Hi. I got redirected to this site from a site called springhole.net. I decided to check it out, and here I am.

So, I've been poking through the forums, and I have questions

1. What's up with the activity drop?
2. How do I get into this sort of roleplaying?
3. What characters can and can't I create?
4. Are there any rules?
5. What should I know?
6. I've heard of Mary Sues, how do I not be one?
7. Is there anything more I should avoid/do/whatever???

Hello and welcome to Revaliir! The majority of your questions regarding role playing can be answered through guides on our wiki:

• New Member Guide
• Role-playing Guides

The rest of our site rules are also in our wiki, including the lore of Revaliir and setting. Real life comes first in most situations, hence the recent drop in site activity. However our community on Discord is very active and it's also the best place to have questions answered regarding things not detailed in the wiki!

Hello and welcome!

Our dearest admin Cymbel has given you the right links to our wiki to explain a lot of your questions. The vast majority of our users are on our discord. The ones looking to roleplay can be found there. Honestly, it's just a bit of a slow period as our developers continue to develop Revaliir 2.0. Most of the OOC activity has always happened on our discord since we got it leaving our OOC areas a bit bare, to be honest. We're still here though even if it doesn't look like it.

Hi!  Welcome! 

Activity is sparse on the site right now because a lot of our crazy interaction happens on the Discord, as previously stated, though we do keep the actual RPing on the site itself.  We've always had highs and lows (work, school, life in general), but we're always a DM away from a potential reply.

For your second question, Cymbel has already posted a few links.  In addition to that, you could always throw a few ideas around in Discord and/or an OOC thread for character ideas or plot ideas, and step one could be writing an open thread for someone to hop in!

I believe the third and fourth questions are cleared by the links, so I'll skip that.  For the fifth, we have an extensive wiki with lore!  It's not entirely necessary to know, but it is available for more in depth roleplaying if you so choose.

Avoiding a Mary-Sue character is quite easy.  When coming up with character ideas, create realistic flaws.  No one person is good at everything, so find your characters strengths, and note their weakness and play them out.  Is your character a mage?  Then they'll likely be bad in a melee with fists and swords.  Are they book smart?  Then they might not understand the street all too well, and get mugged.  No one character is OP, not even the Gods and Goddesses (though they are extremely powerful, but that's a whole different thing.)

As for what to avoid, I can't say anything specific really.  Just be kind and patient, and stick to the general rules of the site (or Discord if you end up joining), and have fun!

Pretty sure everyone here so far covered just about everything, only thing I'd say is to enjoy and have a bit of patience. From what I've seen, RP forums in general have been having it rough for the last few years, activity wise. But there's still plenty of us writers around ready to scratch that writing inch. Definitely take a peek at the discord to learn more and meet up with our writers.