How to Successfully RP on an "Account Per Player" Board

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How to Successfully RP on an "Account Per Player" Board
Topic Started: Apr 6 2009, 05:01 PM (246 Views)
heatherbee.	Apr 6 2009, 05:01 PM Post #1
Andrea's Grasshopper Posts: 642 Group: Admin Member #2 Joined: Apr 6 2009 Time Zone (GMT +/-) GMT -5 Realm of Arda Blog http://tinyurl.com/ydhajbt Thread Tracker http://tinyurl.com/ya6dcce Fiction Tracker http://tinyurl.com/yc2oed2	How to Successfully RP on an "Account Per Player" Board. (c) December, Esq of RPG-D Note: APP = "accounts per player," APC = "accounts per character" Greetings, everyone. I have come to help enlighten people who have had a few questions about APP boards. It seems that by far the more popular type of board is APC. Why is this? Perhaps it is because it works better. No, it is because people are used to APC and they are afraid to branch out. Now wait. Don't get all defensive that I said that. But how many people here who bang on pots and pans that APC is better have actually played on an APP board? That's what I thought. I'm not getting all high and mighty, trust me. You should have seen how utterly confused I was when I switched over from APP to APC; I couldn't figure out what to do and the admin of the site couldn't figure out why I was so downright stupid--because obviously I was stupid if I did things differently right? Well, for the sake of the admin, I wasn't exactly being the best of members, either. But I digress. So I have decided to come and educate the masses about the truths behind APP boards and enlighten everyone. After all, the point of roleplaying is, well, writing and having fun, so why not expand your horizons at the same time? MYTH: On an APP board, you never know what characters are in the thread with you. FACT: On an APP board, you always know what characters and members are in the thread with you. Don't think that because the account name is a screenname rather than a character name that you'll never know the name of the characters. Good writers--and even crappy ones--put the name of their characters in their posts. There are some times when this doesn't work out for either system, but that's beside the point. When someone writes a post, he or she does not just say "he went to the store. He bought some milk," etc whether it be APP or APC. In addition, not only will you know the characters that are in the thread, but you will also know the members that are in the thread. I don't know how many times I have RPed with people on APC and not known who the member was. This I find disconcerting because I want to know more than just the character--I want to know the person behind the character. Call me crazy. MYTH: APP boards don't allow you to have multiple characters (of your own) in a thread. FACT: You can have multiple characters per thread, though you may not get the extra post count for it. Trust me; I grew up having one account per person, so I know that you can indeed have multiple characters per thread. And there are multiple ways to do it, depending upon the general feeling of the board. 1) One post per character. This will get you the appropriate post count;) but you'll be doing a lot of double posting. 2) One post per person per turn. This is what I see most people doing because it is the easiest and the least confusing. Put both characters' posts into one post and save yourself some trouble. Oh, and it's so much easier to do this than to switch accounts! APP does allow you to post with multiple characters in a thread; it's just not going to be so blaringly obvious. However, that does not mean that there will be confusion at all. Once again, we rely upon good writing and decent writers who realize that they need to put their characters' names in their posts. MYTH: APP boards don't let you have pretty/nice/cool signatures. FACT: Some pretty kick-hiney signatures have come off of APP boards. Let's face it: signatures are just an accessory of RPing. The true point of roleplaying on text-based RPGs is writing, so signatures are kind of like a side note. However, that doesn't mean that they're not fun to make. n_n It has long been a popular belief that with APP boards, you cannot have cool signatures. Oh, sure, you'll have to give up some signature space in order to accomodate all of your characters, but remember that the point of RPing is the writing and not the pretty little designs. So how do you put all of your characters into a signature without making it huge and obnoxious? Easy. 1) You put all of your characters into one sig. This will require a bit of photoshop because I doubt you'll be able to find a pre-made graphic that conveniently has all of your play bys in it, but that's okay; there are plenty of willing graphic artists out there. 2) You can make tiny little signatures for each of your character. This is what I have done because I can make the picture a link that links back to their profiles. Here's an example of one of these signatures: From this signature, everyone knows that the character is Cole, he is 18 years old, he belongs to the Twilight camp and he suffers from paranoia. All that from that little sig? Yeah, pretty cool. Plus I had boatloads of fun making it! (I love playing with text.) Currently I have several of these little things in my signature because I have several characters. If I get too many characters, I'll have to make them smaller, but that's okay; I like to do graphics. I knew ahead of time that I would have to make several renditions of this. MYTH: APC boards allow you to devide people into member groups; APP doesn't allow for that flexibility. FACT: APP actually does allow you to sort your members into groups but in a different way. Remember the pictures of the signatures? What if I decided that I wanted the color for all Twilight campers to be pink? Well, I wouldn't need to switch to APC in order to illustrate that my good buddy Cole is in a different group; I'd simply add some color into the signature. A pink border around the picture and maybe a bit of pink text would let the world know perfectly that young COle is in the Twilight camp. Sure, it may not show up that way on the member list, but everyone can tell from looking at one of my posts 1) what characters I have and 2) what "houses" they belong in. MYTH: When people sign up for an account, it gives them incentive to keep with a character. FACT: Just because someone can register an account doesn't mean that they will stay with their character. Take me, for example. I have joined boards, registered for an account, made a long-winded application and then ... disappeared. Why? Probably because I found the board boring, but that's beside the point. The point is that I went through all the trouble of clicking that "register" button, filling out that tedious form, and all of that stuff and yet I still disappeared. Whether people stick with a character has nothing to do with whether or not they've had to register a separate account for it; it just depends upon the player's attitude, whether they had fun playing the character or not, and the board in general. I once had a character on an APP board for almost three years and there are people on APP boards who have had characters for much longer. Sure you're going to get a turnover. But no more than you would on an APC board. * * * So why don't you go out and try something new? Play around with the boards and perhaps poke around an APP board--you'll never know what you'll find. Want to ask a question, try to confuse me, or give me feedback on this documentation? Please post.
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