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.
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.
For the sake of a structured example, let's say that a group of nine adventurers go into a dungeon to get a treasure. They immediately find a three-way fork, and split into trios. One group finds the treasure, but it's guarded by a boss fight! The other groups don't know this until they finish exploring their paths, only to have people from the boss fight group run in and tell them to help fight the boss before the party tank dies from distracting it. They make their way back to the boss, but the tank has taken some serious damage and can't keep fighting, so the other eight adventurers fight the boss instead! Then, the tank gets taken to a hospital off-screen, and later the other adventurers come by and give them chocolate and flowers and hugs and stuff.
Visually, it would look something like this...
Post Body: Mod details dungeon and points out the three paths. In a Discord or OOC comm discussion (or even an IC thread if people want) the trios are determined and each gets their own thread within the post.
Optional Pre-Event: IC discussion of who's in which groups, characters shooting the shit beforehand, whatever.
TEAM ONE: Enters the dungeon through the first path.
team one chains a bunch of comments (probably alongside the mod guiding them like a dungeon master) until they finish their chunk of dungeon. comment chains gradually slide to the right so it looked like a giant triangle of rp content.
At one point, someone from the Boss Group appears, and tells Team One to come fight the boss before someone dies. The thread would then (or soon after) end, and be assumed to link up with the boss monster.
TEAM TWO: Enters the dungeon through the second path.
team two chains a bunch of comments (probably alongside the mod guiding them like a dungeon master) until they finish their chunk of dungeon.
At one point, someone from the Boss Group appears, and tells Team Two to come fight the boss before someone dies. The thread would then (or soon after) end, and be assumed to link up with the boss monster.
TEAM THREE: Enters the dungeon through the third path.
team three chains a bunch of comments (probably alongside the mod guiding them like a dungeon master) until they find the boss, oh shit.
There's probably a pretty short thread of the tank in question fighting this boss monster on their own, or maybe it's handwaved altogether. Or maybe it's set aside as something fo the mod and player to write out at their leisure, separate from the group's expectations for the event.
The other party members show up, the tank goes down, and they fight the boss. OR...
BOSS FIGHT: gets its own separate thread in the post so it's not so hard to find
THEN, once that event is done enough, the tank's player makes a new entry in the community located in the hospital as an aftermath post. If the players all agree, it could even be included as an extra thread at the end of the Event post. It's whatever.
But things aren't always so predictable. In fact, most posts set the scene in a variety of ways, encouraging players to open their characters up to threads with others through a variety of prompts. An easy example is a carnival! The descriptions are normally a bit more detailed, but a person writing the base prompt could have options like...
A. RIDES RIDES RIDES - roller coaster, teacups, vomit inducer, haunted house, GO WILD
B. GREASY FOOD - funnel cake, doubly deep fried funnel cake, deep fried milkshake with plastic cup also deep fried
C. GAMES GAMES GAMES - squirt guns, throw the ring on the bottle, get swindled, WIN THE STUFFED ANIMAL OF YOUR DREAMS
D. OTHER - shine on you crazy diamonds
And a character's comment, called a top-level, is cherry-picking what they want to work with from those options, and would be one comment to the entry including all of something like...
A1. There's definitely some kind of meat in that... - detailing the character's misadventures on the vomit inducer
A2. Haunted houses bad for other bodily fluids. - detailing this poor fuck, knees a-quiver, about to enter a haunted house and prolly die
C. KING OF GAMES - this nerd got it together and is cleaning up at the squirt gun game, that's too many stuffed animals please help them
D. A MUGGING - look, all those stuffed animals are begging to be stolen, plz help from these vagrants
So the important thing to keep in mind with top-levels, especially when there's a bunch of them around, is that they don't have to mutually exclusive between characters. It's generally poor form to have your character respond to more than one prompt from another character (unless it's exclusive to them, which is fine!) but the only thing stopping your character from throwing a reply at every character with a top-level in the bunch is your own mental reserves and free time. It might be easier to start smaller with 2-3 threads at once to test what your limits are, though. And it's not often mandatory to write a top-level set of prompts, sometimes it's funner to just rise from the depths and hit the threads that really give you a fun feeling. There are no wrong answers with this, but be willing to put yourself out there.
Threads can also involve more than two people, that's totally fine. Whereas threads with two participants tend to alternate, threads with three tend to cycle, so Character 1, Character 2, Character 3, then Character 1 again. That ordering can be shaken up if the players are cool with it.
And sometimes, a third (or more!) character can drop in out of nowhere and interrupt the flow of a thread. This is called threadjacking, and must be done carefully so you don't step on toes. There are instances where you can pull off that sort of thing without advance warning but it really depends on the temperaments of the players and characters in the thread.
Since we all have lives and sometimes RP threads can take a bit to make happen, there's backtagging, which is a player's tolerance for threads taking longer, and how willing they are to keep a thread going after its prompt has gotten a little older. Some people will backtag an introduction thread for months, and some will stop after a few days or weeks, whatever's their comfort level.
Either way, you shouldn't feel awkward asking the person you're threading with what the end state is. (That's not a real term I've seen people use but I'm using it now, so!!!) Sometimes all parties are winging it and seeing what happens or things reach a natural conclusion, which is fine! But sometimes the players both start to run out of steam or inspiration, so it's easier to say "when do we wanna wrap this one up and how?"
These topics and many others can be figured out through a Permissions Post which I outline further down.
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timeasmymeasure
The Roleplay Environment
Date: 2019-01-02 10:50 pm (UTC)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.
GUIDED THREADS
Date: 2019-01-02 10:52 pm (UTC)Visually, it would look something like this...
Post Body: Mod details dungeon and points out the three paths. In a Discord or OOC comm discussion (or even an IC thread if people want) the trios are determined and each gets their own thread within the post.
THEN, once that event is done enough, the tank's player makes a new entry in the community located in the hospital as an aftermath post. If the players all agree, it could even be included as an extra thread at the end of the Event post. It's whatever.
Open-Ended Prompts
Date: 2019-01-02 10:52 pm (UTC)And a character's comment, called a top-level, is cherry-picking what they want to work with from those options, and would be one comment to the entry including all of something like...
So the important thing to keep in mind with top-levels, especially when there's a bunch of them around, is that they don't have to mutually exclusive between characters. It's generally poor form to have your character respond to more than one prompt from another character (unless it's exclusive to them, which is fine!) but the only thing stopping your character from throwing a reply at every character with a top-level in the bunch is your own mental reserves and free time. It might be easier to start smaller with 2-3 threads at once to test what your limits are, though. And it's not often mandatory to write a top-level set of prompts, sometimes it's funner to just rise from the depths and hit the threads that really give you a fun feeling. There are no wrong answers with this, but be willing to put yourself out there.
Other Terms
Date: 2019-01-02 10:59 pm (UTC)And sometimes, a third (or more!) character can drop in out of nowhere and interrupt the flow of a thread. This is called threadjacking, and must be done carefully so you don't step on toes. There are instances where you can pull off that sort of thing without advance warning but it really depends on the temperaments of the players and characters in the thread.
Since we all have lives and sometimes RP threads can take a bit to make happen, there's backtagging, which is a player's tolerance for threads taking longer, and how willing they are to keep a thread going after its prompt has gotten a little older. Some people will backtag an introduction thread for months, and some will stop after a few days or weeks, whatever's their comfort level.
Either way, you shouldn't feel awkward asking the person you're threading with what the end state is. (That's not a real term I've seen people use but I'm using it now, so!!!) Sometimes all parties are winging it and seeing what happens or things reach a natural conclusion, which is fine! But sometimes the players both start to run out of steam or inspiration, so it's easier to say "when do we wanna wrap this one up and how?"
These topics and many others can be figured out through a Permissions Post which I outline further down.