Mastering Roleplay
We are now going to assume you’ve roleplayed for some time and are just looking for a new way to spice things up, or for some little things you could do better. Here’s a few tips and tricks for roleplayers who have already taken a hint, and just want to know more. Read up! See if you learn anything useful.
Show Versus Tell
Showing versus telling is a major part of writing in general, and roleplay is no exception. Now, the question here is “how do I show instead of tell?” which can be somewhat tricky to answer effectively.
When you are telling someone, you are explaining things as boringly as possible. For example:
To ease yourself into show versus tell, don’t go the easy route and just explain what happens. “The girl trips” is about as aesthetically pleasing as a glob of unused paint. Yes it does have a simpleness to it that someone can enjoy, but there is so much untapped potential in that little glob. Paint a picture with your words, and show us what really happens instead of explaining it.
Okay “the girl runs in fear, trips and hurts her hand”. Great. How? Why? Where? When? What happens when that happens? This phrase can be expanded to showing the fear instead of stating it exists, simply by explaining all the details related to what makes fear visible or recognizable. “Sweat boils to the surface of her skin in fat droplets stinking of emotion while the girl speeds forward, eyes wide, pupils tight when she glances over her shoulder from time to time. She never sees the tree root coming. Her shoe catches against the tree root sending her toppling over, gravity pulling her downwards with her momentum. Her great enemy once again besting her ability to stand upright, damned gravity. Her face contorts into a wince as her hands impact the ground, bloody patches rushing to the surface where the damage was the worst. She pulls them protectively to her chest, and looks back again, tears forming in her eyes. Her heart raced.”
Now what did we add to this? We never said “fear” yet you probably gathered it. We never said trips, but you see it happen. The fear responses that she does show the fear, so people get into the story more and pick up the mood. The joke about gravity pulls us deeper, allowing us empathy with what is happening. The wince shows pain, the blood shows damage and being hurt, the tears show more fear, more pain. We could have told you all this, but isn’t letting you experience it a little more fun?
This is better storytelling, and better storytelling makes a partner interested in what you have to say. Paint a picture, cover all the bases, and you can create a storyline that interacts with you and makes people pay attention. Hope that explains Showing over Telling!
P.S. As far as telling, When you need a quick shorthand explanation don’t be afraid to use it. Showing makes for a fun read, but there are some situations better glossed over. For speed, because they aren’t worth your attention and will take away from the impact, or because we don’t really need to experience a bathroom break.
Description
Part of showing is the description, and here’s where we show you what you can cover in a post. A few ideas if you will, to flesh out the universe you’ve plopped into and show your interaction with it. You’ll definitely recognize this first bit of a line up: Sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste. So these will be pretty obvious but play with them.
Sight: You can tell a lot with those eyes of yours, and this is the most common one to tackle. You’ll see things happen, colors, people, trouble, danger. So you probably have this one well mastered. Most people are going to pull the ye olde “they saw the person” thing to push a roleplay onwards.
Hearing:Another common one. You’ll overhear conversations, or hear battle or anything else that’s going on. But other than that, listen to the environment as well as the people. Do you hear sudden silence in the woodland? Do you hear the wind blowing over your ears, or maybe hear the footsteps of people going around you. You can hear a lot in an area, and it lets your character take a break from interacting with people and lets the setting flesh out.
✍ Tip: Always flesh a setting out slowly so people can feel more at ease with the transition. An instant change can make people shut out or uncomfortable, and a lot of roleplayers actually start out with a fairly blank slate in mind. If you change the setting too quickly, you might kill a setting idea someone wanted, or make yourself look stupid.
Smell: This is an underused one. You see it sometimes, smelling something coming. Scent is tied to memory and taste, it’s extremely strong whether we recognize that or not, and it can give a new level to a roleplay. Smelling the distant sea carried on the wind? Smelling food, or money, or blood, or death, or any of the millions of scents in the world is going to jog something in your audience’s heads and you want to take advantage of that. This is a game of subtle manipulation, don’t miss a chance to grab someone and shake them by their memories.
Touch:This one is fun too. Breezes, soft fabric, hair under fingertips, sunshine on your skin, metal, leather, cotton, liquid, sand, needles, electricity, gummy, sticky, thick, gooey, solid, textured; all of these things define something special. They all bring out a reaction and there’s thousands more where that came from. Let your character touch the world instead of breezing through it as if they were a ghost. Nothing is useless if used correctly!
Taste: This one is usually not touched as nearly as much as it should. Food is one thing, yes delicious food, but think of what it’s like to go into a city or a farm. You can taste the oil and smog, you can understand the flavor of rubber burning, and well… the usual barnyard stenches. Like kaiila dung to be honest, and hay. Disgusting, but you’re going to have to deal with it. It’s connected with smell so much you might as well taste what you’ve sniffed sometimes.Don’t leave this one out when there’s so much to play with, and food. Don’t just say the food tastes great, detail it. Is it savory? Rich? Does it taste sweet or spicy? Maybe it’s sour and floury with a hint of nutmeg. Expand your mental fields and explain everything!
Other senses play a part too, so don’t forget to give them some love in situations that can give you an opening for them. If you’re falling, use your sense of equilibrium or balance. If you’re overheating cover that. Have fun but show how things effect your character.
More things about description! Nope you can go farther. You don’t have to stick to only describing what’s happening, don’t forget you have room for character development. What are they feeling, maybe show it on their face or add some omniscient storytelling to how they feel.
A final warning, while detail is good, don’t overdo it. It can be sickening to try and read 2 paragraphs of text which amount to a character flipping their hair. Make sure your description is relevant and somewhat along the lines of what your partner is writing. If they go for exposition, by all means enjoy yourself, but if they look a little more towards meat rather than gravy, follow suit (but feel free to pour on some gravy here and there. Who knows they might be waiting for you to let this gravy train get started)
Unique Style and Syntax
This is super advanced stuff, I warn you you may not be happy with us about any of what we are about to write…
Break the rules of English. But wait! Break them with intelligence and reason!
See how we have been just shattering rules left and right up there? There’s incomplete sentences, and terrible grasp of just about everything, and we are using words weirdly and yet here’s the major point: There’s a good chance that it’s just made this writing a little less dry, and more fun to read without being mind-blowingly painful to withstand.
This is where the “advanced” comes in, where you find the cleft between perfect grammar of the exacting science of the written word and the creativity of shaking things up a little by not writing exactly like everyone else. This is dangerous, and it requires an innate knowledge of how to represent things in a clear concise manner that still sounds like it makes sense, without being overtly annoying about your rule breaking.
It’s a lot of guess work.
Another thing that helps is developing your own style. Style is all about how you write. One person might write their posts with a distinctly formal tone, who uses excessively long terminology and jargon in order to demonstrate a superiority over others. Others could write only what they gotta and use slang a ton. These tones should fit the character you are portraying.
If you are roleplaying a character who is uptight and royal, using the tone of a street-brat for your writing isn’t going to fly very easily. It effects how people see you and see your character. Aim for quirks that don’t make people want to strangle you. Contractions are good for slummy but removing them turns your “I don’t like it” into a “I do not like it.” Take it a step farther and it’s a “I do not favor this particular item.” Suddenly it sounds painfully formal, or in the opposite direction, “Ain’t gunna like it.”
A nice thing to do is keep language separate from writing. While some might seep over, keep the extreme use of slang, missing vowels, and other choppy accent use to the actual character talking. Your normal writing should be clear and easy to understand at all points in time to let people respond easier. To stand out, I personally enjoy giving personification to items that shouldn’t have it. I talk about how the drop of a hat seem sad, or if I am focusing on a shoe for instance, I explain it’s movement and then add the rest of the character as something as boring as some dirt on it. It catches people’s eye to see a sneaker sneaking along the pavement with a girl close behind and very much attached.
Articles (the, a, stuff like that) can be dropped for more painfully obtuse writing. It can be hard to read, but it also comes off as very sophisticated and intelligent. It takes a lot to be able to skip words. An example; “Blue eyes slipped over black stone, seeing the road twist and turn away from view. Stepping forth, soldier with a sword over shoulder and sadness in gait, lone traveler progressed along.” Gosh but it can be confusing sometimes. It might be nice just to pepper some here and there to catch the eye.
How and When to Insert Storyline Expansions
By storyline expansion I mean a plot point or idea that could lead to further roleplay. Be it the NPC who steals your purse, or the sudden memory and burst of tears. A lot of the time newer roleplayers will be terrified of jumping on board and coming up with ideas, or so gung-ho they’ll miss that one is already in session and speed right through. So here’s the delicate art of engaging your Plot Point sensors.
When a plot point is going, you have a set goal in mind for the characters. Something is happening (occasionally too much nothing), and they have to do something to stop it from happening. This means you have plenty to write about, lots to engage, and funny things to do. You can add smaller plot points here; if you are on a quest for a locket, right about now would be a good time to be distracted by the cat running past to set up a quick simple chase scene to complicate things and possibly bring you to the right stand. It’ll fill in the blanks, little guys like this are fine and dandy practically whenever. Although you’ll want to avoid them in heavy character developing scenes as they can draw attention away from the emotions involved. Unless that’s your reason for doing them.
If you’re following a major overarcing plot (which could be anything from “TODAY WE EAT LUNCH!” to “Defeat the 12 Tributary Cities of Ar”) and you want to introduce another one, that is where issues come into play. You’re stepping on toes. When a large well created plot is happening, you can’t introduce another one without making the first one less important. Everyone wants to tell their own story, their own idea, but we have to take turns or this is going to turn into some sort of riot.
Wait for a lull, it’s simple. If the plot has reached a point where nothing good is happening drop some hints for a future arc, mini-plot your way to the next step, and continue this one. Now that you’ve dropped previous hints, your idea will flow better. Don’t be a jerk about it, if no one wants to do it they’ll try to change the topic and you should try to ease into it again later. If it keeps happening, ask about it, if you get a bored response, drop it. Be civil, it may be a great idea, but save it for another time. It’s okay to not do it! When the plot is over though is a great time to start another one.
Honestly it’s as simple as taking turns, and not shoving. Share the storyline, the plot, and the spotlight and you’ll be a better roleplayer every single day. Remember to treat others as you want to be treated in roleplay, and you’ll usually get what you give. If not, it’s not worth your time, move on and enjoy life!
And in the end always remember, once you know the rules and why they were created in the first place, you can create loopholes and break the rules, so long as you pay deference to the spirit of it.
Where Do I Go From Here?
Simply chose a link below that best suits your next step you want to take.
Show Versus Tell
Showing versus telling is a major part of writing in general, and roleplay is no exception. Now, the question here is “how do I show instead of tell?” which can be somewhat tricky to answer effectively.
When you are telling someone, you are explaining things as boringly as possible. For example:
To ease yourself into show versus tell, don’t go the easy route and just explain what happens. “The girl trips” is about as aesthetically pleasing as a glob of unused paint. Yes it does have a simpleness to it that someone can enjoy, but there is so much untapped potential in that little glob. Paint a picture with your words, and show us what really happens instead of explaining it.
Okay “the girl runs in fear, trips and hurts her hand”. Great. How? Why? Where? When? What happens when that happens? This phrase can be expanded to showing the fear instead of stating it exists, simply by explaining all the details related to what makes fear visible or recognizable. “Sweat boils to the surface of her skin in fat droplets stinking of emotion while the girl speeds forward, eyes wide, pupils tight when she glances over her shoulder from time to time. She never sees the tree root coming. Her shoe catches against the tree root sending her toppling over, gravity pulling her downwards with her momentum. Her great enemy once again besting her ability to stand upright, damned gravity. Her face contorts into a wince as her hands impact the ground, bloody patches rushing to the surface where the damage was the worst. She pulls them protectively to her chest, and looks back again, tears forming in her eyes. Her heart raced.”
Now what did we add to this? We never said “fear” yet you probably gathered it. We never said trips, but you see it happen. The fear responses that she does show the fear, so people get into the story more and pick up the mood. The joke about gravity pulls us deeper, allowing us empathy with what is happening. The wince shows pain, the blood shows damage and being hurt, the tears show more fear, more pain. We could have told you all this, but isn’t letting you experience it a little more fun?
This is better storytelling, and better storytelling makes a partner interested in what you have to say. Paint a picture, cover all the bases, and you can create a storyline that interacts with you and makes people pay attention. Hope that explains Showing over Telling!
P.S. As far as telling, When you need a quick shorthand explanation don’t be afraid to use it. Showing makes for a fun read, but there are some situations better glossed over. For speed, because they aren’t worth your attention and will take away from the impact, or because we don’t really need to experience a bathroom break.
Description
Part of showing is the description, and here’s where we show you what you can cover in a post. A few ideas if you will, to flesh out the universe you’ve plopped into and show your interaction with it. You’ll definitely recognize this first bit of a line up: Sight, smell, hearing, touch, and taste. So these will be pretty obvious but play with them.
Sight: You can tell a lot with those eyes of yours, and this is the most common one to tackle. You’ll see things happen, colors, people, trouble, danger. So you probably have this one well mastered. Most people are going to pull the ye olde “they saw the person” thing to push a roleplay onwards.
Hearing:Another common one. You’ll overhear conversations, or hear battle or anything else that’s going on. But other than that, listen to the environment as well as the people. Do you hear sudden silence in the woodland? Do you hear the wind blowing over your ears, or maybe hear the footsteps of people going around you. You can hear a lot in an area, and it lets your character take a break from interacting with people and lets the setting flesh out.
✍ Tip: Always flesh a setting out slowly so people can feel more at ease with the transition. An instant change can make people shut out or uncomfortable, and a lot of roleplayers actually start out with a fairly blank slate in mind. If you change the setting too quickly, you might kill a setting idea someone wanted, or make yourself look stupid.
Smell: This is an underused one. You see it sometimes, smelling something coming. Scent is tied to memory and taste, it’s extremely strong whether we recognize that or not, and it can give a new level to a roleplay. Smelling the distant sea carried on the wind? Smelling food, or money, or blood, or death, or any of the millions of scents in the world is going to jog something in your audience’s heads and you want to take advantage of that. This is a game of subtle manipulation, don’t miss a chance to grab someone and shake them by their memories.
Touch:This one is fun too. Breezes, soft fabric, hair under fingertips, sunshine on your skin, metal, leather, cotton, liquid, sand, needles, electricity, gummy, sticky, thick, gooey, solid, textured; all of these things define something special. They all bring out a reaction and there’s thousands more where that came from. Let your character touch the world instead of breezing through it as if they were a ghost. Nothing is useless if used correctly!
Taste: This one is usually not touched as nearly as much as it should. Food is one thing, yes delicious food, but think of what it’s like to go into a city or a farm. You can taste the oil and smog, you can understand the flavor of rubber burning, and well… the usual barnyard stenches. Like kaiila dung to be honest, and hay. Disgusting, but you’re going to have to deal with it. It’s connected with smell so much you might as well taste what you’ve sniffed sometimes.Don’t leave this one out when there’s so much to play with, and food. Don’t just say the food tastes great, detail it. Is it savory? Rich? Does it taste sweet or spicy? Maybe it’s sour and floury with a hint of nutmeg. Expand your mental fields and explain everything!
Other senses play a part too, so don’t forget to give them some love in situations that can give you an opening for them. If you’re falling, use your sense of equilibrium or balance. If you’re overheating cover that. Have fun but show how things effect your character.
More things about description! Nope you can go farther. You don’t have to stick to only describing what’s happening, don’t forget you have room for character development. What are they feeling, maybe show it on their face or add some omniscient storytelling to how they feel.
A final warning, while detail is good, don’t overdo it. It can be sickening to try and read 2 paragraphs of text which amount to a character flipping their hair. Make sure your description is relevant and somewhat along the lines of what your partner is writing. If they go for exposition, by all means enjoy yourself, but if they look a little more towards meat rather than gravy, follow suit (but feel free to pour on some gravy here and there. Who knows they might be waiting for you to let this gravy train get started)
Unique Style and Syntax
This is super advanced stuff, I warn you you may not be happy with us about any of what we are about to write…
Break the rules of English. But wait! Break them with intelligence and reason!
See how we have been just shattering rules left and right up there? There’s incomplete sentences, and terrible grasp of just about everything, and we are using words weirdly and yet here’s the major point: There’s a good chance that it’s just made this writing a little less dry, and more fun to read without being mind-blowingly painful to withstand.
This is where the “advanced” comes in, where you find the cleft between perfect grammar of the exacting science of the written word and the creativity of shaking things up a little by not writing exactly like everyone else. This is dangerous, and it requires an innate knowledge of how to represent things in a clear concise manner that still sounds like it makes sense, without being overtly annoying about your rule breaking.
It’s a lot of guess work.
Another thing that helps is developing your own style. Style is all about how you write. One person might write their posts with a distinctly formal tone, who uses excessively long terminology and jargon in order to demonstrate a superiority over others. Others could write only what they gotta and use slang a ton. These tones should fit the character you are portraying.
If you are roleplaying a character who is uptight and royal, using the tone of a street-brat for your writing isn’t going to fly very easily. It effects how people see you and see your character. Aim for quirks that don’t make people want to strangle you. Contractions are good for slummy but removing them turns your “I don’t like it” into a “I do not like it.” Take it a step farther and it’s a “I do not favor this particular item.” Suddenly it sounds painfully formal, or in the opposite direction, “Ain’t gunna like it.”
A nice thing to do is keep language separate from writing. While some might seep over, keep the extreme use of slang, missing vowels, and other choppy accent use to the actual character talking. Your normal writing should be clear and easy to understand at all points in time to let people respond easier. To stand out, I personally enjoy giving personification to items that shouldn’t have it. I talk about how the drop of a hat seem sad, or if I am focusing on a shoe for instance, I explain it’s movement and then add the rest of the character as something as boring as some dirt on it. It catches people’s eye to see a sneaker sneaking along the pavement with a girl close behind and very much attached.
Articles (the, a, stuff like that) can be dropped for more painfully obtuse writing. It can be hard to read, but it also comes off as very sophisticated and intelligent. It takes a lot to be able to skip words. An example; “Blue eyes slipped over black stone, seeing the road twist and turn away from view. Stepping forth, soldier with a sword over shoulder and sadness in gait, lone traveler progressed along.” Gosh but it can be confusing sometimes. It might be nice just to pepper some here and there to catch the eye.
How and When to Insert Storyline Expansions
By storyline expansion I mean a plot point or idea that could lead to further roleplay. Be it the NPC who steals your purse, or the sudden memory and burst of tears. A lot of the time newer roleplayers will be terrified of jumping on board and coming up with ideas, or so gung-ho they’ll miss that one is already in session and speed right through. So here’s the delicate art of engaging your Plot Point sensors.
When a plot point is going, you have a set goal in mind for the characters. Something is happening (occasionally too much nothing), and they have to do something to stop it from happening. This means you have plenty to write about, lots to engage, and funny things to do. You can add smaller plot points here; if you are on a quest for a locket, right about now would be a good time to be distracted by the cat running past to set up a quick simple chase scene to complicate things and possibly bring you to the right stand. It’ll fill in the blanks, little guys like this are fine and dandy practically whenever. Although you’ll want to avoid them in heavy character developing scenes as they can draw attention away from the emotions involved. Unless that’s your reason for doing them.
If you’re following a major overarcing plot (which could be anything from “TODAY WE EAT LUNCH!” to “Defeat the 12 Tributary Cities of Ar”) and you want to introduce another one, that is where issues come into play. You’re stepping on toes. When a large well created plot is happening, you can’t introduce another one without making the first one less important. Everyone wants to tell their own story, their own idea, but we have to take turns or this is going to turn into some sort of riot.
Wait for a lull, it’s simple. If the plot has reached a point where nothing good is happening drop some hints for a future arc, mini-plot your way to the next step, and continue this one. Now that you’ve dropped previous hints, your idea will flow better. Don’t be a jerk about it, if no one wants to do it they’ll try to change the topic and you should try to ease into it again later. If it keeps happening, ask about it, if you get a bored response, drop it. Be civil, it may be a great idea, but save it for another time. It’s okay to not do it! When the plot is over though is a great time to start another one.
Honestly it’s as simple as taking turns, and not shoving. Share the storyline, the plot, and the spotlight and you’ll be a better roleplayer every single day. Remember to treat others as you want to be treated in roleplay, and you’ll usually get what you give. If not, it’s not worth your time, move on and enjoy life!
And in the end always remember, once you know the rules and why they were created in the first place, you can create loopholes and break the rules, so long as you pay deference to the spirit of it.
Where Do I Go From Here?
Simply chose a link below that best suits your next step you want to take.
