Now that you’ve got the types of roleplay down, you might be thinking you can just jump right in and start wherever you like. I hate to break it to you, but… not quite. Before you can really dive into a roleplay, there are a few important steps to take. You’ll need a partner or maybe a small group to work with. You’ll want to discuss the plot, the setting, and the tone of the story you’re going to tell together. But before any of that, you need to create a character sheet.
A character sheet is your foundation—the blueprint for who your character is. It’s how you figure out what they look like, how they act, and what makes them unique. Without it, you might find yourself fumbling through scenes, unsure of how they’d react or what they’d say. With it, the roleplay will flow much more naturally.
Some experienced roleplayers can skip writing one because they’ve used that character for so long, they know them like the back of their hand. But for beginners? I strongly recommend making at least one. It’s like putting training wheels on a bike—it gives you stability until you’re steady enough to go without.
Here’s what to include when you’re building your character sheet:
Name: Hopefully self-explanatory. This obviously includes first name and last name (if any), and may include aliases, nicknames, and other names which the character may be known as. Aliases and nicknames might be included in the name section, or in a separate category depending on the community or on your preferences.
Age: This is self-explanatory as well, but if your character's species is one that has a different lifespan than a human's, you should include more than just the actual number, or the fact that its age is unknown; mention how old they look, or how old they would be if they were human if so. Example, an elf aged 300 wouldn't look like a human aged 300 (which is impossible in the first place...). Since we, the roleplayers, are humans, we need references we can relate to.
Gender: Though it may be obvious enough with the name section most of the time (unless it's a fantasy name), this is still important; male, female, non-binary, unknown, or none are the usual choices (male and female more often than any other, since the others are very rare in society and we are much less familiar with them). This is not based on what your character looks like; a boy that looks like a girl is still a boy, for example. However, you may mention "looks like a boy/girl" and/or "prefers to be referred to as a male/female" if your character's gender is unknown or ambiguous.
Species: What your character actually is; their genetic origin. If you are using a scarcely known species or a custom-made species, be sure to mention something about what the species is apart from the name; this should include general appearance for the whole species (height, stance, body structure and frame, etc.) as well as any outstanding characteristic the species may have. This might affect the other sections a lot, since certain species may have special habits or needs which the character would have to bend to. Make sure you don't overdo "half-" species, with a one-eighth here and a quarter there, since after "half", the genes most likely will not be important enough that it would affect the character in any significant way.
Appearance: You need to let others know what your character looks like. Describe them in enough detail to let others get a mental image, but try not to stretch it out too much with tons of details. You may mention that they like this or that item or clothing they have on themselves at all time or a small description of how they obtained it, but do NOT mention anything which is not relevant to the way they look. A tutorial will be made specifically for this soon.
Personality: The way the character acts. Even if they are shy or try to avoid social contact, you should still mention how they act when they have to interact with others. Likes and dislikes, phobias, and other such things also should be written down in this category. Make sure to include at least a few characteristics about the character; a personality of only one or two characteristics will make a flat character. A tutorial specific to this section will be submitted soon.
Bio: What happened in the character's past. This section usually spans from the birth or childhood of the character to the present day, although it may begin even before their birth. If you mention something about the way they act (I.E., they were feared by other children because they were extremely aggressive), be sure it was also mentioned in personality, and make sure it still is relevant to what happened in the character's past (don't just start about how they act like this or that if it doesn't affect anything about the history). This section is NOT made to add more to the personality section. I will submit a tutorial explaining this section more in detail soon.
Others: Anything that you couldn't put in any other category for whatever reason should go here.
Here’s an example, using Kris—my assistant in these tutorials:
Name: Kris
Age: Appears 16 years old in most forms.
Gender: Non-binary
Species: Shapeshifter
Appearance: Varies greatly, though usually humanoid—human, elf, anthro.
Personality: Can shift depending on the situation, but most often shy and defensive, keeping people at a distance while still meaning to help when possible. Direct when it matters, dislikes people who reject advice, and can become hostile if someone refuses to listen.
Bio: Created for a series of roleplay tutorials, Kris seemed to appear from nowhere, fully formed and ready to serve as an example character for roleplayers around the world.
Others: Resides in the tutorial world but can appear elsewhere through special rifts.
A few final notes:
Try to know your character well enough to write at least 3 lines for appearance, 4 for personality, and 6 for their history.
You should get attached to your character — the more you care about them, the easier it will be to write for them.
The order of these sections isn’t set in stone, and you can add extras like “powers,” “weaknesses,” or “weapons” depending on the roleplay.
Think of your character sheet as your compass — it won’t tell you exactly where the story will go, but it’ll make sure you never lose your direction.
many of us seem to be struggling with a minor bug when it comes to typing out our responses on tumblr using the BTE. the biggest one i've come to notice is when we make our replies small. it's super common for the BTE to hardcore glitch and have the last couple of letters regular sized while the rest of the response is small. here is an example:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam eros leo, feugiat sit amet massa at, dapibus consectetur massa. Aliquam eget metus nec dolor efficitur sodales faucibus interdum dolor. Maecenas mollis justo euismod varius dictum. Etiam scelerisque erat vitae est hendrerit, a maximus justo tempor.
idk about you but i find that to be pretty annoying but that's just me.
another problem is that, for some odd reason, we're not able to do a form of "indentation" when typing out our responses on here via the BTE. why? idk. i really don't. now when i say "indentation" i mean like how one does when writing a research paper for school or writing out a fanfic. you know ... something like this:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Aliquam eros leo, feugiat sit amet massa at, dapibus consectetur massa. Aliquam eget metus nec dolor efficitur sodales faucibus interdum dolor. Maecenas mollis justo euismod varius dictum. Etiam scelerisque erat vitae est hendrerit, a maximus justo tempor.
so what i honestly recommend doing is to just type all of your responses on Roleplay Formatter. the reason for this is because Roleplay Formatter is what many coders and graphic designers call WYSIWYG. for those of you wondering, WYSIWYG stands for What You See Is What You Get. this is very beneficial for those of us who code, do gfx, and whatnot because it helps us get a better idea on what to expect for the end result.
it's super easy to use and i honestly can't recommend it enough. really. and not only that but you can use hell of a lot more colors for your text through there than on here where you only get eight options to choose from. all you need is a website that gives you the color hex and you're golden. here's a couple of sites i recommend you using for getting color hexes:
girls, gays, theys; members of the roleplay community who prefer to use discord and love to use tupperbox. i am going to change your lives, for the better. sorry i have been meaning to do this for 19 years and keep forgetting. so. come along, buckle up, strap in. lets go.
tupperbox.app
click this link.
hit login and its going to take you to another page. this page? she’s magic. she knows you. and she wants to help.
you are going to hit that big ‘ol purple authorize button down there and its going to take you to a page that is going to help save you time and make your life so much easier.
from this screen you can hit the blue button there that says +add to server. this will allow you to pick the servers that exist with this discord account through a dropdown box, and invite tupper to that server.
if you click this drop down arrow instead, you will get a couple options. tuppers, and log out. hit tuppers. trust the process.
i’m not showing you all of my crap its private fam, but here you have a + and = and then a + with a dropdown arrow.
hit that one. and then click that heckin add tupper button. this is where we make magic. do it.
now you’ve got this. this is your new best friend. see it, like it, love it.
put a name here, however you want it to appear when you use this bot. for display purposes only i will be using a beloved childhood character. boom baby!
now in the next space you are going to go to the internet. tumblr, twitter, pinterest, google idc, wherever you want to go and find an icon you like. copy that thangs url.
dang that looks awesome. alright, now we’re going to set the trigger text that summons the magnificent bot to your server of choice. loooooookin goodddddd.
now. you can also set their birthday, add some notes, create groups, y’all can figure that out on your own but your next step from here is to hit the green button of amazement. you’ve now created your tupper. there is no copying and pasting text. no erasing and re-typing quotation marks. no trying to remember commands.
now go to discord. type that trigger command and then your text, like usual.
if everything is correct, you will now be spicing up the server! oh yeahhhhh! now. the only command i still use is tul!auto “Ｋｕｚｃｏ” #CHANNELNAME and that will set everything to automatically post any text, gifs or images that you add to that channel with the tupper of your choice. i hope this was helpful friends!
fuck the patriarchy! be gay, do crimes, stay safe out there capital wasteland.
how do u do the small font in general when you want to reply or make a new post
so anon!!! i’ll give you a little tutorial on how to do small font on both desktop and mobile.
How to get small font in a post/reply on tumblr desktop
It doesn’t involve much but it’s knowing the shortcuts on how to do it. so the first thing you need to do is make a post, write what you want like below (example below is one of a reply i’ve just started to write so you can ignore the content.)
Then all you need to do once you’ve finished writing your reply, you need to highlight all of your reply (like shown below) and once you’ve done that you will need to press ctrl + shift + - buttons on your keyboard at the same time. And you should have small font!! (shown in the second image below)
How to get small font in a post/reply on tumblr mobile
It’s the same principle as doing it on desktop. You write your post, highlight the text you want to make small and once highlighted, the options to make it bold, italic, stike through and change colour should appear. There is now a option (after strikethrough) that says <s> which makes your text small! Please see below! :)
Hope that helped you Anon!!! If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to ask me!
Today, I am going to show you how to do icons in photopea (A free website). All you need is photopea open, a coloring psd, a border, and a screencap plus some patience!
This process is not fast, it isn't the best way to do icons but if you don't have photoshop or are using a Chromebook (like I am, you can't have photoshop on it) this is the only way to make your own icons.
Credits for different things:
Screencap, first coloring psd, second coloring psd, icon border, editing website, tutorial maker
Make your canvas size whatever size you want your icons to be. For me, I am doing 100x100 sized icons. If you need help picking a size of icon to use, look at this post for reference to icon sizes.
This is what it looks like when I open up a blank canvas of 100x100 in size.
I went over to the other open tab that I had with my icon border in it and hit the alt button (On a Chromebook computer) and went up to the duplicate into and not the duplicate layer
The box that pops up is asking where this layer is going so we go and pick the icon tutorial one and hit ok
Now I have two layers one being the white background and the other being my border. The next step is to open up my psd so go to the file and go down and open and find the coloring psd that you like.
My coloring psd is open in another tab now.
Go over and click the folder with the adjustments in it and right click (Or for me it was just hitting alt on the keyboard while clicking the folder)
Please ignore the thing over on the side. I was screencapping as I was going and my screencaps show up in the corner for a second. Anyways, same as the border layer! Do the same thing!
This is what it looks like on the icon tutorial canvas right now! I will move the folder under the border (so that way the border doesn't end up changing colors).
So the first folder that I had done was just a basic lighting psd and the second one (which I didn't show doing) was the real coloring that wasn't just a curves layer and things.
I went and got my screencap (So either out of your screencaps folder or from the gallery itself. Drag it over, copy paste, whatever works for you!)
When I put the screencap in the canvas, this is what it looks like at this step.
I adjusted the basic coloring (the lighting layer as I am calling it right now).
Next, I adjusted the other coloring folder to my liking
Now click the layer or go to the transform tool (edit, free transform)
Hold shift as you resize the image!
Your next step would be to move the screencap to be in the position that you want it. Once that is done, all you have to do is save! If you like the way it looks! Position examples are here.
Once again ignore the other image in the corner. You will want to go to file and down to export as..and then pick png.
A window pops up showing you the icon and you will want to hit the save button!
This is how the icon turned out in the end. This process is not fast but I find it relaxing!
Mobile replying, is honestly, quite the worst. And it is hard to make a reply that looks pretty. So under the cut is a tutorial of how I do my mobile replies(which I find gives the prettiest results).
First, you’ll want to open a browser app. This is important, as it won’t work on the Tumblr app. Once you are logged in, what I do is find the reply I want to do and save it in my drafts. I just find it easier, as if you are not sure about what the formatting looks, you can just save it and see how it looks so far. In any case, once you open the edit reblog, it will look like this:
Next, what you’ll want to do is copy your partner’s reply in the blank box. To do so, you’ll first need to highlight their reply and press copy. After that, you only need to paste it into the blank box.
It will then look like this. As you can see, the gif didn’t paste, that’s because you need to add it manually with the correct tag.
To add the gif, you’ll need to long press on your partner’s gif and select copy. You then have to type in this, before or after the reply depending on where it originally was: <.a href=“gif url”> (without the dot) So it should look like this once you’re done:
Once this has been done, you can type in your own reply after the tag for your partner’s gif.
Now to add your own gif, you will use the same tag as for your partner’s gif. But this time, you’ll use a different gif. Usually, I have a gif hunt opened in another tab so it’s easier to find an appropriate gif.
The next thing to do is to do the formatting. I personally only make the text small, but you may use any other formatting tag you wish. You’ll also want to try and keep the same formatting your partner had. So if they had something bolded, you can bold it using the <.bold> / <./bold> tags(without the dots).
You’ll also want to put your partner’s reply in a blockquote. Just put the <.blockquote> tag(without the dot) before the beginning of their reply, and the <./blockquote> tag(without the dot) after the tag for their gif.
And you will also want to add a link back to their blog at the beginning of the reply. For that, you need to use this tag <.a href=“partner’s url”>(without the dot) and place it before the blockquote. *note I accidentally put herf in the screenshot, but it really is href.
Now, you have the whole reply set in html, so you can click on the red ‘x’ at the top of the reblog to delete it, and post it! If you want to make sure it looks good, you can also save it in your drafts to see the formatting and make sure you haven’t messed up anything, and then post it.
And you’re done! I hope this was clear enough!
And if this was useful, please give this a like or a reblog, thank you!
The Advanced Guide to Photoshopping Icons Using Batch Processing
Tired of making icons one-by-one? So was I before discovering the magic of Photoshop. This comprehensive tutorial will teach you every step you need to make fantabulous icons as easily as possible! The only manual steps are resizing images and making your template for icons. I am using Photoshop CS6 for this tutorial, but CC is capable of doing the same steps, and previous versions may also be able to handle it.
If you don’t have Photoshop, go ahead and check out my GIMP tutorial! http://dancingbetweenraindrops.tumblr.com/post/167426124590/how-to-batch-process-icons-in-gimp
Tutorial under cut.
Step 1: Set up Photoshop
Open Photoshop and create a new canvas sized 100x100 or whatever size you would like your icons to be. That’s it for this step!
Step 2: Resizing Icons
Paste art or screenshots of your character into the canvas and resize them to how you’d like them to appear within the frame.
Step 3: Export Layers to Files
Select File > Scripts > Export Layers to Files. You will then be given this screen.
Make sure you have your Destination set to the file directory you’d like your icons in. I’d suggest making a dedicated folder for just these icons, as it will help in the Batch Process.
!WARNING!
Only export about 50 icons at once for maximum speed. Even on my gaming computer it takes a while for more than 50 at a time. I like to have all of my icons ready to go and then delete a group of them so I’m left with only increments of 50 at a time. It’s easy to undo deleting in the history window, so just undelete the previous batch and delete the batch you just finished. For example, if I have 100 icons, I delete icons 51-100 and save the first 50. Then I step back in the history window and delete the first 50 icons and save the last 51-100. Now I’d recommend also SAVING while you have all of them cropped, just in case you mess up while deleting and can’t get them back.
Step 4: Create a template
For this step, open one of the icons you saved from the script saving.
You will notice that the icon layer says “Index” and is locked. Go to Image > Mode and select RGB color to fix this. This is the only time we’ll need to worry about this.
Now for the creative part - you can go absolutely crazy with what you want to do with the icon. Add layers, adjustment layers, whatever you want. I usually start by creating a layer beneath my icon layer (You have to double click on the icon layer and change it to layer 0 instead of background first) and making it into a 95x95 or so box centered in the middle and clipping my icon to that layer.
That gives me a nice border space for my icon. Then I add new layers above that layer to make borders, or new adjustment layers to give them cool effects. Always remember to clip the layers to each other!
One of the most common effects I see in a lot of icons is this “Film” photo filter that washes out colours and softens blacks and whites. How to achieve this look is shown below. It is done using a Curves adjustment layer.
Set it to look similar to this
Adjust as needed.
To get a straight border, use the Layer Style for the clipping layer (the layer that all the others is clipped to.) Go ahead and add a stroke, drop shadow, and whatever else you’d like to your border.
Finally, save your template as a .PSD in the same directory as your icons (for ease) and give it an easy name, such as Template.PSD.
Step 5: Create a Script
This is where it gets tricky. You need to create a script in the EXACT order I give for it to work right. Close your template and open any icon. Then, click the arrow-like tool on the toolbar. It will open the Actions tab. Go ahead and press the little file button to create a new script. Name it whatever you want and then start record.
Once the action is recording, select the icon and hit control+c or copy. Then, go to File > Open and open your template. Paste your icon on top of the default icon. It should automatically clip as long as the adjustment layers above are clipped to the mask. Otherwise, right click on the layer and clip it.
Here, I pasted Layer 2 over Layer 0, the default icon.
Then, go to File > Save As and save your file in a subdirectory within your icon folder. Save it as 001.PNG. Make sure to select PNG and not save it as a JPEG or PSD file. Then, delete the layer you just pasted in and close the template.psd by clicking the little “x” at the top.
Finally, hit Stop Recording on the action panel.
Step 6: Batch Process
Go to File > Automate > Batch
After this, a window that looks like this will pop up
Make sure that your action is selected under Action:. Your source needs to be the folder in which you have all your icons saved. Your destination needs to be the folder you want all of your icons to save to. MAKE SURE TO CHECK “Override Action “Save As” Commands”. Finally, Go ahead and press “OK” and let Photoshop work magic!
so i made a tutorial in the past explaining how to do add color to your text on my previous blog @shinsources but unfortunately it's no longer active. and not only that but i found it a bit complicated so i'm gonna go ahead and remake it. the things you will need will be Beta Text Editor, Roleplay Formatter, and a website that provides you with color hexes. here are a couple that i recommend using:
encycolorpedia
color-hex
wikipedia ( a - f ) ( g - m ) ( n - z )
so the reason you have to use BTE is because colored text is only available in BTE and not LTE. and the reason i recommend you using Roleplay Formatter is because the number of options BTE supplies us with is ... uh ... limited, to put it bluntly. we literally only get eight colors which sucks. but whatever. eight is better than nothing i guess. idk.
anyways! let's get to the actual tutorial, yes? because it's relatively long i'mma throw everything under a READ MORE for simplicity's sake.
now all you have to do is type out your response on Roleplay Formatter, highlight the text you want to color, and then select color text font as shown down below.
once you click on that the image on the top will pop up. i need you to do me a favor and click on more options which will trigger the image on the bottom to pop up.
now obviously you're gonna want to pick out your color in advance because that'll make things 1,000,000 times easier in the long run. i'mma choose emerald green because that's what i use for my ulquiorra blog over @segnuda ( shameless self promo ). the color hex for emerald green is #50C878 for any of you wondering, fyi. you will do like i did in the image on the top and paste it in the second or bottom box. once you do that you click on okay and it will turn out like it does in the image on the bottom.
now i recommend you going ham and doing anything fancy shmancy with your text — bold, italics, strikethrough, small font, etc. — because who doesn't like fancying up their writing, right? i decided to make my text small ( in which you click on Styles until you see Small and click on that ) and bold / italicize / underline the first line as seen in the image on the top. once you get everything to your likings click on Source as highlighted in the image on the bottom.
NOTE: don't pull a me and actually underline your stuff because i forgot that BTE doesn't support underline. it won't register it at all.
once you've done that, you'll see something similar to the image similar to the one on the top. i need you to copy the whole entire source code via CTRL + C and then get onto tumblr followed by getting a text box open. i need you to do like i did in this tutorial here and completely backspace to where it goes from the middle image to the bottom image.
once done, click on the settings widget in the top right corner and go from Rich text to HTML as seen in the top image. it'll now look something like the image in the middle. after you've done that, paste the code you just copied and it'll look a little something like the one on the bottom.
when done you'll click on the settings widget again and go from HTML to Rich text. once done it'll look a little something like this!
literally all you have to do now is add any icons you want and the whole nine yards then you're good to go! simple as that!
