ingress | Guide to Roleplaying on Dreamwidth

Welcome to Ingress! This post if for those of you who are playing Journal RP for the first time. We've all been there. It's really different (and very similar) to other types of roleplaying, so here's a step-by-step guide of what to do:

First, create a character journal.

Whether or not you already have a personal account on DW, create a separate account for your character. You'll be using it to post (i.e. roleplay) in all the Ingress communities.

You don't actually have to post anything in your journal, though many players choose to display past applications as that character, or even post short responses to a writing prompt. Here are a few examples you can look at:

your_logic_is_impeccable and

steadycourse .

Second, get some sweet user pics.

Dreamwidth is kind enough to give free users 15 slots for user pictures, all of which you will probably use to accompany your posts. User pics sometimes add that nice visual expression to the post you've been writing, or even give other players a laugh. Take a look around Hollow Art to see if any icons call to you. Or, if you have a specific actor in mind you'd like to use, check out Find Icons.

Third, understand how the Ingress works.

Of course, make sure to read the rules and everything that's linked to on our profile page. However, if you've never done Journal RP before, you might be wondering, what's the difference between

ingress_network

ingress_logs and

ingress_ooc ?

ingress_network is typically where characters can call, text, magically write, or otherwise communicate to each other from a distance. Posts are done in the first-person. However, this community is currently closed because no characters have yet obtained the necessary device to contact others remotely in this world.

ingress_logs will be where most of the roleplaying happens, and is for all face-to-face interaction between characters. You roleplay in third-person, describe your actions, and interact. If you've done online roleplaying before, this is probably the format you're most used to.

ingress_ooc is the Out of Character community, where you'll be able to talk to other players as you. When you first join Ingress, feel free to make a post here and introduce yourself!

You may also notice that

ingress_playtest also exists. Playtest is a community we made to test out the dice rolling before the proper game started. We didn't want to delete any of the great things that happened here, so we're keeping the community around. Feel free to not follow or read this community.

Fourth, understand how to post.

When you're posting in the LOGS community, we created a log template that you can use for every time you post. Make sure each of your posts contains these four fields at the top, and then go on your merry way roleplaying what's happening in the scene itself:

Who: Who are the characters you know are going to be in this thread? Also mark it as [open] to anyone to join, or [closed] to only those characters you've listed.
Where: List the location of the event.
When: What day and general time of day is this happening? Keeping track allows players to get a sense of what chronological order events are happening in. After all, you can't be in two places at once.
Warnings: Any language, violence. Anything that could be a trigger warning for anyone.

Then, make sure to tag all the players who will be in the thread, including yourself. More likely than not, a tag already exists for every character, so make sure to use the right tag. If one has yet to be made, feel free to create it yourself. Tags are usually the exact name of the character being played.

Finally, resolve character conflicts with the player.

Unlike most online roleplaying games, Ingress actually has a battle system, with dice! Please check out that link to learn how the system affects your character.

What we want to highlight here, is that we never want any player to feel like something is being done to their character without permission. If you're playing the Hulk, and you want to smash Loki, that makes total sense. But you can only have the Hulk smash Loki, if the Loki player is okay with it. If not, then the two of you can figure out why it didn't happen. Maybe Loki was projecting himself as a holograph again and got away. Maybe Loki was too terrified of the Hulk from the first time he got smashed and just JET as soon as he saw the green giant. It's all up to you.

If for some reason, players cannot come to a consensus to how a conflict should resolve, do not hesitate to contact the Moderators. However, we expect that most of the time, players can always work it out.

And that's it! There's always more to learn, but these are the basics to help get you started!