F F V I I I - 2 . o r g

tips

Here are some useful tips for role-playing. These are not the role-playing rules (see Essential Reading in the forums) but helpful hints on how to keep things interesting and attracting people to your topics.

When making a new story-topic, there are a number of things you should consider:

The length of the first post in a story topic is very important in attracting other role-players to join. If it is short and undescriptive, it is unlikely that many people will be interested. Basically, the longer your intro post is, the more interested other people will be. However, you should be careful not to make it too long, or else people may feel discouraged to read the whole thing, and the impression becomes that the topic may be more of a monologue for one character than a story for company.
Make sure you make opportunities for other people to join your topics. If you write an intro post that doesn't seem to lead anywhere and it would be difficult for other characters to appear you probably won't get much interest. You don't have to make a gap at the end like "and then someone came up from behind and tapped him on the shoulder" - in fact this is really quite poor and hardly likely to produce inspiration. Instead, just make sure there could be another person around and reason for them to be there.
Think of something imaginative for your stories. Simple stories can be nice but more often than not they don't get very far. When writing a new story-topic, check that there is reason for your character to be there and for other characters to join in. Things such as just sitting in the park or such like could lead to some good character interaction but there's little opportunity for much else. That said, don't go overboard. The most important thing is that things have realism within the boundaries of power. Power-playing is frowned upon and breaks the flow of things. For example, if one decides one's character can repair the earth, it would contrast greatly with the story and would be highly unrealistic that the character is not more deeply involved in the world. Of course that's one unlikely example - no list of all examples of power-playing could be created, so use your head and decide for yourself if you're playing your character well or overdoing it.
State somewhere in the topic, using the out of character tag, how many people can join your story-topic. You could leave it open for all, set a number or choose pre-decided characters. If you only want certain other members to join, make sure you specify or you may find characters in your story you hadn't planned for.

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