There are multiple kinds of roleplaying, but the kind most often done here in the Treasure Vault is what I would call "collaborative storytelling." We each choose one or two characters whom we will each focus on, and then we bounce our stories about them off each other.

In short, we tell stories about our characters in the same imaginary world.

Why no flirting? Romantic roleplaying games are fairly common (though not on these forums), and in-game romances are a recurring theme.

There is no real guide to roleplaying, but people should really ought to know a few tips.

RoleplayGateway is a great site for learning the basics of roleplaying (but some members do not know how to respectfully critique other's playstyles, which is why I consider it at a basic level).

Googling on how to free-form roleplay will bring up a lot of tips and lingo that'll help newer roleplayers pick up relatively quickly.

If you're too lazy (I doubt that Mawa-Master is too lazy), I'll put up a few keywords you'll want to learn in roleplaying.

God-modding - Making a character virtually indestructible and all-powerful. Avoid this WHENEVER possible, and allow your character to at least take a few hits. At least. That being said, you'll see the good roleplayers create "weak" characters to work on learning how to develop a character with realism.

Power-playing - The iffy-maybe-so-so sin of controlling other characters. Some roleplays give full lee-way to power-playing, others ban even the slightest action, and others will allow you to power-play...to an extent. Newer or generally terrible roleplayers should not power-play in the slightest to avoid conflicts with other players. Personally, I power-play a LOT, though they're small things that would be natural for most characters to do anyways, such as forcing characters to take notice of alarming events (some players prefer that they get their character to notice AND act upon an event, for comeplete control). But really, avoid the temptation of playing as other characters at all times. You may ONLY AND ONLY play as other players' characters if they type specifically this :

"You are allowed to play _______."

And even then, they'd usually have restrictions and power checks to make sure you don't cause other characters to act stupidly. So really, it's better to avoid power-playing at all times, and always ask before you play another player's character.

Munchkins - Players who roleplay to "win" and reach the objective rather than actually "role + play = roleplay". They'll min-max their characters (in other words, make them a perfect human being for their assigned roles), power-game (try and reach the goal ASAP, with little regard to realism, teamwork, character development, etc.), and more often than not, god-mod their characters.

Those are the first three words that every roleplayer should learn about, as a lot more etiquette and implied rules are in place than what meets the eye.

In another site, Thinslayer also talked about "reciprocating spotlights", which means that if a character has the focus for a particular scene or event, shifting the "spotlight" (focus) to other players will allow everyone to get a fair chance to get their characters to synergize and coordinate harmoniously. It isn't a hard thing to do with some creativity, but frankly, I do find that many of our roleplayers on this site aren't capable of doing so.

I'd go over more aspects of roleplaying, but most information on play-by-text roleplaying is already posted on most of our RPs anyways. Wouldn't hurt to read their rules, if they have them up.

Mawa, you will find that forum roleplaying is a lot different from regular roleplaying. ( like D n D) It is more um.... Storytelling then playing.

It wouldn't be rude at all. Of course, you might find that you'd have to disappoint some players with rejection, but that comes with the territory.