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General Rp, a Gaian Essay
By Jamie Davenport

I've been asked many times now to either create such a document as this or tutor another Gaian in the art of Literate Rp. Given such and a general amount of boredom this is my attempt at a quick and dirty general guide to Rping on gaia. I do not pretend to be an expert, this is merely my ideas and observations on the matter.

First, Rping on Gaia consists of two important factors, you can pull anything off if you do one or the other extremely well, but if you have both, you can do anything.

The first of the two factors is character creation. Currently most of gaia's characters fall into 4 categories; human, angel, demon, mix/subspecies. You'd be hard pressed within gaia to find a RP character that was not a human, angel, somem sort of demon/kitsune, vampire or lycanthropist or elf. Furthermore, it's nearly impossible to find a character without either magic abilities, superior fighting skills or a shaded and tragic past..or worst of all, all of the above combined. The trick to a good character these days is either create a completely new species (and if you do this please, for god's sake, create something ORIGINAL and FEASABLE. There's nothing worse than coming across a "fragorian" new race of elf.) or if a lack of originality hits you, a good standby is to do a search for odd but interesting folklore online. There's usually a good deal of "local" (by this i mean a local boogie from a small english hamlet or a demon that terrorizes a small african villiage somewhere etc. the less heard of it is the more interesting and unique it is) ghosts and ghouls to pick and choose from for an interesting character.

Part of the character creation process is both planning out your character's history, and appearance and powers. There are two methods to plan out the powers and history, first, wing it and build on it as you go. I like this process because it's flexible and if you come up with a fabulous idea or something odd happens down the road, you can incorperate it. Second would be to carefully plan out everything which will eventually bore you to rp death. As for appearance, please for god's sake, stop using silver hair, red eyes, blacked out eyes with no pupils and dealthly pale skin. We've enough freaks running around. Wanna make it interesting? make your character look completely normal, no one will expect your character to be unique and you are less likely to get what i call the "show off auto response" On gaia people judge your character in about 5 seconds, partially on appearance and partially on your rp skills. The less impressive you try to make yourself appearance wise, the more people will like and admire you.

Another portion of character creation is personality.I personally like to go with my own personality, it gets tiresome pretending to be somone else. But, if you do choose to play the part try and stay away from the personaity cliche's.

-angsty silent guy/girl
-too cute awkward guy/girl
-my life is falling down around me guy/girl
-amnesiac guy/girl

No one wants to see nor cares about your character's personal problems, loss of memory, or inability to think and walk at the same time. Be normal or completely insane, suprise people by sneaking your character's personality up on them, catch them off guard. My personal favorite fall back is the 7 year old slurring kid that walks into demon bars and pokes people. It gets a laugh, it's unexpected, and you'd be suprised how many angsty demons will give a kid a cookie to shut them up.

The second part of a good rp is your actual rp, how well you communicate what your character is doing. Lets start with the basics. There are two types of posts in an rp, out of character posts and in character posts. (ooc, ic) How you portray them varies per Rp but here are some exampoles:

out of character:
(Hi guys! Finally got off work!)
((Hi guys! Finally got off work!))

in character:
*she walked across the room silently* I Don't suppose I could get a drink?
She walked across the room silently, "I don't suppose I could get a drink?"
~she walked across the room silently~ I don't suppose I could get a drink?
(she walked across the room silently) I don't suppose i could get a drink?

The other method i've seen used now and again is to type it as such:

she walked across the room silently, i don't suppose i coud get a drink?

the above method, is usually color coded, one color for the action, another for the speech. By far this is the most annoying method of rp and should be avoided. A good rper will usually write thier rp as if you were reading a book, using proper capitolization, punctuation and quotations, the fall back for a more relaxed rp would be the asterisks method. As the asterisks method is more relaxed it's not mandatory that you use capitolization but it is encouraged. Punctuation is mandatory, I dont' care what method you use, there's no exscuse for not typing a period at the end of a sentence. (i.e. *she nodded* hello there!)

Now we get to the make or break segment of rping. There are 4 major types of rping. Only one of them is what I consider acceptable:


1. the n0ob.

hi~! gets drink

2. the clueless

"hi" walks over to the bartender and orders a scotch, sits down and drinks it. eyes the room.

3. the decent rp

She walked into the room slowly, making her way over to the bar with a glance around before speaking, "I don't suppose I could get a scotch on the rocks?"

4. the librarian

She ambled into the room her hair like the raven wings of a blackbird in teh winter against the cold grey of the sky seen through the door at her straight back, her skirts rustled around her feet like the gentle sound of wind running throught he grass mid summer on the african plains. Her cool grey eyes transversed the room seeking to her hope a antendant or bartender for the run down little estableshment, her pale hand clutched in the edge of her skirt, "Perchance might I ask of an employee to procure me a drink of suitable tastes?"

Now, although I personally prefer option three or four depending on the situation each of the four rp styles do have thier place. 1 would be suitable in the chatterbox. 2 would be suitable for a hang out spot either in the chatterbox or commerce where the people chatting mix rp with real life and don't have a seperate atmosphere for rp. 3 would be suitable in any good rp thread save perhaps one of the upperscale rp's where there's a three paragraph requirment and you must submit a sample of your rping to join in. 4 would be suitable for one of the upper class rp's where verboseness is encouraged and everyone but the "best" is kept from rping by strict guidelines and applications to join.

The trick to pulling off numbers 3 & 4 is simple. In real life you have five senses (barring an unfortunate accident or birth defect) touch, sight, taste, sound and smell. Alot of rping is simply good use of capitolization and punctuation (and for gods sake spelling!!) But the other part, the bit that really makes you stand out as somone others want to rp with is how you make your characters actions and feelings evident. No one wants to read "walked across the room" when they could have, "She walked silently across the still room, her feet leaving faint trails in the dust that had collected on the old wood floorboards" How do you do this? As i mentioned, you have 5 senses and suprise suprise, your character does too. ALWAYS include at least one sense observation in your post. If you let people know your character smelled something odd, or saw a crack in a floor board, felt the softness of a silk hankerchef, tasted the bitterness of a cup of coffee they can not only build upon those senses but they'll be more interested in rping with you because you've widened thier look upon the world in which your characters are interacting.

Also remember that the thesaurus is your best freind. rather than say "black" say pitch or raven. the less common and unique you make your wording the more interesting it'll become. Justy try not to lose your audience by making the words too unique or difficult. otherwise people won't understand what your saying.

Summary, Key points to remember and use:
-Be original in your character design!
-Use captiolization, punctuation and spelling to your advantage, even if you have to run a spell check on your posts.
-Be descriptive, you have 5 senses for a reason!

Don't let yourself become just another angsty demon with super human powers bent on destroying anyone who looks at them funny and has an inability to spell common words! It could happen to you. For the sake of the rest of us, don't let it.