#roleplay tools

When I first started roleplaying over five years ago, I had no idea what I was doing, to be honest. My very first blog was made on a whim and I went about it the same way. I had no notion of tags, reblogs, read mores, anything at all. To be honest, I still have the blog if only for the memories.

So this is a list of stuff that I’ve found that has helped my roleplay experience easier and a lot more organized: XKit & RPThreadTracker.

XKit 

( Main page || Download || Tips )

This is the most powerful tool to have, tbh. Besides making your experience in tumblr a more personalized one, it has lots of extensions which are lifesavers for roleplayers.

My favorites are:

Editable reblogs. This one allows for cutting down those threads that get awfully long. You know, to avoid annoying people on the dashboard and on mobile. Roleplaying etiquette suggests you cut down the previous reblogs to show only the latest reply from your partner and your new response, but you can include as many previous replies as you want. Only keep in mind some people don’t like long posts on their dashboards and there’s a risk they will unfollow you if they are on mobile.

Tweaks. This one I like particularly for the ‘tag wrapping’ feat, since it lets you see your partner’s tags entirely, which is useful while rolepalying mostly if you (like me) like to have random ooc conversations on the tags while you post.

Reblog Display Options. This is entirely for the visual aspect, since it only affects the way posts look like on your dashboard, while not editing any of them. You can see posts in the previous traditional ‘nested’ format, and even color the blockquotes to identify easily which reply belongs to whom. Convenient when you are working on a group thread.

Shorten Posts. This is the extension of the gods, and honestly I think it is equally useful for people who don’t roleplay. As the name says, this extension allows you to shorten posts down to a maximum post height set by you, and you can even select which types of posts to shorten and which not to (like, you can select text posts and photosets, but leave long link posts as they are). Extremely useful if you follow people who don’t know/cannot cut posts, so you can go through your dash without losing your head.

Quick tags. This one lets you add predefined tags or groups of tags to your posts. You save the groups under a particular name and then you can add them quickly to anything you post. Useful when you have threads with long names which you want to keep organized.

Activity+. This adds extra feats to your activity page, like grouping notifications by post and filtering them by type. Pretty good when you are looking for a reply from a partner.

RP Thread Tracker 

( Site || Instructions )

This, my friends, is the thing galaxies are made of. Seriously. This little site right here will allow you to keep track of every single thread you have going on. Every single one of them. No more wondering if your partner replied, or thinking you were the last one to post when it actually was your partner but tumblr never notified you. No, those are things of the past!

Once you set up an account, which is completely free by the way, you can add the url of the blogs you want to track, add threads to track on each separate blog by setting stuff like title, the url of your partner, and tags to identify them easily. You can also put a blog on hiatus so you don’t get notifications from that one in particular, as well as add a thread to the archive if you are done with it, or untrack it if you no longer need it.

The best thing about this is that the site is run by a very friendly and attentive person, @blackjackkent, who is always there to fix stuff and make the whole thing better so, if you can, make sure to donate to keep the site running.