Roleplay

Roleplay or roleplaying, often abbreviated RP, is assuming the role of a character. It typically takes the form of a sort of collaborative story-telling, with each player describing the actions of their character.

In the multiplayer of Flexible Survival, RP is encouraged, as every 15 minutes the game checks for people roleplaying and rewards them with freecred and experience, along with salvage, if they're in a room with a source, and a chance to earn 1 reward token.

How to RP

First, you'll need at least one partner. Roleplay only counts if you do with another person.

• Once you and your partner are set, you may take turns using any of the following commands to describe what your character is doing, thinking or saying:
  • pose - Starts the sentence with the name of your character.
  • spoof - Does not preappend anything to the start of the line. What you write is what you get.
  • say - Starts the sentence with your character's sayverb.
  • %r and %t - These are special character combinations you can use in your poses. %r does a line break and %t does a tab spacing.
  • pot - Not a command for roleplaying, but to check the pose history. Shows the last 10 poses (say/pose/spoof) that happened in the room. You can add a number to increase or decrease the number of poses that will be listed, such as pot 30.
• Once you two finish, you may give each other a +vote to indicate you enjoyed the roleplay with them.

You can also roleplay with more people: in such cases, it's important to set the order of action. Most players use "reverse WS order", which means the player at the bottom of the WS acts first, then the player above and so on.

Finding Roleplay Partners

There are two main ways to find a roleplay partner:

• Using the Pickup channel. It is turned off by default as many new players attempt to use pick as a command and that sends a message to the channel instead.
  • Turn it on by typing pick #on
  • Type in your ad. It can be something like this: pick I'm looking for a partner that enjoys the company of a fluffy husky boy
  • You can check previously posted messages with pick #last. Players often enjoy being contacted from old ads.
  • Players will likely reply by sending you a page. It is advised to avoid using the pickup channel for chat about scenes.
• Using the WI profile's built in command to find people with certain flags
  • If any of the characters listed striked your fancy, you can send them a page and let them know you'd like to roleplay.

Pages/Paging is the command for direct/private messages between players. The name derives from the electronic device pager.

RP Etiquette

TLDR Version

• Keep your poses to what your character does. Do not state what another player's character feels or does.
• Put it all in a single command instead of various separate commands
• Respect your partner(s)
• Keep communication clear at all times so both of you don't accidentally do something the other dislikes

The full thing from the in-game help file:

As much as you may like to do whatever you want while roleplaying, it's important to note that there are a few rules around here to make sure everyone enjoys themselves. Like with the guide on roleplay-commands, we'll enlist the help of Alice and Bob.

.. Oh dear. Seems they're fighting with each other.

Now, Bob could type |Bob throws a punch at Alice, knocking her right out. And Bob would be breaking the standard RP-rules. Alice has no way to decide the result of such a move, and is forced to go along with this action. What Bob should've done is this: |Bob throws a punch at Alice, intent on knocking her out. The message is the same, yet this time, Alice can choose whether or not she'll go along with it. Maybe she jumps away, maybe she blocks the punch. Or maybe she gets knocked out. But that's Alice's choice, now.

This is a good example of the right of defense. Always allow the other to decide what happens to their character. While ICly forcing people and non-consensual acts are A-okay, OOCly forcing people into a corner is to be avoided. If someone tells you to stop, stop. This is a hard rule, no excuses.

Okay, well, let's assume Bob knew this rule, and we'll let Alice make her move. Alice decides to type the following: |In a split-second, Alice spots Bob's fist, and quickly flies out of the way, using the magical abilities she was born with to hover in mid-air. Is there something wrong with this? At first, it may not appear to be wrong, since magic does exist in our world. However, we have to consider two things. One, canon demands that no-one has magical powers from birth. Magic comes from certain dedications, and is limited to what their rpinfo notes they give you access to. Secondly, the theme doesn't permit magical hovering, period. Preachy as it may sound, it's important to keep this in mind. Always follow the canon and theme of the game. This is another hard rule, breaking theme is frowned upon.


Furthermore, there are a few things to keep in mind. For example:

Bob shouldn't
pose
Like this.

This way of posing is hard to work with, and generally just spammy. Bob could've easily combined that into one pose. In fact, lets compare two different poses Bob could write.

Firstly: 

|As Alice avoids his punch, Bob just stands there, confused. Soon enough, he readies another punch.

Secondly:

|After his punch being avoided, Bob takes a moment to recover, staring at Alice in a confused manner, panting lightly, before putting up his fists for another punch. No, he isn't done with this fight yet, simply because Alice avoided. She'll pay for what she did, stepping out on him like that. He thought that what they had was special.

While the first is a valid pose, the second option holds a lot more information, and gives Alice more to work with and react to. Try to keep your poses a respectable length to make sure people are capable of reacting to them. 3-5 lines is a nice minimum-bound to set for yourself.

Now, suppose there's a third person standing around in the room, Eve. Eve is completely uninvolved, and hasn't posed himself in. At this point, Bob poses the following:
:drags Eve into the room, pointing at Alice and flailing his arms wildly as he makes a long rant of complaints

Eve might not appreciate this, for two reasons. One, he wasn't actively IC, and thus, not in the room. In other words, Bob has now effectively power-played with respect to him, denying him the option of posing in the way he likes. Secondly, Eve might have wanted to stay out of things entirely. In short, if someone isn't posing, don't assume they're IC without asking.
And no, the [IC] tag is not a good indicator. Due to the way the system works, this tag is set whenever you move, meaning that almost anything you do puts you 'IC'.

In addition to this, it might be a good idea not to pose repeatedly. Make one pose, and wait for your partner(s) to respond to that. That way, people will have an easier time responding to you poses, because they don't have to keep changing their poses every time you do something.

To this extent, two systems are used. Let's assume we have Alice, Bob, Eve, and Steven in a scene. They could decide to pose in order, for example: Alice -> Bob -> Eve -> Steven
This is what's called a pose-order, which is a rigid way of deciding who poses when. In small groups, this is the most-used system.
The other option is the N poses first system, which means that after N poses, normally set to something such as two or three, you are free to pose again. In this case, both Alice -> Bob -> Eve -> Steven - Alice and Alice -> Bob -> Eve -> Alice -> Steven would be considered valid. Keep in mind that if it goes on like that, Stephen could lose track of things, so this system relies on different people being at least close in their pose-speed.
  
Also, remember to not post OOC material in IC. If you wish to communicate OOCly, use ooc <text>.

In any case, the important thing is to have fun. If you don't want something, or are enjoying yourself, make sure to let the other person know. After all, no-one's trying to ruin others' times, and we all like it if you enjoy yourself.