Posted by Kim on January 3, 2013, 4:54pm
My dearest friends,January is the time of year when most people think about bettering themselves and their lives. This year, we want you to consider also bettering your roleplay.
Good roleplay is electric. We're all looking for more of those characters that are so engaging that we can't tear ourselves away, even though it's far past our bedtimes and we have tests to be studying for. We're all yearning for that scene that is so engaging we don't even notice the approaching dawn and the waking songs of birds, and when it finally ends we find tears on our cheeks.
Roleplay can be just as much of a craft as any other kind of writing or acting. And like any craft, it can be learned, taught, practiced and honed to legendary proficiency! But unlike writing, roleplay is done with a group, and the decisions that we make affect how much fun our friends are having as well.
So over the next two months, we will be hosting a series of moderated discussions surrounding some of the central questions of RP as a craft. We aren't looking to preach one style of RP over another: We want to learn from you, and for you to learn from each other.
No matter our experience level, we can always get better -- and we can always use more of those truly spine-tinglingly excellent games. It is within our grasp to create them more often!
Our first discussion about the craft of RP will be on Saturday, January 12th, from 12 noon PST to 2PM. For those of you on the east coast, that's 3-5PM EST. Mark your calendars!
The first topic that we will be exploring is do players have a responsibility to make sure that everyone else is having fun, too? We'll ask whether those responsibilities are different for new and old players, and if that has implications for character creation as well.
Think about it, but don't answer now! Please join us in the chat next weekend. Bring your experiences, your consideration, and your curiosity. We can't wait to hear from RPers from many walks of game. We think we'll all become better RPers, and we'll become more close knit as a community.
Until then, let's kick things off with the following ice breakers:
1. What has helped you improve as a RPer in the past?
2. Did you have some embarrassing moments when you were just starting out? (Or maybe some more recent flubs!)
Posting your answers in the comments will help others feel more comfortable opening up as well!
Next: Tomorrow, 12 noon PST: Join us for a discussion on the craft of RP »
« Previous: 2013: Year of the group
Comments
Well I started rping around twelve years old, been at it for quite some time now. I've always been a creative person so I would just write stories and make characters because well I was bored half the time and it worked as an escapism tool. There were characters of all types and I just wanted to see where the story would go, how'd they get interwoven, how complex and far reaching they could get. Which is probably why I have a character like Draeval today who is as interwoven and far reaching as possible.
As time went on I started to get into chat based roleplay, I was with a crowd that liked to push themselves and their limits. The more developed our characters got, the more better I got at interacting with people and ultimately rping as a whole. I was able to create maps of key things that made a character a character, and could snap one into existence with what seemed like minimal time but quite a bit of forethought.
The more people I played with the better I became because really, you can only learn this craft by doing. Writing a single person story is nice and concise but once you add in other players there is an amount of give and take that has to be learned. It took me a long time to figure that one out!
I still flub, I still flounder, and sometimes it's hard to adapt to new people and new settings. But you just gotta keep your head up and keep trying, oh! And I love to surround myself with players that impress me and maybe even make me feel like a bad roleplayer because it pushes me to try and get better and uh...unflub.
As time went on I started to get into chat based roleplay, I was with a crowd that liked to push themselves and their limits. The more developed our characters got, the more better I got at interacting with people and ultimately rping as a whole. I was able to create maps of key things that made a character a character, and could snap one into existence with what seemed like minimal time but quite a bit of forethought.
The more people I played with the better I became because really, you can only learn this craft by doing. Writing a single person story is nice and concise but once you add in other players there is an amount of give and take that has to be learned. It took me a long time to figure that one out!
I still flub, I still flounder, and sometimes it's hard to adapt to new people and new settings. But you just gotta keep your head up and keep trying, oh! And I love to surround myself with players that impress me and maybe even make me feel like a bad roleplayer because it pushes me to try and get better and uh...unflub.
This sounds like a really wonderful idea! I can't wait to participate. When I first started out rping, I only roleplayed with a few irl friends on the yahoo forums, several of them had role played in the past, so I just learned from them. It also helped that I was around 17 when I started, so I already had some basic writing concepts down. When I moved to a place that wasn't a forum and more like a chat, I had the opposite problem of a lot of people, my posts were too long! I'd break the post limit five or six times writing just one post. It was a real problem 
When I first branched out into roleplaying with other people with my own original creations I have to admit a lot of them weren't unique or very creative, and I did have a lot of orphans. Though I think trial and error with those original creations helped me a lot in coming up with characters! That and finding a group of friends that was at about the same skill level as me. We learned together, and I still role-play with a lot of them to this day
When I first branched out into roleplaying with other people with my own original creations I have to admit a lot of them weren't unique or very creative, and I did have a lot of orphans. Though I think trial and error with those original creations helped me a lot in coming up with characters! That and finding a group of friends that was at about the same skill level as me. We learned together, and I still role-play with a lot of them to this day
I started RPing around 11 years of age, and I still cringe intensely thinking of the characters that I wrote. They all existed in very realistic continuities, but they had fairy princess style names that no one on the planet really has. They curtsied in every other post despite living in modern or futuristic settings. Every last one of them was an orphan. I would hit enter too soon in my excitement and split my posts into seven or eight separate lines, so that whoever was responding to me would get halfway through writing their response then have to restart when I altered my action. Over. and over. and over.
But I gradually got better due entirely to excellent role models. I was lucky enough to have stumbled into a community of very intelligent writers, who wrote beautiful and concise masterpieces and crafted characters with great depth, nuance and humility. They were so, so patient with silly little me, and when I saw their example I worked really hard to match it.
Many of those players are still much better than me, but I feel like I've come a million miles thanks to them. I don't know where I'd be now if they hadn't tolerated me and encouraged me until I could swim in the deep end with them.
But I gradually got better due entirely to excellent role models. I was lucky enough to have stumbled into a community of very intelligent writers, who wrote beautiful and concise masterpieces and crafted characters with great depth, nuance and humility. They were so, so patient with silly little me, and when I saw their example I worked really hard to match it.
Many of those players are still much better than me, but I feel like I've come a million miles thanks to them. I don't know where I'd be now if they hadn't tolerated me and encouraged me until I could swim in the deep end with them.
Nuclear_Dingoz
January 3, 2013
5:47pm
I've been rping for nearly eleven years now on and off, and I still think I have loads more to learn. The hardest thing I had to learn was giving away control to someone else during the rp, I'm ashamed to admit earlier I thought it should go they way I thought it should go... but then I realized how incredible it is when you don't have control, and your characters breathe and behave as their own people, mixing with other people's creations to create incredible stories that would never have come along with one person controlling everything.
So adapting to everyone else around me and loving other peoples characters, i believe has helped me the most. helped me try and make my characters and stories as enriching as those I have ran across. Some I doubt I will ever be good as, but I still enjoy it.