Pitfall #1: Assuming too close a relationship

The thing about open starters is that, well, they’re open. They should be able to be answered by anyone in the group - or, at least, the majority of the group. So it’s probably not a good idea to start off the conversation in a way that you’d only speak to someone who’s close to you.

Examples:

“Man, can you believe I got Mary Sue to sleep with me last night? Pound it!”

“Sorry I’m late. I was up until four last night fighting with my brother.”

Whoa there, cowboy. Unless part of your muse’s characterization is poor social skills and painfully blunt honesty, an open starter isn’t the place to open those floodgates. Sure, characters who know yours well will be able to respond, but anyone else? They’ll have no clue what to do for you, and so you’re excluding them from the conversation.

Pitfall #2: Putting the responder into a convoluted circumstance

While it’s good to give your starter a context and somewhere to go, it’s a common mistake to take this too far and end up with very specific scenarios. Then, it becomes the responder’s job to try and figure out how their character got into that scenario in the first place.

Examples:

“It’s three in the morning. What are you doing at my house?”

“Dude! I can’t believe you just said that!”

The first example raises difficult questions that the responder has to answer: What is their muse doing out and about at three in the morning? Why did they choose to go to your muse’s house? If their muse isn’t the type to go galavanting about the neighborhood in nightly TP raids, it’s gonna be hard to try and come up with a valid reason for their muse being there.

The second example puts a lot of pressure on the responder. Their muse just said something that evoked an extreme reaction from yours. All you had to do was react, and now they’re left with the heavy lifting, having to figure out their muse said or did to get that reaction.

Pitfall #3: Being too vague

On the other end of the sliding scale of vagueness vs. specificity is another problem that often crops up in starters. You don’t want to make your starter too specific, but you also want to give the responder something to go off of.

For this example, I’m going to use the most common starter I see in every roleplay ever:

“I’m sorry, did you say something?”

This is not a good starter. This does not give anyone anything to go off of. Where are they? I don’t know. What mood are they in? Your guess is as good as mine. What are they doing? Beats the hell out of me.

Fortunately, this is one pitfall that can be mended pretty easily, as I’ll explain in part two of the guide:

Pitfall No More!

Fix-It #1: Give your vague starter context

There is a happy medium between too specific and not specific enough, and adding a dash of context can make all the difference. See the questions I listed in the above pitfall description? Try to answer at least one of them in your starter.

Where are they?

What mood are they in?

What are they doing?

Examples:

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” Neil asked, turning away from the football game he’d been focused on and glancing at the person on the bar stool next to his.

Ah, there we go! They’re at a public eatery of some sort, maybe a bar or diner. If this is, say, a town roleplay, then that’s a very reasonable place to assume your muse might be passing some time.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?” Neil asked through a yawn as he rubbed his eyes.

Now your muse can see that mine is tired. They could ask mine if he’s gotten any sleep, or maybe make fun of the bags under his eyes, or offer him some of their coffee. Whichever they pick, it’s a direction.

“I’m sorry, did you say something? I’m kind of busy reading here.”

This also gives your muse something to respond to. Maybe they could ask what book he’s reading, or say they’ve read that book, and can you believe the step-sister was the murderer? Or perhaps they could tell him to put the book down and have some real fun for once. But they have a context to respond to.

Fix-It #2: Play with what’s established in the roleplay

There are going to be events, locations, and lore that are specific to your roleplay, but that all or most of the characters are familiar with.

Keep track of what’s happening in your roleplay’s universe, and when something occurs, let your character respond to it.

“Did you hear the mayor died last night? Good riddance, I say.”

And there may be places in town that are common places to gather or to discuss.

“You know, I’ve heard this library’s haunted. Might wanna be careful about walking around these bookshelves alone.”

Not to mention the sort of actions or situations that would be common in your roleplay’s setting, even if the same wouldn’t be said for the real world.

“All right, the zombies are really starting to crowd the front gates. I’m gonna go see if I can pick some of them off. Anyone want to come along?”

Fix-It #3: Find something specific to your character

A big one for this is your character’s job. If you play a store clerk, use your starter to see if your customer needs any help. If you play a cop, ask if they know why you pulled them over. If you’re a high school student, ask if they know anything about trigonometry. If you work at a piano bar, request a tip and ask if they have any requests.

“Feel free to leave a tip in the jar. Have any requests?”

You could also take a look through the gifs you have of your FC, and focus on finding ones of them in action. If you’ve got a gif of your faceclaim doing/wearing/eating/being/making something that could be an icebreaker, and seems like something your character might do/wear/eat/be/make, use it. With starters like these, you instantly answer the “What are they doing?” question, giving something for the other player to respond to, without getting too specific with other things like setting.

“See? Magic! Is your mind blown, or is your mind blown?”

“I found this little guy out behind the building all alone. You haven’t lost a dog, have you?”

“I need an opinion. Does the mustache make me look more sophisticated, or just goofy?”

Well, what about Para RPs?

“That’s all fine and dandy, Neil,” you say to me, because you’re a cool person who uses phrases like ‘fine and dandy’. “But what about roleplays that encourage para starters? How can we find that balance between vagueness and specificity if we need to put paragraphs’ worth of detail into the starter?”

To this I answer: the same guidelines still apply.

When you’re adding the detail and context to your para starter, avoid getting too specific about the other player’s muse. Instead, put your word count energy into digging further into your muse. You can still have a very open-ended starter at a public place where your muse is making small talk. That fact that you may now preface it with a description of how your muse got there and where their mind is doesn’t change that end result.

It had been another long day in front of the word processor that had stretched into a long night. Neil hadn’t even noticed until nearly four in the morning what the hour was, and, between the time he’d finally fallen into the Land of Nod and the moment his alarm clock sounded, he accumulated no more than an hour of sleep.

Still, he had to get up and start the day, and it was with the heavy weight of frustration over how little progress he’d made on his manuscript that night that he trudged into the coffee shop that morning, brusquely demanding a double espresso to try to get his energy up again.

Once he’d received his drink, he took a seat at one of the single tables and intermittently either sipped from the cup, or simply stared at it, letting the din of the coffee shop buzz in his ear. That is, until he realized that the person at the next table was looking at him expectantly.  “I’m sorry, did you say something?” Neil asked through a yawn as he rubbed his eyes.