Dev Diary #2: A Guide to Roleplaying on LiveJournal
Hi, and welcome to the second of our series of Development Diaries. The Dev Diaries, which will be posted once every five days until the start of game, and then sporadically as new metaplot information is revealed, are intended to clearly explain gameplay, rules, and parts of the world of Rowan, beyond the summaries that are already posted.
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Welcome to LiveJournal! For some of you, what I'm about to say has already been incorporated into your minds -- your daily habits and strolls around LJ. But for others of you, this is your first venture into a roleplaying community, LiveJournal, or your first roleplaying community on LiveJournal, and thus, we have compiled a few things to help you along.
First, create a character journal.
Whether or not you already have an LJ, create a separate journal for your character. You'll be using it to post (i.e. roleplay) in all the Rowan Tree communities.
You don't actually have to post anything in your journal, though many players choose to display past applications as that character, or even post short responses to a writing prompt. Here are a few examples you can look at: ritamordio,
monticello_tj.
Second, get some sweet user pics.
LiveJournal is kind enough to give free users 15 slots for user pictures, all of which you will probably use to accompany your posts. User pics sometimes add that nice visual expression to the post you've been writing, or even give other players a laugh. Take a look around Hollow Art to see if any icons call to you. Or, if you have a specific actor in mind you'd like to use, check out Find Icons.
Third, get familiar with LJ and Rowan, and learn how to navigate.
When I first started with LiveJournal, the layout disoriented me a bit, but after some fiddling, I quickly learned how to change these properties or view those pages. Mess around with your account for awhile and you'll get acquainted.
More importantly however, is knowing where to go to look for information on your rp community. As with Rowan, all LJ roleplaying communities make the effort to post a thought-out summation of their world and their rules on their profile page. Anytime you're looking at a community, clicking on "User Info" on the upper right hand corner will get you there. Rowan Tree's is located here. The profile is the same for all the communities, so no matter where you are, you'll have quick access to the links.
So what's the difference between rowantree_rpg, rowantree_logs, and rowantree_ooc anyways?
The RPG community is for first-person roleplaying. When your character arrives in Rowan, he or she was immediately provided a book in which all the visitors were supposed to use for distance communication. All of your posts here can be public to everyone who has a journal (all the players), private to yourself, or locked to certain individuals. You decide which when you're posting, and I'll cover how to indicate this in the next point. Thus, all posts made in RPG are essential diary entries to each other.
The Logs community is where face-to-face interaction occurs. You roleplay in third-person, describe your actions, and interact. If you've done online roleplaying before, this is probably the format you're most used to.
Finally, the OOC community stands for the Out of Character community, where you'll be able to talk to other players as you. When you first join Rowan Tree, feel free to make a post here and introduce yourself!
Oh, and you might also be wondering about the Porn community. Both Mara and Sisi agreed that if we accept your application, it means you're a good roleplayer. So if any of you feel the need to take the content to NC-17, we don't want to stand in your way. Of course, we want to respect the desires of other players as well. So if you don't want to read that content, you don't have to either. It's in a separate thread completely.
Fourth, understand how to post.
When you're posting in the LOG community, here's an example of what you're post should look like.
There are a few things you should notice. First, in the subject line, there's two parts. "A long wait ahead" is simply flair. Write whatever you think is appropriate to title your post. Second however, it is labeled as [OPEN]. All posts should be labeled one of the following:
Finally, to the good stuff: your introductory roleplaying masterpiece. As you can see in the sample post, there are two paragraphs of text following the logistical information up top. However, if you look at the post from the community view, you see that instead of displaying all of the words, it says "Brings many dangers." inside some parentheses. This is called a lj cut. Basically, instead of including it in the community section of the post, you place it within a link. That way, players can easily browse through all the posts without needed to scroll through paragraphs of text. Now, including an lj cut is easy. If you're in HTML mode, simply surround your body text with < lj-cut text="Include your flair text here."> and < /lj-cut>. Take out the spaces right after the "<" to make the code work.
Now, while your posting a comment, LJ doesn't have a rich-text editor to help you use html. Therefore, you've got to do a small bit of coding on your own. Luckily, someone created an LJ Cheat Sheet just for this purpose. So make sure to go take a look. Oh, and Mara really wanted me to explain that if you want to make a heart, type the following without spaces in between: & hearts ; The result should look like this: ♥
Finally, resolve character conflicts with the player.
Most LJ roleplay communities don't have a battle system. That means that no characters have stats. But Sisi, what about my magical powers?!? Well, young grasshopper, at Rowan, we hold the common online roleplaying tradition that should your character get into a fight, competition, or anything that creates a conflict, the players must get together and decide how the scene will play out. If for some reason, players cannot resolve this, do not hesitate to contact the Narrators. BUT, do keep in mind that you should not need to contact us about this sort of thing very often.
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Welcome to LiveJournal! For some of you, what I'm about to say has already been incorporated into your minds -- your daily habits and strolls around LJ. But for others of you, this is your first venture into a roleplaying community, LiveJournal, or your first roleplaying community on LiveJournal, and thus, we have compiled a few things to help you along.
First, create a character journal.
Whether or not you already have an LJ, create a separate journal for your character. You'll be using it to post (i.e. roleplay) in all the Rowan Tree communities.
You don't actually have to post anything in your journal, though many players choose to display past applications as that character, or even post short responses to a writing prompt. Here are a few examples you can look at: ritamordio,
monticello_tj.
Second, get some sweet user pics.
LiveJournal is kind enough to give free users 15 slots for user pictures, all of which you will probably use to accompany your posts. User pics sometimes add that nice visual expression to the post you've been writing, or even give other players a laugh. Take a look around Hollow Art to see if any icons call to you. Or, if you have a specific actor in mind you'd like to use, check out Find Icons.
Third, get familiar with LJ and Rowan, and learn how to navigate.
When I first started with LiveJournal, the layout disoriented me a bit, but after some fiddling, I quickly learned how to change these properties or view those pages. Mess around with your account for awhile and you'll get acquainted.
More importantly however, is knowing where to go to look for information on your rp community. As with Rowan, all LJ roleplaying communities make the effort to post a thought-out summation of their world and their rules on their profile page. Anytime you're looking at a community, clicking on "User Info" on the upper right hand corner will get you there. Rowan Tree's is located here. The profile is the same for all the communities, so no matter where you are, you'll have quick access to the links.
So what's the difference between rowantree_rpg, rowantree_logs, and rowantree_ooc anyways?
The RPG community is for first-person roleplaying. When your character arrives in Rowan, he or she was immediately provided a book in which all the visitors were supposed to use for distance communication. All of your posts here can be public to everyone who has a journal (all the players), private to yourself, or locked to certain individuals. You decide which when you're posting, and I'll cover how to indicate this in the next point. Thus, all posts made in RPG are essential diary entries to each other.
The Logs community is where face-to-face interaction occurs. You roleplay in third-person, describe your actions, and interact. If you've done online roleplaying before, this is probably the format you're most used to.
Finally, the OOC community stands for the Out of Character community, where you'll be able to talk to other players as you. When you first join Rowan Tree, feel free to make a post here and introduce yourself!
Oh, and you might also be wondering about the Porn community. Both Mara and Sisi agreed that if we accept your application, it means you're a good roleplayer. So if any of you feel the need to take the content to NC-17, we don't want to stand in your way. Of course, we want to respect the desires of other players as well. So if you don't want to read that content, you don't have to either. It's in a separate thread completely.
Fourth, understand how to post.
When you're posting in the LOG community, here's an example of what you're post should look like.
There are a few things you should notice. First, in the subject line, there's two parts. "A long wait ahead" is simply flair. Write whatever you think is appropriate to title your post. Second however, it is labeled as [OPEN]. All posts should be labeled one of the following:
- [OPEN] - Used in the LOG community to denote that anyone may join the thread.
- [CLOSED] - Used in the LOG community to denote that only certain people may join the thread. If you mark a thread as closed, please include the names of all the expected players in the "Who" section of the post later.
- [PUBLIC] - Used in the RP community to denote that all players can read and reply to this thread in their journal.
- [PRIVATE] - Used in the RP community to denote that only certain individuals can view and reply to this thread in their journal.
- Who: - Name all the characters you know will be in the thread.
- When: - What day and time is this happening? Keeping track allows players to get a sense of what chronological order events are happening in. After all, you can't be in two places at once.
- Where: - List the location of the event.
- What: - Give a short, one or two line description of how the scene starts off.
Finally, to the good stuff: your introductory roleplaying masterpiece. As you can see in the sample post, there are two paragraphs of text following the logistical information up top. However, if you look at the post from the community view, you see that instead of displaying all of the words, it says "Brings many dangers." inside some parentheses. This is called a lj cut. Basically, instead of including it in the community section of the post, you place it within a link. That way, players can easily browse through all the posts without needed to scroll through paragraphs of text. Now, including an lj cut is easy. If you're in HTML mode, simply surround your body text with < lj-cut text="Include your flair text here."> and < /lj-cut>. Take out the spaces right after the "<" to make the code work.
Now, while your posting a comment, LJ doesn't have a rich-text editor to help you use html. Therefore, you've got to do a small bit of coding on your own. Luckily, someone created an LJ Cheat Sheet just for this purpose. So make sure to go take a look. Oh, and Mara really wanted me to explain that if you want to make a heart, type the following without spaces in between: & hearts ; The result should look like this: ♥
Finally, resolve character conflicts with the player.
Most LJ roleplay communities don't have a battle system. That means that no characters have stats. But Sisi, what about my magical powers?!? Well, young grasshopper, at Rowan, we hold the common online roleplaying tradition that should your character get into a fight, competition, or anything that creates a conflict, the players must get together and decide how the scene will play out. If for some reason, players cannot resolve this, do not hesitate to contact the Narrators. BUT, do keep in mind that you should not need to contact us about this sort of thing very often.