NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 8624420" data-attributes="member: 6801252">So, we called them RPs, I would say that we actually thought of them more as a 'pastime' it was a fun thing to do but it didn't have an object usually, and while you could get ambitious and try to carry off a story arc, it wasn't exactly meant to produce anything at the end the way you expect a creative project might. I participated in them mainly on Nintendo's Nsider Forums, on <a href="https://www.gaiaonline.com/" target="_blank">Gaia Online's Forums</a>, and after Nsider went down, on private forums hosted by people I knew from that scene. I was also very familiar, and somewhat involved in the <a href="https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Fizzy_Bubbles" target="_blank">Fizzy Bubbles</a> scene, when it was active on Serebii.net.Different people did different things with it, so it was actually fairly diverse-- imagine an enworld board, where every thread was its own game, and all of the action was just people typing descriptions and dialog at each other and RPing. So I might join an RP, sometimes by application, other times freely simply by popping off a basic character bio, glancing at the context of whatever was already happening, like for location and such and say:Magic steps through the front door of the old house, they look pensive as they glance around, a sword is slung across their back while a revolver rests at their side. "Hey, is anyone here?" they call out, their hand rests on the hilt of the sword, as if they're expecting to be attacked. Then one of the other participants might respond:Veronica calls out lazily from behind a nearby folding screen "Oh, I'm right here" she puts down the book she was reading and stands up, walking slowly around the screen with her arms crossed beneath her breasts, she cocks an eyebrow as she looks Magic up and down "What, looking for a fight?"Which is a post I would read, and respond:Magic blushes and takes their hand off theirsword "Oh no, sorry, force of habit"_______________________________________________________________________________________________Where things get a little weird, is that there are no rules other than social convention, and no conflict resolution mechanic, so a fight might look like this:Magic draws their sword and revolver and dashes across the space between them and Veronica, bringing the blade down in a jumping slash. With the other participant responding:Veronica steps forward, dropping into a roll that narrowly dodges the slash before coming up and attempting to slam her book into their side with the incredible force of her super strength. Then I would have to decide whether my character Magic would take the hit or not, which is my decision-- she can't force me to take it, except if I seem to never take hits, the other participants will become annoyed at me for always making my character untouchable and give me a talking to, so there's a push and pull of what I want to take and when. Pushed to its extreme, there were 'militaries' where characters would fight other groups-- some forums had referees, others determined winner with judges based off writing quality, and others developed metas where it was about adhering to your approved set of abilities, and siloing off routes of escape to force a logical win in the fiction. If the fight wasn't with another player, it was more about expression, with someone loosely 'GMing' as part of their description, usually one of the people who had clout in that RP._________________________________________________________________________________________________The central object, if it can be described to have one, was to participate in a sort of shared daydream in a particular milieu, they were often social, with the character's personalities fooling around, fighting, flirting, and so forth being a big draw-- the OC could actually become a kind of secondary identity to inhabit, and the RP itself a kind of almost entirely social experience where you sit around and chat in character, becoming so comfortable doing so that you could shoot the breeze and banter, like it was a night with buddies in a real world bar. Some took it very seriously, and made art or headcanons about their characters, or paired up with certain partners for more serious RP.They also varied a lot, my writing above is very good, it would have been top notch if I was still participating (they were very young scenes you understand, I was 10 when I got into my longest running one, and the leader was like 14 and had been doing it for a couple of years, I only found out how close we really were in age talking to them just recently, actually-- that was more than half my life ago!) other times it could look like this:Magic: Veronica, what are you doing with that book!? Dodges and draws their swordVeronica: Putting you out of your misery charges swinging the book from side to side, ignoring the sword</blockquote>

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