Free forum : DBR - Dragon Ball Reborn

The "newbie guidelines". Most of this is for total newbies, baby steps. Learn the small tricks that are essential when playing, and get some serious guidance on roleplaying. We will start with small matters.

- Dice Roll

Dice rolling is used to randomly determine the outcome of something. For instance: this is used when looking for Earth's dragon balls (dragon dice), or to grab/cut a saiyan's tail (3-sided dice) or for other battle actions like dodging, energy absorption etc. (3-sided dice). To roll a dice, one must post a reply and go for the option titled "Dice Roll", seen below the "Preview" and "Send" buttons. From here you must specify the type of the dice you want to roll, and the amount of rolls you want. You will then see a message indicating you have rolled a dice, and the result is shown. In fights, battle referees (who monitor fights) will take this responsibility and roll for the players whenever this feature is needed.

- Equipment

There are many outfits and accessories that can be equipped. By default, you carry the equipment given by your chosen starting set. This will add into your stats or into something else, depending on the equipment.

As you can see in the character page, you have three slots: outfit, accessory and accessory 2. The outfit slot can be equipped with a whole "suit of equipment", like the Turtle School Gi or the Crane School Uniform. Accessories are for small additions, like scouters, weights, pouches, weapons or even ornaments. Say, Piccolo dons a martial arts gi, weighted robes and a weighted turban.

If you wish to change your equipment, just do so in any roleplay, and say that you want to change your equipment, it might go unnoticed.

- Wordcounts

So, the default, minimum wordcount is 200. You should know that by now. If you are totally new to these forum rpgs, you might wonder how is it possible to count your words. There are many tools, some text editors like Word can count words for you, there are many sites that can do this there is a javascript tool around. Just be sure the counter you are using is accurate, someone might check out your wordcount with another counter and whine about your error. But don't worry, I won't get mad if your wc is a little off. Just google "Wordcounter" or something like that.

Roleplaying

Some useful tips and guidance to help you become a better roleplayer. Note that most of this was originally written by Cello, I just added the third part and some other stuff.

I – A good intro.

Ok so they say first impressions are everything right? Same goes for rp, you want a good intro so people will take interest and follow your rp. Ok so first you want to establish a solid character, which means personality. Try to establish their personality first up. If you want a real badass guy, try and show a bit of a negative perspective on the world, express your characters thoughts a lot. This keeps the reader in the same mind set as your character. But say if you want a happy go lucky sort of character, try and make them seem like a really nice person that goes out of their way to be nice, take on positive points of view. Get the idea?

Now you need good surroundings, have a clear mental map of your characters house/home, make sure you know what kind of places they are living in. We don’t want happy go lucky Joe in a murky old swamp, or Badass Chris in some kind of meadow with flowers. Once again it all draws back to personality so choose wisely. Make sure you have a vast knowledge of the types of environments your characters planet provides. And believe it or not, make sure you know the time of day, for example: Nameks have no night time; I don’t want to start off with Cindy the Namek cooking dinner looking out the window to all the stars.

Friends and family are important too, as in real life, a happy go lucky person would have happy go lucky friends. They would also lay influence; you need to factor these guys into your rp. Unless your character is total loner, you need to include some other people. The world is there for you to make friendships in. As for the word count of the intro, I wouldn’t worry too much about length on this one. Just make sure you get whatever message you want to get across and finish it there. Save your creativity for the training posts and stuff, you will gain much from this.

II – Maintain your skills.

Ok so you’ve got off to a red hot start and have been approved, you look forward to the follow up, but this is usually the hardest part. Make sure you know what you’re doing, once approved you have many choices (Battling, Questing, Training, and Working) the best to take is training, since power is everything. You probably should raise your stats before you take on the big bad world out there.

Now you may find your next post lacks a little from your intro, now I’m assuming your training so here are my tips. Be as graphic as possible when battling, ok, a thesaurus comes in handy here, especially ones installed onto your computer. Try not to use things like “Cecil hit the tree with his fist, the tree then began to shake, he then hit it with his foot” change it up to “Cecil struck the tree with his fist, the tree then began to shake, he then thumped it with his foot” this makes it easier to read and different types of words can often describes variations of the one hit. So experiment here and aim for a desired effect.

Also imagine the battles in your head, as if in slow motion, describe every known aspect and emotion/movement that is happening. This helps stretch things out and vastly help the reader understand.

Keep consistent wordcount; don’t go from a 2,000 worder to a 400 then 700. Keep consistent with training, it looks a lot more professional and helps your skills develop one level at a time. Your words counts should slowly increase say from 1500 to 2000 over 4-5 posts.

Now, stay busy. Don’t just do training all the time, get away from your characters house, always have something to keep you entertained. Go on a quest, find a master, then train, go shopping, catch up with a character’s friend, train. See space things out, don’t just rapid train hard day after day, you’ll hit boredom.

III – Know your limits.

Always acknowledge your limits. You might have the need to spam posts continously to get as strong/rich as possible in a short period of time, but let's face it - you are not a machine. You have to take a break sometimes and build up creativity and motivation to keep going. If you try to write without inspiration and passion, it's going to be senseless crap with a lot of typos. It's like working out, at first it's fun and not that hard, but after a while you are exhausted and it gets harder and harder, and you need to rest. If you get a headache, and still continue, you are truly obsessed with it. So when feeling uninspired, you need to take a break and recharge your motivation. When you do so, you absorb all that new experience you just gathered. Also, save your creativity for something major that you are planning to do, like a big quest or an upcoming saga. You don't wanna drain all that creativity by doing some smalls quests, and miss the huge gains you'd get thanks to extra inspiration.

If you are a total newbie to writing, you should stay around 1,000 words. It took me, Neo, a few months to get to 5,000, and a year with some extra months to get to 7,000. But it's like a hobby, so don't take it too seriously. You will not notice how your skills improve, and you should not think about it. Just have fun.

IIII – Final Notes

Just some last notes to head you off: Remember patience is the key; don’t try to say “Ill finish this story tonight” instead just say “I’ll continue this story tonight” see where it takes you.

Don’t be discouraged by others, stick to what you love, take onboard what they say. Hone your own skills.

Avoid utter boredom that might present itself in your roleplays. Write diverse and rich text, show off and add swearing, put there some humor too if you feel like it, it might affect the reader. Swearing will send out a message that your character is pissed and about to break some shit, and it's far more interesting to read. Humor will lighten the mood, and gives a relaxed atmosphere. Don't use blood and brutality continously, associate them with rage, evil and fights to the death.

So, with these teachings in your mind, get out there and show your writing potential.