To some, a story-based roleplay is a daunting task. The first step to many would be to know just what one is. If you have no clue what roleplays are, it would be a good idea to check here. Essentially, in a Storyline Roleplay you are writing co-writing a story in the most basic way, taking turns writing out what your characters do. Note that very rarely will you see someone refer to what they are doing as Storyline Roleplaying. Most will just say 'Roleplaying', but for clarity and to differentiate from other things filed under the name of 'Roleplay', 'Storyline Roleplaying', or 'Story Roleplaying' is used.

If you answer the questions of Where, Who, What, and When, then you more or less have the answer to 'How'.

Where?

Answering the question "Where" can take a little more though than the rest. This is what conventional writers would call the 'Setting', but for the sake of words that start with 'W', we're going to go with this instead. Many would say that the answers to these are completely a matter of preference, but many people also turn out to be completely wrong about many things. In this case, though, they are only a tad off of the mark. Unless you are simply experimenting, then it is best to choose a setting based on your level of familiarity on the subject, not just preference. If one knows nothing of what they are writing about, then the material they produce will not necessarily be of any desirable level of quality.

There are a myriad of choices to pick from when looking for an answer to these three questions, but here are a list of the most basic of settings: Medieval, Science Fiction, Modern, Post-apocalyptic. These settings can, in turn, be either fantasy or realistic. Fantasy simply indicates that things such as magic and other supernatural exist in the setting, and in fact are usually a central focus, while realistic implies a lack of such things, or only subtle examples of such. Others choose to answer 'Where', 'What', and 'When' with answers which come from their favourite video game, television, movie, or book series. In some more disturbing cases, those answers come from several things, resulting in an odd amalgamation of conflicting aspects.

Who, What, When?

'Who' is a pretty simple to figure out. The answer will consist of you, and those people you find who will roleplay (to be referred to as RP from this point forward) with you. The last part should be the only hard part, if any. If you have trouble finding yourself, well, go get soul-searching.

The rest, however, will need a tad bit more explaning.

Different 'What's

In the case that you cannot find anyone in person whom you can RP with, then answering 'What' can help find the answer to 'Who', though the answers to 'What' will be slightly less numerous if you do not RP in person. What is the medium through which you will roleplay. If in person, there is the possibility of using a notebook to write things in. The advantage is being able to RP during times when you shouldn't, like while in the classroom¹. The downside can, if you turn out to be a long-winded writer, be a tired hand, or simply a considerable amount of time unnecessarily spent in order to write out everything. A much more common manner of roleplaying is the Internet, but that is several mediums itself. These separate mediums all have the advantage over the notebook method in that they employ typing, which is often faster and more legible than handwriting, depending on your spelling and keyboarding abilities. You can use message boards, chat rooms, instant messengers, MUSHs (Multi-User Shared Habitats/Hallucinations) and possibly e-mail, though the last has faded from common use.

Which What, and Where to Find It?

The main advantage of the message board over the chat rooms and instant messengers is the fact that it is more readable, and more easily saved. With public mediums such as this, you are also likely to find someone who would be more than happy to join in and make things a bit more interesting. Instant messengers get the better of the other two for their privacy, though saving those sessions may be a bit hassling without a program to log them with. E-mail has some of both worlds, but it has its own little problems and small annoyances, such as not being able to read through everything without clicking back and another link between each bit (which is a very big problem if you write short posts, or wish to go through things in a more fast-paced manner).

If you choose to use a forum or chat room, then you are probably going to need to choose the forum or chat room you do this in wisely. There are websites all over the web being made and dying out constantly, and keeping tabs on even a small number of them would be untidy and unreliable. Some tips would be to run to your favourite search engine, and enter such things as 'roleplay', 'fantasy roleplay', or whatever such things would fit the setting you are aiming for. There are some points which you will want to confirm, though: level of literacy, the sort of people, and the setting the forum/chat room leans towards. Depending on who is in the place, you can get odd results. You obviously don't want a site where people tend to jump in and post inane, badly spelled contributions, or people who come in, contribute, and then suddenly drop out of existence, leaving you hanging. Make note of these things before getting to involved with a community.

When to Get Together

When is another problem. When will you and your fellow roleplayers get together? If you can't arrange a time where you will be able to check for updates on your story, then you will only be able to respond to very small bits, and the story progresses slowly, losing its appeal and, ultimately, the attention of the participants. A solution for this is to roleplay regardless of any missing party (if there are more than two people involved), but this can lead to very large problems in storyline continuity, which in turn can lead up to very messy situations (I.E. Guy, other guy, and girl are roleplaying. Guy suddenly has to leave, so his characters are regarded as not there, and then other guy makes out/whatever with girl. Suddenly the first guy comes back, and his character is just as suddenly there to witness this. You get the picture.)

What Now?

Well, the rest is fairly simple. Take turns posting/e-mailing/writing/instant-messaging your contributions to the roleplay to all other participants, or into the thread on the message bored, depending on how you answered the second 'what'. If all goes well, you will come up with something interesting and, perhaps, actually readable.

Rules to Live By

Well, once you've done this, you've nailed down the basics. All you need to do is nail down the basics. What's left is to go at it. Experiment with post length. There is no real all-around good length or level of descriptiveness. It all depends on how you answered the questions above. So I leave you with a few tips:

• You are not your character: Keep In Character and Out of Character² matters separate. If someone else's character insults yours, he is not insulting you. This, surprisingly, is quite a common problem, though it should not be.
• An extension on the prior tip: Your character does not know everything that you do, necessarily. If you read about someone else's character reaching into a secret compartment, and your character can't reasonably have witnessed or figured this out, then don't have him/her somehow, against all odds, find this compartment.
• Stay in the setting: Don't make a character with rapid-fire lasers and plasma shields for a roleplay set in the medieval ages (unless temporal anomalies are commonplace in that roleplay.)
• Make a flawed/dynamic character: Characters which begin as all-powerful/all-knowing/perfect in some manner make for boring, predictable stories. Give your characters some sort of interesting flaw, or even some common ones. Take your pick, a short attention span, any number of other personality problems, a disorder, a physical disease, or give a disadvantage of any sort.
• Don't make things up on the fly: That is to mean, don't suddenly make your character able to do things that had no previous mention of things. At the very least, don't be obvious about it, or cause plotholes with it. I.E. Do not suddenly give your character the skill to pick complex locks, especially if he earlier was locked away, and made no attempt to pick the lock.
• Have fun: If you're upset about something, and not just because you're the kind of person who gets emotionally affected by writing, but because you're arguing, then someone is doing something wrong.