One of the things that gave me pause when considering the move to Chrome from Firefox was having to give up the wide range of add-ons that the Mozilla service provides. But while Chrome can’t yet match Firefox’s huge extension ecosystem, it’s rapidly catching up, and many of my favorite “must-have” Firefox add-ons are are now available as Chrome extensions, or at least have Chrome equivalents. Here are the five Chrome extensions that I wouldn’t be without in the course of my daily blogging work:

Read the full (original) article here: 5 Must-have Chrome Extensions for Writers and Bloggers/

Where to Start

First and foremost, you must decide what sort of character you are creating. This will depend largely on the roleplay. For example, you wouldn’t create a space pirate in a Tolkien-esque fantasy roleplay. So you need to ask yourself a few questions:

• Is my character of a race that ‘fits in’ with the roleplay?
• Will my character be a lead character or a supporting one?
• What role does my character have?

Of course, these are very basic questions to ask, but they allow an initial outline idea of your character. By answering these questions, you’re on the way to creating an awesome character.

Names

For myself, I start by naming my character. Certain races have expected naming conventions, but that doesn’t always matter – your character’s name needs to simply fit in with the roleplay.

Names can be difficult to make up, but help is available! Check out the following links to name generators:

• Seventh Sanctum has a good name generator section, with many generators for all kinds of situations
• Dragon’s Mark is another service that offers multiple name generators, focusing mostly on fantasy names
• Another good name generator can be found at fantasyrole.org which again focuses on fantasy names
• PHP Geek is another site with a name generator. It’s pretty basic and works based on your own information – surname, first name, mother’s maiden name and the name of the city you were born in. Of course, you don’t have to enter real information though.

Others exist, of course, and you can use Google to search for them.

Appearance

Your character’s appearance is important. Often it can be a reflection of your character’s personality, an indication of their position, or simply what they look like. A few things should be considered:

• How tall is your character?
• What build? Slim, muscular, chubby, some alien-looking abomination?
• What does their face look like? Hair colour, eye colour, ugly, pretty, handsome?
• What clothes do they wear?
• How does your character ‘carry’ themselves? Do they seem confident, nervous, arrogant, flirtatious? This is often directly linked to the character’s personality.

Personality

A character’s personality will determine their of the world, how they interact with others, and predominantly, how you play the character. A personality can also change over time, as in real life. Often, the character’s history will link into their personality – perhaps being the cause of the personality.

• What is the general attitude of your character? Fun-loving, happy, enthusiastic, serious, stoic, loud, bashful?
• In what way do they view others? Friends, acquaintances, enemies?
• How does your character view the world they are in?
• What standards/morals/principals does your character have?
• Is your character liked by others? Immediately, after getting to know them, not at all?
• What is your character motivated by?

History

A character’s history is one of the keystones in character creation. It is what ties everything together. Much like a real person, a roleplay character will inevitably be moulded by the events in their life. The history of a character can also explain why there are where they are in a roleplay. A few things to consider, when writing a character’s history:

• What was their childhood like?
• What events in their childhood helped to shape them, if any?
• What have they spent their life doing up to this point?
• Are there any influential people they’ve met ‘along the way’?
• What jobs has the character had?
• What trials helped to make the character stronger, weaker, less trusting etc?
• Has your character moved from their home town?
• If so, why?
• If not, why?

Some people like to have a very detailed history, some don’t. The choice is up to you. If you write a history, try to keep at least to the key points in their life that led them to ‘now’.

Abilities and Equipment

A character’s ability and equipment needs to again fit in with the roleplay. Your character wouldn’t have a phaser in a fantasy roleplay, typically. A few things, without going into specifics, should be considered:

• Do the abilities and equipment match the roleplay?
• Are the strength of my character’s abilities too strong? (After all, you don’t want to god mod.)
• Where did the character learn these abilities? Do they match up to the history?
• Do the abilities coincide with other character points? (For example, would a 15 year old really have mastered a technique that takes fifty years to do so?)
• What equipment does my character have?
• For what purpose?
• How many of each item?
• Is it realistic for my character to carry all this equipment?
• How does the equipment assist in my character’s role?
• Are these abilities and equipment necessary, or do I just want an ‘uber character of doom’?

Part 2

We’ve looked at the basics of creating a character here. But, we’re not quite finished yet… We need to keep balance. A balance character is generally more interesting, and helps to suspend disbelief.

In the second part of this tutorial, we will look at how to maintain balance in your characters.

Lord Saladin is an experienced veteran RolePlayer and wordsmith, and long-time tutor of RolePlay and writing. He runs his own proof-reading business and has been published on several websites for his articles about sales and business.

It is with noble sentiments that bad literature gets written.

André Gide says it pretty well here: We sometimes want to focus on the aspects of RolePlaying aside from the literary, which is perfectly acceptable. Yet, it does sometimes mean our writing suffers as a result. So, we must be entirely certain that we make words just as important as everything else.

Why?

Communication and understanding. To put it in a nutshell. As writers engaging in a collaborative effort to write a story, it is of utmost importance that we all understand what it is the other has written. How else can we expect the next person who posts to understand what just happened, and then continue the story in a coherent manner? Can we at all?

But remember also that we write not only for ourselves, as a RolePlayer, and our group of writers; but also for people who may be reading what we have spent valuable time and effort in creating. That’s an important fact to remember, one we often forget – even myself.

So…

Be sure to write in a way that makes sense, follows a logic that most can understand, and most importantly, make it an enjoyable read. What are the easiest ways to do that?

• Spelling: Spell your words out in full. There’s no need for ‘txt-tlk’ at all. I know that, perhaps, it will save you a quarter of a second here or there, but not everyone uses the same ‘code’ for writing shorthand. This means that your readers may have to spend a few minutes deciphering exactly what you mean; this will detract from the post itself – meaning your actions, narrative, character development etc could quite easily go unnoticed.
• Grammar and Punctuation: Grammar – which includes punctuation – adds to the meaning of your words. Emphasis can be placed in certain areas through punctuation, grammar and sentence structure can help convey the feeling of your character and their mindset or personality of your character better than the words themselves sometimes. Now, I don’t know the origin of this, but Miyumi quoted the following on RolePlay Gateway:

  Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy–will you let me be yours? Gloria

  And, in comparison (also from the same quote):

  Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Gloria

  Notice, if you will, firstly that the words and their order are identical. Then take note of the entirely different meaning and tone. That’s the importance of grammar.

In Conclusion

The above two points are only the very basics of the importance of words. Utilising the above will certainly put you soundly on your way to creating exciting, gripping and easily read, easily played RolePlays.

I know a lot of new RolePlayers, and young writers, feel that spelling and grammar are unimportant when RolePlaying, as this is ‘only the internet’ and just some harmless fun. We need to remember, though, that just as the writing is collaborative, so too is the fun made by each of us working together. A lack of understanding, like trying to decipher post-graduate algebra, can take the fun away. Unless you’re a mathematician with a post-graduate degree.

Help is Available Though

No-one expects each RolePlayer to have perfect spelling and grammar, or to be able to maintain a high level at all times. We all make mistakes, which is perfectly fine. The following tools and methods can help you improve, though.

• Word Processors: Microsoft Word, or any other word processor with a spelling and grammar check will make sure that most errors are removed from your posts. Type your posts first there, and copy/paste into your forum.
• Mozilla Firefox: This awesome, free, web browser has built-in spell checkers though (as far as I’m aware) no grammar checker. Its default is American English, but you can easily install most languages, meaning it doesn’t matter in what language you are writing (unless made up), you know you’re spelling things correctly. It can be downloaded here.
• Proof Reading: Read through what you’ve written after you’re finished and before you hit ‘Submit.’ You will likely spot errors. Then read it aloud, you’ll notice grammar and punctuation mistakes. Read it once more. Then maybe let a friend or family member read your post – they’ll notice things you may have missed. Now you can hit the ‘Submit’ button with a secure knowledge that your post makes sense and is easily read.
• Time and Effort: Writing a 500-word post in five minutes may well mean you have a pretty decent typing speed, but likely you’re going lack the quality of someone who takes ten, or even fifteen minutes to write the same amount. If you’re going to write something, do it well. People can generally see when effort has been made, and they will respect that from you. Spending a little extra time, making that bit more effort, will also make your work all the better.

Lord Saladin is an experienced veteran RolePlayer and wordsmith, and long-time tutor of RolePlay and writing. He runs his own proof-reading business and has been published on several websites for his articles about sales and business.

 
When starting a forum based roleplay, char sheets are often used to screen players and identify godmoders while preventing Mary Sues. When dueling, a character sheet helps set limitations on “power level” to prevent powergaming. When casually roleplaying multiple characters, good character sheets can help the player manage the various personalities.

Whatever your reason for using a character sheet, make sure that the sheet you use is functional. If it is meant for other players to read, make it concise and informative. If it is for personal reference, make it detailed and well organized. If it is for player screening, make sure you follow the GM’s rules. If you are the GM, make sure that you set a sheet that you actually care about. While a character’s vocation is important, their hair and eye color are often not. An aside to GMs: if you require a character sheet, don’t use it just for screening. Integrate bits and pieces of characters’ histories into the plot.

I generally partake in freeform RPs and thus rarely read others’ character profiles (except for research). I highly doubt that every player takes the time to read mine, so my primary reason is to create a comprehensive reference for my own use. My characters are often of much varied temperaments than I, so roleplaying “what I know” is a rarity. I build my character sheet the same way that I build my character: given a set of personality traits, I produce an anecdotal history that explains why my character has those traits. Alternatively, given an event in my character’s biography I determine the effects on their psyche and demeanor. This reference is a way for me to tell myself what things make up my character, so that when he or she or it discovers a new situation, I can use their anecdotal past to determine their reaction. Just writing down that reference helps me ingrain it, so I might not even return to it.

A criticism I often receive after making that statement calls me out as bland and “too rational, preventing my characters from ever being spontaneous”. If you feel like making that criticism then you are missing my point: if my character is spontaneous or has the potential for spontaneity I will explain that potential via some event or sequence of events in their life. So when he risks his life to save a little girl, he will be thinking back to his sister’s death that no one risked their life to prevent. Or he will be going out of his way to impress a maiden, fooling himself and others that he is chivalrous. When my character leads a battalion into the fray, my history will reflect either childhood board game endeavors leading to a profound understanding of strategy, or perhaps a con-artisan streak leading up to the commanding rank. Or perhaps he will have spent his entire life working towards the position, and has finally reached it.

What these anecdotes allow me to do is extrapolate other details from the situation. Is my character ecstatic or anxious? Is he confident or doubtful? Is he emotionally stable or unstable? Rather than make a random guess I am able to use my character reference to portray truer actions, ones that will certainly affect the course of the roleplay. More importantly, this reference prevents me from living vicariously through my characters and overlaying my own psyche with their abilities. It prevents my lover from forgiving his cheating significant other, and prevents my brute from solving a simple puzzle.

Of course, the character reference is only relevent or useful if you actually use it. If the roleplay is a duel with no plot then the only relevant details are fighting style, ability to taunt, and attributes of the body, then only those features should go on the sheet. If the relevant character is meant to be an extension of yourself then only the physical appearance (for the benefit of others) is a necessary aspect of the sheet. Whatever your purpose for creating a character sheet for a forum roleplay, make sure that your sheet is targeted for a specific audience (or yourself) and that if fulfills whatever purpose you set out for it.

There are various ways to create a World. In most novels, the world is narrow, detailed like a corridor through which the storyline paths. And yet, many of us have read Tolkien, or Brust, or scores of other authors who persist with the same world. We as forum roleplayers seek to create worlds post-by-post, thread-by-thread. We gather several friends, toss together enough information to have a setting, drop a character each into the fray, create a bit of history, and starting moving forwards and outwards.

Let me first caution you, from my own experience: stick to a single time period, and only move forward. I have partaken in a world so fluidly created that we moved back and forth through history (at the same time) days, months, decades, centuries, millenia. We created three concurrent planes of existance, at least four ranks of beings, and five times as many characters as we had players. Had we need one person, this would have prospered and grown. Unfortunately, there were too many nuances to keep track of in space and in time. At some point, any world will become too thick for many players to keep it free of contradictions.

Let us say that you seek to create a world, and start with a continent, a town, a day, and some characters. You are a group of perhaps ten avid writers, all looking to participate, all with equal pull as to which direction thir world moves in. One way to go about it is to write, each creating lore, writing quests, beasts, enemies, events, and more of the like. STOP. Do not do this. You are not the lone writer, the Tolkein who has free reign of his domain. Passive Writing, where your work is simply added to that of your fellows, is a killer of worlds. Your work does not engage your fellows, nor are they necessitated to read it, given that they too are people, with lives, with limited time, and are currently busy with their own Passive Writing. In analogy, if all of you start bricking out a building from different places with no rules as to how your bricks should be stacked, your building will either have many holes, several clashes between builders, or no structural integrity if you all manage to still come together.

I prescribe Active Roleplaying.

We are all used to in-character topics where we all throw together our PCs and write NPCs in as we need them. This is, of course, Active Roleplaying, as it requires your fellow players to take heed of your character’s actions, and of any world-fleshing information you include among those actions. But how many times can you ‘Kill the Were Bear’ or ‘Save the Princess’ or ‘Recover the Golden Goblet’ before you and your fellows are bored and want to move on to another world, or maybe their girlfriends? Active Roleplaying doesn’t always have to be quests, and most importantly doesn’t always have to involve PCs.

One mode of Active Roleplaying that involves only NPCs is what I call Conversation Topics. There is little description (of the scenery, at least) and there is almost no action (apart from “stood” or “sat”). If your world was Rome, there could be a Conversation Topic at the Forum or at the Senate. If you were following Aladdin in Agrabah, a good place for a Conversation Topic might be the local bazaar. In Alexandria, the Lighthouse Library would serve well. In the small town of Sleepy Grove a perfect Conversation Topic would be the Town Hall Meeting. In a college setting, an engaging discussion class would work. Given a corporation, a meeting of the Board of Directors. At a high school, the PTA meeting. In a Fraternity, a Regional or National Conference. Etc. For any setting except for the travels of a quest, there is likely some location where several NPCs are likely to meet.

Use them. Rather than starting off with the “Slay the Dragon” quest, take to the town hall, where all sorts of mundane and otherwise matters are likely to be discussed. One man will whine about someone’s urine on his white fence. Another will comment about how ugly that white fence is anyway. If nothing else, it is a place to create a one-time or even recurring character with a personality that you want to test out. It also sets the mood to have Gerta, mother of three, bust through the doors yelling and screaming about bandits who kidnapped her son and demand the town’s harvest for his safe return, where failure to comply will involve taking the grain by force anyway. Now you have a quest to work with, with a proper setup. Your fellows were playing equally useless townsmen until this quest came about, but now all know about it. When they go to the new topic you’ve created for the quest they wont be surprised: they will be ready, eager, and thinking of what their NPC will say when the heroes come back.

NPC Conversation topics can be revisited over and over again, or can be abandoned with no loss and no harm done. They give players a chance to stay active in the world between quests, while at the same time serving as spawning point for quests. As the world grows, they become perfect starting points for players new to the world. Most importantly, they give all of the players a chance to practice roleplaying with little consequence – a rowdy townsman can always be bounced out of the meeting, while a boring senator can always just stop talking. And if the annoying teacher gets hit by a car, well, not only was that a good solution to a failed experiment, but it also spawned a murder mystery that a bunch of dumb kids are likely to investigate.

NPC Conversation topics aren’t purly theoretical – I have tried them, and in my limited experience they have worked wonders. If you have a world to try them out, please do, and give me your insights and your suceess (or otherwise) stories. Good luck, and happy world building!

In its most basic form, roleplaying is just that: playing a role other than yourself. The most prevalent and well known form of this would be acting, where someone becomes a character either for the stage or screen. They study the character, his/her personality, accent, thoughts and then throughout the film/play, the actor essentially ‘is’ that character. Another place we can see roleplaying, and perhaps in its most ‘innocent’ form, is in childsplay – a perfect example would be when kids play ‘house.’

However, what is more pertinent to this site is Play-By-Post Online Roleplaying. This is generally played on forums, and takes upon itself a role similar to acting, in that you are taking the role of a character (or several) and throughout the roleplay you essentially become that character. The major difference, of course, is that online roleplaying is performed through writing, rather than playing the actions yourself.

Writing the varying aspects of your character with other players who also are writing their character, you work together to create a story. Each character’s actions and individual histories come together and through each post your story develops. It also is the job of each player to not only write their character, but also the environment in which the characters are in. In this sense, then, online roleplaying could very well be more aptly defined as ‘collaborative creative writing.’

You are working in collaboration with other writers to write creatively – each person taking the point of view of one character in your story. That is what Play-By-Post Online Roleplaying truly is.

I find the majority of writers dichotomized into two groups, neither of which produces ideal works, in my subjective opinion. I generally class myself to the second group, but am aiming for the idyllic middle ground. The first group are the minimalists: not only do they not avoid adverbs but they also cut adjectives, simplify actions, reduce nouns, and produce very skeletal projects. The finished works are functional, yes, but very dry. An entire book in this style is horribly boring to read through, and roleplay posts, while shorter, are often too short, lacking, and interesting. To escape this minimalism, many other writers go too far, and fall into the second group: fluffers. Nouns are padded with strings of adjectives, adjectives and verbs are modified by adverbs, active sentences are cushioned by passive ones, and the result is so fat that is has lost all semblance to a dog and looks more like the inside of a pillow. The second group also over-extends metaphors ;]

One problem with finding the middle ground is determining what is “bad” from the second group. The minimalists pretty much set the lower bound, but how fluffy is too fluffy? A generally accepted rule, according to such books as Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style is functionality. Every action, every adjective, every description, all need to either serve some purpose now, or in the case of roleplaying need to be usable for some purpose later. Of course, noticing that there are mountains behind the lake might have little significance to your character in a roleplay, but another player might make use of them and direct the action right up their slopes. However, taking the time to describe the particular colors of the rising peaks, the contours of the snow coverage, or even the random orientation of caves is a step into the fluff: the other players who plan to make use of those elements can just as easily describe them on their time. In solo works, if those details aren’t on the agenda, don’t toss them in. Another good rule for minimizing local fluff is to reduce the quantity of “ly” adverbs within any piece. any “ly” adverb modified verb can be replaced by a more applicable and descriptive verb. “Gently touching” can be replaced with “caressing”, “lightly laughing” can be replaced with “giggling”, “jumping forcefully” is easily swapped out for “leaping” or even “lunging”, depending on direction.

I have found that the best way to convey information while giving a good image of the scene is by writing out the mood associated with the actions, while allowing for each reader to see the scene with their own details. Any details left out will be filled in by the readers’ imaginations, each one differently, based on their general preconceptions of the detail at hand and the scene surrounding that detail. This allows for the reader to do much of the work describing static elements, giving the author the freedom to describe only the necessary and relevant dynamic ones.

Over the course of some of my attempts at teaching the arts of roleplaying I’ve developed a bare-bones process to take bare-bones actions and get them to a healthier “fleshed out” middle ground. I’ve since modified the process, but it is important to realize that I am working from the bottom up (rather than cutting from the top down). This can be applied to any piece of creative writing, but I will be describing it for a single roleplaying post. Most pieces of writing can be broken up into scenes or even parts of scenes.

1. Set a goal. Some writers write first, and their goal comes to them, while others brainstorm to get to the goal. The brainstormers will have an easy task: simply come up with the end result for this particular snippet of writing. Stream of consciousness writers, at least those who decide to make use of this process, might need to write a draft (which will then be tossed out, unfortunately), and will use that draft to develop their goal.
2. Take several steps from start to finish. The previous post or the previous scene set the starting point for this scene, and you have just determined a goal, which is the end to this post or scene. Now write out several actions, in the “bare-bones” manner, which will bring the situation from the starting state to the ending state. Play around with the actions, develop and order, determine the actors (your played character, any non-played characters, or even the environment).
3. Get some context to smooth those actions out. Your actions are steps, but writing should flow. So, those actions need to get modified and where appropriate, those jumps need to become lunges. To do this, imagine the scene (Durr, right? Bear with me.). Imagine what is happening, and imagine it first from the point of view of the omniscient author. You know all, you see all, you know what is playing out and how. Now imagine it from the point of view of the actors: what do they see and how do they feel about the actions, and how do their perspectives differ from yours? Now imagine yourself an audience member, watching the action unfold. You don’t yet know the goal, so how is the action making you feel at each checkpoint? Imagine yourself another player’s character, seeing it all happen. Most likely, that is who you are writing for.
4. Smooth and refine the surface. The imagination exercise gave you more than just one perspective on your own scene, and it is up to you to determine whose perspective you adapt it to. If the scene is meant to change the mind of another player’s character, include those details which might, based on that character’s personality, influence him or her. If the scene is meant to instill awe or inspiration, or to simply give some background on your character, describe from the point of view of an audience member (or omniscient author), focusing on those facets that you want associated with your character’s personality.

Example: The dragon rose above the water-line and hovered on an aerial within arrow-shot or the pirate ship, bearing her upon its back. Her wet skin glistened in the sunlight as she knocked an arrow. When the pirates did the same, she could not help but tense up. Still, she furrowed her brow and warned them. “You will lose much more than your cargo if you let your arrows fly our way!”

The goal here is to have an image in your mind: most often a beautiful, bright colored, well defined image. However, every reader’s imagination is different, so it is important to closely define only the most important features. These are the actions and their descriptions, more so than the nouns. You can tell from my example that the character is confident but realistic (and aware of her mortality) as she furrowed her brow but tensed anyway, respectively. The day is sunny due to the glistening of her skin, and the pirates are not standing idly, waiting for her to finish her actions or monologue. However, this scene lacks many fluffy details which every person can come up with themselves. While I envisioned the character as a blond with straight hair, someone else might envision her as a curly redhead: either way she is toned enough to wield a bow. The pirates have a ship, and while I imagined a single mast boat and the pirates in some generic tri-cornered hats, the important point is that they are on an open deck and also have bows. If you imagined The Black Pearl and its crew carrying bows, the important elements of the scene are unchanged.

I attempted to convey many particular elements without writing them out directly and without over-describing them. Say you want to describe a bright and sunny day, because those are great for heroics, but you don’t want to say “bright and sunny day”, because that is telling. Instead, you want to give an image of something that is often associated with a bright and sunny day, like droplets of the babbling brook shimmering under the sun. It is a happy image, set most likely in a forest, and anyone who knows what a babbling brook might be will try and imagine it, applying that setting to whatever else you write immediately afterward. This is showing: you are showing somewhat what a sunny day feels like, and they are imagining the rest of the sunny day. What your character looks like is up to you, but that she has knocked an arrow makes the reader think she is lithe. Replacing “furrowed her brow” with “pursed her lips” might her a more appealing and feminine image, intrinsically conveying a possible ponytail and an I-take-no-attitude expression in her eyes (without saying either of those!). Of course, the particular details someone imagines will be different, but even if her hair isn’t in a ponytail, the expression on her face and the perception of her personality are likely to be the same among most readers.

You want to do this for every scene. Swimming through the water, rising out of the waves, confronting the ship, avoiding the arrows, breaking the mast, etc. However, for repeated actions, like gliding beneath the water, the particular elements of the mood need only be described once: simply mentioning a repeat of the situation will bring the same image back into the readers’ minds.

Returning to the topic of bare bones vs. fluff: just as there are adverbs that produce excess fluff, there are dull nouns and verbs and adjectives which produce no mental image whatsoever, or the wrong mental image. In dialogue, “she said” and “she announced” and “she prepared” are very dull verbs (although, “saying” and “announcing” carry very different tones).

Things like “circular room” or “in the castle” or “examining each man” are very dull adjectives/nouns/verbs. Yes, they convey an action, a location, and they do so adequately. However, they have no color or mood and thus produce no (or the wrong) mental images. Adding something like “Her voice had been sultry, almost arousing, but now they could hear the poison behind it” would most certainly illustrate a Queens change in tone while doling out the “but should you fail me, your death will be slow and painful” portion of her speech. This sets the mood, makes the reader feel like one of the persons being addressed, and gives insight to the Queen’s character and agenda. So even if she speaks with very regal structure and vocabulary, adding color to her tones will make her speech more enticing to read. I know I didn’t give you much on that example, but try to imagine that scene anyway. How much could you fill in? (Let me know if it worked!)

One of the descriptors for this article is the word “functional”, and I should return to it. Every descriptive element should serve some purpose: the sultry almost arousing voice that carried poisonous tones does well to describe the queen’s personality. However, taking a paragraph to describe the Queens bosom and buttock along with her facial expressions along the same lines of sultry and arousing but somehow dangerous would be fluff, because the task at hand had already been accomplished, and more concisely to boot. So, with every detail, ask yourself if the detail accomplishes something new, or can be replaced with something both more condensed and more telling.

Problems stemming from inflexibility:

• Overwhelming Content – when the prerequisite to becoming involved is reading a large quantity of material, that can form a barrier to players who would otherwise participate.
• Obstructing Contributions – holding an iron fist around what is occurring in the story, and maintaining a regimental environment, obstructs opportunities for others to contribute. 
• Poor Integration – a closed or tedious environment can make it awkward for those who are trying to involve themselves in the story.

To provide an example of the above items, imagine a story involving a group of friends playing a criminal, a victim, and a police officer. The setting is the criminal’s cellar, where he tortures his victim until the police officer comes and arrests him, rescuing the victim. This restricts the ways a fourth party could become involved, making for an example of poor integration. The basement environment is not conducive to people just wandering on in and participating. As an outsider, I would feel as though there was nothing to contribute without railroading the story.

Tools for developing flexibility:

• Open Writing – write in such a way that it is easy for people to respond to you, such as posing a question to nobody in particular or walking up to a vendor in a market square and inquiring of the local news.
• Length and Style – keep your posts of relatively average length, so others don’t spend an excessive amount of time reading them. By the same token, don’t make them too short, otherwise you won’t be able to keep their interest. Also write in a style that is familiar, and not overly obtuse. A narrative, third-person style seems to be the most typical.
• Acknowledging Others – when another person posts, do what you can to acknowledge what they’ve written; for example, noticing they’ve entered the area or responding to something they’ve said.
• Maintaining a Summary – just a short list of what has happened thus far, so people can quickly know what is happening or, if they have a poor memory, can recall it with relative easy.
• Foreshadowing - provide all the involved parties a sense of direction, so when they sit down to write they have focus. This can be done either by foreshadowing in the actual writing or by less discrete methods such as providing a summary of objectives, both short and long term, that is readily available for everyone to read.
• Autonomy - don’t let your character become trapped in a situation where you’re utterly reliant on other players if you wish to move forward.

Metagaming is the act of over-reaching the bounds of the character. Past the introduction, given that a player controls only their own character, any changes to environment or plot occur as perceptions of that character. Metagaming, then, is overstepping a character’s perceptions and tapping into the knowledge and power of the player (who knows more and can do more). This can either be used correctly, or incorrectly, with an incredibly fine line between the extremes.

Incorrect (read: wholly unacceptable) uses of metagaming are generally deemed Godmoding. Here the player assumes a level of control far above and beyond what the other players have agreed to use. Examples of godmoding include, but are not limited to, speaking/acting for others’ characters, directly describing the damage (physical or emotional) caused to others’ characters, giving one’s own character godlike/super powers without due explanation, acting (inexplicably) off of others’ characters’ thoughts, matching a character’s strengths to others’ characters’ weaknesses, etc. I am trying to cast metagaming in a neutral light, and am associating the things we generally hate about it with Godmoding instead. So, bear with me.

Proper (read: socially acceptable) metagaming requires a very tight hold on what not to do. For example, it is possible to act on another character’s thoughts, but to do so without godmoding. By giving due explanation of one’s own character’s perception of another character’s personality and body language in a situation, the metagamer’s character can discern the basic gist of the thoughts, if they are easily deducible. In this way, the player, who knows the other character’s thoughts, hones their character’s perception in the right direction, so that their character also gains that information. This is usually done to move along plot, but should not used to gain an unfair advantage in a confrontational situation without proper explanation. This is a very common and often overlooked form of metagaming, used to streamline a roleplay. The fact that this is often overlooked (as in, critically) should show that this really is an acceptable form of metagaming.

Now onto some techniques that employ/are-classed-as metagaming (but don’t ruin the game if used with care).

“Leading” is the process of moving the action of a scenario forward by some short interval without explicitly acting out all portions of the scene. It is called “leading” precisely because the “leader” makes some logical leap forward, thus prompting all other players to make the same leap to arrive at the new point in time. Leading is used to skip over elements like necessary but known dialogue, occurrences which are inexplicable now but can be explained later, etc. It is necessary that all skipped events be mentioned by the leader, and be easy for others to understand how the missed events could have happened. Leading hinges on cooperation from other players to accept the leap forward so as to avoid contradicting the leader.

If the player leading requires that others’ character perform in some way that is precedented and natural to their personality, then the leader may imply that those characters did indeed perform in just that, or a similar manner. Note that the leader may only imply that the events were accomplished, not how (in terms of specific dialogue and actions) the other characters accomplished them. The other players would then pick up on the missed events, and fill their own portions in to match the leader’s plot. Leading should only be used in the case that an RP is dying off, or moving in some nonsensical direction. Any use of leading should first be discussed with other players, and then be well thought out, as it is irreversible!

“Pushing” is akin to leaving breadcrumbs for other players to pick up. While leading is reliant on active metagaming, pushing makes use of passive metagaming. Often times the action of the roleplay might stagnate, or take a turn towards the degenerate. Times like those, but also when a player just wants to develop their character, or introduce the next “act” of the plot, pushing is a non-invasive control technique.

The actual work done to “push” something is akin to “hooking“: the player pushing writes a series of details that at the present moment are unused. It is different from hooking in that hooks are open ended details, added to give players a starting point. The details left as a result of pushing are quite the opposite: they are all tied together by a common goal or consequence, whichever goal or consequence the “pusher” intends.

The technique of pushing has some merits and pros over other control techniques. For one, it is non-invasive, meaning that it does not require any direct control of other characters. As well, it leaves the actual work up to other players, while giving them the illusion that they came up with the goal or consequence that results. This garners interests, and makes an RP longer lived.

Passive metagaming may come into play if the pusher describes a new element as “within reach” or “easily observable” by some specific character, prompting them to act on the element. This is passive because the other players do not have to respond. Contrarily, active metagaming, like that used in leading, requires that other players respond with complementary action to fill in the time skip.

Of course, pushing is difficult to pull off correctly. Since the trail of breadcrumb details is only clear in your mind, players might misinterpret the desired consequence, and go off in another direction altogether. Players might also not use all breadcrumb details present. The trail left might be too loose, and thus hard to follow, or it might be too tight and obvious, and consequently boring. However, aside from the last variant, all of the possible outcomes of pushing involve very dynamic play, making pushing worthwhile to try out!

The moral behind metagaming is to find a comfortable median. Active metagaming is more invasive, but more direct, thus more likely to accomplish what you might see necessary. Passive metagaming is not invasive, but is very indirect, so while other players will not be unhappy, the metagaming is less likely to accomplish the intended task. The level of appropriate metagaming should always be decided by any group of roleplayers collaborating on a roleplay, so that players who wish to make use of advanced control techniques know where their limits lie.

Having read this guide, you might wonder why “leading” is active, while “pushing” is passive, and why the terminologies aren’t switched around. This is due in part to the origination of the concepts (separately), and the terminology was applied to them without due consideration. However, another argument is that when given a push, players have a choice on whether to move or resist, while when being led, the choices are to follow or to hold a mutiny (mutinies are rather difficult in the sense of a roleplay). Regardless of terminology, the lessons lie in active and passive metagaming, so take that away with you if you take nothing else.

So try your hand (with others’ permission) at socially acceptable metagaming, and let me know how you fair via comments or emails!

Whether you create or you participate in an RP, there may be certain facts, concepts, plot points, etc, all of which you know and plan to employ, but no one else knows. These things known only to you I will describe as the Private Sector. On the other hand are details which are shared with the other players, whether through the OOC, IC dialogue or thought, or IC description, and are thus part of the Public Sector.

But the big question is, for each particular detail, Where should it go? Should it stay hidden for now (until it becomes necessary), and thus be private, or should it be divulged and thus made public? There is no overarching answer, as each detail is different, each RP is different, and every group of roleplayers is different. This discussion will focus on a process that can be helpful in deciding what to do with a particular detail. Or rather, what the act of revealing that detail will accomplish.

First, when revealing a detail, there must be a reason and thus something to be gained. Rather than just “going for it”, take a step back. What can be gained from revealing this little bit of information? It might be a bit of secret biography about your character, or a plot point you have in mind that you haven’t gotten to yet. By letting this bit be known, what benefits can you or your RP profit from? Will this detail guide fellow roleplayers in the direction you intend? Will the new revelation give players a burst of interest and get the RP back on its feet? There are many pointed questions; many well defined benefits for any particular detail which might cement your decision.

But, where something is gained, something else is lost. Every time you fill a hole with a detail, you prevent someone else from doing it. A roleplay is a joint story being told, and everyone wants to tell it. If you reveal this detail prematurely, you add constraints. Will players become frustrated? Will this detail counter any development they might have been trying to foster? Knowing what you lose is just as important as what you gain.

Most importantly, you must consider the risks of either revealing something or keeping it hidden. If you reveal the necessary details one by one, and not all together, than there is always the chance that someone else will contradict the next private detail of yours in line, with some detail of their own. Would you be able to work around it? Would it completely ruin your privately-defined character, or destroy your planned plot? If yes, would you be able to bounce back? How flexible are your ideas? If they are rigid and linear, then revealing the private sector is a security measure. Everyone knows what will happen, and they have to play out how happens. Or if your ideas are vague or so far removed that they would work in almost any situation, revealing them now might remove the excitement they incite later. Maybe saving that kind of details until the right moment will be your key to an amazing collaboration. Always guess at how much your ideas can suffer from the actions of someone else, and always judge your decision to divulge them on your own ability to adapt to changes.

Keep the idea of the public-and-private sectors in mind as you roleplay, and comment here (or email me) with insights you develop as a result!