~RPC for Newbies: How to RP without driving everyone crazy~

This is now an Announcement. - Rebecca

Since we're trying to get new members to join RPC, I thought it might be helpful to add an altogether guide on RPC in general. A few guides similar to this have been posted before, but not by me, so there. :P

If anyone notices a serious error in here, please let me know so I can fix it.

Chapter One: Getting Started

Welcome to RPC! If you've just joined, you should know that we're all always happy to welcome newcomers, no matter what your level of experience is! And if you have any questions, the members of this site are always happy to help you.
The first thing you should do after creating your username/password is to post on the "Introduce Yourself" section. This isn't required at all, but posting a thread like: "Hello, I'm new" or something like that is a great way to introduce yourself to the community and start making friends.
Then you can start reading stories, playing games, and RPing as much as you want.

Chapter Two: An Overview of RPing

So, you've never RPed before. Don't worry, it's easy and really fun once you get the hang of it!
Basically, you should think of an RP as a group of people telling a story. Each person has a different character, or maybe several characters, that they make up and who's actions they control throughout the story.
Most RPs on here are in the third person: "Mist walked through the faint morning light of the forest."
But some are in first person: "I walked through the faint morning light of the forest." First person could also be "Name of character: I walked through the faint morning light of the forest."
Usually when you join an RP there is a main plot that the creator of the RP came up with themselves. You must respect their ideas and go along with it, otherwise you're a jerk.
Sometimes you can create your own sideplots, which is when you do something on your own IN ADDITION to playing along with the main plot. And sometimes your sideplot affects the entire RP. Sometimes on the front page of an RP, the creator will post whether they allow sideplots or not. If it's not clearly stated either way on the first post, private message (PM) them to check for sure.
It may seem like a lot to remember, but it all becomes second nature after you try it for a while.

Chapter Three: Joining an RP

When you join an RP, there are three very basic things to do.
1. Read the entire first post.
2. Copy/paste the form to the reply window.
3. Wait to be accepted before Rping.
4. Don't try to join old roleplays. The first couple roleplays are the most active. CHECK THE DATE ON THE LAST POST.
The form is a very simple thing. It is usually required to join so that everyone gets an idea of your character and how to respond to them.
The first post will tell you what the RP is about, what you RP as, where you are, etc. It's very important.
And being accepted into an RP means you post your form and wait for the creator of the RP to post that you've been accepted.
Usually you can jump right in to the current action, as long as the majority of members are involved. For example, say you've joined a warrior RP, and everyone is in camp with the exception of a few cats on patrol or something. In that case you would RP in camp. Usually, just by reading the last page or two of posts should give you a good idea of where your character/s should be.

Chapter Four: The Rules

Often when you join an RP, you'll see something like, 'you know the rules, follow 'em'. But actually, if you're new, you might not.
So basically they are:
No Godmodding
This is often misspelled as 'godmodeling'. It basically means that your character is NOT perfect. Going back to our example of the warrior RP:
"Sagepaw went hunting and caught five mice and a squirrel" This is wrong for a couple of reasons. The first being a shocking lack of detail, but that's because it was an example. The second problem is that Sagepaw is an apprentice, and not that skilled at hunting, so she wouldn't be able to catch that much. Also, one cat would have great difficulty with that large of a catch anyway. It's just not realistic. It would make sense if she caught two mice or just the squirrel, unless the hunting is particularly good that time of year and she's a skilled huntress.
No Mary-sues
This is similar to no godmodding. It means that you are not allowed to make perfect characters. For example, you may want to make a character that is beautiful, charming, popular, skilled, and things like that. And that's fine. But who is ever like that? It would be more realistic if they were beautiful but didn't think of themselves that way, charming but sometimes annoying, popular with some people, and skilled at a few things but terrible at others. Get the idea? You must give your characters some kind of flaw.
No Flaming
This is a rare problem on this site, but still should be mentioned.
Flaming is deliberately insulting a person or group. It's rude anywhere, and will NOT be tolerated. ((*glares*))
No Rudeness Outside of Character
This is pretty self-explanitory. Generally, in an RP, anything you type is considered your character unless you put it in parenthesees or brackets, or put OOC: ((out of character)) before you type.
Sometimes your character is mean, and so is mean to others. This is fine, as long as it's clear it's your character, not you, being that way.

Chapter Five: Creating an RP

"Why won't anyone join my RP?"
That's perhaps the most common question I see from newbies on any site.
Many will tell you that you need to dress up your main page, but really I've always seen it as simpler.
If no one knows you, very few people will join your RP because they don't know what your RP style is like.
Now you're probably like, "RP style? Huh?"
Well, just like everyone writes differently, everyone RPs differently. Some people talk a lot about their characters feelings, some go into great detail about their enviroment. Just remember, there is no real wrong way to RP. But if no one has seen you RP, and you create one right away, more often then not you'll get few, if any, to join.
A good way to fix this is to RP in other people's RPs for a while. After you've racked up a few posts and feel comfortable with most of the more active members, go ahead and make an RP.
If you still don't get a lot of members, don't worry. Maybe your topic just isn't one that's very popular. Or maybe not a lot of people have been on lately. Remember, the more popular RPs like Pond Dust and JointClan weren't their owners first RPs.
There is also two main "levels" of rping that you might see. "Literate/Elite" and "Semi-literate" are ones you'll see often. Literate or Elite is the highest level. The poster is usually required to an extremly detailed post and form, probably about one or two paragraphs. I do not suggest joining a literate rp first, you might be critized by the owner. Try different roleplays, then when you have a taste of how we rp here, go ahead and try one.
Semi-literate are the eaier ones, so to say. It really doesn't have a requirment more than two or so sentences, but feel free to post longer. These rp's probably move and gain pages faster than literate ones, but not very much detail is added.

Chapter Six: Members

Never be afraid to ask for help. We all are friendly and love to help new members get aqquainted with the site.
If you get confused during an RP, just ask about what's confusing you, and you'll get an answer. :]
To make things a little easier, here's a quick list of the most active members here.

Staff
Storm: Founder of Roleplay central. She quit awhile ago, but is still respected as an admin and creater.
Ally: One of the Administrators of the site. Note: Ally is hardly active.
Ginger: An admin also. She was appointed with Ally, and like Ally, is never one anymore.
Rebecca: New admiistrator of RPC! She handles the layouts and stuff, plus all the other cool admin stuff.
Blank: Second oldest member of RPC, she is aso a newly appointed admin! She knows how it was created to present time, and is most active. She aso helped make this site with Stormie.
Vixen The new Mod-in-training. She's a reglar here, and is on at least four hours a day. She changes her name often, she and Branch RP all the time together.

Oldest members/Most active members
Branch: Vixen's bestest friend, Branch has started some of the most amazing roleplays on RPCentral!
Jay: Becca's twin, so to say. xD Roleplays a lot with her, and is one of the more literate roleplayers.
Varjak_paw: I believe she has had the same name since joining, but I'm not sure. She is the creator of Pond Dust, another sucessful roleplay.
Otter: Generally he keeps an Otter in his username or Avatar/signature.
Socky: Known by many names, a good standby is 'Socky'. He usually has a sock monkey in his avatar or siggie. If not, just look for the incredibly random dude. The one WITHOUT an Otter in his name.
Suburbia: That was his name when I joined, he's changed it a lot. It's hard to keep track of him.

Chapter Seven: Colors, italics, etc.

ALRIGHT! To post in color, simply put: <color=anycoloryouwant> type your text, and then to stop the color: </color> Just replace < > with [ ].
You can play with the colors all you want, but remember that bright blue and bright red are reserved for Moderators and Admins like Becca and Blankie.
To post italics just type: <i> and to end it, </i> again replacing < > with [ ]. To post in bold or underlined, just do the same thing as you did for the italics, but replace 'i' with 'b' for bold and 'u' for underlined.

I hope this guide was of some benefit to you new members. Thanks for putting up with my pointless ramblings, hopefully I got my point across. Oh! One more thing...

DO NOT post in chatspeak unless you're just fooling around, and watch your spelling/punctuation! If you aren't sure how to spell something, just put (sp?) after the word and if someone else knows how to spell it, they can let you know. Or you can look it up and edit your post later.

'Kay that's about it I think, if anyone has anything to add just let me know, mmkay? :]