Roleplay / Dangan Roleplay

Dangan Roleplay (often abbreviated to 'DRRP') is, as the name suggests, a Journal Roleplay based on the Danganronpa series. It's best known for being the Genre Popularizer for murdergames in this style of RP, to the point that the "mass-ex" subgenre is also called "danganlike," as well as for having a large (and sometimes toxic) fanbase (and just as much Hype Backlash); while many fans ended up joining later rounds of the game themselves, others spectated the entire game.

As in the visual novels, a group of extraordinarily talented individuals are placed in a close-quarters setting, assigned Super High School Level titles, and told the only way out is to get away with murder. However, not everyone in the game can be reasonably called a high school student...

Canon Rounds

These rounds of the game continue and branch off from the canon story of Hope's Peak, with the point of divergence being after Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. Each follows from the previous one, playing in real time.

• Round 1: Twenty strangers wake up on Jabberwock Island for a few weeks of friendship-building exercises, but Monobear crashes the party and enacts a killing game. This round ran from December 3rd, 2013 to February 14th, 2014.
• Round 2: Thirty students must figure out the mysterious "Hope's Peak Academy Auxiliary Campus" and what sent them there as their numbers dwindle. This round introduced the first original setting, the Monomono Machine, and memory loss. It ran from May 19th to August 3rd, 2014.
• Round 3: Twenty students trapped in the "Hotel Monobear" find that they have a lot more in common than just murderschool. This round adds a concrete endgame date from the beginning instead of a projected window of a few weeks and introduces elements from Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls. It ran from June 15th to August 11th, 2015.

Gimmick and Guest Rounds

These rounds are each in their own separate continuity from the canon rounds and from each other. The "gimmick" name comes from that they all focus on specific themes, like a single fandom or set of properties.

• Disney Ronpa: Fifteen students find themselves in Lord Monobear's castle in the "Tragic Kingdom". This round introduced the rule that misvotes would result in execution, which carried over to future rounds, and its mystery relied heavily on its single-fandom background. It ran from February 1st to March 17th, 2015.
• Smash Ronpa: Based on the Super Smash Bros. series, it takes characters from Nintendo and related properties and puts them into a deadly training camp. The first round to be run by guest moderators instead of the main mod team. It ran from September 28th to November 8th, 2015.
• Dangan Roleplay: Nick vs CN: The first "versus" round, where ten Nickelodeon characters face off against ten Cartoon Network characters with the hope of their team producing a graduate — or just the last ones standing. It ran from May 30th to July 17th, 2016.

On September 30th, 2016, the official announcement was made that the game's canon story was over and Round 4 would no longer be happening. Gimmick rounds were originally stated to still continue, but that was quietly phased out; however, first-run reserves would also apply to the first rounds of new affiliates/spinoffs It's Curtains and Airlocked. Almost six years passed without word, until on September 25th, 2021, a teaser for the mods' new game Ars Arcana hinted that DRRP might have a revival someday after that, but "not yet." Finally, on October 27th, 2023, a teaser went up on the mod plurk for a 10th anniversary project and, while they clarified that it would not be a new round, mention was made that new rounds might be coming in the future.

Dangan Roleplay may be read on Dreamwidth here. Guest round Smash Ronpa can be found here.

Not to be confused with the tag of the same name on Tumblr, which focuses on the canon characters; the unaffiliated Reddit community of the same name; or the appropriation of the name from both the Dreamwidth and Tumblr games to refer to any DR-related roleplay game or prompt.

This game provides examples of:

General A-M

• Actor Allusion: In Nick Versus CN, Tarrlok wonders why TOM sounds like Amon.

• Agents Dating: There's enough fraternization at the Future Foundation that Main HQ has its own designated makeout closet.
• All or Nothing: A Deadly Game variant. You graduate or you get executed; you find the killer or you all get executed (especially from Disney Ronpa on, where attempting to abstain from the vote gets you killed along with the guilty party).
• All Therapists Are Muggles: Averted for survivors by the Future Foundation's SHSL Therapist, who offers his services so they won't have to go home and try to explain alternate worlds to a therapist there.
• Always Check Behind the Chair: Setting-related evidence is usually harder to find than murder-related evidence and can be found anywhere.
• Amateur Sleuth: The first round had a prosecutor who took on investigative duties at home and the second had a police detective, but they're in the minority. Most of the characters have barely investigated a suspiciously empty cookie jar before, let alone a murder.
• Another Side, Another Story: The community of dead characters. A round's dead events are customarily unlocked to the public after the living students complete the game. Starting in Round 3, the dead have had goals to assist the living and even develop their own "dead protag."
• Anyone Can Die: Every PC is at the RNG's mercy, and while some have to die, it's hard to tell who will live.
• Apocalypse Anarchy: Caused and encouraged by SHSL Despair in backstory.
• Apocalypse Cult: SHSL Despair was one in the canon rounds. They succeeded, mostly.
• Arbitrarily Large Bank Account: One of the first things Monobear announces is always that the school has an unrealistically high budget, there to sustainably trap the students and provide their life necessities indefinitely until they snap. It's often justified in the end, too, with conclusions like "everything was a simulation anyway" or "the mastermind had been extremely wealthy and well able to hoard resources leading up to his wiping out the rest of the country".
• Artificial Intelligence: Along with all the canon examples, Hope is technically an AI as she was created inside a computer and given a real body later, Henri and his beta-test brother were AIs created to enable Lysandre to enrol himself in his own game, and the coaches in Nick VS CN are imaginary friends who take the form of a robot and a TV-dwelling AI.
• Babies Ever After: Couples who make it out sometimes have these in the far future. Or the near future. Hi, Adachi and Sonico.
• Back for the Dead: Characters who made it to the survivor pool in one round are pretty much doomed if they're reapped (sorry, Anna). Players thus immediately freaked out when Jimmy showed up among the Round 3 test-runners in the Mock Trial. On a meta level, if you've played in only one canon round before, survived, and are in another canon round, you're dead.
• Badass in a Nice Suit: Future Foundation operatives usually wear black suits.
• Battle Theme Music: Machine Gun Talk Battles, introduced in Round 2 and used sparingly for intense late-game trial faceoffs, have music from the "boss" character's canon linked.
• Before the Dark Times: The canon DR characters sometimes cameo and records still exist of the world they grew up in before canon happened to it.
• Beneath Suspicion: Culprits will often slip right under the radar as others are accused until the truth comes out. Usually happens if the truth is deemed too obvious or if their victim was close to them.
• Big Word Shout: The canon DR ones will occasionally show up, as well as those from Ace Attorney, as its characters tend to appear in the game.
• Black Blood: Yep, blood is pink. Thing is, the characters notice it's pink, and it's pink even when a game takes place outside of the DR world, moving it a little closer to Alien Blood were it not for Crazy Hand's admission in Smash Ronpa that it's still "to appease the censors." Round 2's mastermind posits that it's a "feature" of the game, but there's no real known reason.
• Blackmail: Many of the motives, especially Round 2's first, which led to further murders down the line even after that week was over and the secrets Monobear was taunting the students with saved.
• Blazing Inferno Hellfire Sauce: Kirei supplied this in the form of spicy muffins in Round 2, and in Round 3, his cutouts came with mapo tofu.
• Bloody Horror: Common but warned for if it gets too excessive, like in 1-4 and the canon rounds' Case 5 tradition.
• Body in a Breadbox: Roller coaster. Washroom stall. Swimming pool. Kitchen table. Every round has at least one "what?" corpse pop up.
• Body of the Week
• Building of Adventure: The settings of Round 2, Round 3, Disney Ronpa, and Nick VS CN confine the characters to a single building.
• Canon Discontinuity: Inverted, somewhat. The canon rounds predate Danganronpa 3 and diverge strongly from what occur there as a result; the cancelled Round 4 was to draw inspiration from 3, but the arguably disappointing content of the anime along with the plot of the RP so far led to just cancelling Round 4 instead of dealing with what to keep and what to discard.
• Captured Superentity: How did they manage to defeat, capture, and depower some of these people to stuff them into murderschool?
• Character Death: You think?
• Characters Dropping Like Flies: Known not just for doing it but for proving that it could be done in DWRP, where such ideas were replied to with "Who would want to be killed off?"
• Character-Magnetic Team: The Future Foundation, to the point that some say rescuing people from murder schools is their biggest source of staff recruitment.
• Children Forced to Kill: Nearly averted. Characters under 15 are barred unless there's a very good reason, like if their canon is that dark to begin with or they're secretly older, dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Still, if you see a five-year-old running around, it's somebody's kid from a happy ending's epilogue, not a student. Even R3's Monaka, who's definitely not forced to be evil, is older than she was in canon because of the time that's passed. The gimmick rounds all had lower age requirements due to the fandoms they drew from having a lot of younger characters.
• Climactic Elevator Ride: Any round where the final trial is accessed by an elevator.
• Closed Circle: Characters are confined to the setting, with the murder game supposedly providing an escape.
• Continuity Lockout: Avoided by setting investigations and final investigations. If the characters and players need to know something about the canon games or the previous rounds, there will be something explaining it.
• Crossover Ship: invoked Happens in both Official Couple and Ship Tease variants. In typical Danganronpa fashion, it's practically a death sentence.
  • Round One: Lysandre/Archer and Juniper/Veronica. (Ironically, in the first trial, Lysandre is boggled at the notion that anyone would want to use Murder School to find someone to date.)
  • Round Two: Adachi/Sonico and {...}/Naomi. Sycamore and Cammy also slept together at one point, though he later got together with Lysandre, his own canonmate.
  • Disney Ronpa: Naveen/Ariel. (Ship Tease-wise, Naveen/Everyone.)
  • Round Three: Dave/Meridiana and Ryuunosuke/Tsukiyama. Post-game, it's confirmed that Tucker and Washington's relationship changes into a three-way polyamorous one with Maya, and it's hinted (first confirmed and then vaguely retconned) that something similar happens with Dave/Meridiana and Silver until most of the teenagers end up joining them in an affectionate "polyblob."
  • Smash Ronpa: Dark Pit/Ashley, Clair/Yomiel, and Alastor/Nephenee.
  • Nickelodeon Versus Cartoon Network: Sokka/Marinette/Adrien.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The executions. All of them, though Round 1 and Nick VS CN have some really bad ones. The murders weren't a walk in the park either; 1-4 and every single round's Case 5 were particularly hideous.
• Deadly Game: The premise of the series the game is based on, and the game itself as well. In order to escape their current situation, the "students" are expected to commit the perfect murder.
• Dead Person Conversation: The ghosts of the original dead students in Round 1 and the "ghosts" of some of Round 2's dead in Round 2 appeared to a select few living students. In the second case, they were fakes, though; one had been Faking the Dead all along and the others were Henri in disguise. Round 3's version edges on Talking to the Dead, but the hauntings turned out to be real.
• Defiant Captive: The casts generally start like this until they gradually start to give in and play the game.
• Despair Gambit: Pulled on individual students at every opportunity, with the whole game (usually) a setup to do this on a larger scale. Round 2 was engineered as this to give a colossal middle finger to the Future Foundation and destroy their ideal of spreading hope with things that had a track record of making everything worse.
• Did Not Die That Way: Murder methods are often covered up by decoys, like 2-4's arrow incident or Dis-2's sword. In 3-5, even the murderer didn't think they died that way.
• Door to Before: Rounds 2 and 3 have convenient hidden elevators accessible only after the final trial to lead to the exit.
• Dwindling Party: Starting with 15-30 students and ending up with 6-9.
• Evidence Scavenger Hunt: A key game mechanic, often extending to areas nowhere near the body.
• Exploring the Evil Lair: Setting investigations and final investigations.
• Fantastic Angst: Characters are far from home, not sure where their lives are going, and not sure of who to trust (real issue) because they're in murderschool (fantastic cause).
• First-Name Basis: People with Only One Name suddenly have this kind of relationship with others, owing to the fact that Monobear gives last names to people that don't have them.
• First Time in the Sun: Though the characters have all been outside before, being trapped so long makes each survivor pool's act of stepping outside this. Strongest in Round 2 and 3, as 1 and Smash already had outdoor settings, the NvC cast isn't actually seen leaving the house, and Disney Ronpa ended at night. (First Time Under the Stars?)
• Flashback Nightmare: In rounds with memory loss, the regains come in dreams, and they're often not very happy.
• Friendship Moment: Several, often serving as either death flags or signs of the group coming together in spite of the Headmaster. The most famous is probably Madison and Veronica bridging their differences in the mansion in Round 1.
• Freudian Excuse: Even the most evil killers have reasons for being what they are. Kirei's in Round 2 hit a lot of people.
• Geodesic Cast: Each class forms one unit reflected in each of the others, and counterparts are often assigned by the players both based on personality and role in the plot. This fell out of fashion hard for later games that followed it, but during DRRP, role-assigning flourished among both players and fans, with one or two characters per round being fit into a pattern with roles like The Hero, The Lancer, The Heart, Decoy Protagonist, and "Deadland Protag."
• Heroic Safe Mode: Common in the last few weeks of the game, when characters are worn down and know they need to just look after themselves and others and settle into the investigate-convict-repeat pattern to survive.
• He's Dead, Jim: "(character) is dead."
• Hide the Evidence: Note to characters — doing this never ends well. Even if you tried to get something to Eat the Evidence, Adachi. Or you're covering for someone who didn't even do it, Maybeck.
• High-Heel–Face Turn: Inverted in the canon rounds. Of their masterminds, it's Junko and Monaka who insist upon execution and are, while tragic, irredeemably evil. Lysandre is saved.
• High School: Murderschools, hence the name, are very loosely patterned after the original set in a school, with Super High School Level titles and (often) claims of ties to Hope's Peak. This is treated as The Artifact by the Future Foundation and confuses characters who are either too old for high school or don't know what it is.
• History Repeats: There are common themes to the cases that players tend to draw. Case 4 is the "heartbreaking case" and Case 5 is the "gory case" every time (though gimmick rounds don't usually have a Case 5).
• "I Can't Look!" Gesture: A common sign of Character Development. Usually, all but the most messed-up students are unable to watch the first execution, but most gain the nerve to uncomfortably see the last.
• I Have Your Wife: A common motive is characters' loved ones in danger.
• Incompetence, Inc.: The Future Foundation isn't really this, but their strange hiring practices and the fate of many of their big operations prompt some of their lower-ranking employees and ex-employees to suspect it.
• Inexplicably Preserved Dungeon Meat: Edible machine prizes are still safe to eat, even after weeks.
• Insecurity Camera: Averted. After round one, no one can tamper with any security cameras in murderschool on pain of death.
• The Intern: Background NPC Tyrone Speedwagon, a Future Foundation intern, was invented as a brainless Butt-Monkey whose screwups explain the Foundation's mistakes mandated by plot or player whims.
• Improbable Food Budget: Murderschool kitchens usually have some pretty high-quality ingredients.
• Internal Reveal: When the characters find something out about the backstory that occurred onscreen or in a canon DR game. On an individual level, when your character learns something about their classmate but you've already seen the canon and know what it is.
• Ironic Death: Again, the executions - they're specifically tailored to each of their victims.
• It Never Gets Any Easier: Executions, to many having to vote for their friends to die.
• Just in Time: The SDR2 kids saving Jimmy from his wrongful execution in Round 1, Lysandre cutting the power in Round 2, Jack scaring Gaston to save Naveen in Disney Ronpa, and Miss Usami hacking the hotel's Monobears to rescue Silver's Pokémon in Round 3.
• Knight, Knave, and Squire: "Heart, Snarker, and Protagonist" usually turns out this way, only the Knight/Heart is often inexperienced themselves; they just adapted to the setting anyway without losing their optimism. It fits better in the canon rounds.
• Last Villain Stand: It's pretty clear in the three canon rounds (and outright shown in Round 2) that endgame triggers both because the students have found their resolve and because outside help may be on the way. Also done differently in Smash: the campers start endgame on their own by derailing the game and marching on Final Destination.
• Laundromat Liaisons: There's usually only one washing machine or at least only one laundry room. Nick VS CN had two, but the teams were divided, so functionally there was just one that any student could use. Thus, characters will often meet up in the laundry room.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: Investigations, to cover more ground. Enforced in final investigations.
• Limited Wardrobe: Everyone starts out with two outfits. More can be be obtained from making them in the sewing room if one unlocks, Robbing the Dead, or regains from the prize machine.
• Monster-Shaped Mountain: Monobear mountains appear in both Round 1 and Smash Ronpa.
• Motivational Lie: While some motives are based in truth, others, such as R1's Doomed Hometown motive or R2's and NvC's I Have Your Wife motive, are explicitly shown to be fake and just made to push people to kill.
• The Multiverse: Necessary with all these people from different worlds.
• My Girl Back Home: Nearly everyone has people waiting for them to come home, since they're all from different worlds, but in the Round 2 and Smash afterparties, we actually get to meet some of them. One of these is used to set up for Round 3.

General N-Z

• Nerf: Starting in Round 2, this was done to special powers that weren't outright removed, largely to balance the game.
• N.G.O. Superpower: The Future Foundation is this depending on the world they're in; it's definitely an example on its post-apocalyptic home turf.
• Non-Linear Sequel: Gimmick rounds don't belong to the existing plot.
• Nothing Is the Same Anymore: Often the tone after the first murder.
  Dave: We're still in the same place, but everything looks different. And not in a good way.
• Obvious Rule Patch: Monobear tends to add new rules whenever students think of something game-breaking or something that might keep them from constantly murdering one another.
• Oddly Named Sequel 2: Electric Boogaloo: Non-canonical rounds are all named after their gimmicks.
• An Odd Place to Sleep: Sleeping outside of the dorms/cabins/bedrooms is punishable by death.
• Oh, My Gods!: Extremely common from characters whose canons have fictional gods. Nearly every Pokémon character has invoked Arceus, for example.
• Old Hero, New Pals: The rules mandate that only a small number of characters can return from previous rounds and the majority have to be new additions.
• The Outside World: An important stepping stone for every survivor pool that's earned it.
• Play Every Day: The activity requirements alone ensure that players spend a lot of time on DRRP, asking for a week to yield what other games want in one or two months. What's more, almost every player well exceeds those requirements regularly. And that's just for the Free Time Events...
• Playing Nice for Now: Characters who would be willing to kill but haven't yet been deathrolled often decide to bide their time and observe how they can get away with it.
• Plot-Sensitive Snooping Skills: Canon rounds only unlock the ability to get any results from investigating the setting for clues as to why you're here and how to escape once a certain number of cases is completed.
• Point of No Return: The leadup to the final investigation tends to involve some manner of message in narration to the effect of "get your stuff, you may not be back to your room again." This usually results in the survivor pool showing up to the final trial looking like suitcase-laden tourists.
• Press X to Die: Misvoting, either if enough people do it (Rounds 1 and 2) or if you do it at all (Disney Ronpa and later). The mechanic is rarely used, but sometimes Played for Drama.
• Public Execution: The fate of culprits when caught.
• Ragnarök Proofing: Justified in R2, where the school is actually an underground bunker; the rest of the world does not look perfectly intact until the Future Foundation spends a lot of time and effort repairing it post-game. Subverted in R3, where the hotel only looks nice on the inside.
• Rainbow Speak: Bold is used by both characters and mod narration; however, it's more this than Bold Inflation, since it's used to highlight important evidence, theories, and revelations.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: Accepting or opting out of death rolls, as well as requesting to be killed off (either because you'd apped in for a specific death scene or your life got so busy that your character needed to be written out).
• Recurring Element: The murder game, Monobear, and basic structure to start. The Future Foundation recurs in canon rounds as well, and there are repeating themes and "character roles".
• Redundant Rescue: In rounds 2 and 3, when the Future Foundation arrives, the survivors have already saved themselves. A similar thing happens in Smash, but the EBA had been doing reconnaissance earlier, at least, and were still involved in getting the characters' powers back and debatably in reviving the dead.
• Revealing Injury: The reason trials sometimes end up in strip searches.
• Ruins of the Modern Age: When the canon rounds show the DR world, given that it's After the End.
• Running Gag: In OOC text, "Dangan Roleplay is a serious game about murder" in response to something ridiculous happening in-game. Usually followed by "[current number of deaths] people are dead".
  • "It's ANOTHER BODY/A HUGE POOL OF BLOOD/SOMETHING EXTREMELY GRUESOME—no, just kidding, it's something much more innocuous" during the investigations, usually when a character hopes that they will not, in fact, find another body or more blood.
• Schrödinger's Cast: Characters who would have been (or were already) Killed Off for Real if left in their canons, if they survive their round, have to figure out what they'll do now and what it'll do to their worlds. Most opt not to send their canon Off the Rails and instead to start new lives.
• Sequel Hook: The mystery of Lysandre and Komaeda waking up late in Round 1, both the Future Foundation and Lysandre acknowledging that future murder games and apocalypse scenarios are a "when" at this point rather than an "if" in Round 2, and the noted possibility that the Mastermind's Dragon very likely contracted other kids, if only to supply Monaka with grief seeds in round 3.
• Sliding Scale of Continuity: Main rounds are a Level 4. New players can hop in every round with a new cast, setting, and plot, but the metaplot going on in the background ties everything together. Gimmick rounds are a Level 0, non-canonical.
• Speech-Centric Work: Most of the battles are of the courtroom variety.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: Sort of. After surviving their round (or, in one case, being revived), Lysandre in Mock Trial 1, Anna in Disney Ronpa, and Jimmy in Mock Trial 2 are all quickly killed off in non-canon gimmick rounds and test drives where they reappear.
• Super Title 64 Advance: Technically! The name comes from the fact that its "console" is Journal Roleplay.
• Ticket-Line Campout: Done in real life on reserve day. Round 2's reserves filled up in fifteen minutes. As the first gimmick round, Disney Ronpa was expected to take longer with fewer people having applicable muses. Nope. Seven minutes. Round 3 Mock Trial? Five seconds. Round 3 proper was open for two seconds, something rarely replicated since (and then, only for very well-established games).
• They Died Because of You: The students often throw this at Monobear and/or the mastermind, who throws it back at them just as often — the culprits wouldn't have acted if not for the game, but they wouldn't have been executed if not for the vote. Round 2's Graduation Exam explores and debates this idea in depth.
• Thriller on the Express: Ruled out as a viable long-term setting, but it was used for the second mock trial.
• To Absent Friends: The function of afterparty logs.
• Unwinnable by Design: Every round so far has had a Hopeless Boss Fight bailed out by a Deus ex Machina. However, the mods have worked hard and continue to do so to ensure no trials are Unintentionally Unwinnable.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Some of the criteria to get good or better endings involve forgiving your enemies or at least showing mercy. See recovering Henri instead of leaving him alone in R2 and giving Monaka a quick and painless execution in R3.
• Virtual Soundtrack: Fanmixes and original compositions, some of which are linked in the text.
• Waking Up Elsewhere: Each round starts with the cast waking up in unfamiliar rooms.
• Where There's a Will, There's a Sticky Note: It's common for characters to write their own wills, leaving their belongings to room-looting classmates. Justified, since murderschool has a decided lack of law offices.
• Win Your Freedom: Monobear says you can if you kill someone. Whether that's actually true...

Due to overwhelming page length lagging computers, the individual rounds' pages can be found here:

• Dangan Roleplay Round One
• Dangan Roleplay Round Two
• Disney Ronpa
• Dangan Roleplay Round Three
• Smash Ronpa
• Dangan Roleplay Nickelodeon VS Cartoon Network