Look, I get it. You want to RP but you don’t know how. You watched an episode of Critical Role or you heard about your friend’s lucrative catboy cafe on the critically acclaimed Final Fantasy 14 which is offering a free trial period including Heavensward and you want a piece of the pie. You’ve asked around and there seem to be so many rules about how to get started. Something something backstory, something something something lore, something something flaws. You’ve also seen so, SO many posts be it from Reddit or Discord or Tumblr or whatever about “the bads,” and you don’t want to be one of those. There are tons of posts on forums telling you how to roleplay, so what’s the deal with this one?

This one doesn’t give a shit about your backstory. It doesn’t give a shit about what obscure lore text you need to know. It doesn’t give a shit about whether or not your character is a self insert. It doesn’t give a shit about your character’s race. It doesn’t even give a shit about which game you roleplay on.

This isn’t a blog for making a server darling character.This is a blog for the roleplayers who make the characters. This is a blog about how to not get bogged down in the community purity contest of roleplay servers and just have some good old fashioned fun. This is a blog about dynamic RP.

What I mean by “dynamic roleplay” is RP that you simultaneously control and don’t control. It’s walk ups with a stranger that can change your character’s life. It’s stories that fly by the seat of their pants that you poke along. It’s not making you want to AFK in the tavern and pray someone sends you a tell. It’s writing the kind of characters that make you and others invest in them just by playing them instead of collecting aesthetic images on tumblr.

In short, it’s the difference between RP and writing a fanfiction with an audience.

Dynamic RP has some things it values over others, such as:

• Fluid Improvization over Rigid Plans: creating details on the fly and adding on to another person’s post instead of following a standard plan and arguing over lore out of character
• Actual Roleplay over Indulgent Fluff: the most important thing about roleplay is to ROLEPLAY, not write a story about what you want to roleplay or building a Spotify playlist
• Evolution over Stasis: Who your character is should change over time
• Meaningful Consequences over Desired Consequences: What happens in RP should affect RP in ways you didn’t plan
• Having Fun over Adhering to Dogma: Take only what you like and throw the rest away, including whatever nonsense I’m talking about

I’ve been RPing in MMOs for longer than I’d care to admit, and this blog outlines things I’ve learned. I hope you enjoy the ride.