Posted by Kim on August 24, 2015, 12:15pm
With the Looking For RP forums now combined with the "Find RP" search tool, it's the perfect time for a refresher on how to take advantage of all of their amazing features!This will be a three part series, starting with how to propose a game concept by posting it on the Looking for RP Forum.
1. Go to the Looking For RP forum of your choice, and add a topic
Head over to the Looking For RP (All Ages) forum, or the Looking For RP (Adults Only) forum, and click the "Add Topic" button.2. Start with a title
Use descriptive titles for your Looking For RP topics. This is a rule on the forums, but it is especially critical in the Looking For RP forums! It is assumed that everyone posting to these forums is looking for RP partners in one form or another, so you do not need to title your posts "Looking for RP" or anything similar.Instead, choose a title that would give someone scanning the entire list of topics some idea of what they might find in yours. Some examples of great titles:
- Looking for evil wizards
- High fantasy dragon, looking for warriors
- Futuristic, loosely based on (scifi show)
- Dark RP with violent themes, time period flexible
- Many ideas, ranging from modern to scifi
For those who find their RP by browsing the forums, the title of a post may be all of the information available to decide if they are interested in opening and reading it. Show them that you aren't just creative - you're considerate, too! - by giving your topics excellent titles!
3. Plan your post
The "Find RP" tool borrows the first 500 characters of your post to use in search results, so make sure the start of your post clearly explains the premise of the RP that you want to do!This is a great idea even when trying to grab the attention of players who don't use the search tool, and instead browse the forums directly. Many people will only give you a paragraph to sound interesting before they move on.
So resist rambling, especially in the opening, and save your nitty gritty details for later in the post!
These are the only steps that are required to post a Looking For RP topic, but you can significantly increase the number of players who want to join - and make it more likely that those who want to join are good matches for the game - by completing the following steps as well.
4. Define the genre
Put a check in the box "Include genre information," and ta-da! The so called "genre sliders" will appear. There are three of them, each one positioning your game idea on a spectrum: Magic, technology, and combat.These sliders are very important to help people suggest characters that fit in your setting. For example, if your world doesn't have magic in it, you don't want someone to suggest a wizard for your game.
The sliders have a value of 0 to 100. Each time you move the slider along, it jumps 10 points ahead. Try picking a number that feels right for your world and move the slider to this area.
In this screenshot, I have set Magic to 70.
5. Writing and play styles
Hate super long posts? Love super long posts? Love or hate dice? Prefer groups over one-to-one RP? Think it all depends on the situation? Help players who like to play the same way as you find your game by defining the writing and play styles!Put a check in the box "Include play and writing style information" to reveal these options.
Play style
- Freeform: You do not require strict rules for dice and detailed character sheets. This RP is intended to 'go with the flow' and focuses primarily on writing a fun story together.
- Occasional dice use: Your RP will sometimes use dice in a mild form to complement the story. It's used as a tool to help make decisions or introduce random events, but the story functions without it. (How do I use dice?)
- Character sheets & strict mechanics: Your RP is ruled by a strict set of mechanics. Dice are a must to play in this game, and characters must have detailed sheets with statistics and information that is going to be utilized by the dice. All of it determines what your character can or can't do in the game.Please note...* This is not the same as requiring a detailed profile with a background on a character! The term 'character sheet' refers to the statistics of strength, speed, health, stamina and other mathematical values for dice usage. It also indicates a possible requirement to keep track of experience, inventory, abilities, skill proficiency and other such assets.
The amount and type of information is variable per game, but the list above is an indication of what is commonly expected.
You can also compare this to the Pokemon games: your Pokemon has statistics for its moves, strength, speed etc. It also equips items you give it and needs to be healed and regenerated regularly. Without these stats, it can't play in your game. The same idea applies in strict character sheets.
Writing style
- Concise: Posts in this game don't need to be long. They can be quick responses and are usually only one or two sentences long.
- Adjustable length: Posts in this game can be short and long. It doesn't really matter if it's one sentence or twenty sentences! It just needs to fit the situation and offer something the other player can respond to.
- Paragraphs required: Each post must be a minimum of a whole paragraph long. This usually means five sentences or more, although it's common for posts to be much larger than that in this style.
Other options
- Long term: The purpose of this game is to have the characters develop their personalities and relationships over multiple scenes and plots.
- One-off scene: There may be no immediate follow-up for new scenes in the near future. The characters part ways after this RP.
Pro Tip: Online Status
One of the options that people can choose to search by in the Find RP tool is "Only topics where the OP is active right now."If you'd like your topics to always appear in these searches while you are online, go to Dashboard > Your Settings. Under "Privacy Settings," change the dropdown to "Everyone" next to "can see when I am online."
Pro Tip: Attitude
Negativity scares people away, and if it's severe enough, may even cause your topic to be removed by moderators.Instead of writing a long list of pet peeves, things you hate, and stuff you think is stupid, just do the reverse -- make a list of what you ARE looking for, instead of what you aren't. No one likes to play with someone who will be gloomy all the time, or who they feel may judge or mock them. Put your best foot forward!
Pro Tip: Avoid putting a lot of different ideas in the same topic
Some people like to create big lists of all of their ideas, but this has the effect of making your post very long (so less likely to get fully read, to discover all the ideas), tends to make the topic title very vague ("Lots of RP ideas" vs. "Wizards needed for high adventure") so people who might be otherwise well suited to one of the ideas are less likely to click through, and prevents you from accurately making use of the genre sliders to tag your post with a setting.If your various ideas are significantly different from one another, and are sufficiently fleshed out to warrant their own posts, consider breaking your ideas into different topics.
Pro Tip: Don't be lazy
Most people want to feel that their RP partner will "pull their own weight" when it comes to inventing ideas to keep the RP going. If your topic contains no ideas for a RP, or even just asks people to go and read all of your character profiles without even providing a quick summary of each so they can pick and choose the ones they want to research, people are likely to assume that you won't pull your weight and ignore your topic.Put a little time and effort into your topic before you post it, and your response rate will be much healthier!
Comments
AWESOME! Yet again kim has made a great improvement
SarietheFaeAugust 24, 2015
3:46pm