Resources: RP Tips

These are not hard and fast rules on our game, but rather suggestions to improve everyone's RP experience. Although many of them may be applicable elsewhere, they're written with XMM in mind.

Grammar & Spelling

Nothing contributes to peoples' first impressions of you in an online format as much as how you type. Proper spelling, grammar, and capitalization, as well as avoiding chat-slang as much as possible, are a must. They help you present yourself as an intelligent and mature individual who puts forth the effort to communicate clearly with others online.

Spelling mistakes happen. We all make them and understand the occasional typo, but if you just make a blanket statement that 'I can't see teh Difference btw teh and the when I'm into a Scene, so...' what others perceive you as saying is 'You're not important enough for me to waste precious time to type properly'.

Learning disabilities are also not a good excuse. You will find that there's a lot more sympathy for someone who says 'I've got dyslexia, so I'll be posing slowly because I run my poses through spell-check' than someone who says 'I've got dyslexia, so my spelling is crap'. One is a statement that requests some tolerance because they're making an effort. The other is just an excuse. Give a little, get a little.

Some tips:

• Use a spell-checker. Most clients offer spell-check once you've paid for them. You can also spell-check in a word processing program or on a website like spellchecker.net.
• Pay attention to capitalization – especially of 'I' and proper nouns.
• Remember that commas signify pauses and ellipses (...) signify trailing off . Also remember that an ellipsis has three dots, not two, or five, or seven.
• Leave the chat-speak for IM. Although we're friendly OOCly and chat about lots of things, people prefer full, grammatically-correct sentences even in channel chat.
• Proofread a pose or channel-comment before you hit enter.

Metaposing

Metaposing is any part of a pose which provides information that other characters can't react to, except in specific (telepathic!) cases. Meta includes narrative comments or character thoughts and feelings. It can be used well, or it can be used extremely poorly. The use of metaposing varies widely among games and styles; on XMM, we tend to be light on meta, but that doesn't mean that it's never appropriate.

A few tips for posing and meta:

• Don't include what goes on inside your character's head unless you're playing with a telepath, empath, or some variation of the sort. This is called crystal skull meta, as it is a style that gives a direct window into a character's head, and without the ability to react to it, it's frustrating for other players.
• Do not glorify your own character through the meta. This can be annoying and sometimes leads to powerposing other characters assumptions about your own character.
• Don't put down other characters in meta. By putting it in meta, you can frustrate those you're playing with by removing their ability to react to an insult, and you also take away a fun source of inter-character conflict.
• Focus on using other cues, such as tone of voice, expression, and body language to give clues to the sorts of things you might otherwise say outright in meta.
• Use meta to poke fun at your own character, to OOCly lighten a tense situation, or to clarify something that your purely descriptive skills aren't quite up to.

Pose Length

How long your pose is doesn't matter, because it's the content of that pose that does. On XMM, pose length tends to vary dramatically – from a single word to many lines. Varying pose length can lend a unique feel to a scene and help develop a pace or rhythm. The key is keeping the length appropriate to the scene and to those you're playing with.

Some tips to keep in mind:

• Be certain your pose gives something to react to. One line poses can work – but not in every situation, and using them too often can leave the other person frustrated.
• If the scene is a large one, leave the novellas at home. It's going to be spammy enough without folks having to sort through five lines about how your hair is catching the light.
• Don't take up too much IC 'time' in your pose. Walking across a large room, ordering coffee, waiting in line, paying for your order, finding a couch, sitting and getting comfortable are all actions that other characters can fit their own poses in between. Unless you're setting the scene or you've all agreed to move things on to a given point, slow down and enjoy the moment.
• Leave your thesaurus on the shelf. Big words work best in isolation, so unless your character is a terrible poet, there's no need to go on at great length about glimmering orbs like pools of the most liquid sapphire.

Pose Order

While conventions vary from game to game, XMM usually holds to a pose order in scenes of three people or less. In a small scene, pose order seems to happen as a natural event. A, B, C, A, B, C, unless someone's making a quick interjection. In large events, it also seems natural that there be no pose order.

Some tips:

• In a large scene where all the characters are talking to each other, a good rule of thumb is to pose when at least half the people ahead of you have gone.
• In a large scene with several groups of characters talking amongst themselves, just wait for the poses of those your character is paying attention to.
• If someone jumps pose order, don't worry about it. Either they'll wait and poke their pose in when it is their turn, or the order will just swoop around and adjust. Be flexible.
• Be polite. Don't consistently jump over others' poses and take away their chance to react.

Pose Tense

On most M*-based roleplaying games, and on XMM, we pose in third-person present tense. This means that we pose using names and 'he' or 'she' rather than 'you,' and that we write as if actions are currently happening.

An example pose:

Correct
Tybalt holds his sword steady and stares at the man across from him before shouting, "Romeo, the love I bear for the can afford no better term than this - thou art a villain!"

Incorrect
Tybalt held his sword steady and stared at you before he shouted, "Romeo, the love I bear for the can afford no better term than this - thou art a villain!"

Some tips:

• Proofread poses. Changing to present tense can be tricky until you get the hang of it.
• If you're used to another type of posing, let people know. People tend to be patient as long as they know you're making an effort.

Angst

'Angst' can be used as a blanket term to define all RP that contains conflict, but doing so leads extremes between "fluff bunnies" who assume that any conflict is bad and "angst monkeys" who thrive on soap opera melodramatics. On XMM, we love our conflict, but we also like having a happy medium. So what's the path between these two extremes?

We suggest keeping one foot grounded in reality. That is, remember that you're still playing a three-dimensional sentient being. We aren't just happy, just sad, just... anything. The secret is to explore all the facets of your character. Keep in mind that characters – like people – go through cycles. Sometimes they'll be up, sometimes they'll be down, and there's good RP and story-telling to be had in all.

More important than what you're playing is how you're playing it.

Some tips on how to avoid being annoying in conflict-driven RP:

• Avoid the 'me me me' syndrome. Remember that RP is a cooperative story, and everyone wants a chance to shine. It's fine to have scenes that revolve around your character – just be sure to have scenes that revolve around someone else's now and then, too.
• Do your homework! If your character is going to have a miscarriage, do some research beforehand. Don't play it for laughs or for tears, play it with respect for the situation, and with a sense of reality. Try putting yourself in your characters' shoes. How would you feel if you lost a wanted child, a friend or family member to an anti-mutant mob, or your favorite pair of shoes?
• Be sensitive to others. Scenes involving things like sexual abuse or assault, for example, may cut really close to home for someone who's been a victim of such acts. Be willing to compromise, either by not-mentioning, fading to black, fast-forwarding, or whatever makes everyone involved comfortable.
• Offer fair warning where appropriate. If you think something will take a downward turn, let your RP partners know and see if they're enthused to play it.
• Add a warning for sensitive material to your LJ logs if you feel it's appropriate.
• Make the scene fit with the rest of the character's life. Don't play something for the drama and then let it disappear the next day.
• Make it clear that you-the-player aren't angsting. Whether you do this via channel chat, via posing style, or via OOC comments, just make sure that other folks know that the person on the other side of the screen is stable and that you aren't taking the RP too seriously.

Plausibility

On XMM, we strive to maintain plausibility at a level where actions and events don't jerk others out of their suspension of disbelief. That's not to say that we insist on everything being entirely 'realistic' to our own world – that'd be boring. Rather, it means that we try to be consistent and to recognize and use consequences to enhance RP.

Some tips:

• Be aware of the social differences that a theme creates. On XMM, we offer a good discussion of mutants, politics, and game history to help you be aware of what's going on in the world around you.
• Recognize consequences. We're all willing to fudge six weeks in a cast into four or five, but having it off in six days is going to cause frustration. Think about ways that consequences – whether it be injury, jail time, a fight with a friend, or anything else – can lend itself to new RP stories.
• Use Google. There are some great resources out there, and doing a bit of research on the treatment for a disease or the command structure of the NYPD can often end up leading to some new and interesting ideas for RP.
• When in doubt, ask! Some of the best group discussions and plot ideas come from a group of people in lively debate over the plausibility of this and that, and it can be a lot of fun! If no one's online to talk to real-time, drop a question on the forum.