Who is it for?

Today is a day for something a little bit different. I want to take a break from talking specifically about roleplay, and spend a little bit on the idea of a roleplaying community, specifically the point of administration inside of it. While I’m not going to bother going into specific roles and titles and such, I will likely reference them simply as “moderators” or “staff” or some spin-off of that. I’d like to be clear up front though, that a mod in a roleplaying community can mean many different things, and what ultimately matters is whether or not you have power in this forum that was granted to you by someone else.

So my question I raise to you is this: who is a mod’s power for?

In the Moment

I’m actually really excited to write this one—I’ve wanted to ever since I released the last one, and now I have the time to do it. So here we go: Roleplay in the moment.

As I was writing about Roleplay Perspectives and searching for a good objective way to explain it, it occurred to me that, from my experience, the actual fun part of Roleplay is, and I think should be, each post. In its most unrefined form, RP usually shows up as present-tense, which makes a good deal of sense, though most people do past-tense because it’s more familiar and perhaps professional. What’s important, though, is that RP naturally tends to gravitate toward the present-tense, because the interest is very much involved with the present and less so of simply recounting a story.

Ever read someone else’s RP, after it’s been finished? Ever noticed it’s actually really boring to look back on, and you wouldn’t want to read it unless you had to? Exceptions exist, but for the most part this really stands. Does it mean that the RP was just as boring to read at the time as it is for you now? Not necessarily.