Guidelines for healthy RPing

1. The Purpose of the RPG Section:
The first thing to acknowledge when joining the RPG section is that the term “RPG” in the title is a bit of a misnomer. In RPGs, many (if not most) players focus on their character’s ability to accomplish tasks and achieve victory over others, as opposed to making his or her character’s story interesting or captivating. In order to better understand the RPG section, you must look at it less like an RPG game, and more as a cooperative writing exercise. Here, in the RPG section, “players” cooperate to form interesting stories with their focus residing on their character’s motives, desires, perspectives and biography, with a secondary (but also important) focus on competition and the possession of interesting powers. If you want a great way of evaluating a character’s quality and aptness for this section of the site, judge your character based on their depth and potential for development (both emotionally and power-wise) and not solely on their ability to “win”.

2. How to RPG
Now that we understand what participants are here to do, we can try and figure out how to go about doing that. Many players new to the RPG section immediately try to engage in pointless battles or attempt to steal control of empires and territory from pre-existing establishments for little to no reason. The thing to remember is that, while combat is a welcomed part of RPGing, it will only be truly engaging and respected if it is happening for a well thought out reason. Such is true for any actions that a created character makes. Although it is recommended that new rpers make weaker characters when they first join, this is mostly because characters who can simply solve all of their problems with a single move or defeat opponents instantly have very little room to develop, no reason to put thought into their actions and will rarely if ever face a challenge. That is to say, a character who has too much power, everything that they want or could ever want and no distant desires or over-looming threats is very unlikely to find themselves in a situation with an interesting plot. Characters with absurd amounts of powers exist en mass, and many are done well, but it is recommended that they are written with a focus on something other than their absurd powers. And as we discussed in part 1, developing an interesting plot is the main goal of the RPG section, not winning every event.

3. Interacting with Other Players & The Tone of The RPG Section:
The main thing to keep in mind when you begin to participate is that we’re here to cooperate to form amazing stories, and not to tear each other apart. A fear of dying in an rp is not needed, and quite frankly characters in this section may be defeated on a regular basis, but rarely die unless the author writing them wants them to perish. With the cooperative nature of RPO in mind, communication and compromise are the keys to producing great stories here.

Wanna rp with some character that you know is far more powerful than yours, but are afraid of dying?
Let that person know and ask if they want to rp with you. Once you know that you won’t get… well, brutally murdered, you’ll be more free to focus on developing your story.

Wanna engage in some competitive RPing to test you and your character’s mettle against someone else whose character seems like a good match-up?
Contact the person to learn about their character and what reason they would have to fight and how they could meet.

Success here is all about communication and compromise. We cooperate here, and as long as your are of a similar mindset with the person that you’re RPing with, you’ll have a great time and make a group of friends in no time!

4. Recommendations for New Rpers:
This particular section of the article is merely a set of recommendations, not a code of rules that need be followed. A link to a larger thread with recommendations is here, but here are a few basics that every newcomer should be aware of.

1. Make Your First Character Earthbound: Let’s not concern ourselves with power level now, and focus on setting. The vast majority of RPG events on ComicVine occur on Earth. With a character who lives on Earth and is effected by events that occur on Earth, they are more likely to have story-lines and events to get involved with for RPing purposes.

2. See Others as People Looking for a Good Time, and not Bloodthirsty Competition: More of a psychological recommendation than anything, but keep in mind that the people here love meeting new members and won’t mind getting involved with your characters (as long as there is solid motive to do so). Speak your mind and don’t be intimidated, people will be happy for your contributions to the site.

3. Avoid Posting OOC (Out of Character) Comments in IC (In Character) RP Threads: Posting OOC comments in IC threads can disrupt the flow of a story and do not belong. Please send OOC comments to the RPers directly through personal messages, or post in an OOC thread that is linked to the thread being discussed.

4. Avoid Including Numbers, Symbols or Random Letters in Your Username: Usernames in the RPG section are often seen as the names for the characters in use as opposed to the author writing them. By treating your username as your character's name, your character can grow recognizable more quickly and you give off more of an air of professionalism and experience.

5. BE RESPECTFUL: Self explanatory, but you’ll get more flies with honey than vinegar.

Special thanks to Kaija for the Guidelines.