(( OOC: About the Roleplay forums and Discord channels ))

[Elaini]

There are two ways to roleplay in E.l.m. Branches: play-by-post style on this main forum or the chat(s) on our Discord server. Click on the link to see how to enter the server and change your nickname. Like in the forums you may also create threads in Discord and it's required for the roleplay chat to simultaneously hold all the games and settings together.

Things to remember in heavy roleplay overall:

1. Important: your character ≠ you. You may use your real life abilities to make a character feel more credible, of course, but that aside you may play a protagonist or an antagonist like an actor. The race, gender or orientation doesn't have to match yourself because the characters live their very own lives inside your imagination of an author. Making this distinction is also good for mental health.
   
2. Related to the first point: avoid metagaming, meaning using all of your own knowledge about the game's details in the actual roleplay. Your character may not always know the names of the other characters in chat just because you can read them. Your character may not always understand the currently spoken language or hear things whispered in another room. The other characters cannot always read your mind based on your descriptions unless you're giving visible hints with body language.
   
3. Each world or universe has its own physical and spiritual laws, as well as its own societal and cultural way of doing things, so "When in Rome…"
   
4. Characters do have a memory of their own, so feel free to play a continuous, long term storyline.
   
5. Enjoy the immersion of the setting, atmosphere and of course the unfolding story itself.
   

Common formatting in a roleplay chat:

• Text in asterisks or tildes means that you're narrating or describing something, e.g. "*He wandered around his house while being miles away, the things she told him racing in his mind.* ~Carefully cleans the dry leaves off the strange, brittle book.~" However, in Discord asterisks are reserved for bold or italic text and you may use the "/me" command for the same purpose instead.
  
• A letter or few in square brackets means that you're speaking in a certain language but what follows is a translation, e.g. for Sindarin: "[s] The shipment of seaweed didn't arrive this morning. I wonder what happened."
  
• Text in various brackets means that you're asking or commenting out of character during roleplay, e.g. "(( Does anyone know about this? Get well soon! ))"

You don't necessarily have to play as an Elf or Fairy, but since the group is about them it's recommended. You may also save roleplay logs from Discord here.

In the new threads:

• Mark in the title whether the thread is a roleplay in progress or a log as well as its universe, e.g.:
  
  • [RP, Middle-earth] Lost at the Mountains
    
  • [Log, Forgotten Realms] Lost within the Mountains

Use this template (or similar) to describe an active roleplay in the first post:

• Type: Lore Friendly / Crossover / Alternative / Original
  
• Universe(s): 
  
• Location(s): 
  
• Era: 
  
• Anything else you feel worth mentioning or updating, such as synopsis, races, characters, art and links involved.

You may use the Character Profiles forum as a reference both in here and on Discord.

Use the Out of Character forum for looking for roleplayers, planning, commenting etc.