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A few ideas to consider

Firm Master

Super-Earth
Joined
Oct 14, 2012
Location
California
Quick disclaimer: First I hope I can post this!
If it bothers anyone, I do use 'he' in a dominant position (and an example for myself) and 'she' as the submissive. It's how I think of it best, but feel free to swap the ideas for yourself.

I had someone ask me on another site about tips on improving their writing. Funny thing, she was doing great in my opinion. Some things could be refined, but all in all she was doing well. I wish I could say the same for everyone I've ever had the pleasure of RPing with, so I thought it'd be nice to make a friendly contribution:

Context
So you've just started a RP where the first and primary goal is to get to some cock gagging. No one is going to care about the backstory. Once you have the basic setting there, it is going to get lost in practically every case. She's home alone, he enters the home (uninvited or not), some bullshitting around, then sex. You may well not even get to that detail if you're already in your chair without any clothes reading away.

And that's all fine!

It's completely different when you need even a little bit of plot or development. If those parents come home, it's not so sexy any more (or it could get even sexier. I'm not here to judge). You now have some new elements to deal with and suddenly he's got to have a level of backstory. He's a boyfriend that the parents are cool with and after slipping his clothes back on, they were honestly just watching a movie and now he's going to head home. He's an armed robber and now he's got that bitch daughter as a hostage and he needs an escape plan, taking her with him to finish what he started, naturally.

Either way, it really helps to give yourself some time to agree whether you're shooting for a RP that is going to be a quick sex fest or if you're trying to write a novel that happens to have some naughty bits. The way they're handled is very different and it will only annoy your partner if you mix 'em up.

Believable character
"He sat down. he looked at her. He got up."

"He sat down, his hands resting upon his lap. He took a quick glance at her before his eyes averted away to inspect the far wall. Feeling awkward now, he ran his hands across the legs of his pants, trying to keep them from feeling sweaty, but it was of little use. He finally got up and stiffly made his way to the day, nervously sliding one hand into his pocket as if to search for something, but withdrawing it a moment later when he realized what he was doing."

You might see a slight difference between those two examples. Other than the word count, you can instantly see that there's a lot more detail in the second example. But what exactly was added that makes it so different, even when the story's actions were identical? Behvaior. Nervous behavior. Fidgeting, uncomfortable glances, and maybe even some behaviors you have done yourself (I know I have).

The other than adding that extra detail, you also have to consider the way they behave. He was clearly nervous. What if he was bored? Or he felt cocky and was going to hit on her, but noticed she was ugly and left? Or she was a good friend and he was having a great time? His thoughts, actions, and the way he would be perceived would all be different. I won't write out an example, but if you're up for an exercise, take that same scenario and write out each of those moods then compare them. I'm sure you'll catch on pretty quickly. And if you're having trouble, ask your what you'd do in his shoes? No. Not the person you WANT to be. The person who you really are and how you might have reacted in real life to a past scenario similar to this.

God Moding or "I'm going to just borrow your character"

I just kicked your character in the head. Right after, my character grabbed yours by the hair, pushed 'em in the guy a few times, tossed them against a wall, then proceeded to face fuck them. Once my character had enough, he picked your character up, they shook hands, and the world was right again.

If you're annoyed. Good. You should be. If you're not, you clearly don't care about your character much. This is considered god moding. Taking the other person's character and either treating them like a ragdoll or having them take any action that your partner did not agree to or make themselves.

Here's the thing. God moding is easy to claim as being wrong. All wrong. But there's a certain level where things work so much better if you do it. If one character is tied up, for instance, you're not going to wait for your partner to struggle against their binds (or not) or to cry out 'no' when you try to stick it in the pooper (or not). You're going to do it, because at that time, your character does have complete control over them and it's going to just make annoying pauses to wait for each wiggle and moan. I prefer getting those in one longer reply. ;)

There's also a grey area that most people usually find to be acceptable and often time preferred. Say your character is leading your partner's. He's waving her forward to follow him down the street and by your discussion, she reasonably trusts him or reasonably would at least walk with him. There's not much reason to have him motion her and actually wait for her to say "Alright, I'm following now!"

Why?

If you stop, you have to wait for a reply. Not such a huge deal when you're IMing each other, but much bigger deal when you expect a reply maybe once a day. Think about in real life anyway. Imagine motioning someone to follow you. If they're even moderately sane, just about any single person would at least be curious enough to do as you beckon. They might be cautious, they might keep their distance, they might skip along and want to hold your hand as you went. Generally, though, they'll follow. So it's safe to assume those type of interactions will be complied with.

Sometimes you might run into an issue with this where he tells her to follow him and he's yacking away as if she had. But she didn't want to follow and chose to stand her ground. A tear in the space time continuum just occurred and someone better patch it up quickly!

It can be awkward. Really awkward. Even more so when it was a forceful action. If she doesn't follow your character, he just rambled to himself, thinking she was right on his heels, hanging on every word. He turns around, she's not there. He rushes back and yells at her, wanting to know what her problem is. The world is stitched back together and off you go!

If she just kicked him in the head and toss his body against a wall, it's not as comfortable to consider when she's a very meager 100 lb. 13 year old and he's a 500 lb. blob of love. I'm not very good with physics, but I'm pretty sure there's no one in the world that weighs 100 lbs and can lift someone that's 500 lbs enough to throw them.

Even if it were believable. Let's say he kicks her in the head and tosses her into a wall. More believable: She's still the same, he's now a 300 lb. weight lifter. What's to stop her from dodging around the kick, or slipping from his grasp, or peeing herself and he doesn't want to touch her after that? It's just muddy water. Really muddy water and this is a great example why I personally can't stand fighting in an RP: Someone is going to dodge and then attack, then the other person dodges and attacks, and so on. Unless someone is agreeable enough to accept they didn't make the dodge and got whacked, but they hopped back on their feet unexpectedly and gave a firm backhand right back. Still, I'm wanting to pull out dice to decide these things and by then I might as well play a game instead of type up a story.

So really you should only god mode when it seems reasonable (most anyone would really follow up with that voluntarily, like following a person, no matter how they feel about it). Or if your character got/gave the reasonable consent (like drying some dishes after asking if she needed help washing dishes). Or your character has control of the other character (like he's got her hog tied and whether she likes it or not, he's going to tickle her until she pisses herself).

It's raining magic!
I don't do magic. It gets out of hand too quickly for my taste and is unbelievable in most cases to me. As much as I enjoyed Star Wars, I refuse to accept the idea that you can lift a several ton vehicle out of some thick swamp goo with just your mind. You clearly need to work out more to get your body to match that strength!

But I'm not everyone, so let's go over some ideas to make magic more streamlined and fun. First off, god moding ideas still come into play. It gets to be even greyer of an area when you've got powers or you can see the future or a wall of fire is as simple as snapping your fingers. Summon tendrils of green ectoplasm to grasp her and pin her to a wall, although erotic to even me, still carries the same weight as doing it with your hands. That idea that she could have dodged your slow moving tendrils (they were distracted by trying to get a peek under her skirt) is ever present since I don't think she's consenting (even if she's wanting it) and he hasn't quite grabbed her yet to control her.

I'm sure many people do not care about this at all, but there's a certain cap you should have to ability. To me, if you have the ability to summon fire on your finger with your mind, then you are going to be incredibly exhausted at the end of it. It's already tiring enough just to imagine an image of a fire in my head much less create one into physical being. I'm totally restrictive though. Still, at some point I think a lot of people want you to be limited. Again, if you can summon a wall of fire by snapping your fingers, how does that scale if you actually concentrate enough that it hurts your head? At the height of your current ability can you turn Los Angeles into a moldering lava pit? Maybe enough to turn the whole North American continent into a crater? But you'd never do that. That'd be mean.

Crossed world also can get annoying quickly. When 'the force' meets Harry Potter, it is a little difficult to decide who's got the upper hand. Sure, without that bad ass lightsaber, Luke can still giggle like a school girl at picking you up and tossing you into a wall (I must really like tossing people into walls), but you've got some teenage kid that can blast you with some vague Latin and a piece of wood pointed at you and he doesn't even have to meditate or concentrate on doing it! In my opinion, it's far better to agree on what the world is like. Powers or technology (i.e. Batman or Superman)? Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter? Mass Effect or Star Trek? They're vastly different, even when the ideas are similar.

That's all I've got for right now. Give me some feedback. Tell me how awesome I am. Tell me that when I said a, b, and c, I was talking out of my ass. tell me you want me to throw you against a wall and hog tie you before tickling you until you piss yourself. I'll be glad to reply and would love other ideas on what to cover further. Thanks for reading!
 
I think most of the points you make here are exceptionally well-thought-out and very helpful! I've known and used most of them for awhile, particularly the 'believable character' and very limited form of 'god-modding', -especially- on actions like "waving and beckoning someone over", though even then I usually inject "Assuming x complies/happens, then dot dot dot" whenever I do that kind of very minor action-driving to keep the flow of a scene moving. Your advice on "Context" is also very helpful, it seems I need to pay more attention to properly separating a fuckfest from a story-driven RP, I actually seem to have a tendancy to unconciously try to inject backstory and psychologically plausible actions and thoughts perhaps even when I shouldn't. ^^;

As for your preface thoughts on "believable" magic, I do rather disagree with you there, the whole point of magic is to do normally impossible things, like a mage casting fire and lighting that tears a castle asunder (an extreme case admittedly, but still). Otherwise, I find your guidelines on handling magic sound.

Other than that nitpick, I think this is great! A lot of people could benefit from this if they read it.
 
I really appreciate your feedback. I know that there's a huge amount of wiggle room in this whole post, but I largely was thinking about a lot of things that either bothered me with replies I've had or just ideas that I know I focus on when I write.

As far as magic, it's never been my thing, so it's very slippery for me to really talk about it. The only time I've ever read anything that has to do with magic and made it believable was with the books by Katherine Kurtz. She had an incredible way of displaying the Deryni's powers (a race of magic users that are largely just humans with abilities). To me, it was so believable because of how limited it was and how there was so much focus to do basic spells. The most talented could harness their powers well, but wouldn't be able to push back even only a handful of people with it. I could go on about other details that I loved in her books, but those limits are what really made the experience so great to me. And that is going to be something that I'm sure many people are going to have a distaste over, especially after things like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter.

Either way, I really appreciate that.
 
Firm Master said:
Quick disclaimer: First I hope I can post this!
If it bothers anyone, I do use 'he' in a dominant position (and an example for myself) and 'she' as the submissive. It's how I think of it best, but feel free to swap the ideas for yourself.

I had someone ask me on another site about tips on improving their writing. Funny thing, she was doing great in my opinion. Some things could be refined, but all in all she was doing well. I wish I could say the same for everyone I've ever had the pleasure of RPing with, so I thought it'd be nice to make a friendly contribution:

Context
So you've just started a RP where the first and primary goal is to get to some cock gagging. No one is going to care about the backstory. Once you have the basic setting there, it is going to get lost in practically every case. She's home alone, he enters the home (uninvited or not), some bullshitting around, then sex. You may well not even get to that detail if you're already in your chair without any clothes reading away.

And that's all fine!

It's completely different when you need even a little bit of plot or development. If those parents come home, it's not so sexy any more (or it could get even sexier. I'm not here to judge). You now have some new elements to deal with and suddenly he's got to have a level of backstory. He's a boyfriend that the parents are cool with and after slipping his clothes back on, they were honestly just watching a movie and now he's going to head home. He's an armed robber and now he's got that bitch daughter as a hostage and he needs an escape plan, taking her with him to finish what he started, naturally.

Either way, it really helps to give yourself some time to agree whether you're shooting for a RP that is going to be a quick sex fest or if you're trying to write a novel that happens to have some naughty bits. The way they're handled is very different and it will only annoy your partner if you mix 'em up.

Believable character
"He sat down. he looked at her. He got up."

"He sat down, his hands resting upon his lap. He took a quick glance at her before his eyes averted away to inspect the far wall. Feeling awkward now, he ran his hands across the legs of his pants, trying to keep them from feeling sweaty, but it was of little use. He finally got up and stiffly made his way to the day, nervously sliding one hand into his pocket as if to search for something, but withdrawing it a moment later when he realized what he was doing."

You might see a slight difference between those two examples. Other than the word count, you can instantly see that there's a lot more detail in the second example. But what exactly was added that makes it so different, even when the story's actions were identical? Behvaior. Nervous behavior. Fidgeting, uncomfortable glances, and maybe even some behaviors you have done yourself (I know I have).

The other than adding that extra detail, you also have to consider the way they behave. He was clearly nervous. What if he was bored? Or he felt cocky and was going to hit on her, but noticed she was ugly and left? Or she was a good friend and he was having a great time? His thoughts, actions, and the way he would be perceived would all be different. I won't write out an example, but if you're up for an exercise, take that same scenario and write out each of those moods then compare them. I'm sure you'll catch on pretty quickly. And if you're having trouble, ask your what you'd do in his shoes? No. Not the person you WANT to be. The person who you really are and how you might have reacted in real life to a past scenario similar to this.

God Moding or "I'm going to just borrow your character"

I just kicked your character in the head. Right after, my character grabbed yours by the hair, pushed 'em in the guy a few times, tossed them against a wall, then proceeded to face fuck them. Once my character had enough, he picked your character up, they shook hands, and the world was right again.

If you're annoyed. Good. You should be. If you're not, you clearly don't care about your character much. This is considered god moding. Taking the other person's character and either treating them like a ragdoll or having them take any action that your partner did not agree to or make themselves.

Here's the thing. God moding is easy to claim as being wrong. All wrong. But there's a certain level where things work so much better if you do it. If one character is tied up, for instance, you're not going to wait for your partner to struggle against their binds (or not) or to cry out 'no' when you try to stick it in the pooper (or not). You're going to do it, because at that time, your character does have complete control over them and it's going to just make annoying pauses to wait for each wiggle and moan. I prefer getting those in one longer reply. ;)

There's also a grey area that most people usually find to be acceptable and often time preferred. Say your character is leading your partner's. He's waving her forward to follow him down the street and by your discussion, she reasonably trusts him or reasonably would at least walk with him. There's not much reason to have him motion her and actually wait for her to say "Alright, I'm following now!"

Why?

If you stop, you have to wait for a reply. Not such a huge deal when you're IMing each other, but much bigger deal when you expect a reply maybe once a day. Think about in real life anyway. Imagine motioning someone to follow you. If they're even moderately sane, just about any single person would at least be curious enough to do as you beckon. They might be cautious, they might keep their distance, they might skip along and want to hold your hand as you went. Generally, though, they'll follow. So it's safe to assume those type of interactions will be complied with.

Sometimes you might run into an issue with this where he tells her to follow him and he's yacking away as if she had. But she didn't want to follow and chose to stand her ground. A tear in the space time continuum just occurred and someone better patch it up quickly!

It can be awkward. Really awkward. Even more so when it was a forceful action. If she doesn't follow your character, he just rambled to himself, thinking she was right on his heels, hanging on every word. He turns around, she's not there. He rushes back and yells at her, wanting to know what her problem is. The world is stitched back together and off you go!

If she just kicked him in the head and toss his body against a wall, it's not as comfortable to consider when she's a very meager 100 lb. 13 year old and he's a 500 lb. blob of love. I'm not very good with physics, but I'm pretty sure there's no one in the world that weighs 100 lbs and can lift someone that's 500 lbs enough to throw them.

Even if it were believable. Let's say he kicks her in the head and tosses her into a wall. More believable: She's still the same, he's now a 300 lb. weight lifter. What's to stop her from dodging around the kick, or slipping from his grasp, or peeing herself and he doesn't want to touch her after that? It's just muddy water. Really muddy water and this is a great example why I personally can't stand fighting in an RP: Someone is going to dodge and then attack, then the other person dodges and attacks, and so on. Unless someone is agreeable enough to accept they didn't make the dodge and got whacked, but they hopped back on their feet unexpectedly and gave a firm backhand right back. Still, I'm wanting to pull out dice to decide these things and by then I might as well play a game instead of type up a story.

So really you should only god mode when it seems reasonable (most anyone would really follow up with that voluntarily, like following a person, no matter how they feel about it). Or if your character got/gave the reasonable consent (like drying some dishes after asking if she needed help washing dishes). Or your character has control of the other character (like he's got her hog tied and whether she likes it or not, he's going to tickle her until she pisses herself).

It's raining magic!
I don't do magic. It gets out of hand too quickly for my taste and is unbelievable in most cases to me. As much as I enjoyed Star Wars, I refuse to accept the idea that you can lift a several ton vehicle out of some thick swamp goo with just your mind. You clearly need to work out more to get your body to match that strength!

But I'm not everyone, so let's go over some ideas to make magic more streamlined and fun. First off, god moding ideas still come into play. It gets to be even greyer of an area when you've got powers or you can see the future or a wall of fire is as simple as snapping your fingers. Summon tendrils of green ectoplasm to grasp her and pin her to a wall, although erotic to even me, still carries the same weight as doing it with your hands. That idea that she could have dodged your slow moving tendrils (they were distracted by trying to get a peek under her skirt) is ever present since I don't think she's consenting (even if she's wanting it) and he hasn't quite grabbed her yet to control her.

I'm sure many people do not care about this at all, but there's a certain cap you should have to ability. To me, if you have the ability to summon fire on your finger with your mind, then you are going to be incredibly exhausted at the end of it. It's already tiring enough just to imagine an image of a fire in my head much less create one into physical being. I'm totally restrictive though. Still, at some point I think a lot of people want you to be limited. Again, if you can summon a wall of fire by snapping your fingers, how does that scale if you actually concentrate enough that it hurts your head? At the height of your current ability can you turn Los Angeles into a moldering lava pit? Maybe enough to turn the whole North American continent into a crater? But you'd never do that. That'd be mean.

Crossed world also can get annoying quickly. When 'the force' meets Harry Potter, it is a little difficult to decide who's got the upper hand. Sure, without that bad ass lightsaber, Luke can still giggle like a school girl at picking you up and tossing you into a wall (I must really like tossing people into walls), but you've got some teenage kid that can blast you with some vague Latin and a piece of wood pointed at you and he doesn't even have to meditate or concentrate on doing it! In my opinion, it's far better to agree on what the world is like. Powers or technology (i.e. Batman or Superman)? Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter? Mass Effect or Star Trek? They're vastly different, even when the ideas are similar.

That's all I've got for right now. Give me some feedback. Tell me how awesome I am. Tell me that when I said a, b, and c, I was talking out of my ass. tell me you want me to throw you against a wall and hog tie you before tickling you until you piss yourself. I'll be glad to reply and would love other ideas on what to cover further. Thanks for reading!

I enjoyed your post, since I'm new to the RP scene it helped gauge how I want to go about any role playing that I do. I especially enjoyed the last bit about being tied and tickled! You must know women well.
 
Nice to see you're getting into roleplaying and I hope you enjoy yourself with it. Also welcome to the site! I'm still pretty new here myself, so you're not alone in that aspect. Either way, this is all closer to guidelines than anything. It definitely won't fit for everyone, so find what works for you and if any of what I posted helps you out in enjoying your experience more, then I've done what I set out to do!

I also like to think I know women well. Maybe I just can pick 'em, but it seems the more I admit to what I really want and seek it out from women, the more they seem to enjoy it. Which is terribly general, but I've made more than one woman happy who's made me happy in return, lol.
 
I agree with a lot of what you have said, God Modding is annoying as is someone adding something to the scene that was clearly not there previously or even impossible.

The Context part is interesting, I have found that a mere theme is not enough to carry a RP, yes it sounds great the idea of auctioning someone as a sex slave for example, but then what? Scene after scene of sexual acts? Believe it or not it gets dull, you need to make the characters believable, you have to care about them to some degree, to know what they are feeling etc.

That said if it is just a short RP then it doesn't matter you play out the main scene and that is it. It depends on what you are wanting in the end. Like you said you have to decide with your partner if you want a sex fest or an actual story.

I would add Communication to your list as well.

Spend some time finding out what your partner wants, story line wise, from the RP itself, what do they want to achieve by writing. What does the story itself mean to them, what do they want to focus on or explore. It makes a difference to how well you will or won't mesh in the end.
 
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