Overview
The premise of roleplaying is something every human being learns and understands in childhood, from the moment they pick up a doll or an action figure and imagines adventures in fantastical realms.
It’s as simple as wrapping your mind around the simple trick of breaking free from your normal reality and immersing yourself in the potential of joining G.I. Joe or smashing the forces of evil with the Power Rangers.
As we get older, this solitary play evolves into activities with multiple participants, such as cops and robbers, cowboys and Indians, Colonial Fleeters and Cylons, James Bond and counterspies.
In the earliest days, the roleplaying is often free form, a sort of anything goes activity where it’s just you and the toys, and whatever crazy mixed up adventures come to mind are what plays out for you.
When other people enter the mix, however, we often add rules. “If I point my gun finger at you first and say ‘Bang,’ you’re dead,” for example.
The skills we gain as children to imagine the possibilities of an impossible world may fade and lose their luster without regular use, but as it is with bicycles: You never really forget how to do it once you know.
Tips
Here are a few tips:
- Write poses in present-tense. Our game assumes actions happening in real-time.
- Work within a scene’s established pose order. Sometimes, in particularly crowded events, we may shift to the three-pose rule, which states that you can throw in a pose any time after you’ve seen three other characters pose. Also, before posing in, make sure that you know what’s going on. Ask if someone can provide a “scenepose” to get you up to speed.
- Don’t powerpose, which is the act of assuming your character is able to successfully impose a contested action against another character without properly testing via dice rolls with a referee.
- Don’t metagame, which is using information gained beyond the scope of knowledge for your character to take action with your character.
- Be a good sport. Bad things happen sometimes.
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