Roleplay Clubs - The Game Master’s Guide
The Beginning
Before you even start creating your new universe; you should probably think about the mechanics behind it, or the ‘behind the scenes’ stuff. You’ve probably got some idea what kind of universe you want to create, which is great, but there’s a few things you should probably consider first. Remember, you and your fellow roleplayers are telling a story here, the story of your universe, through roleplaying.
Difficulty/Skill Level
Deciding this now sets the tone for your roleplay, as this is how much effort you expect to put into it, as well as how much effort you want other roleplayers to put into it. To read more about skill levels please read our Roleplay Difficulty Guide, to give you some idea what we class as what skill level.
Character IDs
Character IDs are important for roleplays, it establishes which character belongs to which person. You may wish to customise your own character ID to suit your needs from our standard template, either remove things or add them where necessary. If you’re only after a casual roleplay you’ll probably want just bare basics; if you’re making an expert roleplay you might decide that what we’ve provided isn’t good enough, and why settle for less? Feel free to customise it. The template to your character ID, if you go for a custom one, should be within the first post of your character ID topic or in the description of your character ID category within your club.
Alternatively you could have a policy that is ‘Roleplay as your Account’ which means you roleplay as the account you used to register to EcchiDreams, but for nearly all scenarios, this would not be applicable or advisable.
Extra Information
Currently there is no all encompassing guide on how to create an extra information topic, because it differs radically from one roleplay to another. It is also an optional feature within the clubs, however it is a very useful tool. The Extra Information can cover a variety of topics, such as:
- Lore and canon, especially if you’re roleplaying an already created fictional piece of work (example: Pokémon Roleplay)
- How the universe in your roleplay works - Again try to explain it as accurately with as few words as possible, even if this ends up being several paragraphs long.
- Species Profiles - If you have made original species, or if you are using some or all species from the fiction you’re basing it off, this would be a good place to put it in.
- NPC’s - If you have non-playable-characters in your roleplay here would be a good place to add them.
- Technology - when we say ‘technology’ we don’t just mean starships and lasers, or computers and calculators. It could be useful to describe common technology, as well as the technology level that is core to your roleplay.
- Maps, so that roleplayers can have a general layout of the environment. You could include a list of popular, or notable locations within the roleplaying environment.
- And so much more.
Things to consider before constructing your universe
There are several things you need to keep in mind before you start building, and then finally playing in your new universe. Some of these are going to be ‘well; no shit…’ and some of these, hopefully will be deeply insightful.
Formatting
This can be critical to making your topics readable, as well as just plain tidy. For sure; if you like the look of another roleplay use their formatting - just don’t copy and paste everything from their roleplay to yours. Refrain, if you can, from using clashing colours, as this will make your text hard to read. We don’t have a dark ‘EcchiTheme’ where it comes to content, so no matter what colours people have customised their theme with, one thing will stay the same - the place in which the content of a topic is displayed. In the overwhelming majority of cases, there will be a white background for people to read from, so very light/neon colours against this will not be a good idea, you’ll want to choose colours that contrast with white backgrounds. You have to bare in mind that colours also vary from monitor and display to monitor and display, and even from person to person (EG: Colour Blindness). What might look fantastic to you, might not look great to someone else. So try to keep it uniform and as noticeable as possible. In most cases you wouldn’t need to have different text colours at all. The harder something is to read, the less likely someone is going to roleplay there.
Story Structure
A story needs a few things to be great. A story needs a good beginning to hook the reader, this will be covered in greater detail in ‘The Premise, The Plots and The Story’ in the next chapter of his guide. As funny as it is; this is quite relevant, as Stewie brings up some key goals of a story structure in his mocking of Brian.
Planning the Environment, Backstory and Lore
For the purposes of stuff to think about as preparation before starting on your epic quest to make a roleplay, you might want to consider a basic environment details to your world. If you have absolutely no idea what story you’d like to make then it’d be a good idea to pick a genre of your story and start from there. This, again, will be covered in greater detail in the ‘Universe’ Chapter.
Maybe apply some thought exercises. For example: if you went for a post-apocalyptic style roleplay; before you even start working on the story, you need to paint the environment:
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How did the apocalypse come about?
- Was it expected, or at least somewhat expected, or did it take everyone by surprise?
- How is the world going to be affected by this?
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How is the life going to be affected by this?
- Has the wildlife become dangerous?
- Things that used to be safe, or okay with proper medical attention, are now potentially life threatening. How do people cope?
- What about the supply of narcotics and weapons?
- Do people use the pre-apocalypse currency?
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What little gems are hidden in your world that if other characters examined, they’d get more information about it.
- Anything that survived the apocalypse, that adds atmosphere and legitimacy to your universe; but not necessarily have anything to do with the story.
This is just one example of a genre; but you can see how we’ve started to probe the world before the idea of a story has even started. From there, you can make your stories come to fruition.
If at first you don’t succeed...
There are many sayings; if you try and fail, you can learn from your mistakes and pick it back up. If you never try, then sure, you’ll never fail; but you’ll never succeed either. At first you might fail, don’t let this discourage you; that’s what the ‘failure demons’ want you to do. Taking feedback is critical to success as well as your ability to handle criticism. If your first response to criticism is blocking, banning or throwing temper tantrum; guess what’s going to happen? … Exactly. If you need advice; or feedback, on a currently made roleplay, then check out the Game Master’s Corner.
One question you might be asking on this site is: Do I have to create a anime/hentai roleplay?
The answer is, no. EcchiDreams does have its roots in being a hentai themed roleplaying and general interests community forum; while hentai/anime and manga has been at it’s core, it’s since grown and kind of branched out. It’s now a roleplaying community first, general interests second, and whilst it’s still based in the roots of hentai, your roleplay doesn’t have to encompass this at all. It can be anything you want; since, back in the day, where there were only set scenarios you can roleplay in, none of our roleplays were ever tied to any specific anime, hentai or manga.