Post by |ADMIN LEFFIE| on Feb 7, 2012 20:33:43 GMT -5
WHAT IS (FORMAL) ROLEPLAYING?!
For some people who come to this site, roleplaying is a completely new concept. Some have the basic gist of it, while others... not so much. Here we'll address the basics of roleplaying and how to maneuver around the site!
For some people who come to this site, roleplaying is a completely new concept. Some have the basic gist of it, while others... not so much. Here we'll address the basics of roleplaying and how to maneuver around the site!
ROLEPLAYING TERMS!
- GODDMODDING means controlling another person's character without their permission. An example of this would be "Christine felt Erik grab her wrist," when Erik in the post before Christine's did no such thing. The thing to say in this situation might be "Christine prepared herself for Erik to grab her wrist."
- POWERPLAYING means that while you might know something about another character or situation, YOUR character may not, so you can't play them as if they do know it. Your character isn't psychic (that is... unless they are. But even still, your character doesn't know EVERYTHING! xD), and isn't a mind reader (again, unless they are...). An example of this would be, say LND Meg meets Pre-LND Christine, Pre-LND Christine can't possibly know that Meg became the Oh! La La girl and that she loves the Phantom. However, Meg can obviously know things about Christine that Christine doesn't know she knows, if that makes sense. This would be the opposite of Powerplaying, and is acceptable on this site.
- MARY-SUES AND GARY-STUS are practically perfect in every way type characters. This doesn't necessarily mean they have no flaws, because a Mary-Sue can also be a character with insane amounts of flaws, or flaws that are so common they've become cliché (as long as they're paired with equally common other personality traits). A Phantom Mary-Sue can also be a girl who is blind, or "doesn't judge by appearances," as most people say they'd do when confronted with Erik. This would make her "perfect" for Erik as "the Other Woman," that is unless you'd put a twist on it that she just would naturally hate the man. The main thing is, these types of characters should be avoided.
- ALTERNATE UNIVERSE (AU) means that a character, plotline, or other detail deviates from the original story, in a unique way. An AU character can be a Vampiric Erik and Christine, and an AU setting could be a modern day Opera House.
- CANON means the original source material that something was taken from. It can be a single entity, or a collection of material, such as our canon list.
- IN CHARACTER/OUT OF CHARACTER (IC/OOC) means that when you are playing as a character, you are IC, when not writing as a character, but yourself, you are OOC.
- NPC means a non-player character. This is a character that is not controlled by any player, and doesn't necessarily need to be, for instance a sales clerk at a store your character goes to. Just someone who is there, but is unimportant. You can godmod these characters, just keep it within reason.
- ORIGINAL CHARACTER is a character not existing in any canon work, but made from scratch by a player.
- ORIGINAL CANON CHARACTER would be a character that does appear in canon, but is only briefly mentioned, with little to no development. This might be a character like Little Jammes or La Sorelli, or any of the managers (besides Moncharmin and Richard) in the original novel.
- PLAYBYS/FACECLAIMS, usually abbreviated as pb by veteran roleplayers, are the actors, models, what have you that a player can use as the metaphorical "face" of a character. An example of this would be using Michael Crawford as a face for ALW Phantom, or Sarah Brightman for ALW Christine.
- OPEN threads mean that any character who has a reason to be in a thread can join in the thread marked this way. Otherwise, a thread will usually be marked with what character the thread is intended for.
- RETCON, while the term not often used, is the "erasing" of a characters history from since they began in the RP, or erasing parts of it to clear up continuity issues or to start afresh with a character who you want to go in a new direction.
- TAGGING the thread means to put a set of parenthesis around a term in the title of a thread that determines often who the people are in the thread, whether its a casual or fast thread (casual=reply within a week-two weeks, fast=two to three days), or whether the thread is finished.
WILL ADD MORE ASAP!