looking for aus?

me too. let's make this easy and instead of trying to start from zero every single time one of you kids makes an au, let's build an au people are actually going to join:  

— supernatural

- vampires

- mermaids

- gods

— slice of life

- small town 

- island  

- city 

- university

these seven genres are pretty much the only genres that get traction. it doesn't matter at all what you want to write if you have nobody to write with. 

now, in order to actually have an active au, you honestly do not need deep diving lore, i'd argue that aesthetics are more important on this site. have a theme, make it a e s t h e t i c, and people will flock over to it with comments like "wow, i wasn't interested in joining new rps but this place looks so cute! reserve xxx for me please!" this is not an exaggeration. i find newer rpr members have the most trouble with understanding this when they open their first roleplay and wonder why nobody is joining when they put their heart and soul into a roleplay. :( honestly, most of the work that goes into a roleplay should be put into the aesthetics, then rules, then interaction. this because personally i am absolutely blind when it comes to aesthetics, but that's why i on yxgurt's teets like she's my giggolo, i don't care how overused her layouts get because they are the blueprint, ok. gurt did not spend pretty much the majority of 2014-2020 without sleep so that you wouldn't make use of her full roleplay packs ok give the woman respect thanks — anyways, a yxgurt layout is a sure fire way to attract people on rpr if you don't know about coding like me <3 go comment on her layout gallery here: https://www.roleplayrepublic.com/roleplay/view_desc/11994 and spam some y jaehyun pics or whatever she's into these days, probably johnny but idk 

anyways, so now that i've explained that yxgurt is the backbone of this community lmao the next step is to use canva to choose your color palette with whatever aesthetic you like or whatever stock photos you find like it's a god send just, just here https://www.canva.com/colors/color-palette-generator/ like put any photo in and it'll give you what you need, for example: 

canva is here to be your , use it. 

after you've gotten your layout, changed up your color scheme, and added in your photos, it's time to make rooms.

there are four basic categories of rooms you'll need to have an active roleplay: ooc, ic, venues, and residential. ooc for plotting, wishlists, requests, chatting, etc. ic for social media, ic chatrooms, bulletin boards, diary entries, etc. venues for writing threads and residential for common residential space, personal rooms, and housing. don't overcomplicate anything and make sure it stays organized. my favorite layout of rooms go something lilke: 

00. info
- faq
- events
01. ooc
- chatroom
- wishlist
- connections
- requests
02. ic
- main
- tagged
- slow
- rated
03. social media
- phone services 
- snapchat
- instagram
- twitter
04. venues
- cafe
- restaurant
- park
- beach 
05. community
- lounge
- clubhouse 
06. residential
- apartment rooms 
- houses
- penthouses 
- common spaces

find a layout of rooms that works for you and make sure it encourages interaction. set a scenario for people to feel comfortable initiating conversation with one another. 

next, we're going to talk about rules. oh boy oh boy oh boy rules. rules are important for three reasons: establishing how the rp will function, setting expectations, and establishing boundaries. people will try to break the rules. people will try to find loopholes in the rules. drama will occur. and the best you can do is to try to prevent it by establishing a set of well-written rules.

you should always emphasize ways to prevent drama on top of saying no ooc drama is allowed. emphasize that ooc drama is not welcome. if there is somebody they don't agree with, they don't have to interact with them. prevent individuals from making people uncomfortable by setting boundaries with safewords and restricted content in certain rooms. keep ic chatrooms ic. keep ooc chatrooms ooc. move long conversations over to a different room. make sure rated content and actions happen only in rated rooms. along with ooc drama,

the next idea to focus on is limiting demographics.

one of the most annoying things to happen on rpr is having character hoggers. two types of character hoggers that hurt the community the most are the inactive character hogger and the character hogger. the inactive character hogger will reserve as many faceclaims as they can to ensure their spot as a popular face and then never upload a dp, never fill out their app, never even post in the rooms. the character hogger is here to collect as many relationships as they can across all of their characters and will speak only with their beloved and potential future beloveds. the isn't that bad when the rp is active and are usually one of the lasts to leave because of their relationship commitments, but dear lord jesus if you'll let them have unlimited characters, they'll straight up facechase through the wishlist and then the person who wished for their new face is going to get disappointed, not because they didn't want to see them as their wished fc, but because when you have too many characters with overlapping characteristics, you see them and you go "oh, that's just x again." and that's just not fun :') to prevent these character hoggers, you'll usually want to keep a character limit of max 5 with the first character being reservable with a favorite, a second character with an upvote, a third character with a blog post, and 4 & 5 after meeting point count, thread count, or time requirements like having 1000pts for every character they have or to be there for at least three weeks before getting their new characters. 

that rant got a little out of hand, but next on limiting demographics comes the sensitive topic of race. rpr is a community that has a large userbase of kpop fans who roleplay kpop idols and this makes it a little awkward for roleplayers who aren't familiar or caught up with kpop to interact with others. honestly, there's not much that can be done about this issue as no matter how you spin it, kpop idols will always be the majority of the demographic. it's just what the site is comfortable with and it's hard to change that when it's something that's a constant here. there have been successful internationals-only rps, but those were spearheaded by admins who understood the site and how to motivate others into getting out of their comfort zone while inviting those who had been looking for a place where they felt like they belonged in a diverse community. the best way to have a diverse demographic is to have all admins and their alts be as diverse as possible to show everybody looking at their rp that internationals will be valued and treated like everyone else and that they don't have to fit into the kpop idol mold to hold a conversation on this site. but if you're going to be an admin with a kpop idol fc, you might as well set your rp in a korean setting to make things easier for everyone else. not so much ban internationals, but just to make it make sense why 90% of the faceclaims are korean. 

generally doesn't matter when it comes to roleplays, but when the roleplay focuses on love and matchmaking, that's when it gets really hard. this is the only instance in an all-orientations rp that i will limit gay men and straight women, but dear god they'll lie to me and tell me they're bi but really lean towards men and then all the poor himbos will have and thrown at them and they'll either a) out with multiple partners b) out with multiple characters *see character hogger above* or c) get decision paralysis and go inactive because it's hard to breath when there are so many bottoms acting desperate ngl like no offense but we need more tops because these bottoms get embarrassing. istg next time i make a matchmaking rp imma just be like no bottoms yall are banned until you finish a course on boundaries. 

ok so now i've just been ranting and i didn't actually write an outline on what i was going to say and i don't know what was supposed to come next after this but make sure for your own sake as admin that the rp is not heavy on admin duties. burnout is so real, don't use it on this godforsaken site, get paid for it at least irl. communicate that certain things will only be updated once a week. make sure you establish ways to have everybody interacting with each other without the help of an admin by having a good amount of rooms to rp in. if it's a good rp, it'll be able to function while you're offline. also, always dangle clout in front of these hoes because they're absolute s for clout. first to get 1000 pts gets a shiny trophy type lol anyways, i was going to get to making titles that pop but imma just keep it brief: titles should be catchy, easy to remember, pretty, or have a nice acronym and be in a fancy generated font from like coolfonts or whatever site that is, then make sure you put in the title if this rp is an au/nonau, all-orientations/yuri/, supernatural/city/town/university/resort/etc., and that the rp is open and inviting new people. something like ☆⁺˚* ᗷᒪ❀❀ᗰᗪᗩᒪᗴ ⁺˚*☆ ᴀ ᴄᴏᴢʏ ʀɪᴠᴇʀsɪᴅᴇ ᴛᴏᴡɴ // au. all-orientations. open & accepting! join now! should do it. 

anyways, now that i've told you how to make a decent au, please go ahead and make them for me because i don't want to be an admin. thanks.