#type: guide

important notes: as an example, i'm making an interest tracker with a short text field, a multiple choice drop-down menu, a single choice drop-down menu, and two long text fields, but you can use these forms in whatever way you like. also, there are two things you'll need to be able to do this - a google account so you can use google sheets, and have your carrd upgraded to either pro standard or pro plus so you can use the embed option. you're probably gonna need a basic understanding of coding if you want to change the looks of it, but i'm gonna try to make it as easy as possible.

―  STEP ONE:  PREPARING YOUR MUSIC

if you want to have music play on your carrd, the most important thing is, of course, the music. just make sure you have whatever song you want to have played in your files, and if you don't already have it, make sure to download it. now, the next step is to share your file so you'll get a direct file link you can later use in your music player code. personally i'm gonna be using and explaining the dropbox method for this, but there are other ways to do it as well. upload the music file to your dropbox ( either directly or to a special folder, whatever you prefer ) and then click the share button. then create link and copy link and you'll end up with a link that should look something like this: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j904wa1i2e229tdfa4rkb/ok-3.gif?rlkey=jy7822s2rrgaszj3jduggxn9k&dl=0 to create a direct download link out of this one, take out the 'www' and instead replace it with 'dl' so you'll have something like this: https://dl.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j904wa1i2e229tdfa4rkb/ok-3.gif?rlkey=jy7822s2rrgaszj3jduggxn9k&dl=0 save this link somewhere or keep it handy because we're gonna need it again a little later once we actually start working on the carrd.

―  STEP TWO:  GET THE MUSIC PLAYER ON YOUR CARRD

for the next step, we're gonna be looking at different music player codes. there are a wide variety of ready-to-use ones already available ( for example here ) or if you are good at coding, you can always create your own as well. whatever you prefer and feel more comfortable with. once you've found something you like, copy the code because it's finally time to actually put it all on your carrd. if you have multiple sections and want your music to be played in all of them, either use a header or a footer and if you only want it in one, put it in the one you want to use for this. click on the little '+' to add an embed element to your carrd ( it's the one with this symbol: '</>' ). scroll down to the 'code' section and paste the code of the music player you've previously copied there. next thing you need to do to make sure it plays the song you want is to locate the '<audio id="audio" src="link here"audio"></audio>' and replace the link with the direct file link of your music. to see if you've been successful, you either need to publish your site or save it as a template ( in case you aren't ready to publish it yet but still wanna check if everything worked as planned ) and it should display the music player and play your music once clicked.

―  STEP THREE:  CUSTOMIZE IT ( optional )

HI THERE!  to be honest i didn’t at first, but after some trial and error i finally figured it out so i’m gonna try to explain it as simple as i can.  first off, make sure to have the audio file ( in mp3 format ) you wanna use saved somewhere so you can access it easily once we’re getting to making the post.  secondly, and honestly this is probably the most important part, you cannot use copyrighted music and tumblr will find out if you try to upload something copyrighted.  to work around that, you have to modify the audio file a little ― maybe change the pitch, speed it up or slow it down, use only a short segment of it, whatever works for you.  you might have to try a few times until it’ll finally be accepted.

anyway, now that you have your music ready the next step is to make an audio post.  just click on the headphone symbol and you’ll end up with something looking like this ( if you’re using the legacy editor ):

or this ( if you’re using the new editor ):

next thing you gotta do is upload your audio.  so just click on the headphone symbol again, go the the file you wanna use and open it.  this is the step the copyright issue comes into play now so if you’re unable to upload your file, keep modifying it and try again until it goes through and your post now looks similar to this:

as you can see, there are two lines now ( three if you’re using the new editor since there’s another line for the album name added ) and the option to ‘select album art’.  just put whatever text you want on these lines, add some image you like, check the button at the bottom and voilà, you’ll have yourself your own little custom music player post.

hi there! if i'm being totally honest, i tend to struggle with prologues / starting a story in general as well. but i'm gonna try to give some tips that'll hopefully be useful for you.

so, a prologue is usually there for a reason ― either to introduce one / multiple major characters ( which don't necessarily have to be your main character; it could be someone who majorly drives the plot or even someone who only appears once but introduces an important topic ), or to give a sense of your setting, or to set the tone for the story to come. just don't overload it with too much info right away since that tends to overwhelm your readers but do try to get them hooked and interested.

depending on what you want your story to be like there are multiple ways to go about starting it. one example could be to write some sort of flashback. maybe something happened in your main character's past ( or some important story beat that will be relevant later / all throughout the story ) that you want to highlight. just keep it short and don't reveal too much all at once. another example could be to set the prologue in the present while the first part of the story will explain how the characters got to that point. perhaps even leave a sort of cliffhanger at the end that will keep your readers wanting to know more.

one important thing to keep in mind for your prologue is "show, don't tell". no one wants to read an endless exposition about something they don't care about yet, and therefore it's better to show what you want to tell through actions, thoughts, and words.

most importantly, though, keep it short. like i said, a prologue is supposed to hook your readers, so best keep it as a singular scene ― no time jumps, not too many location jumps, and not too many new character introductions.

one thing you can do to get a better feel for how to write your prologue is to read examples of how other people did it. try to keep attention to the way they try to get you to care about their story / characters, and what they do to introduce the plot.

in short, these are the major things you need to remember when writing a prologue:

introduce your characters / setting.

get your readers hooked.

do not infodump.

show, don't tell.

keep it short and simple.

―  PHOTOPEA

photopea is an online editor that’s actually strikingly similar to photoshop both in terms of looks / layout and features.  of course it doesn’t offer all the things photoshop does but i’d say it gives you basically everything you need for your basic roleplay needs.  you can import and export psds ( and other popular file formats ) and make icons and various graphics including gifs.  now the great thing about photopea is that since it runs on a website, you don’t need to download any software and it is usable on all devices ― windows and mac, android and ios.  it’s smooth and quick and ( if you know a bit about how graphic programs usually work ) pretty self explanatory. 

PROS:  no additional software needed / mobile friendly / can open and save psd files / easy to edit pictures / features various adjustment options and effects and filters and brushes / pretty much a ‘small photoshop’

CONS:  ad banners can be annoying / no timeline feature ( that’s used for certain things, e.g. batch editing icons ) / you need a stable internet connection

―  GIMP

again, gimp shares some features with photoshop although it can be quite overwhelming once you open the program for the first time just because it’s all very cluttered and it takes some time to get used to.  it’s probably a good tool that lets you do lots of things but if i’m honest i never really got into it so i can’t say all that much about it.  it doesn’t seem too bad though.

PROS:  available on windows, mac, and linux / can open and save psd files ( although it may potentially corrupt files if you wanna open them in other programs again ) / features various filters and brushes / open source so there are lot of resources for plugins

CONS:  ui outdated and cluttered / not exactly beginner friendly / uses a different color profile than photoshop so imported psds can look weird

―  PIXLR

another web based program that works and looks similar to photopea but doesn’t offer as many features that you’d probably need for roleplay graphics.  i’m still listing it here because it does seem to be a nice and easy editing program if you just wanna do some more or less simple things that don’t require tons of layers and blending and whatever.

PROS:  no additional software needed / mobile friendly ( although the mobile version is different from the computer version ) / features various adjustment options and filters and brushes / you can open psds ( but they might look weird )

CONS:  you need a stable internet connection / no masks and no grouping of layers and no timeline feature / some tools are slow / ad banners can be annoying

―  PHOTO POS PRO

i can’t say much about this one because i wasn’t able to test it myself but from what i’ve gathered it seems to be a good photoshop alternative that offers a lot of different features.  it also works with layers ( and is capable of using masks ) so that’s always a plus.

PROS:  has different layouts for beginners and experts / offers tutorials / features various adjustment options and effects

CONS:  only available on windows ( and mac if you use an emulator ) / export file size limits / can run slow at times

HEY THERE!  i'm not sure about xkit but there are two simple options that you can do pretty much without any outside help.  the first one, if limited in its color options, is to just change the color with the option included in the ‘rich text post editor’.  just highlight the text you want to color and click on the little paint bucket on the right and you’ll see eight colors to choose from.

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.

―  STEP ONE:  PREPARATIONS

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. )

―  STEP FOUR:  HAVE FUN