BlameThePixel!

Well, I'm trying to bring back the RP forum here. And I think we should have a set format for RPing here, agreed? Heres what I think we should do:

Personaly, past tense is a much better way of RPing. I think all posts should be past tense.

For everything other than speach, italics should be used.

For speach, bold is good.

So, a quick example.

Jeff walked down the street to talk to the old guy.

Blah!

The old guy returned a simple blah.

Then then walked in opposite directions.


What do you think of this format..?

why not normal for everything and bold for speach
less typing involved... or clickg whatever

but there is no point in doing this at all if we dont have any RP's to post in

When you RP, you don't do it in past tense. If you DO do it in past tense, that means you have to start using Past Perfect as well, which makes posts more confusing than they ought to be. Stick with present tense.

I find present tense to look and sound noobish, past tense looks and is much better.

jeff eats pie then gets up and walks away

or

jeff ate pie then stood up before walking away, or whatever. Sounds much better.

No, actually it doesn't. See, there's an intrinsic difference between talking in present and past when doing a narrative. When you talk in present tense, it promotes a first-person view of the character. Talking in the past promotes a third-person view, which doesn't get the reader into the story as much.

Glenn kills the monster.
This tells you that I'm doing it RIGHT NOW.

Glenn killed the monster.
Who knows when this one happened.

Also, talking in past tense has a nasty habit of creating passive voice statements, which are very, VERY bad. As for past perfect problems:

After Glenn killed the monster, he walked away.
This is improper, and will only occur when speaking in the past tense. Now, this is, of course, unavoidable whenever past tense is used, but talking in the past tense means the correction has to be made in EVERY sentence.

After Glenn had killed the monster, he walked away.
That is the correct statement.

Finally, speaking in the past gives no sense of time, as i were. If I speak in present tense, you know that what occurs happens right now. If I speak in the past, who knows when I am talking about.

Glenn killed the monster. He walks out into the sunset.
Past tense makes this twin statement change into this:

After Glenn had killed the monster, he walked out into the sunset.

Notice the first one gives a definate time period. You know that I'm walking right now, and before I walked, I killed the monster. However, the second form in past tense, doesn't give any indication when things happened. It could have happened 1 day ago, it could have happened 1 century ago.

The second sounds and looks better to me... :/

Maybe it's 'cause I've been using past tense in most all RPG forums I'm at...

Anyway, if you ask me,

Glenn killed the monster, then he walked out into the sunset.

Sounds better than

Glenn kills the monster. He walks out to the sunset.