viveremuch | DWRP For Newbies

Dreamwidth RP for people who don't RP on Dreamwidth

Dreamwidth RP is an ancient juggernaut of a thing, with an extensive set of community norms and terminology that can be confusing if not outright hostile to outsiders. This document is an attempt to explain and smooth over some of that culture clash. Please note that these are my cultural impressions; you may take them with as much of a grain of salt as you feel is appropriate.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them in the comments section at the bottom of the post! This is the October 2020 version.

CREDITS: Inspired by the now-somewhat-outdated Guide to DWRP for Tumblr RPers by plurk user joltiks.

The Very Basics - What's the point of DWRP?

Dreamwidth roleplay is character and narrative focused. The "goal" is primarily character exploration, rather than any sort of mechanics-based achievement. This description is intended to contrast it with tabletop game style rp - while there are certainly narrative-centric tabletop systems, they still have some level of mechanics. Most Dreamwidth games, in contrast, are entirely "freeform," narrative-only text.

(There are exceptions to this, but those are better looked at on a case by case basis. As an example, the long-running Pokemon game Victory Road has a full system for Pokemon catching, breeding, battling, and so on.)

Most games are long-form storylines, with an event every month or two and downtime in between. Characters in games typically have linear, consistent narratives - eg if your character gets a scar in one thread, they'll still have that scar in a thread three months later. There's continuity within a single game, though not between games except in certain circumstances. The expectation is that a single character will interact with multiple other characters and players over the course of the game (more on how this works below).

Conflict resolution, in DWRP, is usually handled by the players hashing things out OOCly, although they may also use dice or other systems. Generally, "winning" a fight or other IC conflict isn't seen as the point; the point of a fight is the emotional and narrative repercussions of those characters fighting. If someone focuses a lot on whether their character "wins" or not, it's considered... Well, like you've decided that RP is a dick-waving contest about whose character is stronger, and most RPers aren't at all interested in that.

Additionally, the role of game mods in DWRP is relatively different from other forms of RP. Although there's similarities to the role of DM/GM/ST in tabletop systems, DWRP mods tend to be a lot more hands-off. The majority of RP is done between players without mod involvement. Instead, mods do bookkeeping for the game, run events, play NPCs (and often "player" characters of their own as well), and help keep conflicts between players from escalating. The average game has 2-3 mods.

It's also worth mentioning a relatively recent trend in games (especially certain kinds of game, see below) towards "anon mods." These are games where the only contact information presented for the mods is the game's mod journal; the mods themselves are anonymous among the playerbase. The issue of whether mods should be anonymous or not can turn into pretty divisive discourse, depending on where you go.

Typically, a game in the current DWRP environment has three communities. Two are IC - the network and the logs community - and the last one is OOC. The majority of game announcements will be posted to the game's OOC comm, not the mod journal, which is primarily for static info posts.

Murders and memes - A short list of game types you should know

JAMJARS: Slang for any ame setting that characters are trapped in. Sometimes extended to "spooky jamjar" for game settings that are mysterious, ominous, or outright horror games. Comes from... Well, the concept that the characters are all jammed together in a jar with no easy way out.

SANDBOX GAMES: The opposite of a jamjar, in some ways - a sandbox is a large setting that the characters can explore. Sometimes this includes being able to travel between worlds and even back to their own canons, but sometimes it just means "they're trapped in another world, but that world is large and explorable."

TEAMNESIA/ECATS: A set of games favoring extremely short, rapid back-and-forth threads that could easily grow into the hundreds of comments over the course of a day or two. Characters are sorted into teams and engage in challenges of some sort, and as the second half of the name implies, these are almost all memory loss games. ECATS is a very old term that still pops up now and again.

SEX GAMES: You can guess what this is and what it's for. Sometimes RPers are just horny, and they want to write the sex. Typical sex games either incentivize sex ICly or punish lack-of-sex ICly in some way to motivate characters. (The iconic sex game, Amat, had characters slowly choked to death until they orgasmed, leading to the somewhat derisive term "fuck or die games.") A variation called "cuddle games" exists that isn't specifically focused on sex but enforces physical contact in some way. Sex games, more than any other kind of game, are likely to have or come under fire for having anonymous mods.

MURDERGAMES and other short-run format games: Have you ever wanted to RP a Dangan Ronpa scenario? Do you like games that slam through their plots quickly instead of lasting for potentially years? Murdergames might be for you! The original was, in fact, Dangan Roleplay, a DR-themed panfandom game where characters investigated a murder every week, concluding in an IC trial on Saturday. Murdergames are generally considered an intense commitment, and most are advertised months in advance, because the cast is closed once the game starts. Variations in the genre, with a similar format and pace but not murder, are somewhat less common and typically referred to as short-run games. The average length of these games is three months.

MEMES: Worth mentioning by virtue of the fact that they AREN'T a game - memes are usually just places to freeform mess around, without any particular narrative or continuity. Memes are generally for messing around and often used for testing out a character someone hasn't played before, often, or for a long time (usually called "voicetesting"). The most popular meme community is called bakerstreet, and memes are posted there regularly. A lot of game players look down on meme-only players because of a perception that they're not "good enough" for games.

PSLs/museboxes/friends-only and invite-only games: All these are various forms of RP that are private for specific people. "PSL" is short for "personal storyline," a format that's usually called 1x1 on other sites where two people play out a personal plot with their characters. A "musebox" is an individual player's personal RP comm, usually used for PSLs, voicetesting, and other things they only do with their friends. Friends-only and invite-only games are exactly what they sound like - closer to the normal format of games, but only for people the person who started them wants there. You can't ask or apply to join these games unless you know the person running them; doing so is considered kind of rude.

This list isn't intended to be exhaustive, but most other types of game are easily figured out by their names - "exploration game," "horror game," and so on.

Journals and info posts

Typically, you have one character per journal, and one journal per character. There are far more exceptions to the latter than to the former - for example, someone may have a journal specifically for an AU version of a character, while another person who plays a character with a split personality may have one journal per personality. It is very much frowned upon to play multiple characters from the same journal, unless one character is a familiar or something of the like of the other. (For example, playing Pikachu off an Ash account wouldn't be questioned, but you'd be expected to have separate journals for Ash and Brock.)

Some people use a unique journal for every game, even if they're playing the same character. Other people reuse the same journal over and over again. Some people are a mix - for example, having one "normal" journal and one journal for humanization games.

Journal names - the url the journal is found at and how it appears on Dreamwidth, eg dadministrator.dreamwidth.org - are considered the point of "first impression" for RP, probably because of how Dreamwidth comment alerts appear in inboxes. ("[journalname] - DW comment") Thus, people spend a lot of time considering their journal names and trying to get exactly what they want. A significant portion are puns, and shorter and punchier is considered "better." Typically, using underscores in your journal name, or the character's actual name (unless part of a pun) are considered lesser journal names. Actively copying someone's journal name for the same character is a huge faux pas at best. If you need help coming up with a journal name, there's no shame in asking your friends for suggestions, or going to the rpanons username suggestions thread (though someone might snipe the suggestion from you there!).

There are three "standard" posts that most people put on their journals. The first, usually "sticky" to the top of the journal by use of the future dating function, is the HMD/contact post. HMD stands for "How's My Driving?" and is a form of 'leave feedback here' post. Some people enable anonymous responses to their HMDs; other people don't. Additionally, comments may be "screened," which hides them from everyone except the commenter and the person who made the post. Both of these are entirely down to personal preference. A player's non-Dreamwidth contact information will also usually be here.

The second is called a "permissions post." The purpose of this post is to give you a general idea what kinds of interactions and limits the player has for their character, so you're not constantly asking them about stuff. Standard questions include "can I fight with/injure this character?" and "can I hug/kiss this character?" There may also be information about how the character appears to extrasensory abilities - eg "this character is alarmingly magical and anyone who can sense magic would be able to tell" - or how the player feels about having their character's mind read. (Characters with extrasensory abilities may also request information from YOU on their permissions posts, so it's worth looking at them!) It is also a common place to put a player's OOC triggers.

Two questions that appear on every permissions post out there that are absolutely opaque to outsiders are "fourthwalling" and "threadjacking." Fourthwalling is shorthand for implying or outright telling a character that they're fictional - for example, a character from a modern canon set on Earth telling Sherlock Holmes that he's a character from a mystery novel. A lot of players really hate being surprised by this and it's generally considered rude as hell to fourthwall someone without their explicit permission, but some players or types of games have different standards for this. Threadjacking is jumping into a thread that two other characters are doing with your character. Most people are okay with it if you ask beforehand, but it can be considered very rude to not ask. (General, people are more flexible on threadjacking in "network" or chat posts than they are in "logs" or in-person threads.)

The third main type of post put up for the benefit of other players is the general info post, or app post. Most often, it's just a copy of the app the player entered the game with, minus the "samples" section, but it might also take the form of a "profile" type of post, a headcanon post, a listen of questions and answers, or any other form of about. It's very common for the first section to be a physical impressions of the character (this might also be in permissions) so that other players know what their character is immediately seeing. In short, it's information for people who may not be familiar with the character - not at all an uncommon thing in panfandom RP.

Other posts you might find on someone's journal: An "IC inbox" which is an IC post on the character's journal intended to serve as a message machine or other way to get a hold of them ICly; a "CR chart" which is a list of the characters they've interacted with and their impressions of them (most players don't do these anymore); an "AC tracker" or other tracker post where the player notes down all of their threads within the game; and an inventory or items post. If someone has played the same character on the same journal in multiple games, you'll usually see multiples of the same post, one specific to each game, especially for app/info posts.

Lots of people use HTML and images to fancy up their journal or information posts. This is generally referred to as "journal coding." It's not a requirement to participate in DWRP, but lots of people do it anyway because they want to give a better impression on their journals or just like making them look nice. If you want coding help, try asking around.

Icons

Icons are small images attached to posts and comments that portray a character's expression or other emotional cues. They're one of the larger barriers to entry because lots of people are kind of judgemental about them. More experienced DWRPers can spend hours getting their own in order when they make a journal, although there's probably an equal number who don't care. Icons are always 100x100 pixels.

Generally speaking, if you can't get icons yourself, there are people who are willing to help you get some together, or icon makers generally who have made large expression sets for anyone to use. Most icons are crops of source material or other fan content. You can also outright commission artists for icons (and this is done frequently by people who play OCs). There are however some unspoken rules about icons that you should know.

The biggest rule is SOURCE AND CREDIT. If you didn't make the icons yourself, credit whoever made them. Part and parcel with this is that you ask to use someone's personal icons (that is, icons that are made by them, on their journal, rather than in an icon post), and you respect "do not use" whenever you see it.

When it comes to getting the images for icons: Original source or promo material is fair game, the preferred type of icon, and doesn't require specific sourcing. Doujin and other fanart used to be fair game, but isn't so much anymore as Western fandom as a whole respects artists more. However, a lot of published doujin are still considered fair game, and if you ask the artist and they say yes, then it's also fair game (with credit). Commissioned artwork is fair game if it's your commission (and you give credit). Aesthetic icons, rather than images of expressions, are generally only acceptable for OCs and other characters with extremely limited options for visuals (such as characters from novels or older, sprite-based video games).

Faceclaims - more commonly called PBs in DWRP jargon, short for "played by" - are a slightly more complicated issue. Generally, for live-action canon roles, it's preferred to keep from within the canon rather than getting images of the actor from other canons or out of character shots. (This is, however, flexible when it comes to getting the range of expressions you need.) For book characters and OCs, it's most common to pick a lesser known actor/figure that most people won't immediately recognize, and stay within a particular aesthetic if not a single role.

A free Dreamwidth Account gives you 15 icon slots to play with. A paid account (regular) gives you 150 slots for $3 a month. A premium paid gives you 300 slots, and costs $25 for six months (the lowest amount of premium paid you can buy). People in the DWRP community regularly give away 1-2 months of regular paid time, or you can take icon or coding commissions for it, if you can't afford it for yourself but want the benefits.

Comments, Posts, Threads, and Tags - How it actually works

What's a post? What's a thread? What in the name of all that's good is a 'top-level in a mingle'? If you'd prefer a visual reference/example, you can find one here.

A post is the main "journal" entry posted to the RP community (although in certain circumstances it's used also to refer to top-levels, see below). Posts come in two general varieties - network posts and logs. A network post is a post to the game's in-character communications network, whether that be text, video chat, or whatever format it takes. A log is any kind of in-person interaction that isn't over a network. It's most common to put log posts under a cut (so that they don't make the community journal page extremely long), but not network posts. If a network post if longer than 4ish paragraphs, though, it's polite to put that under a cut as well.

A post header is a set of information at the top of a post that contains information such as the characters in the post, where/when it's happening, a brief summary of what's in the post, and any content warnings the post needs (at the time of posting). Most games require these on logs; most network posts won't have them, and instead use the subject line for warnings.

A prompt is a single section of a log post. Most log posts have multiple prompts these days, usually 2-4, in order to offer other players options in how they approach your character. Sometimes a post will include a "closed" prompt, which is intended for only a specific other character.

A mingle post is a particular kind of log where people can post their own top levels in response. A top-level is just the name for a first comment in DW's threaded view; on mingle posts, memes, and certain other kinds of posts, they serve as mini-posts and multiple people reply to the prompts in them. A particular kind of mingle post is an event post, which is a set of prompts for a game event written by the mods and posted by the mod account. People make their top-levels based on their choice of those prompts, and then other people each respond to one of those prompts for a thread.

Threads are the general back-and-forth of DWRP, each composed of a number of comments. Usually, threads are exclusive between two characters. Interrupting someone else's ongoing thread is called threadjacking, and is considered very rude to do in a log without permission. (Network posts are a bit more flexible, but you should still ask.) Continuity across threads, in terms of order of events, is intentionally somewhat vague, given that a player will often have several of them running in parallel. This allows flexibility to accommodate different people's tagging paces.

Aside from threadjacking, there's two big exceptions to the "one on one" nature of threads. The first is three-way threads, which are the same as normal threads except there are three people taking turns instead of two. (You also sometimes see four-way threads, but more than that tends to get bogged down in pace and people don't like doing it.) The other exception is large group settings, such as a group of characters on a mod-event exploration log or in a murdergame trial. These tend to be reply-as-you-can free-for-alls, rather than having any kind of particular order, and can go very fast as a result. Branched threads usually come either from these or from network posts with thredjacking happening.

A tag is a single comment within a thread. Occasionally you may get a tag where the subject line is a fraction, eg 1/4 or 1/?. This indicates that the other player's response is spread over multiple comments - usually for some comedic effect or to facilitate the use of multiple icons in one response. Multicomment tags are unusual in the current DWRP climate, but haven't entirely disappeared.

This differs from organizational tags, also called character tags. These are the "tags" part of an entry when you go to post it, and similarly to tumblr tags or twitter hastags, they're used for organization. Most games have some form of character tags that can be added to entries your character is in; many also have "Event" or "NPC" tags. Commentary never goes in these tags; they're strictly for organizational purposes, and used by the whole game. Not everyone tags their posts.

Every tag sends a notification to the inbox of the person you're replying to, even if you then delete the tag. They also get a notification every time you edit. This has resulted in two things. The first is something called a gagtag, which is a jokey or internet-meme tag that is sent and then immediately deleted, intended for the other person to laugh at. The other is the possibility of editing a tag to send a new notification to the person's inbox. Do not do this, it's considered extremely passive-aggressive.

Most people use a single Gmail inbox for all of their RP notifs, because Gmail flagging allows them to set up separate inboxes per character and per game. Here is a guide on how to do this.

Most tags are light on formatting, especially log tags. Standard practice is to have text tags on a network set in courier font, though some people will use other fonts or colored text depending on the character. Additionally, action bracket sections of 'action' style tags are usually made one size smaller than the rest of the text. You can hand-format the text, or use the Chrome extension Dreamwidth Tools to do it automatically.

Subject line etiquette has its own set of rules that you should also be aware of. When making a top-level on an event or test drive post, it's best practice to include your character's name and canon so that people can recognize them easily. When responding for the first time to someone else, you should include some indicator of the prompt you're replying to (often as simple as a number eg '3' for the third prompt). Finally, if the content of your tag is deserving of a content warning, put that in the subject line.

Tagging pace varies wildly among Dreamwidth RPers. The fastest taggers will respond immediately, a habit known as "boomeranging" in the community. The slowest taggers might leave you waiting for a week. The average is probably somewhere around twice a day for normal games, though it's much higher in murdergames. Generally, it's most appropriate to not poke someone for a response until at least three days have passed.

Not every thread is played out to a complete conclusion. It's much more common for a thread to just get dropped, rather than having a specific conclusion, as players move on to new content and threads. The average length of time people will continue tagging a thread is between two weeks (for faster paced games like murdergames) to a month, to even two months for very slow-paced games or threads. Generally, tagging anything older than a month old is called "backtagging."

Plurk, Discord, and OOC interaction

The backbone of the Dreamwidth community - other than Dreamwidth itself - is a weird, niche social media website called Plurk. Plurk is primarily used in Taiwan, and aside from the RP community the main English users of it seem to be Asian fashion communities, at least last I was aware. If you haven't heard of it before now, that's not at all surprising.

Plurk's layout is a weird fusion of Facebook and old style forums. Each person has their own account, and you friend or follow other people to put their posts on your timeline. (You can only "follow" people who have public plurks, which is uncommon for personal but common for game plurks.) Each post then is a separate header that appears on your timeline, and has a single thread of chronological comments underneath it when you click on it, like a forum thread. You will see responses from everyone in a plurk that you don't have blocked, not just the people you're friends with.

Typically, each player has one plurk (some have more than one, separating RP from their personal lives or sometimes their art from the rest of their posts). Each game also typically has its own plurk account, run by the mod team, for posting game announcements. Don't expect people to post exclusively about their RP stuff on plurk, because a lot of people use it the way they use any other social media, for talking with their friends and posting updates about their lives. Posts from public plurks may also be replurked (like retweets or reblogs) onto your timeline (private plurks can't be replurked).

Fortunately, for content that you don't want to see, there's an easy "mute" button on every single plurk, which will silence Unread notifications from that plurk. Due to a limitation of the coding, mute isn't forever; there's a cap of around 200 muted plurks, and as you continue to mute more, old mutes will fall off at the back. This results in sometimes old plurks appearing in your unread list as people go back to them. There's no stigma on muting literally anything, so use it liberally.

Lots of people customize their plurk pages the same way they do their character journals. Plurk also allows you to upload custom emotes (though the number of them is a fairly small cap for free users). Most games have at least one game emote which people use to preface plurks about that game. (Example:

Ryslig game emote,

Penance game emote) Other emotes used to indicate RL plurks or other topics are also used. (Example:

Generic Meme Emote,

DND emote) Plurk emotes max out at 48x48 pixels, though most game emotes are much shorter to enable them to be used in-line with text.

Most games have their own Game Discords, which is a server specifically for players in that game to plot and talk about the game. This is a more fast-paced method of OOC communication than Plurk, and generally works like any other Discord server. Typically, there is no IC play in a game Discord; IC play is almost always exclusive to Dreamwidth itself. However, the game Discord is used for plotting out threads and general chatting with the other players. Game announcements are often posted to the game Discord.

It's generally best practice to have your display name in a DWRP game Discord be something loosely in the format "[Player name] - [Characters played]." For example, if Suzy was playing Axel from Kingdom Hearts and Haru from Persona 5, her display name would be some variation of "Suzy (Axel, Haru)." Mods usually indicate their mod status in their display names (eg "Mod Suzy (Axel, Haru)" or "Suzy (Mod, Axel, Haru)"), as well as by being a different color from players. Whether players are given a specific color and if that means anything varies by game server.

Typically, generic lurkers aren't welcome in game Discords, but those considering applying to the game may be welcome, depending on the mod team. Some game Discords only allow people accepted to the game to join. Best manners is to not join a game Discord unless you've at least submitted an app, unless it's a game that has yet to open.

Most other social media aren't used extensively by the Dreamwidth community; although many of us have Twitter or Tumblr, often at the same URL as our Plurks, OOC communication for RP doesn't take place there. Some players may communicate exclusively through their character journals, but this is considered old-fashioned and kind of standoffish. On rare occasions you may see someone offer a personal journal or an email address as part of their contact info; this is the most old-fashioned it's possible to get.

Dreamwidth RP thrives on OOC communication. It's not outside the norm to ask someone if you can tag their post the first time you interact with them ICly if you're already in a game together (test drives are a free-for-all, however). Many people will talk about logs/posts they're planning to make sometimes as much as a week in advance and cater prompts to give specific other players something to work with even if those prompts are open to anyone. While most players are certainly open to cold-calling on responses, lots of OOC communication is the norm.

Joining a game - Apps, Reserves, and Test Drives

Actually joining a DWRP game is a bit of a process in most cases. Although in theory it's as simple as submitting an application to the mod team, there's a few preparation steps outside of just getting your journal and information posts ready. Let's talk about the application itself - usually considered the most stressful part of Dreamwidth RP - first, though.

There's six general sections that almost every app has. The first is OOC Info, which is a bunch of brief fields about you, the player. These usually include your name/handle, your contact info, your age (many games no longer accept under-18 players even if they aren't sex games), and a section for if you already play any other characters in that game. Most games have a characters-per-player limit, ranging from one (murdergames, most commonly) to as high as seven or more. Some musebox games have no limit. The average game is two or three.

The next section is usually called IC information, and while it covers almost everything about your character, we're going to talk about the four major sections in a minute. The initial part of the app is brief - Character name, character age, canon, and that sort of thing. The one that may trip up new arrivals to DWRP is canon point. Canon points are the exact time in the canon timeline that your character is taken from. Luke Skywalker from A New Hope canonpoint and from The Last Jedi canonpoint are going to be very different, as an example because of the events between those two points in his life. Overall, these initial blanks aren't any more meaty than your OOC information.

The first major section of IC information is the History section. These days, most games accept a link to a fandom wikia entry in lieu of a player writing out their character's history in full, but that was not always the case. Additionally, some players may prefer to write it out rather than use the wiki, and sometimes a wiki just doesn't have enough information (or you're playing an original character, so you have to write out everything). In that case, focus on the main events that influenced your character or the plot, and try to keep it succinct. If the mods want more information, they'll ask.

The next major section is the Personality section, which is the one everyone talks about dreading with varying degrees of seriousness. Personality describes how your character behaves and also how they think; it's a bit of psychoanalysis meta that shows that you, the player, understand the character. This should go without saying, but write your own damn personality sections - this is the most plagiarized section of an app. Generally, mods are looking for 500 to 1000 words here, and there isn't a specific format to most personality sections. If you need a starting place, my personal method is what I call the Onion Method - work from how the character presents themselves outwardly, inwards to describing how they think and what experiences have shaped them.

The third major section, which may not even apply to your character, is Powers and Abilities. If you're playing a normal human, you might skip this section entirely on some apps, or write about your character's mundane abilities ("Sherlock Holmes is observant and good at drawing conclusions from details") if the app asks for those. If you play a character with supernatural abilities or high-tech abilities, however, you may be working on this section for a while. Generally, you want to give the mods enough detail that they have some understanding of how your character's powers work and what they can do. Powers sections are probably the ones that get clarification questions from the mods the most, so don't be surprised or stressed if this happens. Usually towards the bottom of the application, is the Inventory section, which is often included in powers because supernatural items also go here. Inventory is just a list of whatever your character is bringing with them to the game.

Power nerfs are a thing that happens in some games - sometimes most games, if you have a particularly powerful character. This can range from next to no nerfs (common in sandbox games) to complete nerfing (common in murdergames, to prevent the characters from using their special abilities to cheat at murdering or solving murders). Most games fall somewhere in the middle. In particular, almost all teleportation abilities will be nerfed in some way in a jamjar, and time travel and future-sight/prophecy abilities will usually be nerfed due to the difficulty in handling them on an OOC level. Usually mods make any power nerfs/limitations known before you app, because this is one of the most common deciding factors for players on whether or not they app to a game.

The last major section of an application is Samples. These are actual samples of your RPing, linked or pasted at the end of an application. Samples must be for the character you're apping, basically without exception. These days, most games ask for thread samples from within the last two years (if you don't have these, you can get them on the Test Drive). Some games still ask for post or prose samples, sometimes using the now archaic "3rd person" and "1st person" terminology. A 3rd person sample is a prose sample, as would be appropriate in a log post, and the focus is on character introspection. A 1st person sample is a dialogue-heavy sample focused on character voice, usually in the bracket-based "action" format used on network posts. No, I don't know why they have these names, I'm sorry.

Depending on the game, there may be additional sections unique to that game or style of game. For example, most murdergames have a "potential motives" section asking about what could cause your character to kill. Occasionally, you may run into a game that doesn't include or in some way modifies the major sections (combining history and personality into a general "about" section, for example). Players of original characters may also have to fill out a "World info" section that explains the universe their character comes from.

Applications are usually submitted in comments on the application page. (Some games accept them by email.) Turn-around time on apps varies by game; some mods go through them in order, getting verdicts out fast, while others may wait for the end of the application period. Games with always-open apps usually judge them on weekends. There are three possible verdicts - "Accepted," "Revisions," and "Rejected." Accepted is obvious, as is rejection, although the latter is rare. "Revisions" means that the mods have questions about your application or want you to expand on something. Typically, you have three days to respond to a request for revisions.

Prior to applications, most games have something called "Reserves." Although the exact policies vary, the general purpose behind reserves is to reserve your space playing a character, preventing anyone else from applying for that character in that application period. In games with a limited number of total characters (such as murdergames), a reservation instead holds your position as a player. Reservations are usually not required at standard games, but usually are at murdergames and other short-run games.

Also prior to applications, most games run a Test Drive Meme, usually just called a test drive. Test drives are posts with prompts from the mods that allow people to experience a taste of the game's tone and playerbase before they apply, and to gather samples for their applications. Good etiquette is to tag out on the test drive even if you have a top-level of your own, and - if you're already in the game - to go back and tag people on test drives occasionally, and ideally not just people within your canon's cast. This helps out newbies to the game. Threads from test drives may or may not be in-continuity with the rest of the game if the tested character is accepted; this varies game-by-game.

After your application has been accepted, the mods will usually have further instructions for you to assist them in filling out the Taken page and Player Contact information. They're usually pretty straightforward, so just follow them. There will usually be an OOC intro post for each app cycle, where both new and old players can meet each other. Post there, rather than making an individual introduction post on the OOC comm.

In the game - Activity Check, CR, and Events

Now that you're in the game, you get to play!

In fact, in most games, you must play. Most games have something called an "Activity Check," which is a monthly check to be sure that all players have met the minimum standard for activity that month. (Some games run AC on other time periods.) This is typically a fairly low threshold, such as two ten-comment threads. Some games have what's called "check-in" AC - which is just responding to the AC post to prove you haven't disappeared off the face of the Earth - and some have no AC at all. Most games require players to submit their proofs of activity to some kind of AC post, but some make use of something called AC Savior which automatically tabulates comment counts on public journals. (You can also use it personally to track your own activity.) Big thanks to Quinn on this one because they made many people's lives A Lot Easier.

If you don't make AC, you'll usually be given what's called a "warning." AC warning varies by game, but usually means "submit double activity to us next month and you're fine." Only after the warning will you be kicked for not making AC, unless your game has different policies.

In addition to this, many games incentivize activity beyond the minimums by some kind of "points" system. Points can be used to buy rewards such as items from a character's home world. Some of these systems are simple and some are complex; if your game has one, it's best to look at the page that game's mods have written up for an explanation.

SPECIAL SEX GAME NOTE: Many sex games have something called "smut AC," which is an activity check specifically for "did you do a sexy thread this month?" Smut AC may be required, but it may also be optional and part of an incentive AC.

If you know you aren't going to be able to make AC for the month for some reason, you can put in a Hiatus. This is an indication to the mods that you won't be around to play for a certain period, and usually lets you off the hook for AC for that month if that period is two weeks or more. However, typically hiatusing only covers you for one month, unless you make special arrangements with the mods beforehand. Your character may disappear or go on "autopilot" during your hiatus, depending on the game, or something else may happen.

Related to the hiatus is the Canon Update. A canon update is a change to your character's canon point, and usually involves an enforced IC disappearance of some variety. As a result, it's often effectively a hiatus and players often choose to canon update when they know they'll be on hiatus anyway. Typically, mods will want a brief summary of what changes for your character before they approve your update to the new canon point. Most games only allow canon updating forwards in time, and some do not allow canon updates at all.

So what do you thread about? Well, there's usually plenty to do with other players, but most games also have regular Events. The average game has them monthly, though this can vary based on the game. Most events are announced at least a week in advance, to give people time to plan what they want to do during the event (remember, DWRPers love to talk about their threads in advance). Events are run by the game's mod team.

What exactly an event is varies wildly on a game-by-game basis. Sometimes it's an action taken by an NPC that affects the whole setting. Sometimes it's everyone growing cat ears for a week. Sometimes it's your worst nightmare coming to life and trying to eat you. Events can range from crack to serious to horror, and from setting-wide and impersonal to personally tailored to every character. For games that have been running a while, you can usually get an idea of the kind of events they'll have by looking at previous event information posts in the OOC community, where most game announcements are posted.

It isn't required to participate in most events. (Events that do force participation tend to cause negative uproar in the community.) However, they can be a good starting point for character interaction. Building CR - short for "character relationships" - is the main point of dreamwidth RP. Relationships are just as important as events for shaping how characters grow and change over the course of a game.

Leaving a game and game closings

Leaving a game is called Dropping. You can drop a game at any time, for any reason, and most people won't ask you why. Proper etiquette is to respond to the game's Drop post, rather than waiting to get "swept" by repeatedly failing the Activity Check. This allows other people who may be wanting to play that character to app. If no one else applies for your character, you may be able to re-app them with their game memories intact later down the line.

Drops in and of themselves have no impact on your ability to play in that or any other game. Dropping a character because they just aren't working out isn't uncommon, nor is apping another character in after you drop one, at either the same or a new game. However, if you make a pattern of repeatedly joining games and then dropping them quickly, you'll gain a reputation for being flakey or having New Shiny Syndrome, which can make people not want to play with you. Generally, if you don't feel like you have the commitment to play a character for at least a couple months, you should probably play in memes instead. Even murdergames and short-run games average three to four months of play.

Sometimes, games close. Actually, games close fairly regularly, but sometimes it's your game that's closing. Planned closings are planned ahead of time, usually months in advance, by the mod team, and everyone is given fair warning about it. This is usually either because a game's planned plot is coming to an end, or in the case of particularly long-running games, simply because they have been running for so long. These games then enter a state called "endgame." Usually endgame freezes applications; it may also allow previously dropped characters to return without an application for a limited time as a "last hurrah" for the game.

Unplanned closings are more of a mixed bag. Sometimes, games close quietly simply because no one is playing in them, and the mods don't want to have the corpse of a zombie game hanging around their necks. Sometimes the mod team has a fight and breaks up. Sometimes drama and wank implodes the game from within. Unplanned closings rarely give more than a month's notice and are often very sudden.

Whether from a drop or a game closing, it's generally good manners to not hold grudges against people who remove you from plurk or other social media when you're no longer playing together. Some people will engage in a "cut" of their friendslist after leaving a game, while others will keep you around forever. Additionally, sometimes people will want to continue playing after-the-fact threads with you in their museboxes. Declining these invitations isn't rude unless you do it rudely; you're under no social burden to continue playing with people you're not in a game with unless you want to.

Social reputation and Anoncomms

Everyone in DWRP has a reputation. That's simply the nature of the game. A large portion of DWRP is at least a little judgemental and a little elitist, if not more. As fun as it can be, there are also people in it who are extremely toxic. Not discussing that it isn't all sunshine and rainbows is, in my opinion, doing potential newcomers a disservice by not appropriately preparing them.

DWRP is an old community and many people have been playing in it for over ten years. Although every census has shown that there are over a thousand DWRPers, people tend to move in packs and be familiar with the same social circles, usually along the "media divide." In DWRP there isn't a lot of crossover between Western live action and comics fans, and animation and Japanese media fans. Thus, it's always possible to run into someone you've never met before, especially if you join a game that tends towards the other side of the divide (joining a mostly-LA game as an anime character, for example).

Ten years of community also means ten years for people to build grudges. People can get nasty about it. And while a number of commonly-recognized assholes are known to everyone, there's also people who fly under the radar, people who have changed, and people who aren't nearly the kinds of dicks that their reputations make them out to be. If I had to give one piece of advice to an incoming player, it's to make your own judgements based on what you see, but to always be a little bit wary of getting too close to anyone too fast.

Which brings us down to the matter of anoncomms and other forms of anonymous interaction. If you were on tumblr and remember any of the anonymous harassment that went on there, well - there are times when the DWRP community is just as bad. If that's something that concerns you, I would advise you to keep anon off on your HMD, to not make anon plurks, and to not participate in anon culture on Dreamwidth in general.

There are two main anoncomms in DWRP. The first, RPanons, is generally okay and can even be genuinely helpful in journal name suggestions, icon help, and finding a PSL partner outside of your normal circle of friends. Approach with caution, but once you have a decent grip on the flow of the community, you'll probably be fine.

The other is Wankgate. The single best piece of advice I can give you, the one thing I would want you to take away from reading this entire document? Stay away from Wankgate. It's considered the cesspit of wank and gossip, the most toxic place in Dreamwidth RP, for a reason. It's Wankgate that people go to to tear each other apart, deserved or not, and it's just best avoided.

Then why play here? The Final Sales Pitch

For all its problems, Dreamwidth RP has a few things that really separate it from other RP sites and media, and those are the things that keep people coming back, and the things that, I hope, will appeal to new players.

The first is the ease of thread organization and record-keeping. Twitter and Tumblr RP are hellish to find older threads in; when Tumblr removed the ability to trim reblogs, longer RPs there became hellish to even read. Only forum RP comes anywhere near the ease of finding and reading old stuff again that DWRP has, and in my opinion, it still doesn't match it. For long-term RP with multiple players, engaged in multiple threads, over a significant period of time, there's truly nothing like journal RP.

Going along with that, Dreamwidth makes it easy to play out long development arcs in RP. In a lot of other RP cultures, you wind up playing either a static version of the character, or you'll often find your RP thread dropped or vanishing before you can get the kind of conclusive character development that DWRPers favor. If you want to play out something that you can invest months or even years in, your only other option is a tabletop RP group, which meets weekly or less for a couple hours of straight RPing and nothing in between. For busy schedules, that doesn't always work so well - but half an hour of tagging each night instead is a lot easier to make time for.

The other really big reason is how incredibly crossover-friendly DWRP is. Indeed, panfandom is the default for almost all RPs - single fandom and original-only RP tends not to survive here long, except in PSLs. Crossover play is, in my experience, extremely uncommon in other RP communities, but it presents a unique opportunity to really explore characters by brushing them up against other characters of similar archetypes. Few individual canons will put three different brooding antiheroes in a room to see what happens, but that's the kind of interaction that a lot of DWRP is based around.

And lastly, there's the variety of characters that DWRP games and players accept. Almost all games accept characters from all published canons, from massive movie franchises to tiny indie PC games from the early 2000s. The vast majority of games accept original characters, and a substantial number accept fan-made AUs and CRAUs (characters who have been played in previous DWRP games and enter the game with that background). The only thing you'll be frowned on for playing is RPF.

Continuity, variety, and the ability to reread your old threads enough years later that you don't really want to. That's worth coming here for, isn't it?

DWRP For Newbies

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