Hello role play section. As you're probably aware I've made a lot of role plays with varying levels of success. Which is to say that they all failed... (fingers crossed for TSU) BUT! and this is a big but. I've learned a lot from each attempt at making a role play work. Today I'm taking everything I've learned from role plays past and present to hopefully shed some light on how to make one that works. If you have any ideas of your own that aren't listed here please tell me about them below.
1: Don't sit down and make an RP in an hour, or in a day or whatever short time spand you might think of.
Having an interesting premise for a role play like magic schools or slaying kishin is great and all, but a good concept isn't enough to make good role play. you need an idea of how you want the world to look, what factions are within said world, how you want the plot to turn out and most importantly what caused the RP to happen in the first place. If it's a role play about saving puppies, why do the puppies need to be saved. How is trying to hurt them and why? and in what way?
2: Give your important NPC's and OC's fleshed out back stories.
If you have a big bad meant to be the final boss or a leader, you want to make their intentions and personality as clear as possible. If you don't know why your NPC's act a certain way, chances are it won't be clear to anyone else either. This isn't to say that every single character needs some deep rooted reason for everything they do that marks all the way back to their childhood or some shit like that. It could just be that. It could be as simple as
"I worked under our former commander as his right hand man. He imparted wisdom, strength and hope to me. When he died I wanted to quite, to give up. But I couldn't let his death, his memory be for nothing. I had to push on and take the mantle of the new commander. It hasn't been easy, I've made a lot of mistakes. But the men have started to regain hope. I can't let them down, I won't"
That short little speech took me about a minute to come up with and write down. Already it's a hell of a lot more interesting than "He's the current commander of the army after the last one passed away." giving your NPC's realistic personalities is key in making your world feel alive.
3:Proper World Building
Building a world for your role play can be very tricky what with there being multiple cities to go to, multiple places of interest in said cities and so on. When doing this you want to make sure you do a few things. first off you need to make sure people know what the city generally looks like. If you want it to have a certain feel to i then make that clear in it's description. Second thing you want to do is take all of your cities and write down all the POI's or places of interest. for example n the city o Sanctuary from the RP with the same name the POI's are the castle, the Artix statue, Molag's forge, the mage's guild, the bounty hunters guild, the school and the library. Once you have your POI's you can allow other role players to make up small places within these towns. for example an inn or a restaurant or a store or even a residence. Maybe they live there who knows?
Second most important thing about world building is the landscape. First of all again you need to express how you want the world to look. Is it a big fantasy world with air ships and dragons? is it a more realistic landscape like one fallout new vegas? Whatever the case you need to make this as clear as possible to anyone entering the RP. Secondly is actually adding in locations such as forests, deserts and whatever bioms you please. and of cores adding the cities in. the easiest way to do this is to simply use our own earth as the world to save you the trouble. You'll probably notice that RP's that do that such as ATWAG, TSU and IP have been very successful. If you don't plan on using earth for your world or even if you do but want to change it up a bit, try to make a map of the world and listen to the step 4.
4: Don't try to make it by yourself.
If you're making a role play never do it alone. There are plenty of people in the rp community with tons of different ideas and perspectives that can really help flesh out the world of your RP. I've tried making RP worlds by myself in the past and while I'm good at making good lore for the RP I generally suck at world building. This might be different for you but chances are you're not good at everything and there's someone in the community that can do lore, or character development or personalities or something RP related better than you can. This should also apply to making characters for role plays as you can do a lot more when you work with someone. Take for example Jason and Lucy from IP. That started off as just me helping S1 come up with a story for his one character and evolved into 2 main characters, two big government projects with vastly different stories and a character goal for his character to work for regardless of what is going on in the RP.
I know I'm going a bit off track with talking about making characters but one more quick note on that. It's fine if there is an RP about a war going on or whatever and you make a character who is a soldier in said war. However it's also a good idea to give your character goals that aren't directly tied into the plot. I'll use Jason as an example again. He wants to get out, save his sister, find his family, live normally. this cold all happen and still have no effect whatsoever on the rest of the role play. The government could still be in power, the psychics could take over, fuck all could happen and he can still accomplish his goals. I am NOT saying that you should set you character up and ignore the main plot of the RP, far from it. The plot should effect your character in some way weather they try and run from it or face it for whatever reason. Talking to others and comming up with ideas will help you decide what you want your character's goals to be. This also works for NPC's and since the plot of any rp is driven by the characters, this'll make your rp a lot more lively.
5: Do not use a stat system. Make as few restrictions as posible
If you're making an RP and you want to make sure everyone's character is balanced, using stat systems is not the right way to do that. (But Tewi! Didn't you use a stat system for the new version of TSU)
Yes Jimmy, I did, but that was a mistake. Luckily in the case of TSU it didn't effect anything too horribly since A it's just started and I can simply remove that and B everyone pretty much knew what to expect from a first year rookie.
Anyway back on point, stat systems are typically used in video games as well as table top games to determine what your layer character can do. If their fireball with blow a man up or just burn him so on and so forth So why are they bad? Well their bad because they restrict characters to playing within a certain stat limit and discourage them from trying to stand out in any significant way. Role plays like IP and ATWAG easily have the most divers characters because no one is limited to a stat system like in Bad Omen or the 2nd version of Aeterna as opposed to the first.
It IS however important that you list your characters own stats in your own personal bios. Things like how fast they can run, how much they can lift or whatever. The only limitations there should be is the world itself. For example in ATWAG you're limited to what's possible of your own game characters from their respective universes. With IP it's whatever augmentation or powers your character is given.
6: Don't be stubborn about plot
If you put character A in a situation where he's being hunted for, and you want your OC or NPC to find him and fight. Do not force the encounter if they are able to sneak away, let them. You can always have your OC or NPC look for clues as to where they've gone and continue chasing them. Eventually they probably will meet character A in a confrontation, just not under the circumstances you originally wanted.
Likewise you also shouldn't be stubborn about how people get around certain problems. If you have a bridge you want the characters to get across, and there's a lever to raise said bridge that you want them to use, that's fine. But if they don't think to look for a lever and try to get around another way, weather it be flying, building their own bridge or using a zip line or whatever, just let them do it. So long as it could realistically happen in that RP there's no reason to punish them for not solving a puzzle the "right way"
7: Know your community
The size of your community as well as the people in it should determine how you handle your plot. I'm going to be using YC for an example here because it's the only community relevant to this thread. Different role players have different ideas of what's fun, what they want to do. For example maybe you like having your characters simply react to the world around them without doing too much plot writing yourself. Most of you do and that's fine. I enjoy this style as well but I also enjoy building up a world and watching everything come together while I have my own characters react to the reactions of everyone elses characters.. man try saying that 5 items fast.
Anyway if you have someone in your RP like that, give them plenty to react to. throw their character in odd situations, put friends behind them and foes in front of them. These types of RP's make up the majority of our community, and probably the majority of role players in general. Alternatively if you know someone in your role play likes to make plot and is likely to do so in your rp, work with them. They'll help you flesh out your world and make a better experience for everyone. This also insures that no one person is ALWAYS making the plot for everyone else. Trust me when I say that gets really boring and sometimes even stressful after a while. While it's important to keep the community excited about the rp it won't do you any damn good if you find yourself hating it.
Anyway thoses are my tips from what I've learned from making and participating in so many role plays. I hope this helps any of you who were planning to make your own rp. Please share your own tips and ideas below and let me know if you think I'm wrong about something. ^^
1: Don't sit down and make an RP in an hour, or in a day or whatever short time spand you might think of.
Spoiler:
Having an interesting premise for a role play like magic schools or slaying kishin is great and all, but a good concept isn't enough to make good role play. you need an idea of how you want the world to look, what factions are within said world, how you want the plot to turn out and most importantly what caused the RP to happen in the first place. If it's a role play about saving puppies, why do the puppies need to be saved. How is trying to hurt them and why? and in what way?
2: Give your important NPC's and OC's fleshed out back stories.
Spoiler:
If you have a big bad meant to be the final boss or a leader, you want to make their intentions and personality as clear as possible. If you don't know why your NPC's act a certain way, chances are it won't be clear to anyone else either. This isn't to say that every single character needs some deep rooted reason for everything they do that marks all the way back to their childhood or some shit like that. It could just be that. It could be as simple as
"I worked under our former commander as his right hand man. He imparted wisdom, strength and hope to me. When he died I wanted to quite, to give up. But I couldn't let his death, his memory be for nothing. I had to push on and take the mantle of the new commander. It hasn't been easy, I've made a lot of mistakes. But the men have started to regain hope. I can't let them down, I won't"
That short little speech took me about a minute to come up with and write down. Already it's a hell of a lot more interesting than "He's the current commander of the army after the last one passed away." giving your NPC's realistic personalities is key in making your world feel alive.
3:Proper World Building
Spoiler:
Building a world for your role play can be very tricky what with there being multiple cities to go to, multiple places of interest in said cities and so on. When doing this you want to make sure you do a few things. first off you need to make sure people know what the city generally looks like. If you want it to have a certain feel to i then make that clear in it's description. Second thing you want to do is take all of your cities and write down all the POI's or places of interest. for example n the city o Sanctuary from the RP with the same name the POI's are the castle, the Artix statue, Molag's forge, the mage's guild, the bounty hunters guild, the school and the library. Once you have your POI's you can allow other role players to make up small places within these towns. for example an inn or a restaurant or a store or even a residence. Maybe they live there who knows?
Second most important thing about world building is the landscape. First of all again you need to express how you want the world to look. Is it a big fantasy world with air ships and dragons? is it a more realistic landscape like one fallout new vegas? Whatever the case you need to make this as clear as possible to anyone entering the RP. Secondly is actually adding in locations such as forests, deserts and whatever bioms you please. and of cores adding the cities in. the easiest way to do this is to simply use our own earth as the world to save you the trouble. You'll probably notice that RP's that do that such as ATWAG, TSU and IP have been very successful. If you don't plan on using earth for your world or even if you do but want to change it up a bit, try to make a map of the world and listen to the step 4.
4: Don't try to make it by yourself.
Spoiler:
If you're making a role play never do it alone. There are plenty of people in the rp community with tons of different ideas and perspectives that can really help flesh out the world of your RP. I've tried making RP worlds by myself in the past and while I'm good at making good lore for the RP I generally suck at world building. This might be different for you but chances are you're not good at everything and there's someone in the community that can do lore, or character development or personalities or something RP related better than you can. This should also apply to making characters for role plays as you can do a lot more when you work with someone. Take for example Jason and Lucy from IP. That started off as just me helping S1 come up with a story for his one character and evolved into 2 main characters, two big government projects with vastly different stories and a character goal for his character to work for regardless of what is going on in the RP.
I know I'm going a bit off track with talking about making characters but one more quick note on that. It's fine if there is an RP about a war going on or whatever and you make a character who is a soldier in said war. However it's also a good idea to give your character goals that aren't directly tied into the plot. I'll use Jason as an example again. He wants to get out, save his sister, find his family, live normally. this cold all happen and still have no effect whatsoever on the rest of the role play. The government could still be in power, the psychics could take over, fuck all could happen and he can still accomplish his goals. I am NOT saying that you should set you character up and ignore the main plot of the RP, far from it. The plot should effect your character in some way weather they try and run from it or face it for whatever reason. Talking to others and comming up with ideas will help you decide what you want your character's goals to be. This also works for NPC's and since the plot of any rp is driven by the characters, this'll make your rp a lot more lively.
5: Do not use a stat system. Make as few restrictions as posible
Spoiler:
If you're making an RP and you want to make sure everyone's character is balanced, using stat systems is not the right way to do that. (But Tewi! Didn't you use a stat system for the new version of TSU)
Yes Jimmy, I did, but that was a mistake. Luckily in the case of TSU it didn't effect anything too horribly since A it's just started and I can simply remove that and B everyone pretty much knew what to expect from a first year rookie.
Anyway back on point, stat systems are typically used in video games as well as table top games to determine what your layer character can do. If their fireball with blow a man up or just burn him so on and so forth So why are they bad? Well their bad because they restrict characters to playing within a certain stat limit and discourage them from trying to stand out in any significant way. Role plays like IP and ATWAG easily have the most divers characters because no one is limited to a stat system like in Bad Omen or the 2nd version of Aeterna as opposed to the first.
It IS however important that you list your characters own stats in your own personal bios. Things like how fast they can run, how much they can lift or whatever. The only limitations there should be is the world itself. For example in ATWAG you're limited to what's possible of your own game characters from their respective universes. With IP it's whatever augmentation or powers your character is given.
6: Don't be stubborn about plot
Spoiler:
If you put character A in a situation where he's being hunted for, and you want your OC or NPC to find him and fight. Do not force the encounter if they are able to sneak away, let them. You can always have your OC or NPC look for clues as to where they've gone and continue chasing them. Eventually they probably will meet character A in a confrontation, just not under the circumstances you originally wanted.
Likewise you also shouldn't be stubborn about how people get around certain problems. If you have a bridge you want the characters to get across, and there's a lever to raise said bridge that you want them to use, that's fine. But if they don't think to look for a lever and try to get around another way, weather it be flying, building their own bridge or using a zip line or whatever, just let them do it. So long as it could realistically happen in that RP there's no reason to punish them for not solving a puzzle the "right way"
7: Know your community
Spoiler:
The size of your community as well as the people in it should determine how you handle your plot. I'm going to be using YC for an example here because it's the only community relevant to this thread. Different role players have different ideas of what's fun, what they want to do. For example maybe you like having your characters simply react to the world around them without doing too much plot writing yourself. Most of you do and that's fine. I enjoy this style as well but I also enjoy building up a world and watching everything come together while I have my own characters react to the reactions of everyone elses characters.. man try saying that 5 items fast.
Anyway if you have someone in your RP like that, give them plenty to react to. throw their character in odd situations, put friends behind them and foes in front of them. These types of RP's make up the majority of our community, and probably the majority of role players in general. Alternatively if you know someone in your role play likes to make plot and is likely to do so in your rp, work with them. They'll help you flesh out your world and make a better experience for everyone. This also insures that no one person is ALWAYS making the plot for everyone else. Trust me when I say that gets really boring and sometimes even stressful after a while. While it's important to keep the community excited about the rp it won't do you any damn good if you find yourself hating it.
Anyway thoses are my tips from what I've learned from making and participating in so many role plays. I hope this helps any of you who were planning to make your own rp. Please share your own tips and ideas below and let me know if you think I'm wrong about something. ^^
