After the creator of Role Pages sent me e-mail, I decided to join up and see what happened at his role-playing site.
I don’t role play. My brother used to try and bribe me into doing Dungeons & Dragons (“C’mon, Mel, I’ll give you all 18’s”–so I’d be the most strong and powerful character around, you see). I also wandered into a Internet role-play once and ended up virtually locked in a bathroom with a guy, which made me shut down my entire computer. But that was many moons ago, so I decided to try again, this time as Leila Fan, my 27 y.o. alter ego, the trash-talking Montreal eco-activist werewolf who stars in my novel, Wolf Ice.
I thought the RolePages site was beautiful, full of lovely women, striking men, and other creatures’ profiles. As I set up my profile. I had to wonder if most people rp (look, I’m using the lingo) in order to hook up, since the first question was “Relationship status” and the second was “Romantic interests.” Since my real-life baby was in a mediocre mood, I answered in as few words as possible, although for the latter, I waxed eloquent, i.e. “intelligence, passion, generosity, creativity, humour and animal chemistry.” I realized that I left out stuff like gender and age, but figured that’s what rp-ing was all about, baby.
Immediately, I got messaged by someone who was “touched” by my profile and wanted to send me her pictures. Soon after, another woman interested in a “good friendship” also sent me her e-mail address, I assume with similar intentions. One guy said hi and offered to help me out, so I messaged him back.
I joined the Werewolf “world,” along with 184 other werewolves, but it was mostly one guy who obviously wanted to be the alpha saying, “We need to name the group!…No, not that!” I wandered over to the vampires, but they are an exclusive club for vamps only.
So far, I like the creativity of choosing your profile picture and the idea of creating a whole new self (the slogan is, “Where anyone is possible”). I’m sure this place is a rockin’ good time, if I just knew what I was doing. If anyone wants to point this newbie in the right direction, just shout out. Thanks!
I want to thank you Melissa, for joining the site and giving it a good look around before you wrote this review. I’m sorry that you didn’t have the best user experience! There really is a lot of beautiful collaborative work being created in multiple threads on RolePages but because we are an open artistic community, there are also places where less impressive things are going on. It’s from this melting pot of chaos that we hope to create art at all levels of skill and interest.
You mention that you joined the werewolf world. The Worlds are an interesting feature of RolePages in that they are kind of like tiny self contained versions of the site itself. Each world has a public wall, and a forum where mini adventures take place. While the werewolf world does tend to attract younger less skilled writers there are some fairly good interactive stories if you dig down into the forum. This is one that’s been going for a while now: http://www.rolepages.com/group/werewolves/forum/topics/werewolf-transformation
You can also see a much more sophisticated world here: http://www.rolepages.com/group/thedarkbloodkingdom
We also have a few authors who have used worlds to create miniature role playing sites based around their books: http://www.rolepages.com/group/legon
As I said earlier the site is open so we allow people to pretty much pursue whatever type of story they want using the various features. However the entire web of stories is held together with a central plot which, which is pre-planned and coordinated by a number of literary directors. This is the glue that holds the disparate elements of the RolePages world together, and it is recorded in a living document which you can find here: http://www.rolepages.com/profiles/blogs/the-story-so-far
One other thing I want to point you towards, and this was mentioned in an email I sent you, is the chat room. That is like the center stage for the entire story site. In there you have a living written story running day and night, created by multiple characters written by multiple authors, all interrelated and interconnected. I suggest visiting around 8 or 9 pm Eastern, because that’s when the stories get really juicy. We also have live guided story events every Tuesday at 8pm Eastern: http://www.rolepages.com/chat
Writing is a lonely pursuit, but on RolePages it is so interactive and community oriented that creating a story often ends up feeling like a game. That is the essence of what we do.
It has been lovely meeting you and introducing you to the RolePages community. I hope that you and Leila come back and visit us sometime.
Thank you, Joseph, for this excellent explanation! I understand so much better now. I really love the idea of people writing and creating a world together and I hope I can join in sometime.
P.S. No disrespect to the werewolf world! I wasn’t objecting to the writing skill so much as the alpha tone. To be perfectly honest, I’m probably too used to being an alpha myself. 🙂
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