Role play Guidelines

[Sequin]

This RPing Help page was originally taken from www.beqanna.com/versioneleven/rphelp.php, and written by Cassi. I took it from the rpg Reflections && inds of Change. (link can be seen at bottom of page.)



1.) Describe! I cannot stress this enough. You should tell the colors, you should describe your horse (breed, color, history, etc) and you should set a scene. Is it rainy, sunny, or stormy? And thoughts! Thoughts are a good thing. We do not play customary horses; many of the horses in this role-playing world are smarter than many people. They can ponder death, life, and all that stuff. And best of all, you can go on for hours talking about this stuff. Also, your horse never just – ‘walks into the land’. Write something like – The equine figure stepped lightly into the barren lithosphere as if the topsoil had been overlaid with blown glass, her onyx colored hooves seemed to barely leave a crescent into the damp topsoil. That’s still pretty bad, but heck, it’s an example.


2.) Spelling and grammar!mistake here and there is okay but please, don’t misspell every other word. It looks really tacky. Also, don’t use apostrophes unless they’re needed, it g’t’s r’ally ‘nnoying, and don’t use Internet slang, like lol and u when posting. Get your and you’re right – you’re means you are, as in, you’re a horse, and your is possession of something, as in, that is your computer.


3.) Words used in right context. This is a problem I see a lot. Horse’s hooves are not sharp; they are often worn from trotting on rocks and such. Thus, horses should not have flints, talons, claws, daggers, or anything that implies to something sharp used as a word for hooves. Horse’s legs cannot be pillars, pistons, boughs, etc. Horse’s teeth are not sharp, thus they cannot be razors. Ooids is not a word, orbis is not a word, and horse’s eyes are not lanterns, headlights, lamps, or pools. You can use the aforesaid like so – her eyes were as deep as pools, or whatever, but don’t just say – her pools looked around. A horse’s head is not always its zenith, apex, etc, because what if it drops its head? Doesn’t work then. A horse’s nostrils are not nadirs; a nadir is the lowest point of something. A horse’s lips are not labia, the labia is part of a female’s, err, lower region. Terra is a rocky part of the moon, only if you are speaking Latin does it mean the ground we walk on, otherwise use terra firma, which is the ground we walk upon. Mascu is not a word, virile is an adjective, masculine is an adjective, and equine is an adjective. Bruja means witch, but in Spanish. Fatale by itself is not a word. Femme fatale is a word, as is femme. A harlot is a very *friendly* person, don’t use it unless you want to degrade your horse, and don’t use pregnant dog or bytch, its tacky slang. Actually, don't swear at all in a post, it looks tacky (there are some exceptions, sometimes the char you play, or the way you play it, can hold the cussing fine). A carcass usually means a dead body; don’t use it to describe your horse’s figure. A bodice is a corset, and horses don’t wear corsets. Also, don’t say ‘the onyx mare’. Your horse is not made of onyx, or charcoal, or ash, or whatever. Your horse is onyx hued/colored/tinted/whatever.


4.) Don’t use the same words over and over. Don’t use the same words over and over. Don’t use the same words over and over. Don’t use the same words over and over. Don’t use the same words over and over. Don’t use the same words over and over. Don’t use the same words over and over. Get it?


5.) If fighting, please don't say that your horse grasps some part of their foe. Horse’s teeth can grip for maybe ten seconds, probably not more then that. You cannot strangle a horse by going for it’s jugular vein. Okay? No horse, unless it has been heavily drugged or something, is going to stand there and let you masticate upon its throat. Plus, the area is heavily protected by muscle and fat, you’d have to gnaw through that first. As I said before, horse’s hooves are not deadly sharp. They hardly draw blood, even though they can kick like all hell. Why’s this? Because they’re blunt, they cannot slice the other horse’s neck open, or crap like that. You also cannot grasp the skin of the horse’s nose, there’s a tiny bit of skin to grab onto, and horse’s cannot aim that well.


6.) Using crazy, unfamiliar words do not make someone a good role-player. Nor do long, rambling posts. Correct spelling, word treatment, and elegance make a superior role-player, and if you have these, your posts are more often than not extended, because you are so fine at describing. We have no magic words, so don’t ask people for ‘word lists’ and crap, because we don’t have them. We don’t care if you use the word legs as long as you don’t say ‘her legs brought the gamine into the terrain’, you’d be better off saying ‘her lanky appendages churned against the balling snow in a exhorting effort to carry the lithe frame of the ash colored vixen into the terrain which she viewed with a slightly terrified espying.’


Written by Cassi


I, personally, love this guide, it makes so much more sense than having a "dictionary," mainly because RPing DOES NOT require the use of spectacular words that nobody understands. It's about HOW you type, not the words you are using.

Written by zafira