An Easy Guide to Liquid Roleplay

What is liquid roleplay?
In roleplay forum communities, there are a few different styles of roleplay used depending on the wants and needs of each site. The two most common forms are Static and Liquid roleplay, which can be described as such:

Static Roleplay: A type of roleplay where time is not flexible. There will typically be a few pre-made areas that your characters can explore and jump between, but they cannot be in two areas at once as all roleplay is assumed to be happening on a linear timeline between all members. This is good for small, organized groups, but can be very slow-moving and restricting when it comes to bigger plots.

Liquid Roleplay: A more fluid type of roleplay where users write and create their own threads in area boards, where they can set up the time, weather, specific location, and scene/plot of the thread. You can have the same character participating in more than one thread at any given time, as it’s not assumed that all threads are happening at the exact same time in-game. When a scene is done and you’re ready to close the thread and move on to the next, you can “fade out” of the thread and only then is the thread’s contents considered to have happened in the timeline. While one thread might be happening in early winter, another might still be going on in late fall, for example. It is a much more flexible form of story telling, and allows the site members to write the story at their own pace without getting slowed down by outside factors! The downside to this is that it can be confusing to learn at first, but with a little bit of time and our help anyone can catch on.

How do seasons and timelines work at TLRP?
The only restriction Lawa Ridge has when setting up a thread and choosing what time it is taking place, is that you must stay within the current season of the roleplay. That means that if it says “Winter” in the Roleplay Info section on the sidebar menu, that all threads being created must take place during the current winter. It can be early winter, late winter, or whatever you want, but you cannot jump back or forward a season (or year). When the season changes on the sidebar, all currently open threads can stay the same season until they’re finished, but newly created ones must be up-to-date.

Creating and naming threads
When creating a thread, what you put in the title and topic description determines who you want to participate, what’s going to happen, and what the setting is like. The title itself can be anything you want; a quote, lyric, or another little phrase to summarize what is going on in the thread.

In some roleplays, you can put a "tag" in front of the title that says open, private, etc. to restrict who can join your thread, but on this site ALL threads are open to ALL characters at ALL times, so no need to tag anything!

Under the place where you write the title of your thread, you’ll find there is a place to insert a description. Here is where you can list anything else you’d like to share about the thread, such as time of day, weather, and maybe some further info about the mood/setting of the thread you’re creating. You can further elaborate in a small OOC description at the beginning of the first post, but this typically isn’t necessary and you can jump straight into rp in the body of your post.

Once you and your roleplay partners agree that a thread's events are complete, please contact an Admin or Mod via PM, the chatbox, or Discord. The thread will be locked and archived into the board at the bottom of the homepage, so no new posts are made but you can look back and read your threads whenever you want!