"ok but how does dw rp work again??"

[daddykong]

Crash Course in the Basics of DWRPing

Okay, so doing RP on Dreamwidth is very similar to RP on LiveJournal, if you were around that corner of the internet back then. If not, I got you fam. Heads-up, I use the terms "journal" and "account" interchangeably- they mean the same thing.

Comments

The Character Journal

[daddykong]

Sometimes people have personal journals that they use for, well, personal stuff from blog posts to consolidating and linking all of their RP accounts into what's often called a Muse List. It's not necessary to go to these lengths if you're just playing like one or two characters on Dreamwidth. A character's journal is typically defined by its name and its icons. The name can be a weird joke or play on words, something symbolic, part of a quote, the character's name... or even something unrelated, if you wanna be weird about it. The username is going to get associated with the character and every post made as them, so you should at least try to make it indicative of the character in question.

The icons, on the other hand, usually provide visuals of the character emoting- a full set of icons means you can match the face to the tone and carry some extra oomph with your posts. But there's nothing wrong with having even just one icon if you're playing an original character. Commissioned icons can be expensive, and not everyone can draw their own. If you are able to get or create multiple icons, a solid guideline for a good spread of emotions can be found here. Free Dreamwidth accounts have a maximum of 15 icons, but a paid account gets like, hundreds. Icons can be uploaded to a journal by going here, and you can pull straight from a URL or from a local file on your system. Icons are allowed a maximum size of 100x100 pixels, and larger uploads tend to get awkwardly resized. Icons of non-square sizes (ie 30x100) tend to look a bit odd, so taking a moment to crop/resize/manipulate an image to the 100x100 size helps a ton. This can totally be done in things like MSPaint too through some slightly tedious nonsense- if you'd like a walkthrough on how I've done that just ask.

Typically, the character's app goes as an entry in the journal, for others to reference. The app varies from one roleplaying game to the next, but they often ask about backstory, personality, special abilities... standard enough stuff. On top of all of that, you may want to tweak the design of the character's journal once you've made it. This can be done here. Designs are listed as "TITLE by AUTHOR for STYLE", so if you like the layout of a particular journal but not the color, you can just click the link to the style and it'll automatically filter to those. I like picking designs that seem to fit with the character's personal tastes or color palette, but there's no wrong answer here. And if you don't want to see all the colors and different formats whatsoever, you can go to the display settings and change Entry Pages: Shown to You to Site Skin.

The Roleplay Environment

[daddykong]

Dreamwidth roleplays can take place within a community or within smaller, individual posts. Group roleplaying games will most likely take place within a dedicated community, which is pretty much an access-locked mini-forum. Some players may put posts within their character journals so that one-off roleplays with no attachment to a game have a place to go. But we're focusing more on communities here because the audience for this is definitely more than one person. There are usually 2-3 communities for any game, each with a different function: the log community for more detailed or in-person posts, a net community for in-character communications over electronics like text, voice, and video chats, and an out of character (OOC) community for logistics and planning. The rise of things like Discord means that an OOC community can be a little redundant, and with smaller games the Log and Net communities can easily be consolidated into one, and the players just differentiate between the two. They often do that by using tags assigned to a post, akin to Tumblr's and Twitter's. Tags typically include designations like [event] or [char: NAME] so that players can easily isolate things they're looking for.

As I said, you can think of a DW community as like a message board. Within an RP sense, that means that each entry within the community is its own separate sub-event. The mod(s) might post an event to the community, which means that all RPing directly related to that event happens in the comments to that entry. Some things, like RP events, are often guided like a D&D game, while other posts are more open-ended prompts.

Permissions Posts

[daddykong]

Roleplaying is, on a deep level, about consent. Between the players within a given thread, or all players of a given group. Players are all assumed to be on the same page by writing and submitting their apps and reading the rules, but some stuff is more personal.

That's where Permissions Posts come in. Some things here may not be entirely applicable, but you can easily scroll through these fancy-formatted posts to get an idea of the sorts of things people decide to say they are/aren't down with, either in- or out-of-character.

In the past, I created and used this:
<b>[-Out-of-Character-]</b> <b>Backtagging (continuing after a thread is "old"):</b> [YES/CUTOFF-POINT/ASK] <b>Threadjacking (unexpected visitor in a thread):</b> [YES/NO/ASK] <b>Fourth-walling (Deadpool-style acknowledgement of fiction):</b> [YES/NO/ASK] <b>Offensive Subjects</b> [List as needed.] <b>[-In-Character-]</b> <b>Physical Affection</b> [YES/NO/ASK] <b>Physical Violence</b> [YES/NO/ASK/LIMITS] <b>Telepathy/Mind-reading</b> [YES/NO/ASK] <b>Sexual Content</b> [YES/NO/ASK]

Anatomy of a Comment

[daddykong]

This is a comment in the making. We've got the From field, which is the journal you're logged in as, you only should care about this if you have more than one. The Icon Used area on the top right normally has keywords in that arrow-box but I don't have any icons on this account, so. Oops. The Subject Line is often left blank, but can be used for snarky banter between players. It's helpful if you're doing a chain of comments back-to-back. The Message section includes the body of the post itself, using limited HTML coding. Worth pointing out is that makes text smaller, and makes text bigger. These can be nested, so asdsads is real small.

The basic setup for shorter-form posts is that thoughts and actions are bundled up into a some sort of container, usually brackets [] or parentheses (). These are then contained in a classifier so the text takes up less space. Anything the characters actually say is outside of those smaller brackets, formatted normally. Longer-form prose-y posts are a-okay and would use the same sorts of formatting (or lack thereof) if you were writing in a word processor. The above shorter format can be used for more in-depth posts.

And sometimes you'll want to chain a series of comments together, often for dramatic/humorous effect to show a character's change in demeanor through a reaction. A player might decide, for example, to have the character react to something very funny by bursting out laughing, chained into a comment of the character shouting about what they're laughing about, and then a third of the character collapsed on the ground, struggling to catch their breath. This sort of approach is only really viable if you've got multiple icons showing that range of emotions- the content of those chained posts can just as easily be condensed into one if preferable.

I do a quick-and-dirty example of this sort of comment chaining below:

End

[daddykong]

This might seem like a lot, but don't forget:

1. Ask questions.
2. Communicate with each other.
3. Have fun!
• Note: If you're not having fun, revisit items 1 and 2, then brainstorm other things that might help.

questions etc

[daddykong]

just ask me shit here i guess

ON ASSHOLES

[daddykong]

Jerks and douchebags and assholes and antagonistic interactions can be... tricky. I've played many of them, and it's more often than not a very fun experience. Since RPing is all about communication and consent and trust, an asshole character can sometimes inherently chafe against the norms of players. In fact, I've seen many instances of poorly executed or poorly received asshole actions completely destabilize playerbases and games! So here's some advice I've picked up that might help.

• For Players of Assholes:
  • OWN IT. When you write a douchey tag, it's a conscious effort on your part. You're crafting each sentence and picking each word with intent. Acknowledge that your character is usually (or is temporarily being) an ass. Accept it, because nobody's going to be sunshine all the time. It's fine, it's human (or whatever race they are!) and you don't need to feel bad about the mere act of writing rudeness.
  • Expect Resistance! Nobody likes being mistreated. If they're into that sort of thing, then it's likely only in a consensual situation with clear boundaries. So if you make the decision to write your character enacting in assholery, assume that it won't go over well! Characters can push back and even turn the tables! Your character might damage or destroy a relationship. That's fine, those things can be natural consequences of bad behavior! On top of that, players might remark about the character's actions or personality. That's fine too, because if you see some jerkass while you're on a bus, you're probably gonna be like "wow, what a jerk!" And the best way to deal with all that is, uh, the first bullet point. Go reread it if you need to.
    
  • Write It Well! This might sound mean, but asshole characters are best served when the writer behind them is going to clearly explain the motives and rationales behind the actions. It doesn't always have to be immediate (an explanation in-character can be fun!) but it needs to be there. If there's rudeness or hostility with no context or backdrop, then your character may as well be a faceless jerk shouting obscenities at someone else from across the street. If you find yourself repeatedly explaining the motive behind a rude action (especially if it's from a character who isn't normally rude!), you've fucked up in writing the action and should either clarify if needed, or weave the information into later posts. And then you drop it! Learn from your mistakes and don't do it again. You and your characters don't defend good days, so don't defend a character having a bad day. Remember, OWN IT because the character is making a conscious choice.
  • COMMUNICATE, DAMMIT. This is always important! Playing an asshole means you should be willing to play preemptive damage control. As I mentioned in the second point, characters and players will probably be like "wow what an ass." Some characters will eject from the social link forever, while others can get past it, and that's up to you and the people you write with to figure out. If you're feeling attacked for writing an asshole, or if someone feels attacked because you're playing an asshole, be willing to talk about it! You'd be surprised how often I've had lost or damaged relationships between characters that could've been remedied with like five minutes of direct, player-to-player interactions.
  • Use Progressive Douching! Some characters are always, always jerks. That's fine! But it's very easy for those sorts of threads to just abruptly end, because a character doesn't want to put up with that. So it's important to find ways to turn that rude behavior into substance. Tease a motive in their words or in their actions. Or hell, have them say why they're doing the thing out loud! "You literally just insulted me, pal." If they're taking their frustrations out on someone else, contemplate having them realize this. Most people (and characters!) who feel they've been wronged just want to be heard, so giving the perpetrating character avenues to get that catharsis can be very helpful for everyone. If your character is not really confrontational they can always remember the situation for later, when they might be less in the midst of being a pain. It's never worth it to have a character just do something rude and treat it like an island that nobody can interact with. Some psychologists say that anger is a sort of disguising emotion, that there's always something underneath it like insecurity or regret or shame or whatever else. Honestly, just don't have the character be a jerk in a vacuum. It's a building block.
  • GROUP THREADS! Okay, this is actually the most dangerous place to have your character be a prick! Here's why: Threads with many characters can have a long delay between tags and can take a while to get anywhere, unless everyone's sitting down to crank out the entire thread back and forth. If you're thinking about why your character is going to be a douche to someone, think about the goal of the thread; it's probably cooperative. If it's not, go wild! IF IT IS A COOPERATIVE THREAD WITH MULTIPLE CHARACTERS you NEED to be conscious of the rest of the group and their opinions. If you don't know and vibe with everyone, you should reach out to the players and see how they feel about the douchey behavior. You're going to have three outcomes here, and I'm going to tell you when you should go ahead with each. If everyone is okay or indifferent towards the rude behavior, put it in the thread and go ahead. If less than half of the players are okay with it or if you really want to have the character do the thing regardless of what anyone else wants, make a splintering thread where your jerk does the thing. If people generally aren't on board with it, fucking don't. Group threads are a huge hassle to coordinate, and if the group gets slowed down or derailed, it could easily frustrate players. The more characters there are in the thread and the more players there are that you aren't super close with, the more you should be leaning towards either a splinter thread or not doing it at all. ALSO in a group thread, if you do throw down a rude contribution, be willing to edit it if people ask. This entire bullet point is just about Communicating. Do it.
  
  
• For Players Encountering Assholes
  • COMMUNICATE. Obviously.
  • Players of Chronic Assholes Can Be Self-Conscious! Sure, it sorta clashes with the whole OWN IT point, but there's nothing wrong an asshole's player being unsure if the character is too much, consistent, realistic, and so on. If they ask, be honest!
  • CALL THEM OUT. This goes back to communicating but a player is not allowed to get away with being rude or inconsiderate towards other players just because they're playing someone who is an asshole or does a rude thing. "My character is being a jerk so I see your opinion and lol too bad" is just Not Okay. Goes back to that point on progressive douching. Be willing to ask them questions like "If your character does this, mine won't be willing to interact with them anymore, are you okay with this?" or "The motive behind this tag doesn't really feel right to me, is everything on the level here?" If they're defensive to the point where they're offended that you ask questions like these, they're probably not doing a good job of playing an Asshole.