ROLE PLAY TUTORING BOARD GUIDELINES

ROLE PLAY TUTORING BOARD

Mission Statement & Clarifications

Firstly, I’d like to clarify exactly what a Role Play Tutor is: we are the demi-staff helpers of this site, who respond to asks for help regarding specific portions of biographies, or posts you may feel are awkward or ill-written. Although we have tried sending out Personal Messages to “recruit” tutorees who we feel would benefit from help, this method has been phased out due to the sometimes angry responses by members who don’t seem to understand that everybody needs a little help sometimes.

Role Play Tutors do not help you become a better writer, we help you become a better Role Player. Is there a difference, you may ask? Yes indeed there is. Whereas writers (even those who work together on a novel) control all characters involved, and any surprise events/romances/friendships/deaths of people involved in a chapter of the main characters life, Role Players have to work directly with a partner who believes their character is the protagonist as much as your character is to you. Cooperation, listening skills, and the ability to absorb the “essence” of a post, then incorporate it into your response are all skills you need. You can think of Role Playing as a writing exercise in order to better develop a character with flaws (because the second or third characters in the thread are more able to see them, unlike yourself. You’re the creator-parent! You don’t want to see you egotistical your baby is!) Role Playing has rules of etiquette as well, and a unique flavor to “posting.” You can’t just run ahead of yourself and determine “our characters will become best friends,” in one post; you have to ask your fellow RPer and work out a realistic way to do so.

So anyways, when you come to the tutoring board, don’t feel embarrassed by your writing. We all understand you are magnificent, creative people but (especially new members) we all need to push ourselves past the limits of being good writers and become great. That is the goal of Role Play Tutoring, and the reason why we exist: to help improve your experiences on this site.

Basic Guidelines

I understand this may seem to be as lengthy as the site rules if we’re going by the example of the “Mission Statement & Clarifications,” but rest assured my goal isn’t to bore you to tears or make you do some heavy reading. I will be giving you short, sweet statements to be followed when asking a Role Play Tutor for his or her time and assistance. Think of this as the please, thank you, you’re welcome section of the rules, where you learn how to make a good first impression on us.

Firstly, always type a short introduction. Your name in the CBox may be Kittie, and all of the tutors love you, but if your username is sushil0ver4ever, we have no idea who you are. Give your nickname.

Hi, my name is Cinder and I really need help with ___ today.

Secondly, you need to be clear and direct about what you want help with. Don’t beat around the bush and give a long-winded explanation that you don’t understand, and you’re getting confused, you feel awful, this is really embarrassing, you just want help… with your characters history. Just go ahead and fill out the ___ from the quoted statement above with a statement that best sums up what you’d like help with. This could be intro posts, posting, grammar, length, vocabulary, appearance, history, personality, or anything else you can think up, or combinations of at the most, THREE related topics.

Once you’ve told us who you are and what you need help on, choose an example of your work, if it comes from a thread, and if it is a bio, kindly link us to the biography and point us in the right direction of what exactly you’d like help on. If at any time you decide to be vague and just say everything, expect to receive varying responses from the tutoring team: some of us will try our best to give you advice on a thousand word long biography, and others will simply tell you no way in hell. However, if you outright ask for an OPINION on how a post sounds or a biography is coming along, we will all generally tell you a few quick pointers and how it “feels.”

…this is an example of my work: url to biography/copy-pasted post or segment

Now that you’ve told us everything we need, feel free to say a quick statement like “thanks” or “look forward to working with a tutor!” It’s polite. Oh, and add any other information that may be helpful.

No-No’s

There are a few things I’d like to put an emphasis on: the things people do that we don’t like. They are:

-inserting a particular tutors name into your thread title without their permission. Unless you have PMed or Cbox notified a Tutor, you are not allowed to write the title of your thread My Help Thread [Cinder]. This causes a lot of confusion when we check our tutoring threads and find four unanswered threads with names on them.

-inserting a bunch of links to threads. We just don’t have the time to read them all. Give one example and copy/paste it into your post! No need for a crabbypatty-load of things to look through!

-being vague

-not ending the thread. If you got the help you need, make it clear the thread is over, so we can sort it into a sub-board, OR you can bring up a new issue.

Some Last Things

The title of your tutoring thread should be Your Name, Topic You Need Help With (a simple one word or two word answer to What do you need help with today?)

So title is what? Your Name, Topic
What will a tutor add to the title? [Their Name At The End]
What will you do if you have a prearranged session? Your Name, Topic, [Tutor’s Name]
Will you do the above if you don’t have a prearranged session? No way, no how!

Feel free to PM your Tutor if they don’t respond ONLY AFTER three days, as a reminder. I understand that this is unacceptable for biographies, but on the Tutoring Board, we like PMs. But only after three days. You may see us on the chat-box, or replying to posts and ignoring the session, but unless three days have passed, don’t remind us. We have lives, and threading is a way to keep our OWN RP skills up to par.

Remember to end the thread so we can sort it. Say thank you, that’s all. Or something along those lines. You can grovel and praise us more, that’s okay too ☺

So I help this thread has answered your questions of what the hell Tutors are, why this board is here, what you should hope to get out of it, and how you should hope to get our help. And more. Thank you all for reading and please do follow the formats I’ve laid out, because they make our lives much easier, and your life not-hell. Literally, we will bash your heads in if you pull a vague-no-name-many-links-errorful intro post. And we won’t help you either! Head bash + no help = being rude. Help + new friend = Politenessism.

Thanks <3
Chaos
Rook
Rosetta
Stare
Tattletale
Zoe