reference to a book I will probably catch--any reference to a television show I probably won't.

I'm not really that degenerate, nor am I a telepath.

Any advice on how to get started would be appreciated. So far it seems like the OOC is the best place to LFG, so I guess I'm headed there.

Hey there, degenerate_telepath! Love the username. I'm Sato (ViceVersus), a longtime member of this community, and I am pleased to welcome you to RolePlayGateway! If you're looking for collaborative, text-based roleplaying then this is definitely the place to be. We have a lot of tools available for storytellers looking to flesh out their worlds and learn more about our craft.

I am neither a vice, nor a versus, so I think we understand each other on that level. What are some of your favorite books?

Anyways, I'm happy to give you some links and advice on where to start. We are a large forum and a large website with a lot of stuff going on, so it can be a little overwhelming when you first start out.

The best place to look for roleplays that are open and looking for characters is the Roleplayers Wanted forum. This is where GMs of existing roleplays come to sell their wares, and fill specific character slots. You'll see a link to their RP, a brief pitch on why you should be interested in their story, and be able to check things out from there.

If you're looking to start a roleplay, then you're going to want to check out the Interest Check forum. This is where GMs go when they are thinking about creating a roleplay, or they have a story idea, but they aren't sure if there's anyone else out there who would be interested. It's a brainstorming place, an area for GMs to come together and trade points on each others' ideas.

You can also browse the Roleplays tab at the top of the page and look for the listed roleplays that way. That gives you direct access to the OOC threads and the character creation page.

If you're looking to sink your teeth into the community here and get to know some folks, check out the Community section of the forums, accessible through the main RPG Forum index. You're here in the Welcome Desk, obviously, where new users drop by to say hello. The Creative Realm is an awesome place to share original works of poetry, prose, music, and art. The Discussion & Debate forum is always popping with interesting threads, and, of course, the Main Lobby and our Forum Games section is where a lot of users come to blow off some steam.

Hope that helps get you started! Feel free to drop by any of our chat systems and introduce yourself. We're a mostly friendly bunch.

I'll see you around! :)

-VV

Thanks, ViceVersus (Sato)! Glad to meet a fellow writer--if you've been here for six years it must be an interesting and engaging place to be.

As for books, my tastes tend towards speculative science fiction, with Greg Egan and Neal Stephenson being two authors I'm particularly devoted to. Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell, was one of my favorite books long before it was made into a movie. I read anything I can get my hands on, though, which has lately included Paul Auster's Book of Illusions and Philip K. Dick's Our Friends from Frolix 8. Existence, by David Brin, was also quite good. Originally from the States, I also like me some Melville, Poe, Thoreau and Hawthorne.

In books as well as role-playing, I try to stay away from large, intellectual property franchises, so I won't be too exited about Star Wars/Marvel/Pokemon/Warhammer fan-fiction type games, preferring orignal worlds where new ideas, plots, and settings can still be established. I'm obsessed with the idea of dimensional travel, so obviously I was excited to see the "Multiverse" setting. I love the potential for creative anarchy there seems to be with play-by-post games, as opposed to rule-based table-top or computer RPGs. Echoing what someone else said in another topic here, the less combat-oriented a game is, the more interesting I will find it to be.

Those links will be helpful. I would rather be a player in someone else's game before I try to start my own, and I'd honestly rather interact in-character than OOC at this point, so I doubt if I will dive too deep into the community forums, but The Creative Realm sounds cool. See you around!