Roleplay has been with us since the dawn of the internet, and many of us have created original characters in RPs on forums or chats that later found their way into our comic work. It can be a great way to get the ball rolling on creating a webcomic, so today we’re going to talk about our experiences with it!

What parts of your work have been influenced by RP?

How is developing a character in an RP setting different than writing one without? What does the process look like, and how did they work your way into your comics?

What is your advice to someone looking to take their RP sessions, settings, their characters or their friends’ characters, and turn them into a longform narrative like a webcomic?

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Episode Release Date: May 15, 2024

Episode Credits:

Ally Rom Colthoff (@varethane) - she/they, chirault.sevensmith.net wychwoodcomic.com

Rae Baade (@overlordrae) - they/them, empyreancomic.com

Phineas Klier (@tentacledeity) - they/them, heirsoftheveil.fervorcraft.de

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:00.60

Thane

So what parts of your work have been influenced by RP?

00:06.39

Phin

So basically I think at the moment right now in my work, a lot of the things that storywise happen in the comics that, when it comes to character relationships, a lot of that has been established through RPs, and I've been doing RPs for a pretty long time. I think I started to RP with my husband in like 2008, so there's, I don't know, about 15 years of of baggage. But even before we actually started to RP together and to put these things into stories, I got a recommendation from an acquainted comic artist who was like, "Yeah if you ever get stuck in your stories, get yourself someone you trust and just play out the scene with the characters to basically get loose and maybe get new ideas". So before I even knew what RP actually was ,I was kind of already using it for my work when I got to like scenes that were hard, or character relationships that I couldn't figure out. Because it can help a lot to basically just...

01:33.88

Phin

Because it's kind of like a form of freeform writing, where you basically don't think a lot in the moment depending on the RP style. You basically have a look like I don't know kind of like this kind of rapid fire exchange. where you get into a role basically and play that out of someone else. And that can actually like be really cool to just, I don't know, just let your thoughts flow, and not be as restricted as you would be by just trying to plot everything like the conventional way. I also like use RP a lot to try out story ideas or plot ideas mostly for one of my work in progress projects, where every time I change the plot a little bit I go to my RP partner and ask her to like try it out with me to see what works and what doesn't work and the things that work that get um and get basically written down, and in some way adapted into the comic, and everything that doesn't work gets thrown out, or maybe I'll think about it for later. So I think RP is basically a little bit like trying to figure out the characters and the stories in itself. It's like a pretty strong basis for the comics that I make.

03:21.39

Thane

And there's definitely a a lot to be said for the freedom of kind of exploring things that way where you're really kind of thinking from the inside out from the perspective of the characters and there's not really like expectations or pressure of putting it together, you're just kind of having fun with it. It can be very freeing in that regard. How about you, Rae?

03:45.65

Rae

Well, for me I've pretty much been role-playing since I was like probably 11 on like Dragon Lance roleplay forums and chats and stuff. So, pretty much since I started comics. A lot of my influence actually came from role play, because a lot of people are like "hey you should draw comics of our characters and put me in there!" and stuff like that. Pretty much ever since I've drawn comics was pretty much ah said kind of like the push and pull has been influenced by RP and I find a lot of the exploration and characterization. A lot of the settings that I've never done before I've just been like "oh hey, this is cool. Let's toss in and see what happens!", a lot of it has been RP. And it's been pretty interesting because it's just all this back and forth, a lot of surprises, things that you've never probably never thought of doing on your own, because you have this partner that isn't you. So you're like "oh I never I would have never thought of that on my own!" So. You know and I use I originally started out in like group chats and stuff. So it was a lot of people but it now it's like 1 person that I've pretty much work with exclusively because ah group fallouts and stuff do not make good comics. And they end up being my writing advice person to go to? But yeah, I go to it mostly for characterization nowadays. Character settings tend to be mostly something that I come up on my own now though. But originally, it was pretty much exploration and new ideas working with working as a collaboration type work that was the main thing for me.

06:57.74

Thane

And yeah, that collaborative aspect and like other people throwing in stuff that is different from what you might have done if you'd been solo can be like so invigorating about it because like I I mean we all got into this because we like storytelling on some level and. I guess ah in rp sometimes you really truly are kind of also hearing the story from another individual which has its own kind of joy. Ah I I actually Turalt got started in part from sort of a variant. Roleplay type I guess ah so back in like 2006 I used to hang out on these this type of board called a paint chat where you have ah it was like a branch of oy cocky which is like a browser based painting software and there were all these paint chats that used to be around. Ah.

07:47.48

Rae

And ah I remember those.

07:50.92

Thane

There was one called Niko's that was pretty big. Ah there was but some people could just set it up on their own server for fun and a user on a web comic forum that I was a member of had their own actually no, it wasn't even that one anyway. Ah, someone had their own paint chat that they had just installed on their server for fun to invite a handful of friends to and I joined it and was doodling around and I doodled this character and a whole bunch of other people started doodling around him. Ah, showing like their characters interacting or poking him or like drawing bugs around him and stuff like that and as they did this I would like erase out bits of the face and change the expression and add like a little speech bubble and then they would add a speech bubble and we would like talk to each other that way. Ah and it was ah. It was not necessarily the first time I'd ever been I'd ever seen Rp online but it was kind of the the first time I'd seen anything like I'd I'd been in it like in the middle of it like that. Ah and the next day when I rejoined the paint chat I drew the same character again. Ah, but like in a different pose and then people would draw in different things and we would kind of all have like this little rotating cast of characters and the doodle that I had done ah was just I thought it was going to be a one off of this this character with like fun horns and like sort of dreadlocks hair.

09:19.83

Thane

Know it was a hood and at the time and like a scarf. Um, but the more I drew this character and the more other people drew around him more I was like Wes like I'm getting like a feel of the personality of this person ah like seems like kind of a lot of fun to like just kind of kind of poke him and I ended up. Ah, merging it together with this plot premise that I'd been turning over at the back of my head completely separate I was like but like I kind of want to do something with this guy because like I have this feel for him as a person now and I'd love to like make him a part of an actual story and I sort of smooshed them together. And ah one of the other people on that like that character was Kian who became the protagonist of geralt. Um, and actually one of the other paint chat users ah came up with Tyko. Ah, so I got permission before going in and like starting the web comic but that's actually the ah the deep law origin story of how how geralt got started. Um, anyway. I'm going to go on to the next question which is how is developing a character in an rp setting different than writing one. Outside of that setting. What does the process look like and how did that work its way into your comics or.

10:40.10

Phin

Um, so I would say that it's a little bit more chaotic and that it can be difficult when you develop a character just in rp to translate all the context, especially when it's like from. Long form rp from a long rp but that might span like months or in some cases even years to like translate all that context then into the comic because you kind of. At some point already have like this fully fleshed out character. But how do you like explain to the readership who this character is ah what's what's going on. So sometimes when you adapt characters like that. Um. And you do not change a lot from 1 medium to the other it can sometimes feel a little bit jarring um like there's already context that the readers should be aware of about that character that ah might be difficult to establish. In the comic itself. So. That's why for me when I actually develop characters in r piece I kind of try to like look ah at what I do in the r piece as kind of like more of an alternate.

12:12.21

Phin

Universe and then I take the trades and what I like about the character and ah once they are supposed to like go into comic form I try to like rearrange them a little bit so they're basically still the same character. But.

12:32.19

Phin

I'm kind of rebuilding them without like the baggage from the r piece because in most cases, most r piece that I did I was never like active in in groups or did group r piece because I was too like socially awkward. So I only ever did like 1 on one r piece with very close friends so because and that's why um, most of the r piece that I had were like long and every character that was like developing. In such an rp head like this like these really um, like longwinded backsttories that develop during the rp process. Um. Like I remember like Corus one of the protagonists from hes of the veil went through like I think a thousand iterations. Um, at some point he was like part lizard god and that's all like basically yeah.

13:40.11

Thane

I oh.

13:44.82

Phin

Ah, through like through like weird our piece. So when I started to do um straa like the pre decesor of hes of the veil where that was basically still a part of his Backstory. Um. Kind of when I went to heirs of the veil to reboot the comic I kind of was like okay um, what are the things that I like from these are peace that I should throw out. Um because it makes the story less cohesive if it's all there and. That's actually like a process that takes a little bit of work to actually because you already know who the character is you know everything about that character because you like played this character's story. This character's life so much. But at some point like you have to sit down and figure out what is important for the readers. What is important for the story that you want to tell and what are the things that will be left out because they're kind of too wild or don't really make sense in. Ah, basically a comic format because yeah, our piece can be really longwinded so it like kinda makes it kind of difficult to ah, go about having like long-unded stories and long-winded characters in a format that.

15:13.93

Phin

Will probably not spend like 20 to 50 books. Yeah.

15:18.21

Thane

And yeah, that part can definitely be tricky and adapting things from prose to where you can really literally get into the character's head and have whole like paragraphs about like their inner thoughts and like what they're feeling in the moment and then turning that into visual. Unless you do the manga route of having like a million thought bubbles of them hyperanalyzing everything. It could be tricky to be like what are they smelling in this moment and maybe that's a huge thing during the prose version but you can't really, it's difficult to Illustrate. Ah. How about you ray.

15:53.99

Rae

And I do think viewing it as a alternate universe is definitely a good route to go because you definitely are going to have to do some sort of editing to get that into essentially what's an adaption of your role playing. Because um, it's going to be a different format is essentially what it is like it's just like going from prose to comic is you're going to have to make some changes because it's a different medium. So um. It's just going to have to change because it's different. Um and I will say when you're taking it from Rp Sessions you're also going to have to consider that it's. Going to take a lot longer that to turn this into a comic so you're going to have to consider that um, you're that. Is this person going to be my friend in 10 years ah for me to finish this thing because um, my first web comic that did not happen.

17:25.86

Rae

And that certainly did is a blow to motivation when you're making a web comic is if you have a huge falling out with your friends and half the the characters are theirs. Well. It's good to get a lot harder to write your ah roleplay comic if um, you don't like the person that half the characters are based off of anymore. Um, even if you like the characters themselves. Ah it. Definitely can get a lot harder to write those characters.

18:06.49

Thane

So yeah, the web comic that was the the first comic I ever read ah that ah well, the first web comic that made me that introduced me to the scene. It started that way was literally the the creators were a couple initially.

18:12.86

Rae

Oh yeah, yes.

18:22.16

Thane

And they had been roleplaying their characters with each other and they broke up and that was the that was the end of the comic ah in some ways. Ah I was I was talking during the first question about ah teralt and how. A form of Rp was kind of partly responsible for starting it. But I feel in some ways kind of lucky that it wasn't really a story or it didn't really go further than that it was like the seed of the character that I took and could kind of do my own thing with. And I was completely free to like come up with my own story direction. It was not a collaborative effort. Other than that like very initial like spark of an idea. Um, and so to some extent I'm I'm glad that that was ah that that I had that freedom although sometimes ah i. Do look at other other comics that are collaborative efforts and I'm like ah be nice to have help from someone but it's never it's never that simple and I have done freeform text Rps with friends ah in stories and I have some characters from those that I really love and like the storylines were a ton of fun. Ah, in some cases we have storylines that actually finished like it became a completed narrative in a sense I'll beit a really long and rambling one and sometimes I kind of wish like it'd be neat if we could get a comic of that off the ground but ah it it can be tough if like the.

19:49.52

Thane

The 2 creators are operate at different speeds or aren't quite like in sync or in agreement about what direction that's going to go in so I'm not sure whether those will happen but it would be cool someday. Um, so the ah.

20:07.73

Phin

I have something to add if I may because I think um, the point about um creators working in different speeds or creators maybe not being able while. Um, the ideas and the bouncing of of each other might work in something like freeform rp might not be like translatable to an actual comic and the energy that you have during those rps like might not be something that translates. Into working in a different medium because um I kind of like um the experiences I have is that you often have like 1 person who's can be kind of the main idea guy and then like. Takes a lot of the things and does a lot of stuff with that and especially when you adapt something like an rp um figuring out who takes what role and who is basically a. With a comic doing most of the work and actually drawing that comic can be kind of difficult and something that I ran into recently after? um, basically I was writing heirs of the whale with my husband.

21:33.46

Phin

And he like dropped from the project not because like something terrible happened but he didn't feel the project as much anymore and he had a lot of things going on in his life. But I kind of noticed that um the characters that we like developed. In those Rps Um, especially his characters I didn't have that strong connection to Them. So I'm right now in the process of building like a connection to these characters making them kind of mine so I can write them adequately and like give them. Um, ah, satisfying story.

22:22.38

Rae

And yeah, having the same energies if you are collaborating is definitely important for my first web comic which um as I said did have end up having a falling out. Um. We did try having a collaboration at first where I was the main idea person as well as drawing it. Some of my other roleplay partners did offer to do the writing and the coloring and. Inking at first to but um, they the but they never actually would ever meet the deadlines and I would end up having to do it myself in the end and it was. It ended up being very frustrating and I would end up having to do all of it and to be honest, it was like a 3 3 times a week comic so it was like not exactly a very healthy schedule in the first place. But. Um, it was. It was very fair, very frustrating though to end up having all of that expectation and having to.

23:52.81

Rae

Do it all on your own in the first place. So it's one of those do you do do you do you do it all on your own. Do you try to collaborate. Do you just be like hey can I use your characters and I'm just going to draw it or and consult you on if they're in character in the first place. Or what you just need to have the expectations in the front. Um, before you get started I do suggest maybe starting a scene and going from there if you're trying to collaborate though because. You don't want this happening at launch.

24:49.69

Phin

And yeah, I Personally think it's also very important to very early on when you basically decide to turn this Rp into more and like be it a comic. Be it like a novel or some other kind of project. To basically set ah your expectations the expectations of your collaborator and know where you both stand because um I remember like I knew someone once? um, they also like worked on a comic project. And kind of ran into the problem that a character that had kind of like gotten pretty popular within that comic could not really be used could not really be expanded about ah about because it was a character from um, a friend of theirs that they. Compete with um that they like used for the comic at some point. Um, mostly I think um like as this kind of like yeah um, how do you say it is there a character between themselves. Um, but he kind of got like really popular and they ended up like having to drop some of the storylines that the character was um, involved with because um, the person. Ah their friend wanted to use their character for their own Story. So.

26:23.64

Phin

They basically had like loose ends with this like kind of popular character that they had in the comic that like never got expanded on because the other collaborator wanted to use the character for an own project which I do not think like ever came to be but. That's also something especially like if you use other people's characters from those Rps like you have to write from the start know what can I do with this character. How much can that character actually be involved in the story. Or does the other person want to do something with that character later on. So maybe it would be better to like have the character not be there or.

27:11.50

Thane

And yeah, that's ahd be a pretty ah pretty important thing to to iron out. Um, which kind of leads into the third question. Ah, which is what is your advice to someone looking to take their rp sessions settings. Their characters or their friends characters and turn them into a long form narrative like a web comic.

27:32.33

Phin

So yes I think um, we already mentioned a few things that might go awry if you like try to adapt the web comic I think for me, um, it would be that. If you want to adapt like Rp into a comic or a web comic take some time um figure it out try to maybe like for the fun of it work with your collaborator see what the roles are how.

28:06.11

Phin

Um, the other person works how you actually work together when you work on something that's not freeform rp and to write in the beginning like maybe try to um, already set a list of um, the things that. Cannot make it into the comic because they might be too difficult because I think especially with our p comics. Um, especially with like very long form r piece. There is like um this um yeah, you might be. Ah, you might be tempted to be like okay I'm going to make this like huge epic story with all these characters and all like their interactions and entanglements and I think if you like try to adapt the Rp it would be important. To give it like a good structure and see basically what you can actually take into it because comics aren't like such a time intensive form of labor and it takes. So long to actually get through the story to actually draw the comic. So keeping it a little bit shorter is probably like beneficial unless you have like a lot of time to work on it. So for me I would say give it like form. It.

29:40.67

Phin

Ah, the thing ah try to like streamline it and try to like be on the same page with your collaborator and know exactly where each of you like stands and even then there might be like problems in the future. So. Um, adapting our piece can be a little bit difficult unless it's really someone you know 100% like you can trust and you've been like friends for like 15 years and you will probably be friends for like 15 years more um I guess that that would be like an extreme case. But um, yeah, it's like a lot to think about if you like if it's actually worth it to like adapt the thing in the end to.

30:31.70

Thane

And yeah, in some cases like it could be such a blast just writing the thing out but part of the advantage of Rps is that freeform nature and how you're just kind of having fun exploring and wandering around and not necessarily thinking about optimal story structure. Or trying to be concise for a graphic novel adaptation. What do you think? ray.

31:00.63

Rae

I would say don't be afraid to go off script to edit or honestly just go off the rails completely when it comes to um, using the narrative of r piece and just use the characterization as a base. Because what makes an interesting rp and what makes an interesting comic story can be completely different things especially since Rps can tend toward what would be considered melodrama for comics. Um. So I would I would honestly personally just use the characterization for ah, a base because especially since personally my comic my ah role plays end up to be kind of meandering in story. And um, a lot of my characters tend to get tossed in and no focus point tends to be tends to happen. Um, where for comics I think um. What is really beneficial is when you tend to have have ah just a couple characters in focus and most of the other characters tend to be background or supporting characters.

32:29.55

Rae

Um, and one of the main drawbacks for our piece stories tend to be character blue and you keep getting characters introduced and then the focus goes on them because they're the care. They're The. Author's new blurbo and all the focus is on them and the old characters go in the background and the reader goes. Well what happened to them. Um, so that tends to be something that. Ah, tens that can get really really frustrating for a reader that I think you um as an author you really need to keep in mind for um, that role Plays. Can be really fun, but maybe not so much when you're a reader.

33:29.93

Thane

And yeah, definitely when I was ah doing those like text form role plays a lot of it was just like we thought this would be cool at the time like reading over some of those logs which can take a while because some of them are like hundreds of pages at Microsoft where ah like after i. After I extracted the logs and kind of put them together and I'd be reading through it and I'd be like wow this is the section that we wrote after I like read full metal alchemist or something like that and like you can kind of see that right there whereas if you're adapting it. You want to you want to kind of soften those things like. Merge it into a single consistent storyline that doesn't jump around too much and have like themes. So ah ultimately I think I I agree with Ray that it's often better to just kind of start completely from fresh and don't try to directly adapt. The entire thing. Um, I know we didn't really touch on it but like this probably goes double for anything based on like a tabletop role play like a d and d kind of thing that.

34:35.43

Phin

Yeah, um I I Totally agree because I think what something that's like also important to keep in mind that like like you said then that an Rp can be like colored so much by the things that you're reading at the time that you're consuming at the time. Or even like the stuff that you're going through at the moment because sometimes you also are pee in a way that like maybe helps you like deal with stress or other things that you go through in that moment and like that might make for fun or cathartic or like. Cool Rp but not really for like an enjoyable story and I think um, something that I like keep in mind a lot is that like um, the characters that I Rp like I Rp them in different scenarios. And sometimes we don't need like that much setup because we already know the characters. So when we get to like an emotional scene or of course that scene will be emotional for us because we're already familiar with the characters because we repeat them for like a long time. So if I would take like any of these these scenarios and try to extract them exactly as they are into um, a story. They would not really land emotionally because um, the reader They don't have like the family or like look.

36:07.38

Phin

The reader doesn't have the familiarity that like we have with the characters that ah that we are appearing with with.

36:13.88

Thane

And yeah, and some on some levels. It almost feels like ah these kinds of Rps in in a way. It's like ah it's a similar thing to fan fiction where like you're you're sort of I guess it's almost like you're you're telling fan fiction to each other kind of about your own characters. Ah. Like hitting that that like little itch in your brain of like being like I love these characters already and now I want to keep exploring but ah, a new a new reader to a comic won't have that bit of context. It's like ah reading fan fiction for a series that they don't know. Ah, so you got to make sure that when you are adapting a role play that you do lay that groundwork first and really kind of analyze like in this storyline so who are these characters. How can I like I guess ideally as concisely as possible. Get the reader up to speed with what they need to know ideally by telling the most compelling part of their story. Ah so an rp I guess an advantage of it is that it is such a character focused storyline that if ah. When it when it's nailed the the readers will often kind of fall in love with the characters and that's awesome to see but you definitely have to make sure to put in the work of letting the reader know who they are and what their deal is without it being like ok this is backstory dump time. Ah.

37:44.95

Thane

Yeah, you got to walk them through like a like a story this is kind of where ah where I guess I'm I'm at with those long like text form rps where I feel like they really do have to be like stripped down to the bones and rebuilt to turn into a comic and it is a lot of work and getting a collaborator. On board with that level of work is something that ah I'm pretty new to and can definitely be a challenge in its own right? So yeah, huh and with that I think that is a roasted red pepper and goat cheese wrap. Ah. So thank you for listening to our episode today I've been your host farthane and you can find my comics at chealt.sevensmith.net and at wiitchwwoodcomic dot com.

38:35.16

Phin

I I've been fin and you can find my comic at airsofthewale.com

38:41.26

Rae

I and I've been Ray and you can find my comic at comic dot com and overlord of Raven fell on webtoon.

38:54.81

Thane

And who ah and see-you later slappers.

38:57.17

Phin

Yeah, I'm going to go back and make my characters kiss the characters of my friends and arties Newcom just all kissing yes.

39:04.79

Thane

Hell yeah, new Comic just all kissing. Yeah.

39:09.31

Rae

Always it.