How does anything get done, with the big posts i dont think anything would happen. I do free and that picks up quickly and casual i can get, but advanced? i dont get that at all.

It depends on what you want out of a roleplay. Free is fast and uncomplicated, but the way people write makes my eyes bleed, and I work full time so I can't keep up with the speedposting anyway. Casual is the middle ground, but that essentially means the worst of both worlds for me. Advanced means big, meaningful posts from each of the contributors about once or twice per week, which fits the distribution of free time that employed adults or college students usually have.

Advanced or Advanced tier posting is much more calculated and purposeful. You write there as if you're writing a novel. You're not trying to get through events as fast as possible. You're savoring the events as they come. It wouldn't be unusual to write chapter-length in such an environment.

Things happen in every level of RP here on the Guild. The complexity of their narration is the most basic difference between each level; but make no mistake things are a happening.

How does anything get done...

Gradually.

Very gradually. I had a wonderful group RP that survived the Fall until it eventually faded out (totally my fault but I digress) We had hundreds of pages of beautiful writing and fantastic dynamic characters and a lot of action and events and yet it was only about 3 days of in story time that had passed.

I myself prefer free or casual at most over advanced because as my bio says. I see advanced as writing a story not rping. in advanced the posts are giant and well people are doing multiple paragraphs every post. I could do advanced but it's like writing a whole book with others. I prefer to live my characters life. Have her/him be influenced by the actions of others and her/his own. I feel like in a advanced role play that because of the size of each post you wouldn't have as much influence on the actions of your character and others as there's to much happening at one time and so on so forth blah blah blah. So yeah I prefer free or casually. Just my opinion.

I think you're pretty right about that, azarhiro. I consider it more collaborative story telling than role playing. In advanced, I often write for a number of secondary and NPC-type characters and I don't feel like I'm just 'playing' my main character. Though as for not having an effect, that's not true, it's just that there are going to be a lot more detail into what's going on and often, in my experience, I've teamed up with the other writer and discussed things before hand so that we can collaborate on a fight or something drastic.

That makes sense. I can definitely see why people do advanced RP's and I do think it would be fun. I do like story writing anyways and it seems like it would be quite fun to do this. But for now I think I'll stick to my little free RP life style.....for now that is.

I currently am running a RP which tends mix to between three, Free, Casual and Advanced although It is in Free. It has been successful in a quite long life span.

We personally prefer advanced. In fact, we had our current RP moved to advanced as it fit there better than casual (where it was started). One of the key things about advanced is that while some posts seem to be massive works, the biggest ones are usually collabs. Two, or even more, players writing the same post.

Huh? Isn't the very definition of roleplaying collaborative writing? Besides, advanced has the widest range of any of the sections, from a measly two paragraphs to how ever many you feel like writing. It should be everyone's goal to participate in one advanced RP once in awhile, at least to challenge yourself, else you'll stuck in the same rut forever. Unless you're content to where you are now, which I fine I guess, but free/casual RPs often give me headaches.

Even three hundred words takes you into Advanced territory. Know what three hundred words is? That's a third of a page of a college essay, where they tend to stipulate font size and so forth. 900 words per page. I don't think advanced standards are all that unattainable.

Indeed. I would see it as quite difficult to manage much development or role investment without at least a few hundred words per post; storytelling is -- at its very heart -- roleplaying: the best storytellers are those who manage to fit so perfectly into the shoes of their characters that the words can truly bring them to life. Look at it like a small novel, with each character being written by a separate author over the course of several months or years. Even a mere three hundred words a day can make for a respectably long work in just one year! (And most of my roleplays that last more than a few months tend to quickly add up to around a hundred pages for just my character's perspective. Which really isn't that bad to keep abreast of, when you figure it means reading about 4-5 pages worth of writing a day if it's all spread out over a half dozen or so characters.)

I regularly write several thousand words per post. So when people complain about things like essays I can't help but give them funny looks.

When I write posts, I naturally find the desire to react to absolutely everything the others write, detail my character's emotions and thoughts about what is happening in addition to any uncontrollable little movements in his or her body in reaction to the things around before finally going into depth about what my own character does afterwards, with any whims and/or dramatic sense of mine perhaps dragging things out towards the end. This automatically somehow makes it so that I end up writing at a level that makes it so I'd really be acceptable in both Casual and Advanced. I've found that, oddly enough, there isn't much difference between my posts in the two sections. Still, my posts get naturally longer when I have to react to more stuff, so by the laws of cause and consequence my posts in Advanced can get longer. I don't feel that I am properly in character if I don't write at least two to three paragraphs. I honestly don't understand how one-liners work. I also could never possibly post every day, my life simply wouldn't accept it. Haha.

I love the idea of Advanced, but I have yet to find an RP in that section I've wanted to join in with, as I'm quite fussy, and pressed for time. Casual is where all of my RP's and the others I've dipped into and out of have been. The ones I run could - by agreement of all of the players - easily be Advanced due to the detail of their background and the average length and depth of posts. I've only glanced over free in the past, and I wouldn't want to participate in anything in there - the lack of the same depth and complexity of the RP's puts me off, and I couldn't keep up with the speed-posting either.

Having not been a member of the Guild for too long, I cannot entirely say that I know the lines between each genre of detail well enough in the context of the site. I do, however, readily recognize that each subsection has its merits, but that I still - to this day and here - prefer extremely high Casual to Advanced; there's something about having the time, ability and reaching goal of giving a character purpose, opinion plot and a general "life". It is a whole element more the time factor, wherein it is unlikely I will miss any posts, particularly given that I live my life at night rather than the day. That all said, Advanced certainly does move slower, simply by the virtue that each post and concept is so in depth, but at the same time it feels much more involving and rewarding (or so I feel) to the players and characters. I truly hate making characters I won't be able to use or fully express and evolve; most, those who don't see light of day, are often packaged and saved for later. Some I enjoy so much that I keep working on them and advancing their story and personality even without an actual roleplay so as to better understand them as individuals. There also exists a sense of admiration and learning, in that I actually learned more about writing and the English language (as well as other ones) from roleplaying than I actually did through any formal education. Reading, as well as writing, truly are the best ways to make one's self a better writer. Not to say Casual or Free players are worse writers or roleplayers; again, many are extremely creative and have the capacity for it, they just often have different reasons or tastes. Overall though, I suppose I should digress to the topic at hand. Yes, Advanced and high Casual move much slower, but there's also a lot more going on per individual post. All come with their benefits and draw backs.

Well, if you're a fan of reading and novels, along with enjoying writing in general, Advanced would totally be up your alley. Of course, we don't write novels and yes, it does take a bit of time to move along but with a good GM and a decently-paced group, it moves at a respectable pace and is worth it, in my opinion. Even then, it's hard to keep up sometimes with 3-day deadlines and whatnot, though luckily most Advanced RPs have a one-post-per-week deadline.

I love the idea of Advanced, but I have yet to find an RP in that section I've wanted to join in with, as I'm quite fussy, and pressed for time. Casual is where all of my RP's and the others I've dipped into and out of have been. The ones I run could - by agreement of all of the players - easily be Advanced due to the detail of their background and the average length and depth of posts. I've only glanced over free in the past, and I wouldn't want to participate in anything in there - the lack of the same depth and complexity of the RP's puts me off, and I couldn't keep up with the speed-posting either.

free is good, the only problem is its all recycled with animes and zombies. then when something new if up or a new GM steps up no one goes for it.