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In general, RP refers to roleplay.

Hard & Soft Roleplay

There are many different kinds of roleplay that a game can offer, though. A game -- usually a game still in beta -- may offer 'soft RP,' where players may roleplay but consequences are not expected to last, experience will not accrue, and stats will not change. Once that game goes live, the roleplay will change to 'hard RP,' where characters may be in danger, plots are run, and the things they learn may advance their stats.

Consent & Non- or No-Consent

There is full-consent RP, where players are expected to gain each other's consent for actions they'd like to take against one another, and no actions can be taken against another character without his consent. There is no-consent RP, which implies that simply by going onto the grid, a character is in danger of any random threat. And there are varying degrees of consent RP in between as can be seen with Dark Metal's Fate System.

Role-play & Roll-play

Roleplay is often contrasted with rollplay, wherein a player prefers rolling dice to posing actions. The claim of "I'm here to roleplay, not rollplay" is often bandied about by those who are surprised to find that the Character Generation system might not allow them to have the wisdom of Solomon, strength of Hercules, stamina of Atlas, power of Zeus, courage of Achilles, and speed of Mercury all at once, or by those who dropped all their points into Seduction instead of anything that could help with combat (and now have a gun being held to their character's head).

Soul-play

Once upon a time a term used by a certain goth to describe the opposite of rollplay. Now used as a term of derision for those 'soulplayers' who want to play characters with the wisdom of Solomon, the strength of Hercules, etc. etc., whether or not the system lets them dammit. May be related to White Hats.

Terms