#rolescape

The right way to think about this:

Rolescape has a numerous promising features in the works that will allow you to better cultivate your space. You'll be able to better insulate yourself from drama and muns you need to avoid, have a great deal of privacy, and be better able to deal with problems in a meaningful way.

The wrong way to think about this:

Rolescape is a fix for all of the RPC's problems, I cannot wait to be away from all this drama and negativity.

The right way still keeps the responsibility on you, on everyone in the RPC, to not create, foster, or refuse to stay away from problems. It acknowledges the reality that two of the most awful RPCs to ever exist are the target user base for RS - tumblr and twitter. And it expects only what RS's responsibilities should be (coincidentally, what other platforms should have been as well, but we wouldn't be having this conversation if they didn't abysmally fail there) - providing functioning ways of blocking, filtering, and otherwise cultivating one's space. The behavior is up to you.

The wrong way poses RS as an unrealistically utopian place no matter its user base. These are not alright expectations from any platform, places are going to be what you make of them. The same muns are going to be there, the same problems will come with them. It's great that you're excited to have a fresh start with promising features that allow greater comfort and cultivation, but these expectations I see many of you expressing are only going to result in you putting the blame on RS when you run into the handful of muns you have issues with or discover that purity culture and callouts are everywhere.

Let me repeat: It's great that you're excited to have a fresh start with promising features that allow greater comfort and cultivation.

But I'm excited for RS as well, and I'd really rather not have it bottom-out before it really gets rolling when too many muns rage quit because a new, improved platform did not fix every issue they had with the community itself.

Please:

be excited

support RS with reblogs, donations, giving feedback, and/or joining the team

tell your mutuals about RS and why you're excited for it

join the discord server if you're into that

stay realistic that the site will be in testing when you get to join, there will be bugs and things both added and removed, that's what happens during testing phases

stay realistic that the same blogs and RPC issues will only be moving over to a new location, not ceasing to exist

appreciate that you'll be able to control this environment a thousand times better to stay away from all that, know that you will need to do that

— ROLESCAPE FEATURE OF THE DAY!

Group Dashboards & Private Forums aka where we are sure lots of amazing threads will be taking place in the future. In the images above you can see how ROLESCAPEs formatting will allow creators to fully explore writing with others in a highly customizable and intuitive environment! It also showcases how customizable formatting your writing can be.  And finally within our last screenshot you can see a preview of what our highly customizable interface will allow site members to do with HTML. Please make sure to stay tuned as we have even more exciting features to showcase. 

— WHAT IS ROLESCAPE?

ROLESCAPE is an accessible, aesthetically pleasing social networking website (and mobile app!) with a myriad of features that the roleplaying community, over multiple websites, have been begging for. Made FOR roleplayers, BY roleplayers, the site quite literally would not be possible without the help of the very community it’s targeted toward.

— HOW CAN YOU HELP?

— ROLESCAPE FEATURE OF THE DAY!

Thread Manager - Track and manage your threads with the Thread Manager. The first screenshot features an Open Starter thread that two different muses have replied to, which are separated on different rows for easier tracking and organization. The thread manager will also separate by muse for multi-muse accounts.

— WHAT IS ROLESCAPE?

ROLESCAPE is an accessible, aesthetically pleasing social networking website (and mobile app!) with a myriad of features that the roleplaying community, over multiple websites, have been begging for. Made FOR roleplayers, BY roleplayers, the site quite literally would not be possible without the help of the very community it’s targeted toward.

— HOW CAN YOU HELP?

Hey everyone! 

This update is to let everyone know that last week, we began alpha testing on Rolescape. Alpha testing is a type of testing that is done on an application towards the end of development when the product is almost in a usable state. The first phase consists of testing by the developers—since Judah is the only active developer on the site, we have extended the alpha testing offer to some of our internal team members for the first phase. Their job is to use Rolescape and test various areas of the site and routinely submit bugs when they’re found. They are also responsible for re-testing the bugs they’ve submitted when the report is moved to “ready for re-testing”. 

These bugs include everything from typos to non-intuitive design choices, application errors, and other various bugs they may find. They are also responsible for pre-filling the site with content so that when beta testers come along, there will already be content for them to interact with. 

Alpha testing will be done in a few phases, and more slots will open for more alpha testers to come on as we advance through the testing period. Once the alpha testers tell me that they believe the site is ready for beta testing, we will extend 500 invitations to people on our discord + tumblr. Each of your will receive your own invite codes to invite your friends to join the site. The intention of the invite codes is to limit bot sign ups and sign ups by those we don’t believe will use the site. 

 Invite codes can always be obtained by messaging me personally if you don’t have any friends on the site. We just want to make sure real people get them before anyone else. 

We are super excited to be moving things along, and even more excited to see you guys start using Rolescape. 

You get a glossary, you get a glossary, you get a glossary!

Everyone gets a glossary

How does this work?

The Rolescape glossary reads an SKOS (simple knowledge organization system) and creates a page on Rolescape user profiles with a corresponding glossary. Any time a word or phrase from the glossary is used somewhere on Rolescape, a link pointing to the term in the user’s glossary is created.

The goal of this is to help make blogs and content more understandable as well as providing a basis for backstory. It would link posts with key terms and key terms with other key terms. Based on your glossary, terms in your posts and threads are high-lighted automatically, definitions are provided "inline" (as mouse-over effect) and links to the glossary terms are generated on-the-fly. The glossary is available as an extra resource on the blog and can be navigated to learn more about the knowledge domain instantly.

This can be used for terms, or even phrases, and you can choose whether or not you want to link to them on a post-by-post basis, so you won’t have to worry about giving repeated information every single time you use a word.

This will work with phrases/any keyword you set up and predefine.

USE CASE:

EX: If you are writing a thread with my character who is hard of hearing, i may add "hard of hearing" to my glossary so when it's mentioned in thread, you can hover over it and it will give you the backstory on how my character experienced an explosion.

— ROLESCAPE UPDATE!

We have incorporated a visual roadmap for everyone to keep track of the progress on our main features here (linked in source and on the photo). Please feel free to take a look, and keep updated as we are in the process of adding the rest of the finished features and will be adding content regularly as the project progresses. As always, we frequently update our discord server in our screenshots channel and we urge all that are interested to join and track our headway! Links for everything can be found on our Tumblr page, as well as donation links. 

— WHAT IS ROLESCAPE?

ROLESCAPE is an accessible, aesthetically pleasing social networking website (and mobile app!) with a myriad of features that the roleplaying community, over multiple websites, have been begging for. Made FOR roleplayers, BY roleplayers, the site quite literally would not be possible without the help of the very community it’s targeted toward. 

— HOW CAN YOU HELP?

But there are still things you, the individual, and the community can do for us. Whether it’s donating to one of our sources linked on the blog, reblogging this post, joining the discord server for moral support, or joining the team. Every action counts.

I have been trying my best to be as active as I can be on Tumblr for those of you who don’t follow the discord server, and regularly post updates when I can.

Rolescape is a passion project of mine, and is done entirely out of the love I have for creativity, the RPC, roleplaying, and writing in general. I work on Rolescape all day, every day--it is my main priority and focus, but I am still the only one with the ability to give my full attention to it on the development end. So, thank you for being patient with me while I create this thing for you guys.

I am trying my very best to give everyone a platform that has features we’ve all been waiting for, and I can’t wait to use it myself.

As always, I am always looking for help with the development of the project, and could use help in all areas. Content Writers, a personal organizational assistant, artists, developers, social media superstars, etc.