JOKER / Akira Kurusu (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
infiltrationtools) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
abatto2019-01-01 03:58 am
infiltrationtools) wrote in abatto2019-01-01 03:58 am
Dreamwidth for Murdertownies (WIP)
So you want to roleplay on Dreamwidth. Cool! You'll find that the mechanics are somewhat different from playing on tumblr or discord, but they lend themselves very well to roleplay. Here's a guide written by your friend Gira. Wowee.
Part 1: Getting Started
So on Dreamwidth, you have to make accounts to do things. These are called "journals". All of your roleplaying is done here, in the Abatto community ("comm"), where everyone's posts are compiled together chronologically. Think of the Abatto comm like your dashboard, except you don't have to go through and follow everyone.
So how do you make a journal? Go to the main homepage (dreamwidth.org), and hit 'Create Free Account' on the red part that says Join Dreamwidth. Let's walk through all the steps together, with relevant information.
Account Name: Basically like your url. For example, Akira here would have the url/account name 'infiltrationtools'. You can choose to make a separate account for every single muse of yours, or make one multimuse for all of your muses. Keep in mind that you are only allowed to upload fifteen icons per account. This means, if you wanted to make an account for one character, you'd get fifteen icon slots and can integrate those icons seamlessly into your RP. If you wanted to make a multimuse for fifteen characters, you could give each of them an icon, and choose that singular icon when you RP with them. There are ways to get more than 15 icons, but they all involve either A. paying money, or B. using a browser extension that makes your posts kind of ugly. If there is interest in this, I'll make another section to explain it.
Email: You can have unlimited Dreamwidth accounts that go to the same email, but you need to use one specific trick, which I'll explain. Let's say your email is sample@gmail.com. For your character Alice's journal, you would make the email sample+alice@gmail.com. For your character Bob's journal, you would make the email sample+bob@gmail.com. All of that account's emails will go to sample@gmail.com, but they count as two separate emails for registration. You can even set up Gmail filters to give your emails little tags by character, but that's a Gmail tutorial, not a DW one.
Oh, speaking of emails, whatever email you use for your Dreamwidth account: YOU WILL CHECK THIS EMAIL CONSTANTLY. Email is the way that we get informed of new replies to our roleplay. So make sure you have an email that's NOT filled with spam, or a way you can set all of your Dreamwidth emails as "important" and see them at the top of your inbox. If you don't, make a new Gmail account and use it only for DWRP. Also, if you use Gmail, go into your settings (the little gear icon) and scroll down to Conversation View, and turn it off. Otherwise you will lose lots of replies in much the same way that Tumblr eats notes; you'll just never see them.
Password: You can literally make the password for every Dreamwidth account you own the same password. You're not storing any personal information on your DW journals — UNLESS you plan to pay for more icons, in which case, make your password for that account more secure.
Birthdate: Put in whatever month and date you want, but make the year 1991, so that Dreamwidth will acknowledge your journal as a legal adult's.
Dreamwidth Announcements: Leave this message checked on the first journal you ever create, and then uncheck it for every journal afterwards, or else you'll get forty copies of the same email in your inbox.
ToS/PP: Check yes to this.
Hit the continue button.
The stuff on this page is all optional, but you should at least put in the character's name. If you want to fill in the interests, you can, but keep in mind that these features are for people who might want to find your journal based on your listed interests, so someone might approach you based on your muse's interest in Chinese flowering plants or whatever.
Hit the continue button.
Don't upgrade to a paid account.
And you're done!
Now onto icons.
You can get to your icons page by clicking on the red swirly thing that looks like a lowercase d, in the upper corner of most pages by your username. Icons can be uploaded on the red sidebar by file or URL, and then three descriptors. Usually what I do is use "keywords" for whatever I want the icon to be called, and then "comment" for credit, which usually ends up being my own journal. See Akira's icons for an example.
Now, the max size for icons is 100 by 100 px. If you have no plans to do any DWRP outside of Abatto, make the icons whatever size you want within these parameters — but if you do want to do other RP, make sure they are exactly 100 by 100. You can add borders and things if you want, but they look kind of silly on Dreamwidth's interface (and most non-Abatto DWRPers will kinda judge you), so that's up to you.
Again, for a free account you get up t fifteen. For three bucks a month you get up to 100. I wouldn't recommend spending any money on Dreamwidth unless you want to play your character at a more 'proper' Dreamwidth roleplay game; this account for Akira is in one such game, so I pay the three bucks a month for him, but I don't pay for any of my other dozens of journals. If you're really committed to your 6000 icons, then look on the Internet for a Chrome extension called DW Tools, which allows you to select icons from an imgur album and embed them into your posts. This is fine for Abatto, but most non-Abatto DWRPers think it looks kind of tacky, so if you want to explore the wider world of DWRP either stick to fifteen or fork up the three bucks.
Part 2: The Roleplaying Part
Okay, so now how do we start RPing in the Abatto comm? There's several ways!
The first is memes. Similar to memes on tumblr, Dreamwidth memes are entries that provide a list of prompts for roleplayers to start threads on. Here is one example of a meme, here is another, and here's a third. Notice how on the first meme there's only one prompt, on the second meme there's a few prompts about the same topic, and on the third meme there's lots of prompts about lots of topics. Memes can run the gamut! Usually mods are the ones who post memes, and everyone else writes on them. (There are options for making your own posts, which I'll talk about later on.)
Now, scroll down on the first meme I linked. See how it's a sea of top-level comments (comments that reply directly to the entry and nothing else)? This is what happens when you play on public meme comms. No one wants to tag out, aka reply to other people. But on the second and third memes, they are a closer knit meme community because they all play in the game Empatheias, therefore they have incentive to tag out and play with each other. You can see examples of many kinds of threads in the second and third memes.
On a top-level you want to read more about, click "expand". You can then see all of the threads that sprung out of that top-level. This is how Dreamwidth organizes its roleplay; all threads can be viewed on the same page, in chronological order. It's much easier than hunting through your old replies and hoping that Tumblr doesn't, say, eat the thread. Usually, threads are one-on-one; a person posts a toplevel, another person replies to their toplevel, and the first person replies to that reply. This enables many conversations to happen in one event, such as — say — a party, while being distinct from one another.
Now, formatting.
Sometimes people write normally, as one would see in a book, but most of the time roleplayers like to use a certain kind of shorthand. It involves putting dialogue as normal text, and narration in [square brackets] and in a smaller font, using <.small.>[text]<./small.> but without the periods. That results in something like this:
---
Wow, this curry is really good!
[Akira continues to eat curry, and completely ignore everything else around him.]
---
See? Aesthetic.
Okay, now onto the second kind of roleplay, which is private threads. There are a couple of kinds here too. Consider this post versus this one. They were both started by me. The first one is in Empatheias, which has multiple starter scenarios. Sometimes these scenarios are open, sometimes they are closed to certain other characters. On closed starters, only the person they're meant for can reply, but on open ones anybody can reply. In the comments are all the various threads started from this post. Now, in the second post, it's a closed post — one thread between two people, me and Ogo.
These kinds of threads are the ones that anyone can post on the Abatto comm. Don't worry about taking up the space from the info posts; all of them are linked on the sticky at the top, so they can never be lost. Feel free to drown them all out!
When looking at the posts, you may notice that they are indented across the page, and after a while hitting "expand" on everything will just make things harder to read. When that happens, go to the grey part (near the icon) of the last comment you can read properly, and click the part that says "(link)". This will take you to that comment as if it were a top-level, so you can keep reading. Just keep pressing (link) until you finish the thread. And of course, to reply to a comment, you would hit "Reply to this comment", but make sure you're replying to the right thing! Don't reply to the entry by accident and create a new top-level.
Part 3: Miscellaneous
NIGHT MODE / CHANGING THE APPEARANCE OF DREAMWIDTH
Does the light hurt your eyes? No problem. Here are the steps to get night mode.
Go to the top of any page that's not a journal (aka, one where everything is white and you see the full Dreamwidth logo and dropdown menu at the top). Hover or click on "Organize", then "Manage Account".
On the next page, click the Display tab.
Scroll to the bottom of the page.
Click on the bubble next to "Gradation Horizontal".
Hit Save.
Now you're in dark mode! You do need to follow these steps for every account you have, though, and it goes back to default if you're logged out. You can use Stylish or another extension to have night mode enabled no matter what account you used.
Part 1: Getting Started
So on Dreamwidth, you have to make accounts to do things. These are called "journals". All of your roleplaying is done here, in the Abatto community ("comm"), where everyone's posts are compiled together chronologically. Think of the Abatto comm like your dashboard, except you don't have to go through and follow everyone.
So how do you make a journal? Go to the main homepage (dreamwidth.org), and hit 'Create Free Account' on the red part that says Join Dreamwidth. Let's walk through all the steps together, with relevant information.
Account Name: Basically like your url. For example, Akira here would have the url/account name 'infiltrationtools'. You can choose to make a separate account for every single muse of yours, or make one multimuse for all of your muses. Keep in mind that you are only allowed to upload fifteen icons per account. This means, if you wanted to make an account for one character, you'd get fifteen icon slots and can integrate those icons seamlessly into your RP. If you wanted to make a multimuse for fifteen characters, you could give each of them an icon, and choose that singular icon when you RP with them. There are ways to get more than 15 icons, but they all involve either A. paying money, or B. using a browser extension that makes your posts kind of ugly. If there is interest in this, I'll make another section to explain it.
Email: You can have unlimited Dreamwidth accounts that go to the same email, but you need to use one specific trick, which I'll explain. Let's say your email is sample@gmail.com. For your character Alice's journal, you would make the email sample+alice@gmail.com. For your character Bob's journal, you would make the email sample+bob@gmail.com. All of that account's emails will go to sample@gmail.com, but they count as two separate emails for registration. You can even set up Gmail filters to give your emails little tags by character, but that's a Gmail tutorial, not a DW one.
Oh, speaking of emails, whatever email you use for your Dreamwidth account: YOU WILL CHECK THIS EMAIL CONSTANTLY. Email is the way that we get informed of new replies to our roleplay. So make sure you have an email that's NOT filled with spam, or a way you can set all of your Dreamwidth emails as "important" and see them at the top of your inbox. If you don't, make a new Gmail account and use it only for DWRP. Also, if you use Gmail, go into your settings (the little gear icon) and scroll down to Conversation View, and turn it off. Otherwise you will lose lots of replies in much the same way that Tumblr eats notes; you'll just never see them.
Password: You can literally make the password for every Dreamwidth account you own the same password. You're not storing any personal information on your DW journals — UNLESS you plan to pay for more icons, in which case, make your password for that account more secure.
Birthdate: Put in whatever month and date you want, but make the year 1991, so that Dreamwidth will acknowledge your journal as a legal adult's.
Dreamwidth Announcements: Leave this message checked on the first journal you ever create, and then uncheck it for every journal afterwards, or else you'll get forty copies of the same email in your inbox.
ToS/PP: Check yes to this.
Hit the continue button.
The stuff on this page is all optional, but you should at least put in the character's name. If you want to fill in the interests, you can, but keep in mind that these features are for people who might want to find your journal based on your listed interests, so someone might approach you based on your muse's interest in Chinese flowering plants or whatever.
Hit the continue button.
Don't upgrade to a paid account.
And you're done!
Now onto icons.
You can get to your icons page by clicking on the red swirly thing that looks like a lowercase d, in the upper corner of most pages by your username. Icons can be uploaded on the red sidebar by file or URL, and then three descriptors. Usually what I do is use "keywords" for whatever I want the icon to be called, and then "comment" for credit, which usually ends up being my own journal. See Akira's icons for an example.
Now, the max size for icons is 100 by 100 px. If you have no plans to do any DWRP outside of Abatto, make the icons whatever size you want within these parameters — but if you do want to do other RP, make sure they are exactly 100 by 100. You can add borders and things if you want, but they look kind of silly on Dreamwidth's interface (and most non-Abatto DWRPers will kinda judge you), so that's up to you.
Again, for a free account you get up t fifteen. For three bucks a month you get up to 100. I wouldn't recommend spending any money on Dreamwidth unless you want to play your character at a more 'proper' Dreamwidth roleplay game; this account for Akira is in one such game, so I pay the three bucks a month for him, but I don't pay for any of my other dozens of journals. If you're really committed to your 6000 icons, then look on the Internet for a Chrome extension called DW Tools, which allows you to select icons from an imgur album and embed them into your posts. This is fine for Abatto, but most non-Abatto DWRPers think it looks kind of tacky, so if you want to explore the wider world of DWRP either stick to fifteen or fork up the three bucks.
Part 2: The Roleplaying Part
Okay, so now how do we start RPing in the Abatto comm? There's several ways!
The first is memes. Similar to memes on tumblr, Dreamwidth memes are entries that provide a list of prompts for roleplayers to start threads on. Here is one example of a meme, here is another, and here's a third. Notice how on the first meme there's only one prompt, on the second meme there's a few prompts about the same topic, and on the third meme there's lots of prompts about lots of topics. Memes can run the gamut! Usually mods are the ones who post memes, and everyone else writes on them. (There are options for making your own posts, which I'll talk about later on.)
Now, scroll down on the first meme I linked. See how it's a sea of top-level comments (comments that reply directly to the entry and nothing else)? This is what happens when you play on public meme comms. No one wants to tag out, aka reply to other people. But on the second and third memes, they are a closer knit meme community because they all play in the game Empatheias, therefore they have incentive to tag out and play with each other. You can see examples of many kinds of threads in the second and third memes.
On a top-level you want to read more about, click "expand". You can then see all of the threads that sprung out of that top-level. This is how Dreamwidth organizes its roleplay; all threads can be viewed on the same page, in chronological order. It's much easier than hunting through your old replies and hoping that Tumblr doesn't, say, eat the thread. Usually, threads are one-on-one; a person posts a toplevel, another person replies to their toplevel, and the first person replies to that reply. This enables many conversations to happen in one event, such as — say — a party, while being distinct from one another.
Now, formatting.
Sometimes people write normally, as one would see in a book, but most of the time roleplayers like to use a certain kind of shorthand. It involves putting dialogue as normal text, and narration in [square brackets] and in a smaller font, using <.small.>[text]<./small.> but without the periods. That results in something like this:
---
Wow, this curry is really good!
[Akira continues to eat curry, and completely ignore everything else around him.]
---
See? Aesthetic.
Okay, now onto the second kind of roleplay, which is private threads. There are a couple of kinds here too. Consider this post versus this one. They were both started by me. The first one is in Empatheias, which has multiple starter scenarios. Sometimes these scenarios are open, sometimes they are closed to certain other characters. On closed starters, only the person they're meant for can reply, but on open ones anybody can reply. In the comments are all the various threads started from this post. Now, in the second post, it's a closed post — one thread between two people, me and Ogo.
These kinds of threads are the ones that anyone can post on the Abatto comm. Don't worry about taking up the space from the info posts; all of them are linked on the sticky at the top, so they can never be lost. Feel free to drown them all out!
When looking at the posts, you may notice that they are indented across the page, and after a while hitting "expand" on everything will just make things harder to read. When that happens, go to the grey part (near the icon) of the last comment you can read properly, and click the part that says "(link)". This will take you to that comment as if it were a top-level, so you can keep reading. Just keep pressing (link) until you finish the thread. And of course, to reply to a comment, you would hit "Reply to this comment", but make sure you're replying to the right thing! Don't reply to the entry by accident and create a new top-level.
Part 3: Miscellaneous
NIGHT MODE / CHANGING THE APPEARANCE OF DREAMWIDTH
Does the light hurt your eyes? No problem. Here are the steps to get night mode.
Go to the top of any page that's not a journal (aka, one where everything is white and you see the full Dreamwidth logo and dropdown menu at the top). Hover or click on "Organize", then "Manage Account".
On the next page, click the Display tab.
Scroll to the bottom of the page.
Click on the bubble next to "Gradation Horizontal".
Hit Save.
Now you're in dark mode! You do need to follow these steps for every account you have, though, and it goes back to default if you're logged out. You can use Stylish or another extension to have night mode enabled no matter what account you used.