hello! i saw your ad while lurking around tumblr and just wanted to know more about your group and how it works! I’ve never written on a forum before, so I’m a little unsure of how it works
Hi! :D thank you for your interest in Runey Season!
i'd be happy to explain how forum RP works :] or at least how it works for us! Let me put this under a readmore since I'd like to make it a full walkthrough on how the forum works from start to finish with picture examples.
STEP 1: SETUP.
This involves signing up with us by reserving a character you're interested in through sending an ask to the blog here! (For existing members looking to multimuse, I also accept DMs on the forum & Discord messages from people in the Optional Server.)
Once a character is reserved, then you make an account on the forum.
That's through the "Register" button on the top bar!
This requires:
An email address
A password
A name (this will be your character's name!)
A birthday (preferably, your character's birthday so that it shows up on our event calendar!)
It also asks for a username! Plenty of members just use their character name, some (our Kyle, Arthur, Felicity, & Lynette) used their tumblr URLs, some people think something up (ex. princesspoint for Frey, clumsymaidenofmusic for Lily)... It doesn't matter what you put! The username is pretty much solely used for tagging purposes.
Once you're signed up, I'll get a notification that we have a new member pending approval! Once I see who it is, I'll approve you for posting right away; this is just in place to prevent botting, since I've seen forums with open member / posting freedom get overrun by bots. </3
STEP 2: SETUP AGAIN (ON THE FORUM THIS TIME)
Once your account is approved & you're allowed into your account, you'll have access to your profile! This is accessible from the button second to the right on the top bar.
The "Edit Profile" menu has several tab options, with the most important ones being "Avatar," "Personal," & "Privacy." (Some of the tabs shown below are likely unavailable to non-me members, as this is an admin account.)
The "Avatar" tab lets you change your profile picture! As you can see, Admin Wooly's is currently the piece I drew for the group's opening last year. For this, you can upload a picture directly to use!
The "Personal" tab includes options for changing your Display Name, Mini Icon (selectable from one of our many custom emojis), latest status, location, & signature, amongst a few others. The Signature includes a sidebar for inserting one of our many custom emojis, otherwise it uses BBCode, which we have a tutorial thread for!
The "Privacy" tab is for changing, well, privacy settings! Things like permanently setting your status to "Invisible" so that no one other than the admin account can see whenever you're online, hiding your email from everyone, etc.
Once you're done setting things up, we recommend making a post on the "OOC Chat" board to introduce yourself to everyone, but it's not required at all!
STEP 3: ACTUALLY GETTING INTO RPING
So you've set up your account, fixed up your profile, optionally introduced yourself, and you'd like to dive into things. Where do you begin?
First and foremost, forum RP is... I think I would best describe it as relatively similar to Tumblr RP, if you know anything about that. If not, it's no worries! We have plenty of members who were new to this kind of structuring. (Admin's only RP experience is Twitter and a small smidge of Discord, for example. And we have several members who've never RPed at all, let alone on a forum!) What I mean by this comparison is just that it tends to offer the same kind of customisation that Tumblr does regarding lengthy posting limits & formatting capabilities. Except we get signatures. Which is an excellent bonus.
Okay, diving in to how to navigate the forum...
When interacting with others, you're welcome to post your own threads in the Open RP board or reply to any other threads posted there using either the Create Thread button or the Quick Reply / Reply functions, depending on whether you'd like to join a thread or create a new one!
You can also post in the Plotting board if you'd like to run something by others before you post it, or if you want to reach out to plan out a closed thread with someone.
(For an example of this, here's that AMNESIA thread by Frey.)
As the pictures show with those little icons that say "New!" on them, each board will notify you if there's been any new postings in it since the last time you viewed it, in case you ever want to check anything out!
We also have the Recently Updated Threads sidebar on the home page. This applies to any threads, so it'll list ones that may not be generally accessible (ex. anything in the Questions & Suggestions board isn't available to anyone not logged in, as we have the Discord link available there, & occasionally my admin-only test threads will pop up), but it's a generally very handy resource for seeing what just got updated if you're looking for a response! Or a thread you might be interested in jumping into!
When you do want to post something, we have two options for doing so: the "Quick Reply" function for replying to existing threads, & the full Create-a-Post window, which can be used both for creating threads & for replying to existing ones.
The "Quick Reply" option is found at the bottom of an existing thread page; it types things out quickly using raw BBCode formatting view!
As shown here, there are a handful of different font face & size options, colour changes, bold, italics, underlines, strikethroughs, sub/superscript, alignment, grids, lists, link & image insertions... etc.
The :) face button is for our emojis, of which we have plenty! I update our custom emoji + sticker list often. The gradient-styled button next to it is for colour smear, which is our plugin for adding text gradients. This button does NOT work in Quick Reply, for some reason...? The little shushing icon at the end is the Spoiler button, for hiding text!
Clicking the "Reply" button on the right side of the Quick Reply bar takes you to the full Create Post window, which offers options for both raw BBCode & Preview windows.
(The Colour Smear button DOES work here.) This post window can be used to check how the BBCode formatting applied to your text will look, & is available both for replies and for creating new threads!
On that note, the "Create Thread" button that takes you to this post window is available at the far right of a board bar!
When making a new thread, we currently have two available formatting labels for the Open RP board: Forum-style & In Person. These can be added by clicking the gear on the top right of the Create Thread bar next to the "Add Attachment" button, going to Labels, & selecting one of the two!
(The scales under the "Subject" listing are actually a working button, btw! That's the title formatting button; you can change the styling & colour of your thread title using it.)
"Forum-style" is for any interactions conducted as if they're online interactions On A Forum, using the forum setting! I think the fun of these kinds of RP mediums is being able to take advantage of them and how they are in full, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense within canon, so it's an option. A good example of this would be Pia's Bathhouse Survey thread!
"In person" is for any interaction that would be conducted through face-to-face interaction. These are most commonly written out in paragraph style, but any writing formatting is accepted (para, action brackets, dialogue-based, asterisks....) & no one cares about matching length, so there are no pressures regarding writing super long or detailed replies.
We've also discussed the idea of adding a third option (Shortform), but I haven't implemented it yet because I'm still trying to explore my options for providing a shortform writing option for quicker in-person interactions first, especially for future event plans.
For the Closed RP board, as those are plotted out interactions and those tend to lean in-person, we at this time have no labels to apply there! Though thinking on it... a planned-out longterm forum-style interaction would be very funny and I would love to see it happen.
Basically: anything goes regarding writing style, & we have options for in-person interactions and interactions that make use of the forum setting!
I hope that explanation is an in-depth enough walkthrough of Runey Season & how forum RP operates for us! Please feel free to let me know if I've left anything uncovered that you're still curious about; I'd be happy to update this. And I hope it's not too long to keep up with! I like being able to provide picture examples, so they really padded things out;;;