tutorialbox | Let's DWRP

Let's DWRP

[[ooc:

Welcome to Dreamwidth! This is a journaling site in the vein of Livejournal, which resembles LJ in its heyday in terms of layout and function, but which took a different, more user-friendly path. DW is home to a decently-sized and well-established RP community, most of which migrated here from Livejournal after an LJ update that took away some functions RPers relied on.

There are a handful of DWRP tutorials out there that explain how to use the site and explain the conventions of the DWRP community, but I've always learned best from models and I know I'm not the only one, so I wanted to make a guide that shows examples of what it's talking about as it goes along. Two characters I play will be hosting this guide, showing you what RPing on Dreamwidth actually looks like as they explain the how and why.

DWRPers like to think we've figured out a good way to use DW's functions for RP, but there's always more than one way to do things. In this guide, I'll touch on three different...layers, I guess? of how DWRP works:

1) anatomy of the site and how to use its functions
2) how DWRPers usually use those functions to RP
3) and why.

I hope that explaining the reasons will both make it all make more sense and provide the tools to mess around with the formula if you so desire!

The bulk of the guide won't touch on DWRP culture for the most part, just the mechanics of RPing on Dreamwidth. The exception will be in preferred formatting things, like [actiontags], toplevels, setting up journals/communities, things like that.

With that, let's start things off!]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

-I can get the next part, too.

Comments on Dreamwidth are formatted in HTML markup. They respect line breaks - you don't have to slap down

s or s - but you'll get used to the code for bold or italicized or tiny text pretty quickly.

Check out these pages for more info on what HTML you can use in comments. Don't worry about "cuts" for now, that's a post thing and we'll explain that later.

...gaahh, that didn't work. I was trying to say "you don't have to slap down [br]s or [p]s", but with the pointy brackets for HTML. What's the code to make those regular text, again...?

It was a good attempt. And in the process, you've better demonstrated comment nesting.

Do you see how she replied to me twice, and I could reply to both? Roleplay threads don't usually split like that when they're between two people, but the ability for a comment to branch out into multiple threads is frequently used in other ways.

Now, in the context of roleplay, comments are usually called tags. You won't see that terminology used in reference to out-of-character discussions on Dreamwidth - a "tag" is a comment's worth of roleplay. It's a verb, too, as in "Frey tagged me twice".

"I have three tags waiting for replies."
"I will tag you back after work."

And so on.

A thread is a series of tags that comprises a sequence of events in roleplay. It can also be a verb - in this case, it's not so much about the act of replying to an individual tag as the general act of playing out a scene with someone.

"Our thread is becoming very dramatic."
"Can you link me to the thread?"
"Our characters should thread together when you're less busy."

Of course, terminology isn't vital to the process of roleplaying, but if you intend to play with those established on Dreamwidth, understanding the lingo will no doubt make things easier.

Yeah, DWRPers like their shorthand! It makes things a lot easier.

..."dwerpers"...?

...Well, while I'm talking about terminology, I suppose I should cover a few more.

The person behind the computer screen is usually referred to as the player or mun. "Mun" is an older term, short for "mundane", coined at a time when roleplay was a little more...dramatic? Some people dislike it for that reason, but it's much shorter to type.

The character, meanwhile, is simply referred to as a character most of the time.

Yup! And getting back to Threading 101...

Besides "Reply to this" and "Parent", you can also see a few other links under a comment! There's "Thread from start", "Thread", and "Hide comments" - the higher up in our thread you go, the more comments you can hide. Hide comments is exactly what it sounds like, go ahead and give it a try! Then "Show comments" to get all those missing tags back.

"Thread" gives you a direct link to that comment and any comments nested under it. Go ahead and give that a try, too. That link is pretty much the same as the link that says...uh, "link", up near the timestamp in the comment header. I think the only difference is that one preserves your page style if you changed the way you're viewing the page...but, uh, that's kind of an edge case. Don't worry about it.

And then there's "Thread from start", which is super helpful. "Parent" takes you one comment up the chain, but "Thread from start" takes you all the way to the top of the thread - to the comment made directly under the post! If you want to read a thread from the very beginning, that link is your friend.

Edited 2015-11-06 17:06 (UTC)

Frey just edited her tag - you can see a message along the bottom indicating that. On Dreamwidth, you cannot edit comments after they have been replied to, so once I've tagged her back, she will not be able to correct any more errors.

You can't see it, but when Frey is logged in, she sees these icons in the grey comment header:

The first allows her to edit her comment, and the second allows her to delete it. Once I've replied, the first vanishes. She can still delete her comment entirely if she wishes.

Now, because I made this post, I have a few extra privileges when it comes to the comments under it. When I'm logged in and I look at Frey's comments on this post, this is what I see in the same space:

Naturally, there's no edit button - only she can do that. But in addition to deleting her comment, I also have the option of screening, freezing, or tracking it.

You'll hardly ever see or use these functions in the course of normal roleplay. Screening a comment makes it invisible to everyone but the person who made the comment and the person who made the post; freezing a comment keeps it visible, but removes the option to reply to that comment or anything under it. They're usually used when you need to moderate a discussion or perform administrative functions when running a large roleplay game. Tracking is...well, I'll cover that later.

When I look at this comment after posting it, I'll see the same four icons, plus the edit icon - because nobody has replied to my comment yet, I can still edit it.

Edited (Just like this. I mixed up the position of the edit and delete icons, and edited to correct my mistake.) 2015-11-06 17:20 (UTC)

The whole restriction on editing doesn't apply to posts, though. You can always edit a post, no matter how many people have replied to it.

Indeed.

Now...I'd like to demonstrate a feature of Dreamwidth's comment nesting system. Once a thread reaches a certain length, the comments will collapse into links to save space on the page and prevent them from becoming entirely vertical. At this point, you can either Expand the collapsed comments, or you can click on a comment to access that comment and all below it directly.

...The second is rather difficult to explain, but I'm sure you'll understand once you see it. To that end, we'll need to stretch this conversation out a bit. The exact number of comments needed to make the thread collapse varies based on how many threads are on the page, but...well, it'll be fine.