The Pokémon Crossroads Role Playing Guide (Beginners, Advanced, and Role Play Creation)

[Neo Emolga]

GUIDE #3 BUILDING THAT AWESOME ROLE PLAY

1. INTRODUCTION

So, thinking of building your own role play and subjecting a few victims (just kidding!) to bring along for the ride? Building a role play from pure scratch can be done in a variety of ways, and most people who have done it before have their own special style that works great for them. And maybe you've already built a few before but you're interested in seeing one interesting way of doing it that just about anyone can do. Generally, people like to join original, cool, and well-prepared role plays that look like people are seriously interested in taking this idea to a new level. So yeah, it's best not to get lazy about the process and/or recycle something that's already come and gone before. Coming up with a good role play idea isn't the kind of thing that ends up just be a five-minute job. Sometimes it can take a few days or even a week or two.

2. BEGINNING BITS

Before you get started making a role play, there are a few things that you probably should be aware of. Every role play community is different, so be aware of what kind of people may be coming to your role play. Lurk around first and see what kinds of things pass for a role play around there. But, if you're just starting off in a new community, it's better to make a really detailed role play on the side of caution and take it as if that community has pretty high standards. When in doubt, go big and go great. It's just embarrassing to have a locked thread in your name because what you made was too shabby by the community's standards.

Second, a lot depends on what ideas and themes you're basing your role play off of. If you start a Pokémon role play on a Pokémon forum, that works great, but if you post a role play based on something like the anime Bleach or the game series Uncharted on said Pokémon forum, you're already slashing down the number of potential participants by using a fandom many of them may know nothing about. You're better off either coming up with something original, or using a role play based on the fandom that the community is based around. Anything else may mean you're taking a risk. You also can't expect people who don't know the fandom to start spending hours of time researching wikis and plunging into Google searches. Most people are not going to do that.

3. WORLD-BUILDING

AND IN THE BEGINNING, YOU SAID...

For those of you who plan on making an entirely original role play, chances are good you may run into the challenge of building your own world. It may seem pretty daunting, but don't get discouraged. It's something you can have quite a bit of fun with.

First off, don't immediately assume a living, fictional world needs to be pretty much like Earth with different-shaped continents. A lot of stories, games, and movies do this, but you can inject a few things that may alter the normal worldly flow of things, and yet do so much to change ways life have been built around that. Messing with a few things like seasons, gravity, environment, and so on are possibilities, but don't go too overboard. Don't alter too much to the point where reality is now totally scrambled, or else you might confuse your role players and they won't feel too comfortable role playing in this new environment.

Second, don't try to make your own world until after you have a basic idea of what kind of role play you're building. While it's perfectly okay to make changes as you go along, building the entire world completely and then having no idea where you really want to go with it is a mess also. You might have to go backwards after that and stuff like that can get icky.

The "Earth with different shaped continents" approach isn't bad, don't get me wrong. It serves as a good starting point. It's a setting that isn't freakishly outlandish, but it may help to add a little flavor. But yeah, certain assumptions will need to be made first. These are the raw basics that every fictional world needs to have for it to be believable and to have the potential for a storyline:

• This world needs to support sentient, intelligent life in one way or another
• Things like air, food, water, ability to breed, and the basic, physiological needs need to be there
• A basic, sustainable ecosystem with food chains and predator/prey relationships, along with resources these living creatures rely upon for life survival
• Forms of communication, expression, and society

You can look back at any piece of fiction, game, or movie that features an entirely new world and they'll all have these aspects in one way or another. But when it comes to creating an entirely original world, your world may have something like this, but then something different as well that changes how life revolves around the situation. Keep in mind how many different kinds of planets there are out there in the universe. Some of them have really weird stuff going on. Yes, stuff that's even stranger than fiction.

Maybe ask yourself some food-for-thought questions about the world you're building, such as these:

• How warm or cold is it on this world? Are the arctic regions only at the poles, or does this entire world pretty much have snow all over? Or is it very tropical? Maybe a mix of everything the way Earth is? Maybe a new and interesting type of biome exists here?
• Sunlight and day time. Every planet has a longer or shorter day than the next. Are days longer than nights, or vice-versa? Or maybe the world has two suns and that affects the flow of daylight?
• Gravity. Does it still work the same way here? Or can people jump several stories high just because it's much lighter?

Still, keep in mind one thing. If it will greatly affect the RP and the way the world is built, then mention it. But if not, don't really spend too much time on it. A world may have three moons, but if these three moons really don't affect all that much, then you really don't need to mention them. But again, like I said earlier, don't warp around too much. Having the seasons be a little oddball and/or having gravity be altered in a way are good means to create variance, but that should be in then.

But in essence, what people wear, what they eat, how they live, and what they do for entertainment can be greatly affected by the surrounding area and what's available to them in terms of resources, availability, and culture. A planet with lighter gravity may not like playing golf that much.

PUT ON YOUR CARTOGRAPHER HAT

If you're making your own world, I strongly recommend making a map, even if it's just a simple crude one drawn up in MS Paint or some other basic drawing program. A very detailed worded description can be used instead, but still, a map can work wonders. Just about any video game that has you moving from one location to another has some kind of a map involved, even if it's just an outline with dots. Even if you feel your artistic skills are smut and feel your art looks like a kindergartener got drunk off of Heineken, if you can at least draw lines and type letters for city/location labels, you can make a working map for your role play.

Even if all you can do is outline continents with basic black squiggly bubbles, put dots in places, and put city/location labels to create a black and white map, that's already a big step in terms of telling your role players what locations there are in this world, about how close and far apart they are, what their names are, and what kind of geography they're dealing with. As long as people can see the dots and read the city/location labels, that's already a big jump from having nothing. Even if all they have is "Naughty Forest" in the middle of a field of white, at least they know there's a forest there and not somewhere else.

Map or not, it's best to describe at least a little bit about these areas. Chances are good a role player may only take a quick glance at the map and only read about locations they intend on visiting. Everything else may just be skimmed over. Regardless, having the basic stuff gives them an idea of what the world is like. If Naughty Forest is filled with pixies and fairies that like to steal your New York Yankees baseball hat, role players probably should know about that.

Still, if Photoshop is your best friend and you can make a really epic map with all the bells and whistles, then by all means, go for the gusto. A beautiful map will drawn in people and will prove to them that you're serious about this role play and want it to rock the house and get record deals.

HOME SWEET HOME

While you're out creating your world and your story, you may want to start thinking about who or what lives here. If you really want to feature a particular creature or race of beings you had in mind and wanted to create, make sure this world you're building for them can actually support their existence and their ability to survive.

When it comes to making up your own creatures and races, it's good to know a little about biology and about roles and niches, as well was the survival of the fittest. If a particular species can no longer obtain food or has no real place to live, well, they're goners. Species go extinct all the time for various reasons, whether their food or habitats are gone, or just can't produce more offspring to offset their death rate. Also, each species has a carrying capacity, which means a population of creatures can only go as high as the maximum number of resources are available to support it. And sometimes, that may mean going into competition with another species.

In terms of intelligent life, this is typically with regards to creatures that are able to construct civilizations, culture, languages, architecture, trades, economies, technology, and all the kinds of things that humans do. While birds can make their own nests, communicate to each other, and have forms of organization, they're not really considered intelligent life in terms of fiction. Usually with that regards, intelligent life is referred to as any race or creature that is as mentally intelligent as a human and capable of performing most of the same kinds of facilities, such as building structures, reading/writing, creating leadership and law, creating economies by means of currency and exchange, and those kinds of things. A good determination you can use to make this call is to ask if the species uses numbers in any way. Birds, frogs, rabbits, bison, and so on don't use numbers and never really cared for math. Humans use math every day. And fantasy and science fiction races, along with other intelligent life, use math in some form, whether it's for counting money, adding and subtracting personal assets, measurements, and so on.

But, if you need another way of seeing it, a good example to differentiate the two is the Pokémon mainstream games (Black/White, X/Y, Diamond/Pearl, etc) and the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games. In the mainstream games, Pokémon are mostly regarded as wildlife and behave very similarly to animals, whereas in the PMD spinoff series, they're capable of building civilizations and architecture, have working economies and currency, are capable of reading and writing, have organizations and leadership, and share very similar traits to human societies and culture. And the PMD Pokémon use math and numbers, whereas the mainstream Pokémon generally don't. Again, it's not to say Pokémon are stupid in the mainstream games just because they're not building their own villages, but it's just a way of making the determination of who in that world is capable of building civilization.

MAKING FANTASY RACES

Most people know what certain races are, such as elves, mermaids, centaurs, harpies, and that kind of thing from fantasy and mythology. Incorporating races like those into your role play shouldn't leave people with a lot of questions as to what they are and what they look like, although they may need a bit of tweaking to be adjusted for the role play environment. However, if you're designing a totally new race from the ground up, you may want to consider a few things.

• Does it have strengths and weaknesses? Compared to everyday humans, there should be things that all members of the race can do better than humans, and some things that all humans can do better than your race. For example, since harpies fly (advantage over humans), you could say their bones are hallowed out and are more prone to breaking under blunt force (disadvantage compared to humans). Same thing with mermaids. They may have better swimming and underwater breathing ability (advantage over humans), but they're a total joke on land (disadvantage compared to humans).
• Is it regarded as intelligent? If the race has its own societies, cultures, and governments (even primitive is acceptable), and has intelligence at least somewhat comparable to a human's give or take, then it's okay as a playable race. A good way to make the call is asking the question, does the creature use numbers in any way? Sure, your mermaids may not be issuing social security numbers, but if they're capable of using even just basic math and/or currency in some way, it's regarded as intelligent.
• Does the race have a role in the environment? Again, what does the race eat, how does it survive and coexist with nature, and what does the race typically do for entertainment? It also helps to make it all make sense, too. A group of minotaurs that eats pizza, lives in the subway, and entertains itself by playing XBox Live is going to get you some weird looks.

In addition, you're definitely going to need to explain what the race looks like, and if you're good at drawing, considering busting out a picture, because often people have trouble visualizing brand new races. But besides the basics, you need to do what you can to make the race seem as realistic as possible. What would a day in the life of one of these creatures be like? What do they do for work and survival, what do they eat, and what kind of recreational things do they do? What cultural values do they have and what are the demographics like? The more you answer, the more believable the race is and the more comfortable your role players will be with them.

4. YOUR BLANK SLATE (GETTING STARTED WHEN YOU'RE STUMPED FOR IDEAS)

Sometimes, just getting started is the hardest part. We've been there, starting at a blank page, trying to get inspired, and being totally stumped on where to begin, where we then go to YouTube to look at a stupid cat video or spend 3 hours looking at TV Tropes. Sometimes, it's tempting to take the easy way out and just import something that was already done before or dive into the recycling bin for a role play you hosted before and turned out okay (The Hollywood Creative Process). But you don't really want to do that.

Relax, take a deep breath, and consider this approach.

Step 1: What kind of role play are you in the mood for? - Simply consider the genres and put that in the back of your mind. Want a fantasy role play with knights, dragons, magic, and so forth? Maybe a little horror, as a lot of people love a zombie apocalypse. Or something along the lines of an action/thriller, running from the cops or getting tangled up in a government conspiracy? It's your role play, you decide! But if you're not sure, guess what? Unlike a cooking recipe, you can just skip this and save it for later. But if you want to aim in a certain direction, deciding on step one may help.

Step 2: Disc Jockey Time - So you've decided on a good genre of fiction to base your role play on. You may think you haven't made much progress, but you've taken that first, decent step toward getting there. And get this, you can change the genre as you move long if new or better ideas develop. Or even have genres cross over. It works and it's been done before.

But to get started, try playing some soundtrack music that corresponds with the genre you've selected. Even if you had trouble really remaining committed to that genre, play some music anyway. If you're going with a fantasy idea, maybe fire up the Lord of the Rings soundtrack, something from your favorite fantasy RPG, or something epic by Two Steps From Hell or Future World Music. For you horror fans, delve into the soundtracks for Resident Evil or Silent Hill to fill the room with an eerie feel. Action fans, there's a million soundtracks for high intensity action movies. Fire them up, or play some metal. It doesn't matter where it's from, just fire up a great song!

Playing music while you brainstorm your ideas helps get you in the mindset. It helps you picture and imagine events, themes, or situations that could be used for your role play, like giving a soundtrack to the imaginary movie in your mind. If you like using YouTube, sometimes these kinds of songs will have a great picture to match with the song. But in truth, find good music that tells some kind of story or idea to you. Not every song will do this and some people get different ideas from different songs, so you may need to jump around.

You may think "hey, I could just watch my favorite movie or anime and just base the role play off of that." Truthfully, songs are shorter and faster, and if you watch a movie or anime to get inspiration from, you may fall into the temptation of basing the entire role play off just that or something extremely similar. It's okay to get one or two ideas using this method, but if you use too many ideas from the same source, other people who have seen it will know where you got it from.

Step 3: Hang onto those scrap ideas - Don't try to come up with the entire plot in one bang. You'll drive yourself barking up a wall and may ram you face into your desk in the process. Instead, start with just the bits and pieces of inspiration, it's much easier to manage. You wouldn't eat a twelve-ounce steak in one bite, would you? Regardless of how insignificant an idea may be, hold onto it anyway. If you really don't like it, you can always file it in the trash later on. Maybe you remembered a cool idea/concept from a video game or movie. Or a particular character's weapon came to mind. Maybe a form of fighting/weapons/magic came up that you remembered that seemed really cool. Hang onto that, and write them down. It's even better if you just keep them vague. Building upon them and going into depth can wait until later.

At the end of a bunch of songs and some thinking, maybe you came up with some ideas, what we're going to refer to as "scraps," basically just figments of ideas and imagination that don't really mean anything on their own, but might be useful to hang onto. Halfway through your role play making, you may decide to go back and do some more inspiration-induced brainstorming. That's perfectly okay too.

But yeah, listen to the songs, and just jot down ideas or any bits of things that may come to your head. Sometimes, it makes a big difference just looking at the stuff in front of you rather than floating around as an abstract mess in your head. For example, maybe the idea of dragons came to mind, or some dark, urban city. Maybe an idea of a castle in the sky or a way of using magic by song came to you while listening to music. That's stuff worth jotting down, even if you later decide it's not worth clinging onto.

5. WEAVING THE ROLE PLAY TOGETHER

PUTTING THE SCRAPS TO USE

Here's where the magic happens. You start taking your scrap ideas, and you start trying to tie them together into a kind of story. However, sometimes it helps to give these scrap ideas some time and let them sink in or become more solid and concrete rather than weird and all abstract-like. Maybe you'll want to go back to add more scraps to your pool, or maybe scrap a scrap (ha ha, yeah, I went there) in exchange for another figment of an idea. Let your imagination play around. And sometimes it helps to keep playing that music while you're doing this. Something cool may pop up along the way.

Also, while you're trying to tie ideas together, take the time to let the ideas incubate. Don't be in a rush to hastily snap everything together like your cramming for some role play creation final exam. Sometimes giving a role play at least a week's worth of time to really materialize in your head and in writing can help give it a boost. And while you're linking things together, you'll probably figure that yeah, it's like a jigsaw puzzle with many different possibilities, but in this case, not all pieces will interlock together, and you may find yourself with stuff left over. You can also take those pieces and alter them as well.

As you're forging these ideas, you may want to start considering the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How of your role play. It doesn't need to be super-serious or formally done, just keep these on the back of your mind, one at a time, of course. Some of those can even wait until the last minute or be changed if you don't like what came up. Some of your scraps may start answering these questions and may start to fill in the blanks, so be on the watch for them. Eventually, you'll have to figure all of them out, but don't sweat it.

Who is involved in this RP? - Basically, what living, sentient entities are involved in this story? Who are they and how have they come to be? Don't consider the motives just quite yet. Simply consider the who when you're working on this part. Are they human, animal, monster, what kind of living things will be involved? Regardless of the reason, these are the characters of the role play.

Where does the role play take place? - Basically, you're considering the setting. What kind of physical environment is this role play in? If you close your eyes and picture this place, what does it look like? What would it feel like to be there, and what kinds of feelings, emotions, or sensations would it invoke upon you? The very setting of your role play can greatly influence the kinds of themes, emotions, and culture of the characters and their way of life in this world. And it should also vary, with some places invoking different emotions than others.

When does the role play take place? - This will also affect your setting and can tie a bit with the "Where" part. Does it take place in ancient times, modern times, classical era, or in a possible future? And in a different world, what kind of impact has time made upon the development of this place? How has time changed cultures, ways of life, and demographics? Again, don't get too overwhelmed by it. It's food for thought, but no one said you had to eat it. Sometimes just making one decision can answer a truckload of questions.

Why does the role play take place? - A role play works a lot like a story. So consider what motives, reasons, and attitudes may surround the characters and the setting they're in. Is there a conflict of interest, or a concern about a problem that needs to be solved? What could happen as an outcome, and what are the consequences of these actions? Don't overwhelm yourself, though. More of these bits can be painted along the way.

What is the role play about and what is going on? - Save this for last, because you don't want to start committing to one particular thing until you're ready. And you can't put all your ducks in a row until you have all your ducks. But when you're ready, use the "what" area to figure out what the role play is really about, what kinds of themes are going on, and what kinds of purposes, concepts, and motives are driving the engine of this storyline situation.

LINKING SCRAPS

With your scrap ideas, it's time to take one and try and link it with another. Imagine both of those scrap ideas exist in the same storyline. It may sound tricky, but try to create a way for them both to coexist and use both scraps in the same sentence. There's definitely more than one way to link two scrap ideas together. You just need to play around with both ideas, and try putting the ideas working together in cohesion, or working against each other like polar opposites.

For example, if you had two scraps, such as "Dragons" and "City in the Sky," you could connect them together by saying your role play story is about a group of dragons that live in a sky city. Or, the dragons are the enemy of a sky city and they're at war. Or, the dragons are neutral, but the citizens of the sky city have captured them, and the story is about the dragons trying to escape. There's plenty of ways you can connect two scraps together.

If you have trouble creating a cohesive link that you like and seems logical in some way, maybe try linking two other scraps instead first. Also, a good question to ask is this:

Do I like all of these possibilities?

Keep in mind, you probably can't do all of them all at once, but coming up with several alternatives will give you choices and things to consider rather than look at a blank slate. You can't really choose every method to relate the two in the end, and that's if you want to choose any of them at all. But moreover, if you really don't like what came up, again, try linking the concept with something else.

When you've linked two scraps together, keep going and see if you can make a chain of three, or set the first link aside and try to make another link of two. For example, with "Dragons" and "City in the Sky," you may find that adding a third scrap like "Eternal Night" could be added to that link to now affect the setting, and plunge the sky city into darkness with the dragons having to deal with it also. Or, you could link "Eternal Night" with "Snowy Landscape" and then later link that with the "Dragons" plus "City in the Sky" chain to create a situation where a world of snow is plunged in darkness, just below a city in the sky. To further link that, you could say the dragons are from that dark, cold world, targeting that city because that's the reason why the world below is flooded with darkness and cold weather. Again, these are the kinds of things you can play with, but as you can see, this is an effective way to come up with feasible ideas that could be turned into a working storyline and role play.

THE SKELETON FRAMEWORK

A skeleton framework is basically a rough outline and summary of your role play.

You get a skeleton framework of a role play story by linking some scrap ideas and finding a feasible way to tie it together by means of relating one scrap to another. Along the way, you'll be making some pretty major, role play altering choices, and you'll easily find there's more than one way to go about connecting ideas. Don't sweat it out though. Even at this point, you may be changing these as you move from step to step and feel that hey, this other idea is starting to grow on me more than this other one.

Again, it's important to remember that you don't want to just cough up the entire role play's story in one big hurl. It's tricky if you're not building a framework to serve as a foundation of your role play. Don't worry if it may seem a little strange at first. Those kinds of things can be fine-adjusted later on into a way you may feel more comfortable with.

5. FLESHING IT OUT

What you have now is just a role play that's currently just a skeleton, and a skeleton is... well, it's still dead. And in this case, a skeleton role play doesn't even make for a good Halloween decoration. If you release what you have already, well, it's dead right out of the starting gate. And that would be a real waste of all these interesting ideas you linked together.

In this phase, you start fleshing out some details and start really giving depth behind the initial, linked details that you came up with from scrap ideas and found a way to connect together. Now is probably a good time to start giving stuff names, such as important NPCs, factions, concepts like magic, and that kind of good stuff.

When you start filling in your Who, What, Where, Why, and When, don't be ashamed by going back and forward between these. You may decide to adjust the time period to make way for a certain faction, or adjust the geography of the setting so that a certain faction seems more in place. Scraps that deal with physical locations may help you work on your Where, and scraps that deal with living things will help you fill in that Who and Why. But again, a lot of the grunt work simply comes from just knowing how to take two scraps and make a bridge to connect the two. After that, a lot of it is really just a process of filling in the blanks and deciding where you'd like to go with things.

DETAIL AND YOU

From here, it's really up to you to decide how far and how detailed you want to get with your role play, I can't really decide that for you. I've seen relatively basic ideas for role plays go epic in scale and proportion. I've also seen very detailed and intricately designed RPs flop and go bust. And yes, some of those were mine. If you make things too complex, sometimes people get overwhelmed by it. Only focus on the things that really need to be focused on and don't make too many things loopy and confusing. Keep things straightforward and make it easy on the reader's eyes. People often get intimidated if the role play seems gigantic and it'll take them all week to read the thing.

6. SOME ZEN TO THINK ABOUT

From all my many years of role play creation, I've come across some various things that may help you when it comes to both making and running a role play.

KEEP THINGS EVOLVING

Or dynamic, if you really want a special buzz word that's used all the time in crazy, graduate-level business classes like the ones I had to slug through. Dynamic means don't let the storyline situation stay static for too long and don't keep things the same way for ages and ages. Let the story change, let things be created, and throw new challenges and concepts into play. And let your role players feel comfortable doing this also. Stories need to evolve, progress, and move around or they go dry. If things don't change and nothing really new happens, people will get tired of the same old ho-hum stuff and will move onto something else. And the reason why people move onto something else is because yeah, they want something new.

Think of it more in terms of an arms race. The bad guys are getting more powerful, but the good guys need to play catch up, or take advantage of a weak spot that the bad guys overlooked. But if both sides are just having a Mexican standoff and everyone's waiting around for someone to do something, but there's a disadvantage for going first and/or people are afraid they might get punished by the GM for taking action from past reprimands, you've got the role play knocking on death's door. That's not good. That kills role plays and beats them up to look like a raw hamburger.

A good way to do this is to ensure your role players aren't afraid of implementing new stuff, building things, or incorporating their own ideas into your role play. Best way to do that is to make sure they aren't afraid of you as the GM, so don't put pressure on them or call them out each time they try to do something. Be casual and don't be too much of a rules lawyer. Let the rules be bent, and if it really is for the better of the role play, heck, even let a rule be broken or two. I've seen role plays where things that some others would have considered god-modding really brought a role play to life and made it take on a whole new perspective.

And that brings me to my next point.

THERE ARE RULES, BUT...

Sure, there's a good reason to have rules and guidelines. You don't want people god-modding to screw around and make the whole role play a piece of junk where only the violator is having fun and everyone else finds it unfair. However, if it seems like the role play could take an interesting turn from a little reality bending and "god-modding," don't be too quick to shoot it down. Even if the "violator" is becoming some godzilla-sized creature or has some crazy power, they could still have weaknesses. And sometimes these kinds of things are only temporary advantages. Think about it this way. What would Mario Kart be like without all the wild items it has to pummel other racers? Just another blah racing game. If they really worked hard to achieve some special kind of form or power, let them have it, just as long as it doesn't make them invincible or makes a real wreck out of everyone else's fun. Again, really establish a kind of work/activity = reward system, but don't make it so strict. Role plays are really supposed to be pretty loose and casual, not ultra-serious.

"TRAINING IS OVER, SOLDIER!"

I highly don't recommend making a role play where the characters are starting off as total newbies and need to train, work, and build themselves up for a long time to become anything remotely cool. Sure, definitely allow them to become bigger and better as time goes on and as they do stuff, but it's a better idea to get things going strong and not focus on the training or preparation stuff too much. For example:

You are a normal person doing normal things, until you find a mystical gem that grants power. However, this power comes very slowly, and at 1x posts, you get blah blah, and at 2x posts, blah blah...

Let me put it this way. Would a battle between two heavyweight boxers be more interesting while they're fully trained adults, or when they're only months old as little babies? Yeah, thought so. And the truth is, this is often why you see Pokémon role plays that start everyone off with newbie trainers with only starters end up in the trash heap even before the first gym battle. That kind of thing's been done many, many, many times before and starting up from the bottom is often sucktastic. It's better if you start characters with seasoning and experience first, and then let them grow from there.

Also, people like having special powers, features, abilities, and so on RIGHT NOW, not come several months from now. Ever order a new video game online and cringe at the week-long delivery estimate? That's what it's like! Don't do that to your role players! And that training session is like having to go through a tutorial mode that lasts for half the game. Play it as if everyone has ADHD when it comes to that. By the time your role play starts, the exposition stuff and getting acquainted to the conflict fluff should be over. The revolution should have begun by now, the fires should be blazing, and the adventure is now underway. Not six weeks from now.

CHAT ROOM YAKKING

There come times when chatting about the role play outside of the role play, such as on a messenger, often comes around. You may chat with other people about the role play and how things are going, but for pete's sake, don't get ultra-passionate about it and start introducing drama into the situation. I've seen situations like this go from bad, to worse, to actually killing friendships. Over a role play! Yes, it does happen. I've had to do it with some people that took role plays way, way too seriously and treated their characters like their own children. It's okay to like your character and to want them to be successful in the role play's storyline, but don't go bananas over them.

People sometimes have the tendency to want to reveal everything they're doing in a chat, and expect the same from you. Everything gets revealed, shared, and passed around, and suddenly the surprise and suspense is pretty much gone, as if you read movie spoilers just before popping the Blu-Ray in. It's really not as much fun if you keep doing this and often, it ends up with people dropping out of the role play because everyone feels the whole thing's been pretty much resolved on messenger and they don't feel like rehashing what they already talked about last night.

Also, again, don't take things so personally when it comes to role plays. Don't get so ultra-passionate about your characters to the point where you start lashing out at real people over fictitious people. You may think it's crazy if you've never run into this, but it's happened before.

It's okay to chat about the role play a little bit, but don't spoil everything to come, get irritated about everything people do, force them to get all their next actions pre-approved like some chess game auditor, or try to pre-plan everything that is to come. It's more fun to read your adversary's next role play post not knowing what kind of dark and devious plan they're about to hatch in the midst of their interesting literature as opposed to just skimming over the whole darn thing because you already know what's about to happen because you asked them to tell you last night over Skype.

NEVER FEAR FAILURE

And there come times when we thought we had a winning role play... and it flops like a goldfish that jumped out of the take home water bag, through the open car window, and onto the interstate. Only two people signed up, ten others reserved and then decided a black hole would be a great dream vacation destination, and the last post was made by a guy even Interpol would have trouble finding. Either that, or the role play was running pretty well for a while, and then it got slower... and slower... and got plugged somewhere between three pounds of sticky bubble gum and a glue trap.

It happens.

Just because you had a role play flop doesn't mean it was bad. I've had role plays work on one forum and then totally crumble apart on another. Also, you tend to learn more from what didn't work than what did. Don't get discouraged from a dead role play and think it was all your fault. Keep trying new things, give things another shot, and let there be a next time to take on a whole new perspective or maybe rearrange things differently than how they were before.

7. CHEERS

Well, that concludes Part 3 of this huge and enormous role play guide. Hopefully it's helped you in some way, and if you've made it all the way here, awesomesauce. When it doubt, give it a try. Sometimes the biggest and most loved things started off as things some people thought were crazy and couldn't be done.

So, good luck to you and all the best. You deserve it.

Rock on.