Review: Project Roleplay (and giveaway winners announced!)

July 13, 2013 by Critique Geek 1 Comment

Logo belongs to projectroleplay.com

If you live the fandom life, you’re probably familiar with roleplay. Roleplay has been around since the dark ages before Facebook, back when the only way to live out the life of a fictional character was via forums and chat rooms. Fandom roleplay has become huge on social media websites: you can find RPers on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and more.

If you’re a current RPer, you’re probably aware of the crackdown that has been happening on roleplay accounts, particularly on Facebook. While this is being done in the name of security, it’s putting a bit of a damper on the roleplaying community at large. Luckily, the team behind Project Roleplay has come up with a solution. This time it’ll work, this time it’s right, this time your carefully cultivated character profile won’t suddenly be suspended while you’re in the middle of 

Project Roleplay is a website designed exclusively for roleplaying. You sign up with a master account that you use to manage all of your individual characters.  You are then free to start your own role play or join one of the many existing ones. While it is currently very fandom-heavy, there are general medieval and other RPs as well. There’s something for everyone, and if it isn’t there, you can always make it yourself.

Sample RP. Click to enlarge.

Sample Rules. Click to enlarge.

Sample application. Click to enlarge.

Being rather seasoned role players here at 3ChicGeeks (primarily in the Harry Potter fandom), we all simply had to check it out. It’s for science, John. We’ve signed up, created profiles, joined RPs with various characters, and analyzed the Project Roleplay experience with very complicated algorithms and science-y stuff. For the sake of this post, however, we’ve broken it down into a simple list of pros and cons.

Pros:

• One centralized place for all of your character profiles regardless of fandom association.
• Comprehensive set-up.
• You can switch between characters via a drop-down box.
• Easy to start up a new roleplay.
• You can require other RPers to apply for your RP. You can even customize the application.
• Threads stay in the order they were started, from newest to oldest. Big pro in terms of keeping a coherent timeline.
• Roleplay admins have a central place where they can manage everything, including the RP description, banner, members, and application.
• Admins have the choice to list their RP to the public or keep in unlisted and therefore invite-only.
• Character names can be displayed on user profiles or hidden.
• You can search for other RPers based on username or character name.
• Mature content can be flagged and automatically hidden; those who don’t wish to read it can simply skip over the post.
• Your character isn’t going to get randomly deleted. Huzzah!

Cons:

• Website is still very basic and very, very buggy.
• No core website rules, which could be a problem in the future.
• You can access a character’s profile through a user profile, but not vice versa.
• Character profiles are pretty limited for those who are used to RPing through Facebook.
• If you want to apply to a roleplay with an existing character, an admin must add your character by hand, even if you’ve already filled out an application. Applications only let you make a new profile.
• No central listing of characters or users.
• Limited rating system. It currently only lets you list your roleplay as rated G or rated R with nothing in-between.
• Can’t collapse threads with several comments.
• The ads get annoying.
• No FAQ or contact save through the Project Roleplay Facebook page.
• Hasn’t quite caught on yet–a lot of sign ups but not a whole lot of posting, making for slow-moving RPs.

Overall, Project Roleplay is a good start. It needs a lot of upgrades if it hopes to attract avid social media RPers, but it’s a good step in the right direction. It’s pretty easy to use in spite of a few hiccups here and there. While it still has a quite a ways to go, we see Project Roleplay being successful in the long run.

And now for the special bookmark giveaway…

We had a small giveaway earlier in the week, and instead of picking only one winner, we’ve picked two! Congrats to Nikk and Nasra; you were chosen via two Random.org drawings, and each of you will receive a pair of handmade recycled bookmarks in your chosen colors. Winners will be contacted via email to inquire for their mailing address this weekend, or they can reach out to Freak Geek at freak@3chicgeeks.com.