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dreamwidth rp Q&A
First of all, welcome to Dreamwidth-based roleplay!
I'm opening up this posts to general questions about roleplaying on this site because after seeing some newer players come into this format, I realized that there are a lot of things I take for granted and just assume everyone knows even though that's not always the case! We're a very unique format with our own standards, lingo, and what have you, and it's often difficult to jump into unless you have someone holding your hand along the way. There are a lot of resources out there to get you started, but at the same time, there's always something better about asking a person directly when you have a question instead of hunting for an answer in something that's already been written and may not even apply!
Just to give you a little background about me, since I'll be answering the questions, my name is Christy! I actually started out on journal-based roleplaying on Livejournal in 2006 more or less on a whim, and I've been continuously playing ever since. I've played a wide variety of characters in an even wider variety of games, and I've both created games from scratch and run them and helped mod ones that other people have made. So as such, you can ask questions about RP from the perspective of a player, but also from the perspective of a mod.
And of course, as a disclaimer, all answers I give are purely from my experience and my opinions! You might find that other people have different opinions or answers to questions, and I of course encourage people to jump in and answer questions as they see fit. This post is open to any kinds of questions at all, and if I don't have an answer for you off the top of my head, I'll do my best to try and find one for you. There's no such thing as a stupid question, so ask whatever you want! Even if it seems like the most basic, inane thing, I'm still happy to answer.
So go ahead! Ask any questions you'd like, and I'll answer them as quickly as I can. ♥
I'm opening up this posts to general questions about roleplaying on this site because after seeing some newer players come into this format, I realized that there are a lot of things I take for granted and just assume everyone knows even though that's not always the case! We're a very unique format with our own standards, lingo, and what have you, and it's often difficult to jump into unless you have someone holding your hand along the way. There are a lot of resources out there to get you started, but at the same time, there's always something better about asking a person directly when you have a question instead of hunting for an answer in something that's already been written and may not even apply!
Just to give you a little background about me, since I'll be answering the questions, my name is Christy! I actually started out on journal-based roleplaying on Livejournal in 2006 more or less on a whim, and I've been continuously playing ever since. I've played a wide variety of characters in an even wider variety of games, and I've both created games from scratch and run them and helped mod ones that other people have made. So as such, you can ask questions about RP from the perspective of a player, but also from the perspective of a mod.
And of course, as a disclaimer, all answers I give are purely from my experience and my opinions! You might find that other people have different opinions or answers to questions, and I of course encourage people to jump in and answer questions as they see fit. This post is open to any kinds of questions at all, and if I don't have an answer for you off the top of my head, I'll do my best to try and find one for you. There's no such thing as a stupid question, so ask whatever you want! Even if it seems like the most basic, inane thing, I'm still happy to answer.
So go ahead! Ask any questions you'd like, and I'll answer them as quickly as I can. ♥
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1. After the whole intro log of acceptances, etc, as lame as this question sounds, what do you do... after that? I’ve seen where people make opens/closeds just generally based on the setting of the group (and about the event if there's an event going on), and post it into one of the game’s journals (usually the main one). Is that how tagging typically works, post-intro log?
2. Will we (new dw rpers) eventually get used to keeping track of all of the games’ journals with time? I’m not used to keeping up with a (game name)mod journal, and then the (game name)ooc journal, and then this journal and that journal, and right now, it’s all a little overwhelming... So I’m just wondering if this is something that’ll eventually sink in!
3. This one's just about setting up DW accounts as well as your personal opinion on this, since there's a lot of settings and I do get lost sometimes. Do you have any account settings that you personally favor changing/unchecking/etc. every time you create a DW account? Such as, for example, unchecking the box that allows posts to be shown in DW's skin, and so forth...
4. And the biggest question: How long did it take for you to get the hang of boomeranging?
These are all the questions I have for now! Thank you in advance, and If I think of more, I'll ask them.
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1. Not lame at all! Though you've pretty much got it! The way intro logs came about (since they're actually a relatively recent development!) is to give new players and characters a way to integrate with the setting and the current cast of characters. The intro log is your foot in the door, so to speak—You're building your first tidbits of CR and getting your character their introduction to the setting so that you have things to explore and use as a plotting or CR point later.
So after the intro logs are posted, the types of posts you're going to see are basically divided into two types: event posts and logs/network posts (depending on the individual game). Event posts are those logs that are posted by the mods with a bunch of prompts, and people reply to these entries, or depending on how the mods structure their game, it may just be an OOC post describing the event, and from there, people make their own logs. The second type are the more in between types of logs, where say you want for Character A to meet Character B, so you're setting up a post to do that (the Closed logs) or maybe you want to get more CR, so you have your character doing something or talking to the network, at which point anyone who's interested can reply (Open logs).
The event posts tend to be easy to jump into because they have prompts included, so unless you have more questions, I'll gloss over those, but I never realized that the open/closed posts is a bit confusing! So to focus more on them, basically the idea is that you're creating your own prompt(s) for people to reply to. So let's take Kasen for an example. I could make a log where I just want him to meet certain swords that he hadn't in the intro log, which would be a closed log, because it's catered to a particular set of people. Alternately, maybe I want him to tell everyone about the virtues of poetry, so I might want to either make a log where he's pulling random people in for demonstrations (an open log), or maybe making a network post to ask people what their favorite poems are!
However, if you don't have any ideas on how to do this yourself, that's also totally okay. To be honest, it's better to tag around, especially if you're new to a game or to the format in general! Tagging around to those open posts or network posts you see will get CR going that you might not have expected, after all, which is the big fun of RP as far as I'm concerned. Just keep an eye out for any posts or prompts that interest you, and if you're not sure about whether you can tag or not, just send the player a PM to ask! Even if it's not, usually people are super excited to play in general, so they'll probably make a prompt to accommodate you anyways because you expressed interest!
2. This is also why I'm glad I made this post, because this is one of those things that I realize is super not obvious, wow...
Basically, you have two options to consolidate keeping up with everything!
1) Reading Page. You'll hear people refer to this as their Friends List, since this is what it used to be called back on LJ, but under Read at the tabs at the top up Dreamwidth, you'll see an option for Reading Page. This will take you to a link that will show you the entries from every community you're subscribed to. So for me, since I play a lot of different characters in a lot of different games, I tend to just subscribe to the communities of my games, and this way, every time a new post comes up, I'll see it on this page. Mod journals you don't really need to track, since mods will inform you when there's a change to something in those, but you can if you want to!
2) Tracking. If you go to a community, on right right where the join/subscribe options are, you'll also see a little bell labelled "Track." Click this and you'll get a bunch of options, but generally, you'll want to pick the one that's labeled "Someone posts a new entry to [community]." If you do this, also make sure to click the box in the lefthand corner to notidy you by email if you don't really use the DW Inbox (like me). This will end you an email notification every time a post is made to the community, and it'll show you basic information like who posted it, the tags it was posted with, and the subject title, but it won't show you the contents of the entry.
I use a mixture of both personally, since one of my games (Tanagura) is locked, so I can't follow it on my friend's list/read list. I tend to prefer the Reading List version since it's an easy way to chronologically follow when posts happen, but now that I'm used to it, Tracking isn't bad either. Basically just mix and match and see which one appeals to you!
3. LMAO THIS ONE IS TOTALLY FAIR LORD... As you saw in your plurk last night, even we get lost trying to find anything, ugh... I don't actually change many settings unless I need to, so here are the only ones you'd probably ever need to worry about:
- Entry Page: Account Settings > Display > Entry Page Default: Your Journal > uncheck "Show my journal's entry pages in my chosen style instead of the site skin"
This one you've already found, but it just makes a nice, easier to read format in the default Dreamwidth skin instead of whatever your journal layout is. I forget to do this sometimes, but if I'm using my journal a lot, this is the one setting I change immediately.
- Other People's Entries: Account Settings > Display > Entry Pages: Shown to You > Click the dropdown box and set it to "Site skin"
Similar to the above, but if someone forgot to do the above themselves, then this will basically do it for you and you alone.
- HMD Settings. If you have a HMD on your journal for constructive critcism, there are a few settings that need to be changed to allow for these to work, all under Account Settings > Privacy.
1. Enable Comments — Change this to allow comments from everybody.
2. Comment Screening — Screen anonymous comments. You don't have to do this, but that's my preference.
3. IP Address Logging — Log IP addresses of nobody.
There are like three million settings for DW, but honestly, these are like the only ones I ever use... If something else comes up, it's usually a one time thing and I have to dig for it! Sometimes I even have to ask my plurk like "okay how do I do this," so really. No shame in not knowing where settings are hiding, since we don't always know either LMAO.
4. This one is a little harder to answer because I'm an oldbie, so first, a journal RP history lesson, laughs...
When I started RPing, everything was pretty much boomerang tagging, though we didn't call it that back in the day. There were some games that didn't have this expectation, but for the most part, everything was boomerang tagging in the sort of minimalistic style that we call ECATS today. If you're not familiar with that acronym, don't worry about what it stands for, but it's basically shorthand for a lot of the tags that we see at shiptrap for example (Ivan's tags are always an example of this). Dialogue-heavy, not very focused on the thoughts of the characters, more like getting a thread done. So boomerang tagging is basically how I started RPing, so the technical answer to your question is "not very long" because it was way more common back when I started out.
That said! It's a lot more selective now in the sense that the expectation (generally speaking) for boomeranging threads is that it's for threads that are either 1) time sensitive and need to get done or 2) threads you really personally enjoy. Our pace has collectively slowed a lot since I started RPing, so boomerang tagging tends to be done at a player's preference rather than as a requirement.
That said, there is a sort of unspoken etiquette with boomerang tagging that even if you are boomerang tagging a thread that fits either of those criteria, you should also be mindful of other threads too. How a player chooses to handle this depends on the individual, but my approach is to get as many tags done as I can, and then boomerang at my leisure. That way it minimizes the chances that someone is going to be hurt that I'm not paying as much attention to their thread!
So with all that in mind (and this is a weirdly long answer just because the actual answer is short, so I'm trying to explain some other stuff with it), I also don't like... consciously boomerang tag either. I don't sit down and decide to do it, since usually I'm in category 2 for those threads! And in that case, I'm just really excited about the thread in question, so I'm super enthusiastic about responding. As soon as the notif appears, I'm ready to tag again since I'm really enjoying it! And that's the basic idea of how we boomerang tag today, at least in my experience!
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I've added more questions, since I knew I had more, I just needed to... organize them in another pile, but I've gone and tried out the reading page / tracking!! Keeping up with all of those journals really has gotten easier, tbh..... And learning how to do those settings officially does help a lot too! I think when my friends and I applied to our first games a few months ago, we were all over the place trying to figure out how to set up HMDs, AHA...... (In the end, we never really figured it out completely, we just slapped some settings together and prayed... but now we can slap together settings with confidence.)
5. Speaking of network posts... These have been a large source of confusion for me, since I've never actually understood their full importance or their purpose. Of course, I'm not saying that they're not important, especially judging from how often I see them around! It's just that I'm not entirely sure when I'd choose to make a network post over an open/closed log, or in what situation. So... would it be okay to ask for several scenarios in particular, in which a network post would be used over an open/closed log?
6. I think I saw these in shiptrap in the form of screenshots from time to time... (i THINK they were called gagtags but i'm not sure...) but since you mentioned that you do use your email over your inbox for notifs, what are the pros of using an email instead? I know it's all personal preference, but I'd still like to know, if that's okay! Since it seems as if more people tend to use email for it, whereas the whole thing just confuses me...
7. In navigation posts, what are the links that people usually put? Of course, there's "application" and "hmd" and "ic inbox", etc, but are there a few basics that most people tend to stick to? Also, for journals that are in multiple games, would people usually put separate links to their game-specific things?
8. And speaking of IC inboxes... I'm still a little uncertain about these, too, kind of like how I'm confused about network posts. What kinds of things would others post in a character's IC inbox? I understand how they're set up, such as "I'm not here, leave a message", but after that... I've tried to look at other characters' IC inboxes for what kinds of messages were posted there from others, but I don't think I gained a lot of insight...
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5) Absolutely! This does depend a little on the game, since how each game uses their communities can tend to differ, but for most games, the difference amounts to how the character is physically communicating. Network posts are usually used for the communication device (the phone your character is given as a usual staple, more or less), whereas logs are used for in-person interactions. However, it's also acceptable to use a network post where you have someone making a "call" to everyone in the game like "hey, I'll be hanging out at so and so, come stop by" and have log-like prompts as a part of the post. So, for examples! Here is a post that's purely a network post, in that Sebastian is making a broadcast to the entire game and it's purely a prompt for characters to respond with the phone. On the other hand, here is a hybrid post, but it's on the network community because it does include a phone option in the second one, as compared to this open log post where there's no such option.
Basically your decision on what kind of post you want to make amounts to how you want your character and others to interact! If it's in person, it's more log-oriented, but if it's not, then a network post should be fine.
6) This is definitely 99% personal preference, but my personal reason for stick with email over the DW inbox amounts to habit mostly, but it also has one very useful feature that DW doesn't have the same capacity for, and that's searching. This isn't something that's terribly useful when you're new to a game, but when you're in a game for a longer time, then this becomes invaluable when you're trying to remember if two characters talked, if they talked about a certain topic, etc. By basically using the Gmail inbox like Google, I can see every email and thus tag I've ever gotten on a certain topic.
So for example, if I want to reference some random thing that I know my character knows, but I'm not sure where it happened, I can effectively Google the tag! This has proved super useful to me, and it's also why I never delete any of my emails. I have like 60k+ (read) emails in my inbox, no joke.
But this one really does amount to personal preference! That's why I personally prefer using email notifs and never really touch my DW Inbox, but I know people that do the opposite with no problem!
7) Navigation posts are my jam, so I'll give you my general rule of thumb! If I was going to someone's journal to find out about their character in my game, what would I conceivably want to see? In general, your standards are going to be Application, HMD, Permissions (if your game has one), and IC Inbox. These are basically the four things that a casual visitor is going to go looking for, and you can see the basic example of that on this journal. This journal also has an additional post for a character opt-out since she's a nasty piece of work, but that's obviously character dependent.
The navigation post is for other's convenience, so they should be made with someone else in mind, basically. So for example, if you go to Sebastian's journal and ignore the navigation post for the purpose of this example, there are a lot of posts in his journal. You'll have to dig for quite a bit to find one post that you might be looking for! So his navigation post links to everything that someone could conceivably be interested in, and it's also broken into sections since his journal is full of information. For a scarier example, you can check out my old navigation post for him for when he was in CDC as well! CDC was an especially info-heavy game, so it was almost required to have a lot of links like you'll see on that tab, but that's definitely specific to that game.
In short, this navigation code covers the basics, though.
8) IC Inboxes are basically used however you the player wants to use them, since they're not exactly something standardized across DWRP as a whole, much less games. Some games allow IC Inboxes to be used for AC, and some don't, first of all, so this is something you need to be certain of before you start using them heavily! This also influences how I personally use them, so let me give you examples for a game where they can't be used for AC as compared to one where they can.
For games where I can't use them for AC, they're more or less for messages that could be handwaved, but the player and I decided not to for whatever reason! I usually use them as a transition into a log, such as in this brief thread. These are the kind of conversations that you can absolutely talk out with the other person and just be like "hey let's assume they talked and then showed up for this log," but I enjoy threading out these little conversations! Alternately, they can be used for one-on-one "network" conversations, such as in this thread.
This is an example where the line becomes blurry and is a little unspoken common courtesy sort of thing. After all, I absolutely could have made a network post for that conversation with a sort of caveat that it was closed to the character. However, this is generally frowned upon if you don't also have an open prompt for everyone to respond to. So IC Inboxes are great for those kind of conversations where Character A would call Character B rather than meeting them in person, but you don't have a wider prompt for the game as a whole.
As for games where they do count for AC...! Well tbh then they're just a log that I feel too lazy to make an actual log post for and that's it. Which you can see here! This is absolutely something that Aki and I could have made a proper closed log post for but just didn't feel like it... That's really all it amounts to in that case HAHA. I use my ic inboxes way more in games where they count for AC, and I don't really know why, since they're definitely just logs! Laziness always wins somehow.
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This is a question that I'm not sure if you'd understand entirely, since this is mostly a personal thing for me, being new to DWRP and the DWRP system, and therefore tending to be more self-conscious about my rping on DW so far as a result!! But:
9. After being in a game for some time (for me, it's a month or two in), do you ever get sort of... self-conscious about the character that you're playing? Naturally, as much as I'd love to put myself and my character out there, I tend to be a bit more shy when it comes to doing just that. Do you have any tips on how to combat shyness when it comes to, well... DWRP in general?
Since from what I've noticed so far, DWRP is heavily reliant on players talking to each other and plotting things out that way; and of course, I know that players talking, plotting, etc, happens across all roleplay mediums, but DWRP seems to involve... a whole lot more of it than I've ever seen previously, if that makes sense!
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Because to answer your question, yes, absolutely! It's a feeling that probably won't ever go away either, but I am the number one advocate that this isn't a bad thing, and it's not something you should worry about too much if you can. Easier said than done, I know, but here's why and how I personally combat my shyness—
The most important thing to help kick shyness in the face for me is to kind of just realize that feeling shy in this way is 1) perfectly fine, 2) perfectly normal, and 3) the other person is probably also feeling a little shy too! Like for example, think about how excited you are when someone tags you. It's the idea of woah!! woah, someone wants to RP with me, and I'm really excited about it. And I can guarantee that in most cases, that's how the other person is going to feel when you tag them. We're all nerds here, and we're all a little shy too, since it's definitely a little intimidating to blindly tag people you don't know. It's easy to fall into the loop of beating yourself up over tags, characterization, all kinds of things, but really, I think one of the most valuable things I realized with regards to RP (and life in general, honestly...) is just how true the saying "you're your own harshest critic" is.
It's easy to feel self-concious, and it's not a bad thing either! After all, this means that you're being thoughtful about your RP, and you want people to enjoy playing with you as much as you play with them. Or at least, that's how I feel when I get really self-concious. But the biggest and best way to overcome this hurdle is basically to just go for it. Nine times out of ten, it'll go great, and you'll get new threads and even new CR you may have never expected or known that you wanted as badly as you do. And that one time that it doesn't quite mesh? That's fine too! The absolute worst that's going to come from it is that you and the person you tag just don't mesh for whatever reason, which is totally normal too. In my experience, people are generally super understanding of this, because that also happens to everyone. And after all, nine out of ten isn't bad odds at all.
I can't find the actual comic that comes to mind, but I think this post gets to the point of what I mean. It's easy to be harsh on ourselves because we tend to view things from a different lens. I find that the best way to get over self-consciousness is to be aware of that lens because it helps me get over my shyness.
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How do I stop being a flake, Christy... How do I choose one character and stick to it...
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ALSO assuming you want a serious answer for this... I hope so... bc i'm going to give one
Well! First of all, I don't necessarily think that being a flake is defined as having a character you really stick to, because as a whole? I wouldn't say that's common, actually. Even for me who soulbounds for [redacted] years, the characters that I play for years are definitely exceptions overall. Like just to use myself as an example, look at all the characters I've played over the years on DW alone! Sometimes I can be a little flakey too, since my style of picking a character tends to come down to throwing spaghetti at the wall until it sticks. Diva and Sebastian are defintiely exceptions, because most of the time? I tend to only play a character for a few months and then get bored of them.
So really, the key to not being flakey comes down to identifying why you're flaking, first of all. What is it that you don't enjoy about RP? What makes it difficult to stay interested in a character or a game? Because I mean, it's totally fair and not flakey at all if you try out one of those two things and just find it doesn't mesh. To me, flakiness usually comes more in terms of an OOC attitude and not managing time well.
Which at this point, I'm starting to speak much more in general, because I do think individual reasons are going to vary a lot here!
But in general, I think with a lot of people that I find a little flakey is honestly just that relative to the amount of time they have to RP, they're taking on too much or not using their time wisely. One of the important things I learned a few years ago was basically how to juggle RPing with my RL responsibilities in a way that didn't interfere too much with either. And on the RP side, that means being honest with both yourself and with others about the amount of time you have to RP. A lot of people I consider a little flakey just don't have as much time to RP as they want to RP, and end up spreading themselves too thin. It's a neverending cycle, because they get too involved, then feel bad about how many threads they've taken on, and then end up putting them off because they feel bad that they can't handle the threadload. This happens to me too! But I mean, in my experience, just being honest when you have to drop threads and also honestly trying to do better the next time means a lot to other people.
This all has to do with activity, but I think also in terms of characters, part of not being flakey is sticking with a character even if they might not be in a spot of development you're currently happy with. Like the fun of RP (to me) is that it's so dynamic, so there's a lot of freedom to make your own choices. There's definitely a limit in this case, but if you're unhappy with where a character is, then really sitting down and thinking about how to get out of a rut and plots you could do is what it takes to get out of them. No one else is going to do it for you, because the nature of RP is that we tend to be more focused on our own characters, so honestly, that's the sort of problem where the onus falls solely on you. But that's not to say other people can't help! Just coming to the table to CR with ideas you've thought of can send CR in new directions or start new CR. It's just a matter of being proactive.
Overall, I think the way to combat flakiness comes down to being honest with yourself and others though. Whether it's in terms of overall activity or with picking a character, it's just a matter of communication every time. Like it's okay to be slow or have off days where you don't feel like RPing! But I think keeping yourself to a standard of letting people know and evaluating the amount of RPing you can do realistically are the big steps to a non-flakey lifestyle. :)
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fingerguns