The Mechanics of Roleplaying [Guide, Open to Comments]

by **New Azura** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:01 am

The Mechanics of Roleplaying

PREFACE TO THE GUIDE
This guide is designed as an instructional tool to help players here at NationStates learn the basic mechanics of roleplaying—both in terms of structuring posts and the art of writing stories. It is far from a conclusive guide, as the amount of space necessary to go in-depth on all aspects of roleplaying and writing would be vast in scope, and I myself am hardly qualified to be the definitive guide for anything, let alone the finer points of writing. Consider this a tool—one of many—that can be used to help better understand the finer points of roleplaying, created by a player who has attempted to learn and develop his writing style for several years now.

ROLEPLAYING+

is a fascinating hobby. It brings in an eclectic mixture of literary elements, coupling them with cooperative imagining between people from all over the world to create stories that thousands of people have access to. Though it may seem awkward to contemplate, NationStates is one of the best online writing communities you'll come across, simply because of its sheer size, vast array of literary tropes on display, and the chance to partner with other people from different parts of the globe. People come here to the site to write for a number of different reasons; players may enjoy the competitive nature of the 'game' aspect, where they 'out-write' others for the esteem it engenders. Some people are interested in utilizing the forums as a mechanism by which they can improve their creativity and imaginative design processes in lieu of more formal writing elsewhere. Some people enjoy creating stories through cooperating with others—a common roleplaying theme. And then, there are those people who just plain like to write, and take any opportunity they get to ply their craft. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, you've come to this guide ostensibly because you write roleplays, and want to learn ways to improve on your postings here. Hopefully, this guide can be a valuable asset to you moving forward.

Far from advocating any one type of roleplayer over another, this is a generalized guide for actually writing roleplays, versus espousing competitive roleplaying over cooperative roleplaying, or vice versa. Regardless of how you get your kicks, the art of writing a roleplay is surprisingly uniform across the board. So to help elaborate on the points we want to look at here, consider the following scenario as a backdrop for the guide: take an idea that you have, that you think would make for a great story. You're not really invested in competing with someone; you just want to write. Now, as you read this guide, the points that are made will be tailored to that specific set-up. But the concepts learned here can be applied in competitive roleplaying just as readily as it can be in both cooperative and individual roleplaying as well. Writing, in its purest form, draws on the same strengths in each type of roleplaying written here.

Directory of Content:
Preparing to Write || The Individual Post || Story Progression || The Conclusion || Tips for Success

by **New Azura** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:01 am

Preparing to Write

So, you want to write a roleplay? Obviously, the first thing that you want to do is figure out the most redundant part of the writing process: what do you want to write about? So long as you are in keeping with the official content guidelines of the website, there is an almost-endless array of themes and topics which you can choose from. A quick look through the Diplomacy Forums can give you a brief idea of the wide variety of literary styles and themes on display here. The sky is the limit, basically. So when you get the 'writing bug' and have a desire to create a roleplay, the first thing you want to do is establish the tech level in which you want to write. Because there are so many different areas that people like to write in here in the NationStates Community, roleplayers have developed a system which helps prospective readers and roleplay participants identify the general scope of what they're about to read before they get started. The system is designed to identify the relative time period which a story takes place. For instance, if you wish to write about a story in modern times, then that would be considered Modern Tech, or [MT]. If you want to do a story that's in the past, be it Antiquity or the turn of the 20th Century, that would be called Past Tech, or [PT]. Postmodern Tech, or [PMT] is a label that defines a rough period of time that can range from twenty-five to fifty years ahead of the modern day, to several hundred years from today. If you are looking to write science fiction, with alien races or faster-than-light travel, then that genre here is called Future Tech, or [FT]. Then there are all sorts of other genres that you can get into as well. Fantasy Tech, sometimes labeled [FanT] incorporates common fantasy elements, such as magic and is quite popular amongst some of the writers here. Steampunk—any setting that includes an alternate universe setup where steam power is the primary mode for energy production, thus creating a vastly different world—and Cyberpunk (where advanced technology leads to a more broken society as a whole) are also two very popular genres here at the site.

When you decide what you want time period or tech level you want to focus on, you will take the appropriate tag and place it in the "Subject" box at the top of your post window. For our purposes, let's say that we want to write about something that's taking place in the modern day. So we'll be adding [MT] to our post title. Now then, once we get our tech level chosen, we want to figure out a general idea of what we want to write. Now this part can be a bit tricky, as certain forums are better for specific story ideas than others. For instance, people who want to write about sporting events would be best served posting in NS Sports. The NationStates Forum is a good place for stories that deal with events happening within your nation—stories that are generally benign. One of the more common tropes found here is the Wedding Story, where people write roleplays around important marriages, usually between characters from different countries. Wars and major diplomatic events are best served going in International Incidents—the forum you're in now. With a few exceptions (like Forum 7), these three areas are where you will be doing the most roleplaying, so let's disregard all other forums for now. Choosing the right forum is important here, so that we appeal to the type of readers who like to read what we want to write about. It is all a matter of appealing to the reader here.

So you want to come up with a story idea in modern tech, but you're not sure what yet. One of the greatest ways to brainstorm ideas for a roleplay is to draw inspiration from real life sources. There is no shame in this; in fact, a lot of the best roleplays written here draw their inspiration from real life events and literary sources. The trick is to use something that someone else has written or achieved, and use it not as a copyable material, but as inspiration to create your own entity. Write about something that interests you; choosing a subject matter that is boring to you will get you nowhere in the end—the desire to create a roleplay will slowly fizzle. Perhaps you like to read and write about war stories? This is a very common trope on display here, but there is so much you can do with the genre that it is relatively easy to create a great story out of the theme. So let's use a war story as the basis for our scenario here; what type of warfare interests you the most? Do you like to envision giant, pitched battles on open fields of glory? Do you like to write about dogfights in the skies, or submarines hunting each other down in the ocean blue? Perhaps you enjoy writing James Bond-esque espionage stories, or black operations where soldiers go behind enemy lines to engage in stealth missions. The political focus behind wars may be up your alley, or conflicts related to terrorist attacks or civil wars. The last one is a very tried and true medium for storytelling—let's choose that one as the basis for our roleplay here to build upon.

So we have a general framework now in place. We want to write about a civil war in our country, taking place in the modern day. We know that our tech level will be [MT], and we know that International Incidents would be the proper forum to go into. Now we want to focus more on the literary aspect of the story; namely, the 'Five W's of Storytelling'—Who, What, When, Where, and Why. Some of this we've already gone over. For instance, we know when the story takes place, and we know what the general story will be about. The 'who' (great band, by the way) can have multiple meanings, both literary and participation-wise. For a civil war roleplay, the main characters involved will be from your country. They could be on either side of the war, and in fact you would almost certainly want to create characters on either side, to give your story a greater literary scope. Of course, there could be other people from other nations involved too; terrorists maybe, or perhaps observers from other countries. This is where you want to determine whether you want other players to come in and help you write the overall story. Cooperative Roleplaying, or any type of storytelling where two or more people get together to craft a story, brings with it its own special rewards and challenges. Having multiple people brainstorming ideas for a story can help give you more ideas on how you want to write it; yet it also requires you to build your posts off of what other people are doing too. That's why it's called cooperative roleplaying—it requires a greater degree of patience and interpersonal communication to get the story just write. Individual Roleplaying is exactly what it sounds like; you're flying solo, writing on your own. For ease of understanding, we'll postulate a scenario where we're writing a roleplay on our own. To help other people know that this roleplay is not open for them to post in, we want to add a special tag to identify our story as such. To keep people from posting, you want to add [Closed] to your post title. This shows other people that this roleplay is meant to be read only. You can also use the [Closed] tag when you're cooperating with a small group of people too, and don't want outsiders to see multiple nations participating, and having them think that they can jump in.

So now we know the who, the what, and the when. The 'where' will incorporate the settings for your roleplay. As with any story, you wont be using one single setting for the entirety of your roleplay. You want to think about where you want to take the reader during your story. You obviously want to do some battle scenes, so you'd want to think up settings outdoors where your two sides will meet in combat. Perhaps you want to include scenes where political leaders are discussing battle plans, or maybe scenes where characters are talking in private about their personal fears, maybe in a bar or an encampment somewhere. Get a general idea of the settings that you think would be interesting to write about, so that you can base the flow of your story on the points you want to touch on. Yet the most important facet to understand by far is the 'why'—this is the basis for your entire roleplay: the plot. You want to figure out why the story is being written—what causes the civil war, how it is fought, and what the end result will be once you're done. All five of these aspects tie together to serve as the framework, or foundation of your story. Once you've put these pieces of the puzzle into place, you are almost ready to get started.

Preparing for a roleplay can entail a lot of different things. Some people [myself included] like to have a general idea in mind for a story, but basically develop that idea as we actually write the story. I've never been exceptionally good at pre-planning, and some of my best work comes from when I "go with the flow" and write the story as the ideas come to me. Other people are the exact opposite; they want to have a solid outline down before they write the physical roleplay. Whatever your preference is, the most important aspect to planning a roleplay is to have fun with it. The best ideas for stories are the ones that you just cannot wait to write out. In the end, writing here should be fun, not a chore. And oddly enough, one of the things people want to get down first is often the the thing that you will want to focus on last in the planning stages: give your story a title. The title of your roleplay is how readers in the forums will be able to find it, and should somewhat represent the general theme of your story so as to not deceive readers who are looking for something else. There are two parts to your title: the physical name of your story, and the tags to help readers identify some basic information. Every tag you use will go inside one set of parenthesis or brackets, and can be separated by commas, backslashes, or any other number of demarcation symbols. Inspiration for your title can be drawn from anywhere, really. Some people like to use Bible references; others Latin phrases that sound cool. Whatever you want your title to be, make sure that you're happy with it when you get started. So to finish the set-up, for our scenario, a possible title may look like this:

The Broken Dream of a Nation [MT, Closed]

The only place you have to worry about placing tags is in the subject bar when you make your opening post. Speaking of which...

by **New Azura** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:02 am

The Individual Post

Planning the roleplay that you want to write is really half the battle. Once you overcome that step, the physical act of writing the story is a pretty straightforward process. Whenever you write a roleplay, the first part of the story will make up your Opening Post. Every entry that follows the opening are individual posts, which will ultimately contribute to the overall story as a whole. As such, when you are writing a roleplay, you will want to apply the basic principles of writing to each individual post. Think of each post you make as a chapter in a larger story; for now, focus on the skills needed to create one post. After we look at some concepts for writing, we can focus more on how each of the posts you will create will eventually interlock to form your story.

When you are writing an individual post, there are five general concepts that you want to focus on when you're constructing the story material. In order, they are Structure, Plot, Setting, Characterization, and Dialogue. Think of it as a progressive outline towards constructing your post, with each step getting you further and further involved in the finer details of writing. Of the five concepts, only Structure is mechanical or technical in nature—the other four are literary schematics, as it were. The structure of your post is quite simply how it will physically appear to readers once you post it. This guide that you're reading right now has structure to it, for example. Think of it as the nuts and bolts behind writing your post. Some people, myself included like to use a format where each paragraph that I write has a space in between them. It helps make it easier to read. Some people like to write posts as if they were books, without spaces between paragraphs. Though less popular, some people utilize this style by using the [Tab=] formatting tool, located above your text window when posting. The tab feature allows you to create indents when you start a new paragraph. Some people like to utilize the bold or italics coding to emphasize special points during a post. You can see an example of this here in the guide, as I utilize both features to help highlight important notes, and so forth. Then there are other little modifiers like the size of your text, or colors. A good rule of thumb is to follow the KISS rule (Keep it Simple, Stupid) when writing posts. If they're too flashy or overloaded with glitz, it can distract readers from the real meat and potatoes of the post: the actual story. It's all a matter of striking a proper balance between a polished, clean look and a simple set-up that is easy to maintain when writing your posts.

Determining the structure is half the battle. From there, it's a matter of getting down to the business of constructing the literary end of your post. The first concept to consider is the Plot of your post—the events that will transpire to move the story forward. Each post will have its own individual plot, which serves as one ingredient in the larger recipe which is your story. Consider the overall 'Why' of your roleplay, and break that down into individual parts. For instance, in a civil war, you would have times where the two sides are fighting; times where people from one side (or either side) talk with each other about the events of the war, and so on and so forth. Individual posts could detail vast battles between entire corps of troops, or it could detail events from the perspective of a single soldier on the ground. The trick is, once you figure out the relative plot for your post, then it helps guide you in constructing the other literary elements. For instance, depending on what your post will be about, your Setting—or where the story post takes place—will be developed accordingly. Creating the setting for your post is where the detail really comes in. Each setting will be unique from post to post; you may be describing the exact same spot from one post to another, but the inflection and mood of the plot may influence a different feel to your setting. Getting descriptive in your setting is a great way to add some meat to your post. If your post calls for a battle scene in a forest, you could say "the battle was raging in the forest". Or you could be more descriptive: "the battle was raging amidst the pines, which cast long shadows over the troops as they stumbled forward in the thick brush. The gray skies were creating a pall over everything, casting blood-soaked shrubs in an eerie, otherworldly light." The more descriptive you are, the better a post reads in the end. Your ultimate purpose is to paint a picture, that the reader can visualize in their head. It helps capture their attention.

Once you've determined the plot elements and the setting, you're really ready to begin physically writing. As you create the body of your post, you will use a mixture of setting description and character development to help develop the exposition of your post. This is where Characterization comes in. Very rarely will you ever create a post that doesn't involve some sort of a character; most of the time, you'll have more than one involved. Characters can fill any number of roles; some are major characters who will serve as the primary focus of the story; others might be specific elements for an individual post. In any event, the characters you use in a post need to have some sort of characterization behind them, or else they're going to read like caricatures. When developing major characters, you want to paint a picture of what that person looks like, how they act, and what they think. In other words, appearance, mannerisms, and mentality are crucial to develop. You wont always paint the entire picture in one post, either; it's something that you develop over the course of your story. The trick is to reveal enough about your character from post to post to make them interesting to the reader. Dull characters produce dull exposition, which makes for a dull read. Really get inside the character's head, and show the reader what makes them tick. The more detailed you are, the more intrigued a reader will become in your work. And once you establish your characters in a post, then you can develop how they are interacting.

This leads us to the final element of creating a post, and arguably the most intimidating to a lot of writers: Dialogue. Dialogue is the construct by which characters "talk" with each other inside a post. Unless everyone in your story is a mute, you're going to have to develop dialogue between characters at one point. This is where you can deploy a neat little trick, which is kind of meta in nature, but still worth the effort to develop. Once you've characterized each figure in your story, you should have a general idea of not only how they talk, but what they would say in general. When you get this down, an easy way to create dialogue is to "roleplay" as your two conversing characters, carrying on a conversation audibly or in your head. If you put yourself in the position of your character, and begin speaking as if you were in the middle of the plot, you will develop the basis for dialogue that is not only interesting, but genuine as well. Far too often, dialogue can appear wooden, because people rarely put detail into their conversations. Basically, the difference between a character saying "I like this idea" and saying "I think we can make this idea work" is like night and day. Get into the conversation! Because once you're into your dialogue, you create exposition which connects the story together with a general setting, thus creating the plot that you yourself will structure into an individual post. Everything flows, one right to the other. And it's how you will not only entertain the reader, but stay interested yourself in finishing a story.

by **New Azura** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:02 am

Story Progression

Once you've begun to develop individual posts, you're really into the home stretch of your story creation process. The trick from here on out is to figure out a way to link each individual posts into a cohesive whole—the story. Each successive post will build on the previous post, which creates the flow for your story. That's not to say that your design process has to be rigid; far from it. Artistic license is a great virtue here, where writers can use different formats to create their story. The progression of a roleplay can be linear in nature, where every post follows in sequential order, one right after the other. Some people like to start off their roleplays by posting the end of a story first, then going back and building up to what has already been posted. This flashback format is a very intriguing way to structure a post, as it has the added benefit of allowing you to create the endgame of your story first, and work up to that ending in a tangible fashion. For people who are incredibly detail-oriented and love the challenge of writing, a non-linear method of progression is where individual posts can take place at various intervals on the overall timeline of your story. This style is very hard to implement for younger or less experienced writers, but for those who love a challenge, it is very gratifying to pull off successfully. Find the progression that works for you, and base your posts off this mechanism. Before you know it, the posts you make will begin to read more and more like a complete story, building up to the endgame.

The Conclusion

By this point in the design process, you probably already have a general conclusion in mind. The Conclusion is the endgame of your story; it's how everything you've developed to this point gets wrapped up for the reader. When writing a story, it is important to decide whether your story is a standalone, or the basis for a series of roleplays. A standalone roleplay is a story what is self-contained, meaning the events held within are unique to that post, and you will not be continuing that tract in other stories. This type of roleplay is generally used in non-canon roleplays—stories that are more or less written for entertainment value that don't have a binding effect on your nation moving forward. These types of roleplays can have endings that range in scope and magnitude, depending on your desires. If you want to wipe out your entire population, so be it. If you want to do the feel good ending, that's fine too. It's a different ballgame when you're doing a roleplay that will influence future stories down the line. These types of roleplays are considered in-canon, because it contributes to the larger essence of your nation or your characters as a whole. In these types of stories, you have several different options for concluding your roleplay. A definitive ending is always a good way to conclude things; it allows the reader a satisfactory result from investing their time in following the story. However, you as the writer may not be content to end the characters and plot with one story. You may desire to create future stories with the same characters and background. This is how roleplay series develop, in which case you would want to use a cliffhanger, or open ending which precludes future additions to the story's canon. Open endings can take several different forms; on the one hand, they can be foreboding that another story may be forthcoming in the future. Or they could leave the reader hanging on a shocking finale, which sets the stage for the next story to come in the series. Whatever your preference is, develop your ending with these principles in mind—it helps you find the perfect finale on which to close out your story.

Tips for Success

Constructing a roleplay is not an overnight process, unless you type at an extraordinarily fast clip. Patience is a virtue with these types of stories, so don't get into a rush to finish it. I've personally seen stories develop here at the site which have gone on for months—not because the writers involved got stuck, but because they got so invested in the story that they kept finding new ways to make it interesting. When it's time to end a story, you'll know. Don't be afraid to ask others for help in coming up with ideas for a story, or help in critiquing that which you have already written. Cooperation between players is among the most important facets of the roleplaying community; without it, this will be a lonely place. If you need some creative help, writing generators are excellent sources for inspiration. Seventh Sanctum is an awesome resource, with a number of generators that can help you get started—they also have other generators linked from their site as well. In the end, it's all about having fun guys. If you don't like to write, then you won't make it long here. Writing is a passion that develops over the course of your lifetime; just because you aren't satisfied with your writing skill now doesn't mean you wont develop more ability as you grow older. It's about making contacts, and sharing this grand experience with other people. Have faith and believe in yourself, and writing roleplays will become like a second nature to you. If you need a place to get started, come visit us at The Writing Project. Good luck, and have fun guys!

— Lovingly Crafted by New Azura
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012 @ 2:00 PM

by **New Federation China** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:03 am

Enough. Seriously, goddamn enough with the useless ass guides.

by **Cromarty** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:12 am

New Federation China wrote:Enough. Seriously, goddamn enough with the useless ass guides.

Did you read it?

I doubt it.

So how can you say it's useless?

Stop acting like an asshole.

by **New Azura** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:15 am

Well, I'm glad I spent a few hours on this guide now.

by **Dakini Femina** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:15 am

Just read through it. Good stuff, New Azura. With minimal optimism I hope a whole buncha' people get to read through this in due time. It's really helpful, and gotta' give you props for the work that's gone into this little bit as well. Prooooops.

by **Euroslavia** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:22 am

New Federation China wrote:Enough. Seriously, goddamn enough with the useless ass guides.

If you don't have anything constructive to post, don't post at all. I imagine this guide took quite a bit of work and it's very useful. Thank you New Azura for all the work put into this.

by **Spooty** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:35 am

There are a lot of good ideas in this guide, and a few essential pieces of information I don't think any RPer could live without. Unfortunately, it bogs itself down in explaining things which should already be apparent or otherwise treats the audience as having some ignorance, I realise part and parcel of the guides experience is to introduce new players, but with other guides explaining the basics already, and the slightly more advanced approach this guide is taking, I don't see why this needs to be covered again when it only detracts from the useful information.

Like I said, a good guide, but it needs trimming.

by **Kyrusia** » Tue May 08, 2012 11:38 am

Out-of-Character: Very, very well done, Azura. This highlights quite a few points, and while it's quite long for your standard guide, navigating it is quite easy and the actual advice is quite direct. This would be a good guide for newer players who are actually desiring to better their writing and posting to read. Sure, the voice may take the stance that some newer players are "ignorant" of NationStates, but that is generally why guides are meant to be utilized. As we all have surely seen, I don't think "brushing-up on the basics" in every guide is exactly unnecessary or "needing to be trimmed."

I definitely vote for it to be stickied, or at least added to the Megathread.

by **Kylarnatia** » Tue May 08, 2012 12:48 pm

Excellent Guide Azura - need I say anything more? ;)

Bookmarked, and I also think this should be stickied, or at the very least added to the Megathread if it hasn't been already.

by **Former Wellboneland** » Tue May 08, 2012 12:53 pm

Thank you very much for this guide!

~Boner

by **Northorpe** » Tue May 08, 2012 2:22 pm

OoC: Nicely done! Really enjoyed reading it, hopefully it helps other people as well. Definitely bookmarked.

@Spooty: It definitely is long, and it might deter some people who aren't prepared to sit down and read. But the thread itself flows incredibly well, my eyes are drawn to the bolded content, and ... well, if you're put off by reading and you want to improve your roleplaying skills, chances are you won't go very far. The first "Preparing to Write" post does seem to cover the basics, such as the categories of NS RP threads and title tags and such, but the rest of the guide, in my opinion, is relevant to all of us.

If I had to pick a bone with this guide, it would be that it should be readily visible to everyone? Part of megathreads, stickied, link in the Writing Project...y'know, a resource is meant to be shared and all, and I'm sure this guide will go a long way in terms of helping people improve. (~Swadia on #theCommons)

by **New Azura** » Tue May 08, 2012 4:43 pm

Thank you all for the kind words!

by **New Celisia** » Wed May 09, 2012 11:04 am

This is a great article Azura. I'm sure that it will be helpful to not only myself, but to other writers as well.
Signature'd

by **Carbarosia** » Wed May 09, 2012 11:17 am

Out-of-Character Discussion - This is an extremely well drafted piece of information you have here and as others haves said: should be stickied or added to the megathread. Keep them coming Azura!

by **New Azura** » Wed May 09, 2012 12:21 pm

Thanks, guys. There's a lot more that can be done if people think it's worth the effort to put up.

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Sat May 12, 2012 1:53 am

New Federation China wrote:Enough. Seriously, goddamn enough with the useless ass guides.

Rude... and wrong

@New Azura: I've just seen this guide... thanks for writing it, and awesome job!

Posts · by **Yohannes** » Sat May 12, 2012 1:54 am

New Azura wrote:Thanks, guys. There's a lot more that can be done if people think it's worth the effort to put up.

Yes put it up please!

by **Milograd** » Sat May 12, 2012 3:55 pm

This thread is quite helpful. Great work, Azura.

by **Vlack Sturm** » Tue Jun 12, 2012 8:29 pm

Very nice, mate.

by **Mithrandier** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 7:50 am

Great guide. Very helpful

by **Finswedeway** » Wed May 17, 2017 6:22 pm

Very helpful! I will be sure to link this to my RP freinds.

by **Hexolo** » Wed May 17, 2017 6:47 pm

Tagging because I can see this becoming very useful in the future. Well done Azura!

The Mechanics of Roleplaying [Guide, Open to Comments]

The Mechanics of Roleplaying [Guide, Open to Comments]

Preparation for Writing

Creating an Individual Post

Progressing and Concluding a Roleplay

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