Roleplay Etiquette!

This blog is dedicated to the etiquette and common courtesy that go hand-in-hand with text roleplaying. Feel free to ask questions or make your comments/concerns known. This is for the benefit of everyone who wants to begin or improve roleplaying. Access our FAQ here! If you send an ask in, we recommend you turn on post notifications so you will be alerted when we answer it!

[rulesofroleplay]

Friendly reminder that this blog is no longer monitored, and merely serves as an archive / reference. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[rulesofroleplay]

Hi everyone! As you may have noticed, we are very slow to answer. Because I haven’t dedicated much of my time to this blog (like, any) I am going to “step down” from it. Unfortunately, there are far too many asks in our inbox, so I will be clearing it out. Please remember to check our FAQ - we still get quite a few messages asking how to start a roleplay blog, and this has already been laid out for you all nice and neat! Look at the definitions tag as well. We’ve gotten a few repeat questions about some terminology.

We’ve also gotten a few messages about the asker becoming uncomfortable with the roleplay. My advice would be: tell your RP partner you don’t like where it’s going and just stop responding to the roleplay. This is a hobby and you do not owe anyone anything. If you still want to write with them, simply ask if you can change the direction. (Or start over, or move the characters to a different area/plot point/etc.)

Happy writing to all of you!

[rulesofroleplay]

What do blogs mean when they say they're "temp dash only"?

it means that they don’t have their tumblr blog theme set up, and they probably have the visibility “hidden” option turned on (image below).

when this is turned on, you can’t access their blog at their url, as it will redirect to https://tumblr.com/blog/[blogname], meaning that if you’re blocked by them, you won’t be able to access their posts directly at all. if it’s “temporary” (temp) though, that means they’re probably working on a theme, but they don’t want the pages to not function or for it to be incomplete/wacky before they actually add it to their blog, as opposed to wanting to make it permanently inaccessible to people they’ve blocked. this may mean that their pages are harder to find, but with the (relatively) new “pinned posts” option, as well as the ability to link posts in mobile descriptions, i don’t see that being much of a problem anymore.

[rulesofroleplay]

What do you do if you've been playing a canon character slightly off from canon because you forgot a detail and you're only now realizing that that character doesn't believe that certain thing, after a month or two of playing them as if they did, etc?

you basically have three options here:

embrace your interpretation & go canon-divergent. keep playing as you did, but maybe add that in your description or bio that you will be playing slightly different than canon, though it depends

make a post about it (optional) & change from there on out. the post would be to inform your thread partners or people who might be checking out your blog, but most of the time, people won’t even notice that you made that mistake. but really, update your bio, change interactions from then on, but you don’t need to go back and fix earlier threads. if you feel like it’s integral to the character, you can make a note in your rules that you used to write it with x point of view, so any old threads may still include that old version of your muse, but it’s not necessary.

add it as another verse. why did you think that they thought x thing? was it a detail that would alter their point of view in a significant way? if so, you may want to put it as another verse where y thing happened which caused them to form a set of beliefs that aligns with x. i don’t think it’s needed unless it’s a big deal, but if it’s only slightly off, don’t worry about it at all.

[rulesofroleplay]

Would it be considered bad to add new powers to your character even though you're still thinking of new things for them? I feel like I'm doing so with my powers and feel as if it's unfair to others

nope! if you’re an oc, i’d just make a post about it explaining it, and add it to the character’s biography, but otherwise you don’t have to worry!! if you’re playing a canon character, the same thing would apply, just if it’s not something that they have in canon, you can say that your character is “canon-divergent” and then specify how in the bio/briefly in the rules.

[rulesofroleplay]

what does queue based mean?

it means that once make a post, it immediately goes into the queue, so whether they post or not is not an indication of whether or not they’re online. it’s also to clarify that if you don’t see a response to your thread, it may just be in their queue or not be posted yet.

some people who are “queue-based” also put everything in there, like musings, ask memes, etc., but not necessarily. the queue “based” also can imply that there may be exceptions to their rule of putting things in the queue, (aka that they may post on time,) but it really depends on the person. basically it’s short-hand to say that most of their posts will be posted from the queue, and spread out over time, rather than posting whenever they’re online.

[rulesofroleplay]

Hi! If you get sent an ask from a main blog with a clarification of the sideblog they're using, do you tag the main blog they sent the ask with or do you tag the sideblog in your answer?

( apologies for poor wording )

no worries! i would probably message them and ask them which one it comes from. before that, maybe check their rules, because they may have a “if i don’t specify which blog [assume it’s from ___/feel free to choose which one it comes from]” bit in there!

[astral-glass]

💮 How to start a RP blog 💮

Before I start please keep in mind that there are no specific rules on how your blog should be! I’m just explaining the common set ups and what not that most rpers use! Also I’m going to organize this in steps because steps help my overwhelmed brain

1.)   The first step to starting a RP blog is deciding on your muse, or the character you’re going to write as. It can be any muse you want! You can even have multiple muses for one blog if you’d like (but that does make organizing a bit harder). You can write as a canon character, an oc, a canon character with your own headcanons, whatever!       Just ask yourself: is this a character I’m going to want to write for a while? Is this a character that I feel comfy portraying? Choosing a character without thinking this over may lead you to give up or delete quickly because you find that you don’t enjoy them! This is okay though! It’s good to experiment and find out who you write the best! 2.)   Once you have your muse chosen, maybe practice writing with them a bit? This is optional of course, but practice may help you decide if they’re right for you or not. 3.)   Look at you! You got your muse! That’s awesome! Now, time to make the blog! The URL is fun to work with but may also be difficult to figure out. Go with whatever your heart desires! Look at examples too! Here’s how I chose mine:       Peregrine (as in peregrine falcon, the animal Avi represents and owns) was taken, so I changed my i to 3 i’s (a popular trend ha ha). Avian’s url is peregriiine because the word peregrine represents her in multiple ways (I’ll explain how later). 4.)   Got your URL? Radical. Time to give your blog a nice theme! You don’t HAVE to do this, but I highly recommend it. In all honesty, people are going to want to interact with you more if you have a well put together theme and blog. Finding a theme may be difficult but there are blogs made just to help with that! @theme-hunters for example Or, go look at some rp blogs and see if you like any of their themes! Grab the code from the maker, plug it in, and viola! Now you just have to put all your images and text and colors that you want! With this in mind, try to think of a specific color scheme and aesthetic for your muse. It will help with the look I promise! 5.)   Got your theme and images? Wowee you’re really close! Now it’s time to make your pages. There are 3 very important pages to have: An open and easily accessible ask box, a bio/about page for your muse, and a rules page - Ask box: This one is easy. Have it open so people can send in starters and memes! The big one is having it easily accessible in your theme. It doesn’t HAVE to be, because people can find it and sometimes it’s worth the aesthetic, but it’s just easier for your RP partners! - About page: Please have a link/tab about your muse (esp if it’s an OC!). People have to know who you’re writing! If it’s a canon character you’re writing as (ex RED demoman) then you don’t have to put too much there since most people already know the basics about him! But! You can add in your own headcanons if you’d like! I recommend looking at some other RP blog bios to find out how you want to structure your’s :0 - Rules: This one actually isn’t required for people to RP with you, but I recommend it for your own sake. Because different people go by different standards and most (good) RPers make sure to check them first. Some important things to add is how you feel about certain writing topics (ex: No smut because I am a minor/I don’t like it, gore and violence is okay, etc). Again, looking at other rule pages will give you ideas for how to structure it -Other: There are other (optional) pages to include as well, such as a list of verses (like AU’s and what not), relationships (list of their relationship with other rp partners), etc! Anything you also want to have available! 6.)  Your pages are done, your theme is set, you’re almost ready to go! Now here’s the most difficult part: Starting to write. I recommend 3 things:  ~ reblogging RP/ ASK memes (lists of certain things that other people can send you) ~making a promo post to get yourself out there ~and most importantly SEND STARTERS TO OTHER PEOPLE FIRST      This may seem like the hardest task to fulfill but it’s the most efficient way to get started. You can’t just wait for people to find you. You gotta fling yourself at others! Once you do that, people will follow you and send things themselves! It’s very anxiety-inducing for some people (me!!!me!!) but it’s worth it I promise 7.)  YOU DID IT! You are now writing little stories with your muse and another’s muse! How cool is that? You can write about anything ever! You can write small little silly threads (or a series of replies to the same story) or even long extended ones that are deep and thick with development :0!!! Possibilities are endless!!! YOU DID IT YEAAAAAAAH!!!

Now for some extra tips just for fun! ~ Having specific tags for things is REALLY helpful in organizing your content! ~ You don’t just have to reblog memes and replies; you can reblog images or posts that relate to your (such as an aesthetic that follows them or some musings!) I have tags for each of these things ~ For those tags, I recommend looking at other people’s tags for ideas on what to tag and how to tag it. I’m a dork and made really fancy tags with quotes and all that but you don’t have too! ~ Also add fun things to your blog, like a music player for tunes to set the mood for your muse! ~ Also, some people like to use little icons or art pieces in there responses to show their muse’s expression. This is optional but really fun! You don’t have to be an artist, you can just use other people’s art (with permission but most people don’t do that because they state that their icons are not their own art.) ~ Make sure to be respectful and kind to your fellow rp partners! ~ Roleplaying is a hobby. People do it for fun. Do NOT feel obligated to do a reply super quickly if you have other things going on.  ~ Have fun omg For those who are unsure even HOW to write rp responses, there is no set way! You just write how you wish as long as you write your muse and give your partner enough to work with! (Any questions or example requests? Send me an ask)

[rulesofroleplay]

Officialverse Anon. I mean like when you see roleplay blogs with "-official" or official" Those particular blogs call themselves part of the "officialverse"

honestly, i think they’re probably just a group of friends or people in the same group that follow a url trend. sorta like when everyone was adding “x”s in the middle of words for their urls, or just doing four-letter urls, etc. sort of a joking matching-url-but-not-really-because-anyone-can-do-it squad thing, because it’s surprising to them that it wasn’t taken before by a personal or someone else. it’s doesn’t seem like anything formal.

[rulesofroleplay]

Hi! When I’m trying to trim a post with the Xkit extension, the colored text my partner had turns black. How do I keep their reply in their color?

the easiest way is to just go in the HTML and change it to the color they used using a colordropper & the technique from the post before this.

[rulesofroleplay]

hi there! This may seem like a dumb question but I was wondering if you knew how to put colorful text aside from the few that tumblr provide for you?

don’t worry, it’s really not! to my knowledge, this won’t work on tumblr mobile, but the easiest way is to go in to the HTML section! in case you don’t know how to do that, here’s a post explaining it. you can’t do this directly in asks, but if you save your asks as a draft, you can then go to the HTML section pull-down from your drafts page.

you’ll need to know the hex number of the color, so using a color dropper may be helpful. it’ll look like this #FFFFFF (FFFFFF is white, but it can replaced by letters and numbers according to the hex code.) you then wrap the style around the text, like so (without the spaces in the <>s)

< style >text< /style >

hope that makes sense! there are also a lot of color generators out there! just by searching “color text generator” i found a lot. the first few are from patorjk, stuffbydavid, html am, & html code generator. the first seems the best to me, but all of them are great!

[rulesofroleplay]

How common would you say ghosting is during rps and when do you think it's more likely to happen? The rps that I've been ghosted in are in the midst of things and I guess that the other is busy. But recently I didn't even get out of the planning stage with with someone and they just straight up ended the chat, meaning that there's no way to continue it. I'd say they were busy, but a week later the prompt is still up. I get if I suggested a thing they didn't like, but I wish they'd just told me.

“ghosting” itself is extremely common, but most of the time it’s because of conflicts, business, lack of interest in the particular prompt, rather than anything personal. most people jump to thinking that the other person is not interested, but it’s common that they might’ve forgot to respond or don’t feel up to talking to anyone, especially if they note that they have depression/adhd, etc. also, tumblr notifications get buried, or just don’t show up at all.

most people, because of this commonality, have things in their rules regarding whether to contact them / whether they drop threads randomly or make sure to let people know / how fast or slow they are. i’d recommend reading those through before you continue and see if there’s anything relevant there.

i’m assuming the “ending the chat” meant that they unfriended/blocked you (if it’s on discord or tumblr), and in that case, (or if they unfollowed you on tumblr, assuming that they’re mutuals only,) you can assume that they’re not interested in rping, period.

at the same time, if the chat “ended” from from you sending something and them not responding, rather than it being a block/unfriending, i think it’s especially important that you check their rules page for their policy, or recent posts to see if they maybe weren’t feeling up to responding. to reiterate, most of the time, it’s because of outside things going on, even as simple as getting distracted by something else and forgetting to reply, and it’s not anything related to you.

[rulesofroleplay]

how would you politely tell somebody you aren’t interested in a roleplay and more? like one you’ve started and realised they aren’t really the kinda blog you work well with

quite frankly, you can just break mutuals (either by unfollowing them or softblocking, where you block them & immediately unblock). though, it’s not very polite by non-rp standards, so if you want to message them about it & be upfront, you can tell them something along the lines of “i’m sorry, but i’m realizing now that i’m not very interested in roleplaying with you” as well as something like “i like your character/writing/blog, but i don’t think that our characters/writing styles/blogs would mesh well” to let them know it’s not personal. or, literally just say “it’s not personal.”

hope that helps, and if you come across some other troubles with that, feel free to come back & we’ll try to help you out!

[rulesofroleplay]

What is the officialverse?

mod c: i’m not entirely sure? it would depend on the context. from the name itself i can infer that it’s the “canon” verse? aka, literally the “official” verse. for example, if they have a verse where their muse was a vampire or something, the officialverse would be the verse that complies with canon.

it could also be a name of a group verse (a verse shared with other individuals on tumblr), a name for the verse that they use as default for their muse (especially in the case of ocs) or just a name that they use for one of their verses. sorry i can’t help more; i would have to see the context ;;

[rulesofroleplay]

What does “Comment name lbl” mean?

mod c: i’m not sure!! i would really have to see it in context? mod a might know and add an answer later in a reblog but he’s not really active rn so i wanted to at least reply in case someone else knows?

um it can mean a lot of things in outside-of-rp-slang? but none of them would really make sense, with the limited amount of context i have. it could also be a mispelling of lol, but the “b” key is pretty far from the “o” key (assuming they’re using an english keyboard, that is).

if one of our followers knows or if you find out, (maybe message the person?) please let us know so we can update our list!! sorry i couldn’t help more.

[rulesofroleplay]

Mod A here, and I’m sorry to say I’ve never seen that term before. :(

[rulesofroleplay]

hi! what's genderbend?

Genderbending is when you portray a character as the “opposite” gender (in binary terms). For example, @lettherebedoodles‘ interpretations of genderbent Disney characters (original post here):

Some see genderbends as controversial, given the fluidity of gender identity and roles, while some people have no problems with it.

[rulesofroleplay]

why should we use xkit and how does it work? I want to install it but I don't know how to use it and I don't want to mess up my tumblr

Mod A here! xKit sort of functions like a Google Chrome extension. When you install it, it adds an extra button to your Tumblr toolbar that is a circle with a neat little geometric X shape.

Click on it to open xKit.

There are a ton of things you can do with xKit - for example, I have “Old Blue” enabled, which changes Tumblr’s colors back to the darker blue that it used to be, rather than the neon abomination they’ve recently released. It basically customizes the way you use the site. There’s an option that lets you have the reblog/share buttons at the top or bottom of posts. You can enable a feature that turns your “replies” into a new post, et cetera.

You don’t have to use xKit. A lot of people prefer it because it makes things easier. It’s all pretty self explanatory and I recommend checking it out!