Official Guidelines

Introduction (intro):

What you are about to read is going to be a bit long, so you should prepare yourself. This was created because some new role-players do not have a clear concept of what exactly they should and shouldn't do in a role-play. we’re going to clear up some cloudy issues as well as list common rules, terms, and etiquette you should ALWAYS use when rping. If you read carefully and pay attention, you may even learn some helpful tips along the way that will help you become a better role-player. So buckle-up and let’s get ready to ride towards better role-playing!

What Is Role-playing? (rpwth)

What exactly is role-playing? By definition, role-playing (sometimes spelled roleplaying for those who don’t like dashes) is to "adopt and act out the role of characters, or parts, that may have personalities, motivations, and backgrounds different from their own." Role-playing, also known as RP to some, is like being in an improvisational drama or free-form theater, in which the participants are the actors who are playing parts, and the audience. This is the general definition of role-playing.

RP Forum Rules (rprules)

***These rules are subject to change, so please check them often! More about these are also covered in the Terms and Etiquette section.

~ Controlling Characters: You may only control your own characters in a role-play. Do not attempt to dictate the actions of another person’s character. If you need another character to do something in order to progress your character’s story or some such, send them a PM or use OOC. Nobody likes to have somebody else controlling their character’s actions or speech, so don’t do it without first consulting the person in question.

~ Role-play Ownership: When a person starts a role-play, they usually have an idea of what they want to happen throughout the course of the story and it’s ending. They have the right to decide where their role-play is going, so if the starter of a role-play asks the participant to do something to progress the story the way he wants it, then do it. A role-play belongs to the person who started it, so they get power over what happens in it.

~ Keep Track of the Storyline: Actually read other people’s posts in a roleplay. It’s just plain annoying when somebody doesn’t pay attention to what others are saying, because it can disrupt the flow of the story or cause confusion when posts clash with each other.

~ Out of Character Discussion: Out of Character Discussion is an acceptable and useful way of deciding things that need to happen in a role-play. A good story needs at least some discussion in order to work properly, otherwise nobody is sure where exactly the role-play is heading or what is meant to be happening. However, lots of out of character chat is unsightly and detrimental to the role-play. Use OOC sparingly and/or PMs to work out what needs to be done to get the role-play going successfully.

~ Grammar and Punctuation: Try to write it as if you’re writing a book like Harry Potter, or Twilight, or some other book that you love. This helps people understand what you’re writing so that they can respond in the correct manner. L33t speak, chat speak, and sms of any form are not allowed here. Periods should always be used at the end of a sentence. Exclamation points, (!) should be used at the end of a sentence instead of a period to show excitement/anger/surprise, or other extreme emotion. Quotation marks (“At either end of these words”) should always be used to denote that a character is speaking and a comma should be placed before the quotation marks, and after if you plan to continue the sentence.

Now onto an essential part of role-playing; creating and developing your character(s).

Character Development (chardev)

Having a well-developed character to play in your role-play is essential. If you don’t have a good character, there could be problems in the storyline later on. If you’re using a character that has already been created, also called “cannon characters” (for example, Balto, Steele, or Simba) you should already have a good idea of what the character should look and act like. And if you don’t know about the character, you should do research to figure it out. Find out what act like, how they would react, about their history, etc.

Cannon Character/Non-owned Character Role-play:
In this case, if you’re going to play a cannon character, you need to remain in character (IC). You can’t just mold them to your will. They have an identity and personality all their own that their creators gave them. You should respect it.

Your Character Role-play:

If you want to role-play with your own character, it’s even more essential to figure out how the character should look and act. Sometimes when you’re creating a new character, it’s helpful to fill out a form with categories to start describing your new character. Here’s one of the common forms used around the forums, and it is also used to help introduce your character to other players and give some quick, useful background info without bogging them down with too many details:

Name:
Age:
Gender:
Species:
Rank:
Clan:
Mate:
Pups:
Personality:
Physical Description:
History:
Picture(s):
Extra:

There are alternates, but this seems to be the most common version right now. Fill it out to help create your new character and familiarize yourself. That way, you won’t have to sit and think too terribly long about what your character should do when you post, because you’ll already know what kind of personality he/she has. And give him/her some flair that really makes them stand out and be “yours” not just another face in the crowd.

RP Terms And Etiquette (termsmanners)

First of all, what is Etiquette? Etiquette is defined as:
1. conventional requirements as to social behavior; proprieties of conduct as established in any class or community or for any occasion.

2. a prescribed or accepted code of usage in matters of ceremony, as at a court or in official or other formal observances.

3. the code of ethical behavior regarding professional practice or action among the members of a profession in their dealings with each other: medical etiquette.

A synonym for it is manners. All role-players must follow proper role-playing etiquette and manners.

Autoing (aka: auto-hitting, God-moding, God-playing, power-playing, tweaking): Taking control of another person’s character without permission for whatever reason. It can also be defined as any attack that automatically hits another roleplayer’s character without giving said character a chance to dodge it. This is more commonly referred to as auto-hitting.

Ex: Marz snarled, hurtling straight for the she-wolf Kaera. His massive paws slammed into her frail body, rolling her over onto her side. Kaera couldn’t even move with Marz on top of her. Marz leaned down and closed his jaws around her throat, forcing her into submission.

If two different people play Marz and Kaera, then this is considered autoing. Please note that both types of autoing were shown in the example. Auto-hitting is not accepted, EVER. However, this doesn’t mean that you can dodge every single attack that comes your way. Never being hit by an attack is also a form of autoing and will not be tolerated.

OOC: This stands for Out of Character, and should only be used as a drop at the top of a post to inform another of things going on outside of the RPing world. Dropping OOCs between sentences in a post can be very difficult to understand, and it is not recommended.

IC: In Character. Basically everything done with the roleplaying world, while a person is writing for their character, is in character. You can also use BIC, which means Back In Character, if you need to post a quick OOC note at the beginning of your post.

NPC: An NPC is a ‘non-player character’. Typically they can be controlled by any roleplayer who so wishes to take control of them and are only used to help move things along if the plot happens to be moving slowly. Since many players control them at the same time and since they are not truly important to the plot, they can be auto-hit and killed, however, if a specific player creates the NPC, it is always polite to ask if they have finished with the NPC and if you can kill it off.

Tweaks/Tweaking or God characters: A big no-no in the roleplaying world. These are the perfect characters of myth and legend. Handsome, intelligent, perfect manners, can't be harmed, an expert fighter, leader of his old pack etc. Known some? Yeah, don't do it. Good traits should never out number bad ones. They should always at least even out, to give a character depth. These are also known as Godly Characters. Other related terms include: God-moding, God-playing, and power-playing

One-Liners: This should be self-explanatory with the number of times we’ve complained about it over the years. But to clarify once again, these are either one-sentence (or one line) long posts that don’t really contribute to the plot of the role-play and leave other role-players with nothing to respond to. Let’s face it, you can’t really make anything interesting happen successfully in one sentence (unless it’s a run-on sentence, but that’s just bad grammar). The more detail the better. Try to describe as much as you can in your posts. Describe feelings, facial expressions, the land around you, and interaction with other wolves. Make it so the reader can see the scene before them. Even if you're not the best at this, try because the more practice you get at it, the better you will become at it. One-liners are not tolerated.

Frosts/Frosting: This is when you leave a role-play hanging, effectively 'freezing' or 'frosting' everything that is going on. It is understandable if you cannot, for some reason or other, gain access to the internet all the time, but please don't leave other RPers waiting for long periods of time for your reply. Not only is it discourteous, but it is also rather irritating.
In relation to this, don’t drop out of a role-play without letting the other role-players know that you’re leaving. It gets very frustrating when you’re waiting on someone to reply and you don’t find out until two weeks later that they’ve dropped the rp.

Reading Posts: Please, read everyone else’s posts before you respond. If you haven’t read, then there’s a good chance that you’re missing critical details and that your post will not make sense!

Always Be Polite: Role-playing is about having fun, not about starting flame wars. What people do IC is completely separate to how they are OOC. If your character hates another player’s character, and they have a reason for it, that’s fine and dandy. If you start disliking another player because of something his/her character did, that’s not fine. Leave IC issues IC and leave OOC issues OOC. If you have issues with someone OOC, this doesn’t mean that your characters have issues with each other necessarily, so role-play accordingly. And even if you two do have issues, be courteous and polite anyways, otherwise the host of the role-play will likely tell you both to leave.

Forum RPs Aren’t In Real-time: What this basically means is that, though the other players are waiting for a response form you, you don’t have to respond the very first second that you see a reply has been made. Take a few moments to carefully read the post that has been made and then write a thoughtful reply back. You don’t need to constantly stake out the topic you’re role-playing in, just try and reply when you’re able to. Also, obviously, double posting is a no-no. It wastes space and is annoying and distracting.

Never Assume Anything: If you aren’t sure what another person means, just ask them to clarify it. They won’t get mad at you for not understanding; they’ll be happy that you took the time to ask and that you didn’t just role-play around it and possibly miss a huge point in the plot.

Keep Your Posts Readable: That means, no funky colors like light blue on a white background, or anything of that nature. Computers already cause enough eyestrain and nobody needs anymore. In addition to this, try and use good grammar and spelling. People can’t reply to your posts very well if they can’t understand anything you’re trying to say. (tip: some people write their entry in Microsoft Word first before they post it on the site, it not a must, but it's something to think about. I personally don't, but if I'm unsure about a word, I do spell check on MS Word.) No Chatspeak/leetspeak/1337speak/sms! It’s hard to read, annoying, an eyesore, and just plain inconsiderate. Not to mention against the rules here. Don’t do it. This is in conjunction with the above note. If others can’t read it, then they can’t reply to it successfully. Also, don’t overuse punctuation. It’s uncool and annoying.

don’t post stuff like that. If you have a question about spelling, punctuation, or grammar, don’t be afraid to ask someone about it. The worst they can say to you is that they don’t know much themselves, and even then they can probably point you to someone who will know.

First Person Point Of View Narration: When a role-player uses things like: "I walked towards the alpha, my eyes meeting his in defiance." Please don't use this in any role-play. It's rather annoying, sometimes hard to understand, and even harder to reply to. Role-plays need to flow like a story from a book, and they should. The only difference should be that there are many writers instead of just one.

Third Person Point Of View Narration: When a role-player typically uses things like: "Kanag stalked up to the alpha, head raised, eyes blazing angrily." This is recommended in every instance of role-play, as it’s much easier to read and reply to.

Present Tense: He walks, he runs, she stands, etc.

Past Tense: He was walking, he walked, he ran, she was standing, she stood, etc.

(*Note* Most roleplays use only past tense, or only present tense. It gets confusing if multiple tenses are used between posts, and even more confusing if both tenses are used in the same post. Usually it’s better to just use the past tense.)


Hints And Tips (tradesecrets)

Just out of generosity and to help you guys out, here are some of our trade secrets and tips when it comes to rping!

1. Write your post/reply in Microsoft Word or some other word processing program to check for spelling and grammar, or use dictionary.com.

2. Think deeply about your post and what direction you want your character and story to move in before you respond.

3. Never be afraid to ask for help if you’re unsure about anything!

4. Take all rping advice when it is given to you.

5. Always try to make yourself a better role-player.

6. Always read over your post before you submit it to check for errors, and make sure it doesn’t sound funny. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked through a post and realized it didn’t make sense in a couple of areas before I sent it in.

7. Change up your characters every now and then. Don’t make all wolves, all vampires, all heroes, or all villains. Change is your friend and it will expand your horizons and force you to learn and better yourself.

8. Take your time when posting on a forum. You have all the time you need to come up with a good reply, so use it to your advantage! Just try not to leave it for a month at a time.

Thank you to Balto Animation Souce