Hii, as someone who isn’t familiar with Tumblr rp, how would I get started? I’m more used to Instagram rp, but lately there’s hardly been any activity on there. Sorry if this is a weird question btw
HELLO THERE ! no worries, it’s not a weird question and i’d be glad to help. to be honest i’m not sure how different tumblr rp is from instagram rp ( or any other rp for this matter, since all i ever did was tumblr ) so this’ll probably end up being a little more extensive than it needs to be. this is by no means a definite guide, though, and there are probably a million different ways how one could get started but this is what has worked for me. anyway, without further ado, here’s my guide on how to get started with tumblr rp.
the first step, of course, is deciding which character you wanna roleplay as. would you rather play a canon character ( which can be as canonically accurate or divergent as you want them to be ) or an original character? it’s also okay if you want to write multiple characters because you could either do that by making multiple single muse blogs or just compile them all onto one multimuse blog. the possibilities here are endless but of course the character(s) you write should be your main focus. just do whatever suits you best.
also, if you want to use icons ― which you totally don’t need to but i’m gonna add a section here anyway ― you should start looking for some before starting your blog. of course, you can also make them yourself either by using pre-existing base icons ( personally, i use hollow-art and insanejournal a lot of the time ) or by taking various screencaps and cropping them yourself. they can be as simple or fancy as you like and sizes also vary a lot depending on the person / fandom / whatever tumblr trend is in right now, but generally speaking, you can never go wrong with the 100x100 px basic ones. honestly, the whole aesthetic-y aspect of your blog is up to your personal preference anyway.
another thing that’s worth thinking about before setting up your blog is the tagging system. you don’t have to use it, but it’s usually easier to structure everything if you do decide to use tags. you can use them to tag things like images, memes, promos, headcanons, writing, whatever. again, it’s up to you and what you want to do.
― STEP TWO: SETTING YOUR BLOG UP
by far the most tedious step, these are the things that should probably be done before the actual fun of rping starts.
choose your url. the easiest thing to do here is pick a word or a phrase or something that relates to the character you wanna rp as. ( maybe like a personality trait or nickname for example. ) however, it shouldn’t be too long or overly complicated. now, sometimes you’ll run into the problem that the best urls are unavailable. so one thing to do is get creative with the spelling by adding in certain letters or switch some characters for others. ( one popular example of this is switching out vowels with either c or x. )
make your blog. alright, now that you’ve chosen your url the next step is to actually make the blog. there are two ways you can go about this depending on whether or not you wanna make it your main blog or a sideblog. there are advantages and disadvantages to both of these options, but if it’s your first time on tumblr rp, making it your main blog is probably the easier way to gain interactions and mutuals because there’s no need to redirect people to your sideblog.
edit the appearance. if you go into the settings, you can edit your blog’s dash appearance however you like by picking a title, description, avatar, colors, and a header image. again, make it as fancy or basic as you like. and if you don’t want to use some of these things that’s fine as well. for your first time, i wouldn’t fret too much about the general look of the blog in general.
set up your theme ― optional. after setting up your blog, there are two different options for you to choose from. either you can make a ‘dash only’ blog ( by going to blog settings → visibility → hide ‘blogname.tumblr.com’ and checking the mark; this means people will only be able to view your blog within the dash ) or decide to use a theme. of course you can simply use the tumblr standard theme but for roleplaying purposes it tends to be easier to use more roleplay oriented themes or at least ones that allow you to have more pages which you can use as your rules or about pages for example. you could probably just search for rp themes and copy and paste the code of something you like into the theme editor of your own blog and get creative with it.
make your mobile pages ― optional. because it’s difficult to access themes while on mobile, a lot of people tend to make more or less mobile friendly pages nowadays which they link in the pinned post at the top of their blogs. two of the most popular sites i’ve seen used are carrd and google docs. while docs tend to be less mobile friendly than carrds, they are probably easier to set up and there are a lot of pre-made templates around which you can use. generally, it’s always better if you at least have a basic overview of your rules and character information ( especially if you write an original or canon divergent character ) in some way, shape or form. if you want to keep it even more simple, though, you can easily just make a post with your rules and / or information and link them to your pinned post. ( by the way, to make a pinned post, you need to go to the three dots in the upper right corner of a post and click pin. )
make a pinned post ― optional. since we’re on that topic already, i’m gonna make a seperate section for this as well. your pinned post should include the character(s) you’re writing as well as the fandom(s) they are from. additionally it’s good to add in some basic information about yourself ( like name / alias, age, pronouns and potentially the timezone you reside in ) and potentially some links. that could be the aforementioned rules and about pages or maybe even links to something like your wishlist tag or pinterest if you have a board for the character that you want to show off.
― STEP THREE: GET STARTED
now that all of that stuff is out of the way, you can finally start with the good part. the easiest way to gain traction is by following other people and interacting with their posts. if you’re writing a character from a specific fandom your best bet is to search the fandom promo tag and just follow some people in that fandom. don’t be discouraged if they don’t immediately follow you back, though. sometimes it’s difficult to get followers as a completely new blog because in my experience people tend to take a look at the writing of a person to see if they want to follow you back. you just have to be a bit patient because starting completely new can be a bit tedious at first, since it does take some time to gain traction, but you’ll eventually get there.
another thing you can do to attract people is by putting out a promo. an important thing to note here is that you won’t immediately show up in the search results right after making your blog. honestly, it’s a stupid rule in my opinion but sometimes it can take a few days and a little bit of activity on your blog ( which you can get by reblogging, liking, or making your own posts ) before you start showing up and even then some of your posts just ... don’t. tumblr can be pretty frustrating at times. anyway, you can test if you show up in the search results yet ( by making a post, tagging it in some way, search that specific tag and sort by latest to see if you see your post ) and if you do it’s probably time to start promoting your blog. there are a lot of free promo templates you can use or ( if you have the money ) you can pay commission blogs to make a promo graphic for you. you can even just make a text post if you don’t have the time or resources to get a graphic. just be sure to use the right tags. important here is the fact that you cannot simply tag a post as ‘promo’ as it won’t show up in search results. instead, use things like ‘indie rp’, ‘rp promo’ or ‘fandom promo’.
now to get started with the whole writing thing you can reblog memes so that other people can send something in for you to reply to or make a starter call which your followers can like if they want you to make a starter specifically for them. you can also just message people and see if they want to plot with you. or post some random open starters everyone can reply to. ( again, those can be tagged accordingly to gain people’s attention. )
this may all seem a bit overwhelming at first but honestly the most important step is to just have fun. roleplaying is a hobby and it should be treated as such. so at the end of the day, do whatever you wanna do. it’s your blog, so just be yourself and you’ll be fine.
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