Welcome to Gaia! ::

Capital letters, proper punctuation, proper spelling, and proper grammar are your friends. I know, they're the no fun part, but if people can't understand what you’re saying, then they are less likely to respond to you, meaning you’ll have less to respond to, meaning you’re going to be doing a lot of solo rping. If you are unsure about the spelling of a word, try looking it up at www.dictionary.com, which will suggest the proper spelling. (Note: check the definition to be sure that you have found the correct word.)

Now, I’m not saying that occasionally people don’t make typos, or forget to capitalize, or forget to close quotation marks, or something, but at least try to avoid those mistakes, okay? Also, if you have something with a spelling and grammar checker, such as MS word, you can try running your post through that if there are a lot of things you are unsure of grammar or spelling wise. (Note: MS word cannot be relied on to catch your every mistake, and it also might “correct” your mistakes incorrectly. E.g. “Go find you’re shoes!”, which ought to be “Go find your shoes!”. See the difference?)

Now, onto the fun stuff. Sometimes you just want short, quick, back and forth dialogue with no description, which is fine when it’s between two of your characters. However, if it’s one of your characters talking to someone else’s characters, you might want to add something about how the character is saying what they’re saying. And I don’t mean just tone of voice, but body posture too. (E.G. “dare to challenge me, kit?> Xerxes hissed at the teeny thing, spreading his wings and baring his teeth. But the stupid thing still wouldn’t know what it was in for, even when it was staring at his greater size and teeth that he was not afraid to use.”) In the example, it’s very clear that Xerxes is mad at the insolence of the one he is speaking to, and incredulous of the “kit’s” stupidity. However, not all dialogue is this clear, so description is often a good idea. Remember, though, moderation is key! Try not to let either dialogue or description dominate your posts, unless your character talks more than they think, or thinks more than they talk.

General description: Please, please, please please never call eyes “orbs” or I will have to beat you ‘round the head with a rolled up newspaper, and you wouldn’t want that, now would you? While it is a good idea to try to vary your words by using synonyms, there are some synonyms that just don’t work. Seriously, when was the last time you told someone “Oh, this person I just met had the prettiest blue orbs”? Yeah, that’s what I thought. If you wouldn’t say it, it’s probably a bad idea to use that word.

More with the description: Although that shouldn’t be much of a problem here with the poofs/runners, comparing eye colors to jewels is so overdone. Really, it’s new and refreshing to just see “blue eyes” or whatever the proper eye color is. That’s just a general pet peeve of mine, and not an official rule, though.

And more description: Try using senses other than sight and sound. Yes, I know those are the senses humans use the most, but everyone has at least one non-human character. Try using scent or touch a bit more, or taste, instead of just focusing on sight and sound.

Godmoding/power playing: Due to the dice system, we shouldn’t have too much of this here. While I’ve seen the definitions switch so many times I’m not sure which one is “official”, one means that your character is all powerful, and hits every time, and that your character can never be hurt. The other one refers to when you take control of another person’s character(s) and post for the other person’s character(s). Thankfully, we have the dice system, so we don’t have to worry about that, in most cases. However, our powerplaying/godmoding is going in a different direction, namely mind reading, or our characters being so intuitive, that they might as well be reading each other’s minds. And I’m not saying I’m innocent either, but I just want you guys to be aware of that.

Another thing along the lines of powerplaying/godmoding is when a character knows things they aren’t supposed to. For every major event in the rp (births, the treaty, death of the Demon, etc), try to keep track of who knows what about it. Worry about the big things, and not the little ones.

Mistakes: Sometimes we go fast, and people miss what others have posted before them. If you notice someone making a mistake, just kindly point it out OOC, and they should go correct it whenever they see the note.

Character flaws: Now, I know everyone wants a perfect character whom everyone loves and adores, but come on, that’s just no fun. Admit it, you want to give your characters flaws. You want them to snap at people who annoy them, and have them feel perfectly justified. You want them to be cowards, you want them to have egos, you want them to make mistakes and not admit they were wrong. What’s the fun of role playing a character if you don’t have some internal obstacle to overcome? Try it, at least, you might just like it.

One final note: Try to get a clear idea of the character you’re rping as. Try to give them a distinct personality, so even if we weren’t told which character it was in a post, we could still have a pretty good idea.