hi, friends!
While chatting together one day, reminiscing about the good ol' days of roleplay, we realized just how different the rpg world has become in the last decade or so. The biggest thing we agreed on was while communities these days can be fun, over the years the games available to writers seem to have lost focus on what rping is really about. Most things these days are locked behind customs and most interaction is through social media/spam posts. While we agree these things can be fun, some of us expressed how much we missed the way things used to be, when rping was about writing.

When applying here at ~portlandish, you will not be judged on the aesthetics of your journal. We get that not everyone is HTML savy and even with all the resources available, it can be time consuming and frustrating to navigate through. If you want to pretty things up, go for it! However, it's not required and your acceptance isn't based on it. Your acceptance will be judged on writing. A detailed bio showing you have a good grasp on who your character is, is required to apply, as are at least two writing examples. While we prefer them both to be threads/scenes, one of them may be a narrative.

now, for the rules:
The Golden Rule
One thing that hasn't changed, is RP's #1 Rule. Please be kind to each other! Keep your OOC feelings OOC and don't bring your OOC opinions/knowledge/issues IC (and vice versa). Line crossing and bullying will not be tolerated. We feel like this is the crux of why things are so private these days. We want to allow everyone to read other writer's threads, plot posts, and interact civilly. Don't ruin this for anyone. If you do by crossing lines, you will be removed from the community.

Character Limits
We understand that sometimes you join a game and really vibe with the writers, you get inspired. This inspiration can have you wanting to collect characters like pokemon. Trust us, we get it. However, for the purpose of building a strong community with a group of attentive writers and well-rounded characters, for now we are only allowing one character per writer. Once the game is established and has been open for a couple of months, we will announce the ability to pick up another character. after that, the max character limit will be 2 characters per person.

Played-Bys
We understand why the five year rule was created (insert gollum voice here) and we hates it. If you want to use pictures/icons of Sophia Bush or Brad Pitt from when they were younger and use them to play someone in their mid-twenties (instead of being stuck playing them closer to the ages the actors currently are) go for it. If you choose to do that you obviously won't be able to use current pictures of said celebrity, but there are MANY actors/actresses/singers etc that have plenty of pictures from when they were younger/played younger roles. Just be smart about it. What we don't want to see is people taking pbs who are younger/underage and making them much older than they appear. ditching the standard five-year rule is more geared toward allowing flexibility with the use of celebrities who are now older, but have been around long enough to have younger pictures for us to use. Make sense? cool. Pbs must also be 18+.

Activity Checks
This is where we're not like the other games. activity checks will be done once a month, on the last day of the month and we will require two forms of activity.

to keep writing at the heart of our game: your first activity must be a thread/scene or narrative. you may not post two narratives in a row, you may only post a narrative every other month. you do not have to post your threads publicly, if you do not wish you. you may add ~portlandish to your completed thread/post with the scene inside of it. On the other hand, if you have created a group/public thread in our threading subcomm it will count as your main writing activity, should you choose.

Your second activity may be your choice of a journal entry/creative moodboard posted in your character journal or an interactive post posted to one of our subcommunities. (social media post in socialish, lyric post in socialish, etc. this activity must be ic. however, we will allow public/community wide plot posts in tagish to count as an interactive activity.

all activities must be commented on our dropbox. we will not go hunting for your activity. remember: one writing heavy activity, one interactive activity. this means: we expect to see interaction. we expect to see threads between two or more people, not just a starter. we expect to see lyric posts with your character replying to comments, connecting with other members.

your introduction will count as 1/2 of your monthly activity. this means that you must post, interact with comments, and drop that activity here in this post for it to count. introductions are meant to be interactive, so we do ask that you are responding to comments on this post. the other form of activity must be the normal activity one (a thread/narrative).

sub-communities
in order to allow a little slice of what everyone loves in this game, along with apps, we have brought back the "old school" sub-community formats of having multiple sub comms for multiple topics:

• intros: ~introish for new member introductions. intros must be made within 72 hours of acceptance. dropbox activity here.
• random: ~socialish for instagram posts, other social media mockups, lyric pots, playlists, memes, and any other activities you may want to post!
• thread: ~tagish for plot posts, random threads, open threads, and etc.
• storylines: ~linkedish to seek new storylines, get new storylines with incomming members, or post about changes made to your character.

Messaging Apps
We are perfectly fine if our writers want to use wire, discord, googlechat, or other messaging apps. You may also post snippets or entire conversations in your journals or use them in other creative ways to post in your journal or the sub-comms.

Journal Names
Usernames should be IC only. Please refrain from using underscores or numbers.