Guide to Using RolePlay Forum in an Educational Setting.

Roleplaying is used in many different settings, from video games to real life. Simply put roleplaying is taking on a persona and acting out that persona as if it were you. Actors do this to make a living. A famous example of this is the fantasy dice game Dungeons & Dragons. For our purposes we’ll be using the webpage RPG Forums to participate in historical events as if they were part of them.

Since we’re using the RPG Forums as our role-playing platform there are rules and etiquette that must be followed to provide a healthy community. The sites provides an extensive list of rules, here are a few example rules are as follows:

• The role-playing forums are split up into two different section one for out of character (OOC) and in character (IC). This means that when you’re posting in an area designated as IC you post as your character and nothing else. However, when you’re in OOC areas you don’t need to post IC.
• Vulgarity in anyway is not allowed.
• Do not under any situation control another person’s character (moving or making decisions for them) in IC scenarios.

Etiquette, However, is harder to learn etiquette because it is a byproduct of people’s opinions and not often written down. Although you will see personal rules posted on OOC threads allowing for others to understand how the original poster wants their thread to behave. Some common example are:

• Writing with proper grammar, spelling and punctuation is highly preferred, but not entirely forced. Do not write using texting substitution like “U,” and “R” instead of “you” and “are”.
• Length of posts must generally be longer than a few paragraphs to provide depth.
• Most of the time the thread author will want RPers to post at least once or twice a week, sometimes more.

The community within the RPG Forums are all fairly honorable, but it is a public site and that is something to be aware of. However, keeping posts private is fairly easy by adding an “invite only” modifier to the title of your thread (e.g. Age of Civilization 3100 to 100 BCE-invite only-).  This tells most of the other RPers that the only way to get in is through an invite, which allows for threads to be closed to outsiders. This allows your students to share a thread that only they will contribute to, but others may still read it. The readability of the thread shouldn't be seen as a problem. The public nature is partly what always motivated me to write with a higher quality when on the site.

My next post will go over step by step on setting up a thread on RPG forums, followed by scenarios for my standards.