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I found a rather interesting question being asked on one of the sites I hang out on, and felt like asking that question on RPG Initiative to see what do others think about this? Excerpt from the original post: "When it comes to IC postage, how do you picture posts/scenes/events/what have you in your head? Is it realistic, with characters and environments appearing to you as in real life? CGI/3D like your everyday video game? Anime (think the Japanese trend)? Cartoon (western?)? Any given form or combination of depending on any given thread?" I know, that we're primarily telling text-based stories in RPing - but with the prevailing RP culture of faceclaims, fancy banners and avatars, there's no denying that the visual component is a pretty important part of RPing these days. Thus with that in mind, the question here would be when you're writing for your RPs, how do you mentally picture the scenes and/or characters within your head? Do you 'see' your RP world in live-action? (say, live people and actual scenery like the physical world we perceive using our own eyes) Or 3D CGI? (i.e. Skyrim, Fallout 4, etc.) Or 2D illustrations and animations? (i.e. anime, cartoons, western comics, etc.) And are you able to explain how or why you picture your RPs as such? I imagined that our preferences for a site's graphics (i.e. FCs - live or illustrated?) stem heavily from how we mentally 'picture' the world of our RPs. To start the ball rolling with myself - I guess it kinda goes without saying that I'm very much a 2D person; i.e. as the avatars and site banners I have suggest, I tend to 'see' my RPs in stylised animanga form. Hard to say why I feel that way, but I guess the media I primarily consume plays a factor. And while it may sound paradoxical, there's something about 2D illustrations that make them more immersive for me compared to photographs or realistically-rendered 3D. Primarily, since they're not constrained by the limits of human anatomy I find animanga faces more expressive than realistic faces - and as such it allows me to feel the characters' emotions more powerfully than watching a live-action film. But at the same time, because I'm not looking at a flesh-and-blood person, I feel that drawn faces also help to maintain a comfortable degree of separation between IC and OOC; i.e. as much as I can get a feel for the characters, the fact that they're 2D illustrations inhibits me from viewing them as an extension of myself. So yeah, that's why I picture my RPs as such. So, what about the rest of RPG Initiative? Let's hear it from the rest of the community!

Hello everyone, I'm new to RPG Initiative but also on RPG Directory and even Reddit. I'm a veteran role player for online, freeform and text-based storytelling style RPGs. Basically, I love to write and I have a big imagination and I adore being around likeminded creative spirits. I'm also a veteran of Worlde Arcane, which was my favourite game for long time but it no longer exists. Just mentioning it in case anyone comes across this post and wants to reconnect. Looking forward to being a part of the community. I don't just advertise on directories like this, I use them as a Game Master resource to talk shop with other Admins and Mods and get ideas, etc. etc. Oh, and as the subject said, I'm from Canada (Toronto)! Hello!