Advice/Help New to Asynchronous RP

Faerie Childe

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Hi! I've been roleplaying for years, but always real-time (sometimes in-person, sometimes by text) and it seems like this site is designed for asynchronous play, usually with longer posts (anywhere from a few sentences to novellas depending on preference). I'm very intrigued, but struggling to understand how you manage this, especially in 1x1 RPs.
For instance, I assume it's poor form to write responses from the other player's character(s). So, how do you handle dialogue? Especially in a RP where the standard is multi-paragraph responses? Do you push to include 3+ paragraphs of character description and internal monologue between each line? Or do dialogue-heavy sections become more truncated, with each message shortening to 1-2 paragraphs and responses coming more frequently?
I'm also wondering about the pacing of doubling. Is there etiquette for how the two RPs are balanced? Do you always post one message for each RP, back-to-back? Or do you discuss OOC when a good stopping point is within one RP, making it a good time to switch to the other for a while?

These questions probably have painful obvious answers, but I'm a total newcomer to this style of role-play, and I'm still finding my footing. Any advice or explanation would be greatly appreciated!
 
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The thing is, with 1x1 rp you pretty much discuss all that with your rp partner and agree on how you handle these things before you start the actual rp, so that you're both on the same page.

Different people can handle it differently, it's important to set expectations beforehand.
So for 1x1 rp, people commonly have OOC conversation where they discuss things like that, and a separate In-character thread or private message or discord channel, where they write the actual rp.
 
I’d second that it largely depends on preferences that you discuss with your writing partner. As a mostly long form writer, who only responds once or twice a week, usually its a lot of descriptive action and internal decision making that drives the writing, with dialogue dispersed at the beginning and ends. Dialogue arguably flows better when it’s not lost in between paragraphs of exposition/internal thought, so sometimes flipping back into more rapid fire, short form can aid in smoothing out the natural flow of conversation. I’ve personally found a balance of both to be beneficial and most of the people I write with are flexible and willing to switch between the two forms.

As for writing from my partners character’s pov, I’ve actually found it better to relinquish some control to the other, so that plot can move forward quicker, especially since long form takes awhile to move along. This takes a level of trust, and constant open communication and willingness to edit and adjust posts, but it does help if I can write my partners character doing a small action, and that they be allotted the same right, if only for the sake of progression.

But again, that’s all dependent on how you and your writing companion prefer to write. Everyone differs and I’ve found openly communicating with your partners is the best route, especially if you’re uncertain of how to continue a plot/how to structure a response. Most people will list there requisites within their ad too, detailing their preferences when it comes to these things.
 
For instance, I assume it's poor form to write responses from the other player's character(s). So, how do you handle dialogue?
I tried post combing once myself and kind of liked it. If dialogue is the main attraction, you can pm the people youre collaborating with and add small snippets to one post and just credit all involved and use a color coding to make it apparent when someone is speaking.

otherwise the main thing is to not take control of someone else's character. I like to put reactions and tailor my responses specifically to what the other character said. when talking isn't important, you can introduce new elements that people can focus on through character actions. Let's say youre in a bar with two other player characters and yours makes a move for the guy slapping waitresses butts. By focusing on resolving this issue with overt actions such as approaching him, you give your partner(s) someone to work with as long as everyone is visualizing and on the same page.

but its really a lot of questioning what is important. What environmental cues, what dialogue, what personal physical ticks, and what actions are necessary to add to the story and give something to the other people something to react to and give back in their posts.
 
struggling to understand how you manage this, especially in 1x1 RPs.

The basics are relatively simple: Each person writes in their own time, as if they were writing an entry in a story of their own (except of course accounting for their partner). Depending on the pace and length it can closely resemble or even be the same as roleplaying through sessions.


For instance, I assume it's poor form to write responses from the other player's character(s).

Yes and to be honest I have seldom heard of a type of RP (even within session-based RP) in which that isn't the case.


So, how do you handle dialogue?

Others have already given the "it depends" spiel, so I'll just focus on my personal approach as someone who insists on the longer format of posting.

First, I tend to write longer dialogue than what you'd see in a regular back and forth conversation and/or I break up dialogue with narration or internal monologue, making shorter pieces of dialogue but with the scene ongoing. This is not as organic but in terms of writing I don't really see it as necessarily a problem (though it can become a problem if done poorly of course), in fact I wouldn't say it's particularly uncommon in writing. "Natural" and "organic" are two different things, as increased spontaneity and even likeness to real life is not necessarily what makes something feel appropriate as dialogue, for the same reason we don't just write every "uh" "ah" and other little quirks of real life speech. Dialogue in longer form posts is often less based on back and forth and more concentrated on the parts to communicate.

Second, dialogue and action are seldom the main emphasis of my posts. The why and how, the character's feelings and thoughts, the way things are viewed, describing the scene, environment and the, and sure dialogue, action, intermediary "actions" like body language, etc... There's so much that go in a post.

Third, and on that topic, if I ever get stuck in a scene where the above isn't enough to make a regular sized post for me something is wrong. If the scene really doesn't have anything going on besides two characters making small talk, that might be a point where I would consider quitting an RP entirely, as it implies my partner gave me so little to work with, and has created such an uninteresting character, environment, situation, plot etc... That not only has that scene deprived me of content to address but various tricks I can use have been exhausted. But even if a situation close to that does come up, it's possible to open an exception for such posts or discuss making a collaborative post. It's extremely rare but it has happened. Still, the point is that character design, scene construction, setting and so on are thigs I try to make with forethought for how they will affect my future options in terms of writing.

The fourth point is crucial, and its a recognition of fluid time in RP: This is something I find almost all RPs use without thinking about it, but RP posts are seldom entirely concurrent or sequential. Instead various parts of the same post can happen at different points in time, addressing parts of other posts that likewise did not happen entirely in a linear sequence, and if all those parts were to be ordered chronologically you'd note that players are introducing retroactive elements (including dialogue) all the time. Naturally this requires a degree of trust and mutual understanding - A basic shared notion of what would naturally happen in the scene.

Fluid time is perhaps the thing that may be most confusing for someone coming from a session-based RP format, as those formats are in real time and almost entirely chronologically linear. I'll leave here a simple example to hopefully show what I mean, though of course there are more nuances and complexities to it. Still this sounds waaaaaay more complicated than it actually is, and most people do it without really thinking about it.

Person 1 "Would you like some tea?" Character A inquired.

Character A went into the kitchen to start brewing. They returned shortly after with the pot and cups for anyone who wanted some.

"Alright, let's discuss the investigation." They sat down on the couch and took a sip.



Person 2 "Sure, I could use some after... that." Character B shivered a bit on their chair.

While character A was in the kitchen, character B grabbed a newspaper on the desk. Unsurprisingly there was not a single mention of the crime.

"Right. Well, first of all, and you're not going to like this, but I think we should give the marshall a call."



I must, however, emphasize this: People shouldn't be "pushing" to get to 3+ paragraphs. How much one naturally is inclined to write depends on person to person, their mindset, their values and other things. If you are consistently feeling like you need to stuff posts to meet a quota, that's a bad sign. I enjoy the longer writing format because it matches my writing style, what I value in posts, what I like to read, how my mindset approaches writing. I know of brilliant roleplayers who will rarely give you a post a third of the size of my typical ones, but if I am forced to write a post at something like 500 words there's a good chance my partners aren't giving me anything to work with.



I'm also wondering about the pacing of doubling. Is there etiquette for how the two RPs are balanced? Do you always post one message for each RP, back-to-back? Or do you discuss OOC when a good stopping point is within one RP, making it a good time to switch to the other for a while?
Just to be clear, what do you mean by 'doubling'? Doubling has a certain meaning here which usually is something along the lines of players playing two sets of characters each, often each a pairing the other wants, but I'm not sure if that's along the lines of what you mean by it.


Either way, welcome to the site! I wish you the best of luck and happy RPing!
 
The basics are relatively simple: Each person writes in their own time, as if they were writing an entry in a story of their own (except of course accounting for their partner). Depending on the pace and length it can closely resemble or even be the same as roleplaying through sessions.




Yes and to be honest I have seldom heard of a type of RP (even within session-based RP) in which that isn't the case.




Others have already given the "it depends" spiel, so I'll just focus on my personal approach as someone who insists on the longer format of posting.

First, I tend to write longer dialogue than what you'd see in a regular back and forth conversation and/or I break up dialogue with narration or internal monologue, making shorter pieces of dialogue but with the scene ongoing. This is not as organic but in terms of writing I don't really see it as necessarily a problem (though it can become a problem if done poorly of course), in fact I wouldn't say it's particularly uncommon in writing. "Natural" and "organic" are two different things, as increased spontaneity and even likeness to real life is not necessarily what makes something feel appropriate as dialogue, for the same reason we don't just write every "uh" "ah" and other little quirks of real life speech. Dialogue in longer form posts is often less based on back and forth and more concentrated on the parts to communicate.

Second, dialogue and action are seldom the main emphasis of my posts. The why and how, the character's feelings and thoughts, the way things are viewed, describing the scene, environment and the, and sure dialogue, action, intermediary "actions" like body language, etc... There's so much that go in a post.

Third, and on that topic, if I ever get stuck in a scene where the above isn't enough to make a regular sized post for me something is wrong. If the scene really doesn't have anything going on besides two characters making small talk, that might be a point where I would consider quitting an RP entirely, as it implies my partner gave me so little to work with, and has created such an uninteresting character, environment, situation, plot etc... That not only has that scene deprived me of content to address but various tricks I can use have been exhausted. But even if a situation close to that does come up, it's possible to open an exception for such posts or discuss making a collaborative post. It's extremely rare but it has happened. Still, the point is that character design, scene construction, setting and so on are thigs I try to make with forethought for how they will affect my future options in terms of writing.

The fourth point is crucial, and its a recognition of fluid time in RP: This is something I find almost all RPs use without thinking about it, but RP posts are seldom entirely concurrent or sequential. Instead various parts of the same post can happen at different points in time, addressing parts of other posts that likewise did not happen entirely in a linear sequence, and if all those parts were to be ordered chronologically you'd note that players are introducing retroactive elements (including dialogue) all the time. Naturally this requires a degree of trust and mutual understanding - A basic shared notion of what would naturally happen in the scene.

Fluid time is perhaps the thing that may be most confusing for someone coming from a session-based RP format, as those formats are in real time and almost entirely chronologically linear. I'll leave here a simple example to hopefully show what I mean, though of course there are more nuances and complexities to it. Still this sounds waaaaaay more complicated than it actually is, and most people do it without really thinking about it.

Person 1 "Would you like some tea?" Character A inquired.

Character A went into the kitchen to start brewing. They returned shortly after with the pot and cups for anyone who wanted some.

"Alright, let's discuss the investigation." They sat down on the couch and took a sip.



Person 2 "Sure, I could use some after... that." Character B shivered a bit on their chair.

While character A was in the kitchen, character B grabbed a newspaper on the desk. Unsurprisingly there was not a single mention of the crime.

"Right. Well, first of all, and you're not going to like this, but I think we should give the marshall a call."



I must, however, emphasize this: People shouldn't be "pushing" to get to 3+ paragraphs. How much one naturally is inclined to write depends on person to person, their mindset, their values and other things. If you are consistently feeling like you need to stuff posts to meet a quota, that's a bad sign. I enjoy the longer writing format because it matches my writing style, what I value in posts, what I like to read, how my mindset approaches writing. I know of brilliant roleplayers who will rarely give you a post a third of the size of my typical ones, but if I am forced to write a post at something like 500 words there's a good chance my partners aren't giving me anything to work with.




Just to be clear, what do you mean by 'doubling'? Doubling has a certain meaning here which usually is something along the lines of players playing two sets of characters each, often each a pairing the other wants, but I'm not sure if that's along the lines of what you mean by it.


Either way, welcome to the site! I wish you the best of luck and happy RPing!
First off, thanks for giving such a detailed response (and skipping the "it depends" spiel). The note about fluid time was particularly helpful, and something I hadn't considered.

As for doubling, while from what I can tell it's a broad term which can apply to all sorts of RPing with multiple characters per player, I was specifically referring to the type which is basically "we're running two seperate role-plays, in two parallel universes. In one of them I'm playing character A and you're playing character B, and in the other I'm playing character C and you're playing character D." Sometimes there's overlap, with one character being played by a different player in each version. Sometimes it's even a full-on character swap. Usually those seem to be romance situations where both players want to be able to have their OCs romance a particular CC.

Not sure if that made any sense, but it's what I've got. Thanks again for the help!
 
First off, thanks for giving such a detailed response (and skipping the "it depends" spiel). The note about fluid time was particularly helpful, and something I hadn't considered.

As for doubling, while from what I can tell it's a broad term which can apply to all sorts of RPing with multiple characters per player, I was specifically referring to the type which is basically "we're running two seperate role-plays, in two parallel universes. In one of them I'm playing character A and you're playing character B, and in the other I'm playing character C and you're playing character D." Sometimes there's overlap, with one character being played by a different player in each version. Sometimes it's even a full-on character swap. Usually those seem to be romance situations where both players want to be able to have their OCs romance a particular CC.

Not sure if that made any sense, but it's what I've got. Thanks again for the help!

No worries. I generally avoid doubling like the plague so I wasn’t sure if I could give a good answer there. Honestly I probably can’t for this.


What I can say is this: Being on multiple RPs simultaneously is absolutely normal in this kind of place. Often people will give you time like a week especially in groups to reply, so you might make a post and not necessarily expect a reply to come any time soon.

The number of RPs you join and participate in will thus be ultimately more about what you can realistically manage.

That probably doesn’t really answer your question on doubling but I still hope it helps.
 
It depends on the RP or the preference of the GM. Normally I would say a post should be a single action from start to finish and then you give time for other writers to react and bounce of that. Or if you are effectively isolated from all other players how ever many actions you think is fine and let others post for a bit.

Personally as someone who has GMd RPs I do prefer writers to go to Discord or a DM session to compose a collaborative post if the interactions of their two characters can be best described as a series of one-off lines or otherwise brief, and the product of that be compiled into a collab post to be put in the thread. But I also do Nation Roleplays/Nation Building where everyone is already theoretically working with 100,000 people, and you just don't have to take the entire thing to Discord. You and your partner(s) can go ahead and work out the collaborative post while also at the same time posting through unrelated arcs irregardless of the collab
 
For instance, I assume it's poor form to write responses from the other player's character(s).
Yes and to be honest I have seldom heard of a type of RP (even within session-based RP) in which that isn't the case.
On my board, we do exactly this 🤣 I think you need a somewhat high-trust environment and time for people to get to know each other and each other's characters, for it to work well. And because it's so uncommon in the broader RP community, you need to make sure everyone is okay with it if you're going to take that approach.

The "take turns writing mini-chapters" thing we're doing has been working really well for us, and it really helps keep the story moving and creates a good flow when you go back and re-read. Wanted to throw it out there even though it's not the usual way of handling it.
 
On my board, we do exactly this 🤣 I think you need a somewhat high-trust environment and time for people to get to know each other and each other's characters, for it to work well. And because it's so uncommon in the broader RP community, you need to make sure everyone is okay with it if you're going to take that approach.

The "take turns writing mini-chapters" thing we're doing has been working really well for us, and it really helps keep the story moving and creates a good flow when you go back and re-read. Wanted to throw it out there even though it's not the usual way of handling it.

I’ve been involved in something like that as well, though it wasn’t really framed as an RP but rather as collaborative story writing (the distinction laid out at the time being precisely that each person had complete control of the narrative during their “turn” including all the characters). I suppose looking back on it that could still be considered a form of RP. Or maybe not but it does bring up that kind of model as a possibility.

Anyways, thanks for sharing!
 
Yeah, no prob!

In my group, the characters all belong to specific people, and the person who created them has the final say on what's in or out of character for them - so occasionally someone's asked to make an edit, and they do, and it's fine. Other times we play it like the character who was narrating at the time was being an unreliable narrator.

The group predates me, but I do wonder if the reason we write this way is because the initial group started RPing on a fairly poorly run forum, and took the conventions from it with them when they left. (I'm told the admin wanted everything to center on his character and would get upset if anyone else did something cool during a fight, even when they were on his side.) But the group also contained a lot of good writers, who were just new to roleplaying as a format. So we've ended up in this place where we're constantly godmodding each other, and but also respecting each other's vision for the characters and what will make the best story, so it works. There's also an extra kind of fun you don't get in other forms of RP, where someone else writes your character just right and you feel so understood.
 

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