Glossary of some general terminology that tends to get thrown around a lot in discussions. This will be updated whenever an entry occurs to me.
General RP terms
Offer
Basically, an "offer" is anything in a post that other characters can react to. Offers are absolutely vital to the RP process -- they are the hooks that allow your fellow RPers to engage with your posts. It is very difficult to write an interaction with someone if you have no way to react to them without GMing them. Offers can be anything ranging from dialogue, to actions/explicit lack of action, or even information about your character or their environment. Again, I cannot overstate how important it is for every post to contain clearly communicated, unambiguous, and comprehensive offers. You want to cover as much ground with them as possible. RP is just as much about communication as it is creativity.
Selling
Selling is what you do when you acknowledge an offer. As a skill, it's even more important than being good at making offers is -- you can do a lot of damage to a scene by selling things wrong and inadvertently misrepresenting offers.
Always read everything in every post in every thread that you are in. Do not just skimread -- you
will make mistakes that way. If you're reacting to posts, read them again to make sure you've read them right the first time. If you've read them and it's unclear what's going on, don't be afraid to ask your threadmates for clarification.
Posting Order
Fairly self-explanatory, this is the order that people in a thread post in. Generally, unless the handlers in a thread decide otherwise, expect it to follow a rotation where each handler posts once in the same order every cycle, with the order determined by when in the posting cycle each handler originally joined the thread. Please note that posting orders aren't a rigid, officially-enforced thing. Often, with the agreement of everyone in a thread, posting order gets broken or adjusted for scene pacing reasons. Other times, individual handlers will decide to break posting order when they need to exit a thread, and when it's necessary in order to meet a deadline or avoid inactivity.
Private Thread
These threads, usually denoted with a "Private" in their subtitle, are... threads that are private to join. Sometimes this is because people have plot beats they want to hit without risk of derailment, sometimes this is because people want to avoid
others who might be inadvertently approaching the RP in a way they find disruptive or upstaging or personal-boundary-violating, sometimes this is just because people have generalized anxiety disorder. Though private threads aren't enforced officially by staff, joining one without permission is usually considered a fairly large breach of etiquette by much of the site, and will absolutely lead to people being upset with you. So try to avoid it!
Semi-Private Thread
Like a private thread, but less private, but still also not completely open. Typically these are "PM to join", which means.... if you want to join, you should PM the person who started the thread.
Public/Open Thread
These threads, usually denoted with a "Public" or "Open" in their subtitle, are threads that anyone is free to join! Please be aware that if it's unclear whether your thread is private, semi-private, or public, people will often assume that it's public.
Terms related to scene construction
Blocking
No, not "blocking" as in blocking attacks in a fight scene. When we talk about blocking in relation to RP, we're coopting a
theatre term. Blocking refers to, essentially, the way characters are choreographed and communicated to exist within a scene's physical space. The importance of this varies by the kind of scene you're trying to do, but if you're writing something with a lot of physical presence, like a fight or a suspenseful death scene, it should usually be pretty high priority. In order to lock it down, it's pretty important to make sure you and your threadmates are all in communication and are on the same page when it comes to scene layout. Remember that the way you describe an area in a post might not always necessarily be interpreted by your threadmates the way it looks to you in your head.
Language is not necessarily transparent, but
diagrams poorly scribbled in MS paint usually are.
Writerspace
- [+] A picture of writerspace.
Basically, writerspace is the shadowy nebulous blob of 5D geometry that characters, objects, and locations inhabit if it isn't clear how they relate to a scene spatially. Oftentimes, though not always, this happens accidentally or by necessity, as a result of a scene being blocked out poorly or in an ad-hoc way. Other times, it can be a conscious choice on the part of a handler (
here is an example of how that looks in practice). If it's something you're doing on purpose, the other handlers in your thread may feel a little bit like they're doing a trust fall, so it's important to keep in close communication with your threadmates so that they know what's going on, and what to react to or anticipate from the scene. Or if you're an ontologically chaotic individual (like me!) you can also not do that, and instead terrorize your fellow handlers
like some kind of post-Paranormal Activity (2007) horror movie ghost. However, not every handler is necessarily gonna be down for that stuff, so you should always be sure first that everyone in a thread is okay with it before you subject it to your mischief.
Things you shouldn't do!
Passive GMing
See here.
Meta terms!
Discourse
See here and
here and
here and
here and
here and
here and
here.
