Alicias_Rules

1a: Capitalization and basic punctuation.
It blows my mind to watch people roleplay in the Roleplay Room. It really does. Some people don't use capital letters at all. Some forgo punctuation entirely. One person I've seen uses the close-parenthesis - ) - instead of a period. Look, I'm not expecting proficient use of the semi-colon here, but you should at least write at higher than an elementary school level. Capital letter to begin a sentence, period to end. Kindergarteners know this.

1b: Spelling.
Not as important as rule 1a - errors are forgivable. But only to a point. If every single sentence you type has six or seven spelling errors in it (and there are plenty of roleplayers who aren't even that accurate), I'm not going to have fun roleplaying with you. You know if you're bad at spelling, so use a spellcheck. Your browser might even have one built in. It's not asking too much that you pay attention to it - a couple of extra seconds on your end means your partner has a better time. It might be a good idea to write your posts in a word processor such as Microsoft Word or LibreOffice, then run a spellcheck before pasting your post into the chat.

1c: Length.
Post length is not as important as a lot of people like to pretend it is, but it is important. A post that's too short looks like you're not putting any effort in, but one that's too long is naturally harder to read, and your partner may not be willing to put as much time into a single post as you are. Ideally, post length should be flexible. Different situations call for different things. Early on, you'll likely be setting up a scene, and characters will be reacting to each others' words and actions - this requires a bit of description. Later in the roleplay, there may be a vore scene, which will be mainly action-reaction. These posts should be, on average, shorter - each character will need to react more quickly in an active scene, so it's good practice to use smaller, more numerous posts rather than clumping the action into big blocks of text that presume your partner will want to go along with every action you take without reacting. This will give your action scenes a little more vibrance and immersiveness. You'll also feel more involved in the roleplay if you're both contributing two lines of action every minute or so, rather than posting six detailed, drawn-out lines, then waiting ten minutes for your partner to reply.

2a: Have a profile.
If you don't have a profile, nobody good will play with you. That's all. End of story. You must have one. And what's more, you must have one with some substance in it. One line of text is not enough. One paragraph is probably not enough. One paragraph and a picture is probably not enough. You should have a full profile that lets potential partners know everything they need to know. Luckily, I'm here to help.

2b: Have a picture.
Don't care where you get it from, just get one, and make it good! All the dating sites say the same thing - profiles with pictures get way more responses! Try not to just pick some generic anime girl or boy, either - pick one out that suits your character, and conveys his or her personality. Plain pictures of anime girls doing nothing at all are boring. Personally, I find that I write my best characters when I already have a picture and work off that, but it may be different for you. Your picture should be big, eye-catching, interesting, and attractive. 800x600 minimum.

2c: Have a good picture.
What you should not have is a poorly-drawn image. You don't get any extra points for doing it yourself - if your picture looks bad, nobody will want to play with the character it represents. Unless you know you're a competent artist, do not draw your own picture. Your image is what immediately represents you when someone clicks your profile. If it looks like an idiot drew it, people will assume that you are an idiot.

(Note on pictures: Copyright law applies to image files. The chat rules state that if someone makes a copyright claim on an image you use, it will be removed. You can follow your own morality here, but as long as you comply with any legitimate takedown requests, you won't be in any legal trouble, and you won't be bothered about your image. This place is far too small and far too niche for anybody outside it to really care - the majority of the images used in profiles are not owned by their players and somehow the site isn't buried in litigation. Whether you're OK with this is up to you, and it's not the intent of this guide to change your opinion, so please leave this particular debate out of the comments box. Thanks.

Oh, but don't steal an image from somebody else on this site. That's definitely an awful thing to do.)

2d: Have a good character!
This is a tough one - sometimes even characters you put a lot of effort into turn out to be duds. But let's assume you have a good idea. What do you need in your profile? Personality and motivation. It's no good having a character whose sole personality trait is that they're prey. That's just a picture and a word. Decide on how your character acts and briefly convey it in the profile, to give people an idea of what kind of roleplay they'll get with you.

2e: Follow Rule 1
Remember, your profile is where you're advertising your character and roleplay abilities to other users, so all of Rule 1 applies. Make it presentable, well-written, and of appropriate length.

2f: Don't make it too short!
Personally, I like three to five good, descriptive paragraphs in my profiles. This is enough that I can establish a motivation and personality for my character, and a backstory if needed.

2g: Don't make it too long!
The human brain is not designed to take in lots and lots of information. It wants to know the relevant facts. If you present a normal person with three or four screens of detailed history, they will immediately switch off. This means that you need to trim all the bloat from your profile. Everything that's not necessary. Look through your profile and ask yourself "Is this of interest to anyone who isn't me?" If it's not, cut it out. Your list of finished and unfinished RPs is not the vital information you think it is. If you really must have it in there, try putting in a collapsible box or something. All the viewer wants to see is your profile.

2h: No, really. Don't make it too long.
The blunt and honest truth is that the detailed fictional world you've designed for your characters to inhabit is terrible. The special legendary sword your character carries? That's terrible. The spaceship he or she flies around in? Terrible. List of pets? Nobody cares. List of slaves? Nobody cares. In fact, lists of pretty much anything except preferences and roleplay ideas are intensely boring.

Look, you're not a writer. If you had any world-building talent, you'd write and sell the next Lord Of The Rings. What you've got is derivative dreck. Secondly, and more importantly, you are the only person in the world who knows or cares about it. Leave it in your brain and out of your profile.

If you absolutely must write out every last excruciatingly boring detail about the fictional reality you came up with in your head, consider making a separate profile with those details, and just linking it from your current profile as additional data. Then install an HTML hit counter as well so you can see exactly how little anybody cares to look at it. Or better yet, just don't write it at all. I cannot stress enough how uncreative and uninteresting it is.

2i: Use the preference sliders!
Yeah, they ARE boring to go through for the thirtieth time. Cowboy up. You only really need to fill the ones relevant to your character, but if you do all of them you're not going to ruin your profile.

2j: Pick a color scheme!
I'm not gonna give an HTML tutorial here since there's already one, but your profile text should be colored - the plain white is dull to the eye. Pick the color you feel most represents your character and use it in your profile (make sure it stands out against the black background, though). I also like to kick up the font size a little. Makes the profile a little less business-like and encourages people to read it.

2k: Pick a good color scheme!
Some of the profile color schemes used on this site are so bad it's difficult to believe that anybody could ever have thought them a good idea. Black text on a bright pink background. Light blue text on green background. If you use colors like that, people will instantaneously close your profile tab. I'm not kidding - nobody is going to make the effort to read a single word of your profile if they have to squint or strain or adjust their eyes to read it.

Remember that a computer monitor does not act like a piece of paper. A white screen projects significantly more light than a black one (we're talking orders of magnitude, here). Don't pick a bright color for your background - the only thing you're going to convey to the reader is a migraine. There's a reason the default is black.

To boil this down to an easy-to-interpret rule: Unless you genuinely know what you're doing design-wise, leave your page background black. And no, wanting a pink background because you think it represents your character's femininity does not constitute 'knowing what you're doing'.

2l: Finish your profile!
A "This profile is still under construction" message is an instant black mark against you. It doesn't take THAT long to do a profile. Nobody wants to play with half a character. If you haven't bothered to finish a profile, why would I assume you'll put effort into a roleplay?