Post by Jack'Aran on Nov 20, 2011 8:06:12 GMT -5
Role Playing Profile - Display your work to others Introduction
Introduction:
Jack: A profile is a database of information on a character, used primarily for out of character reference, the purpose is to inform others about your character's appearance, skills, professions, attributes, history, and accomplishments.
Billy: Why do I need a profile?
Jack: A profile can be comparable to a dress code. Strangers, Friends, Co-workers, and Employers look at your dress style to see what type of person you are. If you dress good, chances are you care about yourself and care about what you do in life, therefore; you will represent that company well. The same logic applies to Role play; if you have a well made profile it shows to everyone that you care about this and you take it seriously.
That makes the difference in someone wanting to Role play with you or not. In my case, I tend to take people who do not have profiles not very seriously. They can text to me all they want, but if they don't show that they've taken the same steps that I have in developing my character and showing others that I have developed my characters, it offends me.
Billy: But Yahoo changes its profiles all the time!
Jack: Are you reading a yahoo profile right now? No! You make an external website independent of Yahoo! All you need to do is insert your website into your yahoo profile whenever Yahoo changes it and then you say in RP chat "Role player looking for <insert Genre>, (Para, Semi, One-lining) only." Do you get my point?
Billy: OK, I made my profile and no one is reading it.
Jack: That's a tough one. People are reading it, they're just not interested. Continue reading because the solution is below.
Billy: Great! So I'm a failure at Role play!
Jack: Accept that attitude and you can be. Here is what you do.
My recommended tips
-Compact your yahoo profile to hook your audience onto the website. A basic summary of your characters personality or appearance. Genre / era of role play you do.
-Make your Screen name something interesting. If you're a Vampire: "Night_walker" something that describes what you are without saying what you are. Futuristic Tank driver? "Forward_Commander" or something militaristic.
Creating a character profile.
The Basics
For a format, you want the character photo FIRST. Let people see visually what the character looks like, sometimes this isn't always possible (It's not the end of the world, its alright.)
After your photo you want to have basic information about the character and their appearance. You want to summarize.
Ultimately people want to know "Can our characters work together or not?"
You'll see these people where they have only a paragraph about their character - You don't want that! You get the person onto your website and then suddenly demand them to read 1-10 paragraphs about your character that they know NOTHING about, and then you sucker punch them by having 5 OTHER characters with the exact format as the first!
In professional writing that's a no go! You don't do that! Your objective is to get them hooked BEFORE you throw information at them.
You wouldn't be reading this if you weren't interested in creating a readable profile. Obviously you got hooked and you want to know more. This is the method you will use to get others to read your profile.
Here is the Basic outline I've set up. You can add or remove information as necessary: Try being consistent, if some characters have age listed and others don't, that gives your readers an awkward feeling.
Condense information: Age and Race belong together, Age and Profession don't.
A common mistake people make is they confuse Race for Age, Profession,or Class.
Another common mistake is class. The link below is there to help you but, I will summarize it for you: "A number of persons or things regarded as forming a group by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits; kind; sort." - Dictionary.com. This does not include species or age.
Race: Spider <- Species
Class: Black Widow <- classification of species
The race isn't Black Widow (Unless that is some kind of new species.)
Remember, Class is short for "Classification" which gets broken down into specifications of that classification. I, personally, get pissed when people don't recognize the difference.
dictionary.reference.com/browse/class
(Optional) Titles: [Excellent for defining your character, Background characters can refer to your character as these titles and make your character more unique]
Name: John Doe
Alias: Pyro
Age: 29
Race: Human
The information above has personal information. Nothing professional, nothing describing his appearance. It recognizes that he exists, that's all.
Height: Six feet
Weight : One hundred and ninety
Skin color: White
Eye color: Green
Hair Color: Black
The information above here has appearance details, here you can add information like "Scars", "Tattoos", "Piercings", or anything else.
Height and Weight can be transformed into numeric system such as 6'0" and 190 lbs
Class: (Rogue, Paladin, Mage, Special Forces, Pilot, Heavy Weapons, Artist, Musician, Artisan, Engineer, etc.)
Occupation or Profession: ([Your job], Business man, Stripper, Politician, Lord of land, King, Drug dealer [Not drug addict; that's a personality trait.]
Weapons: (MP-5, Fire Axe, Garden Hose, none, etc.)
A common thing people like to do is quote their character or place a quote that their character likes...
<Quote being said> - <Character stating quote> <Character receiving Quote> and then <Who said the original quote>(If possible)
Example: "Come on get up, come on get down with the sickness!" John Doe in concert performing a Disturbed cover.
Or can try this example.
<Character Name> - "Quote being stated" <Source / reason for quote>
After you get these basic elements down - now you work on your background story and history. Commonly people work from the Beginning of their life to the end. If you have a long history summarize your character's story to what they are currently doing. Example below.
Paragraphs should be about 5 - 6 sentences, anything past that and you're killing your reader.
** The ideal setup**
History: <Paragraph 1>
<Paragraph 2>
<Paragraph 3>, so forth and so on.
**Long History setup**
In this example: It should start out with 1 paragraph and should not exceed past 2 paragraphs.
Current events: <Paragraph 1>
(Optional)<Paragraph 2>
History: <Paragraph 1> -
<Paragraph 2>
<Paragraph 3>, so forth and so on.
Some background information behind this "long history setup," in business this method of writing is called "Inverted Pyramid" or "Executives letter." The reader immediately gets the bottom line regarding what the character is doing and elect to decide if they want to know more about that character. So your Current events, should be interesting and to the point with explaining your character.
I hope you found this guide to be helpful as well amusing. I enjoyed writing it and if you have any questions feel free to message me.
Thank you for your time, I appreciate any feedback.
Introduction:
Jack: A profile is a database of information on a character, used primarily for out of character reference, the purpose is to inform others about your character's appearance, skills, professions, attributes, history, and accomplishments.
Billy: Why do I need a profile?
Jack: A profile can be comparable to a dress code. Strangers, Friends, Co-workers, and Employers look at your dress style to see what type of person you are. If you dress good, chances are you care about yourself and care about what you do in life, therefore; you will represent that company well. The same logic applies to Role play; if you have a well made profile it shows to everyone that you care about this and you take it seriously.
That makes the difference in someone wanting to Role play with you or not. In my case, I tend to take people who do not have profiles not very seriously. They can text to me all they want, but if they don't show that they've taken the same steps that I have in developing my character and showing others that I have developed my characters, it offends me.
Billy: But Yahoo changes its profiles all the time!
Jack: Are you reading a yahoo profile right now? No! You make an external website independent of Yahoo! All you need to do is insert your website into your yahoo profile whenever Yahoo changes it and then you say in RP chat "Role player looking for <insert Genre>, (Para, Semi, One-lining) only." Do you get my point?
Billy: OK, I made my profile and no one is reading it.
Jack: That's a tough one. People are reading it, they're just not interested. Continue reading because the solution is below.
Billy: Great! So I'm a failure at Role play!
Jack: Accept that attitude and you can be. Here is what you do.
My recommended tips
-Compact your yahoo profile to hook your audience onto the website. A basic summary of your characters personality or appearance. Genre / era of role play you do.
-Make your Screen name something interesting. If you're a Vampire: "Night_walker" something that describes what you are without saying what you are. Futuristic Tank driver? "Forward_Commander" or something militaristic.
Creating a character profile.
The Basics
For a format, you want the character photo FIRST. Let people see visually what the character looks like, sometimes this isn't always possible (It's not the end of the world, its alright.)
After your photo you want to have basic information about the character and their appearance. You want to summarize.
Ultimately people want to know "Can our characters work together or not?"
You'll see these people where they have only a paragraph about their character - You don't want that! You get the person onto your website and then suddenly demand them to read 1-10 paragraphs about your character that they know NOTHING about, and then you sucker punch them by having 5 OTHER characters with the exact format as the first!
In professional writing that's a no go! You don't do that! Your objective is to get them hooked BEFORE you throw information at them.
You wouldn't be reading this if you weren't interested in creating a readable profile. Obviously you got hooked and you want to know more. This is the method you will use to get others to read your profile.
Here is the Basic outline I've set up. You can add or remove information as necessary: Try being consistent, if some characters have age listed and others don't, that gives your readers an awkward feeling.
Condense information: Age and Race belong together, Age and Profession don't.
A common mistake people make is they confuse Race for Age, Profession,or Class.
Another common mistake is class. The link below is there to help you but, I will summarize it for you: "A number of persons or things regarded as forming a group by reason of common attributes, characteristics, qualities, or traits; kind; sort." - Dictionary.com. This does not include species or age.
Race: Spider <- Species
Class: Black Widow <- classification of species
The race isn't Black Widow (Unless that is some kind of new species.)
Remember, Class is short for "Classification" which gets broken down into specifications of that classification. I, personally, get pissed when people don't recognize the difference.
dictionary.reference.com/browse/class
(Optional) Titles: [Excellent for defining your character, Background characters can refer to your character as these titles and make your character more unique]
Name: John Doe
Alias: Pyro
Age: 29
Race: Human
The information above has personal information. Nothing professional, nothing describing his appearance. It recognizes that he exists, that's all.
Height: Six feet
Weight : One hundred and ninety
Skin color: White
Eye color: Green
Hair Color: Black
The information above here has appearance details, here you can add information like "Scars", "Tattoos", "Piercings", or anything else.
Height and Weight can be transformed into numeric system such as 6'0" and 190 lbs
Class: (Rogue, Paladin, Mage, Special Forces, Pilot, Heavy Weapons, Artist, Musician, Artisan, Engineer, etc.)
Occupation or Profession: ([Your job], Business man, Stripper, Politician, Lord of land, King, Drug dealer [Not drug addict; that's a personality trait.]
Weapons: (MP-5, Fire Axe, Garden Hose, none, etc.)
A common thing people like to do is quote their character or place a quote that their character likes...
<Quote being said> - <Character stating quote> <Character receiving Quote> and then <Who said the original quote>(If possible)
Example: "Come on get up, come on get down with the sickness!" John Doe in concert performing a Disturbed cover.
Or can try this example.
<Character Name> - "Quote being stated" <Source / reason for quote>
After you get these basic elements down - now you work on your background story and history. Commonly people work from the Beginning of their life to the end. If you have a long history summarize your character's story to what they are currently doing. Example below.
Paragraphs should be about 5 - 6 sentences, anything past that and you're killing your reader.
** The ideal setup**
History: <Paragraph 1>
<Paragraph 2>
<Paragraph 3>, so forth and so on.
**Long History setup**
In this example: It should start out with 1 paragraph and should not exceed past 2 paragraphs.
Current events: <Paragraph 1>
(Optional)<Paragraph 2>
History: <Paragraph 1> -
<Paragraph 2>
<Paragraph 3>, so forth and so on.
Some background information behind this "long history setup," in business this method of writing is called "Inverted Pyramid" or "Executives letter." The reader immediately gets the bottom line regarding what the character is doing and elect to decide if they want to know more about that character. So your Current events, should be interesting and to the point with explaining your character.
I hope you found this guide to be helpful as well amusing. I enjoyed writing it and if you have any questions feel free to message me.
Thank you for your time, I appreciate any feedback.
