Rules guidelines

[MoonRaven]

Rules

* Have a character completely figured out before you start writing anything. You should know your character's full name, history, personality, appearance, strengths and weaknesses.

* Stay in character. There's nothing worse than an evil old mage suddenly going berserk with a broadsword on his own minions.

* Spelling and grammar doesn't cause cancer. This is almost a serious litterary work; you'd hardly send a book to a publisher where (s)he could read "nad then i cutt teh othre orc wit my sword and then i cut the last orc wit my sword to lol". Read up on grammar here if English isn't your first language. Read through your text at least twice before posting it and/or get some program to spell check it for you if spelling's not your strong side.
Of course, the occasional typo is allowed.

* Don't be afraid to have weaknesses. There's no fun in making your character some kind of omnipotent hiker capable of killing anything without moving a muscle and at the same time healing everyone in your party.

* Be careful about taking over other people's characters and adding their actions in your posts. That person might've wanted to say or do somethinng completely different and it is also rude.

* While there is room for small (quite big, actually) subplots and quests, please note that there IS a story planned. Everyone is free to have stories of their own, in which that person may also control the NPC:s, but don't try to hijack the whole RP by going "these monsters was sent to attack us by Haldor, my arch-enemy!" if it's those monsters weren't controlled by you from the start.
This also applies to suddenly being attacked of monsters, detecting monsters, suddenly finding items that will solve a problem ("oops, I found a key to this locked door, what luck!") and so on. It's just like in real life; you won't find something just because you want to find it. In the RP, the higher power called the game master taker care of these things.

* Wait up for the others/ keep up with the others. It's not very polite of two people to write four or five pages on their own in an afternoon. On the other hand, it's unreasonable to ask the whole group to wait a week for one person to respond. There are of course a number of reasons why someone might be unable to post, but if you know you're not going to have internet access for a while, say so in the discussion.

* Write often. It's better to write "The old man stands still and humms" than nothing at all.

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Q&A


I am interested, and you all know that I enjoy writing, but I do not know really how to participate. I.e. Create a character, and such?

It's not that hard. Come up with some good idea(s), then build a character around it. It can be an event in the person's life which has affected him/her greatly (parents getting killed to mention a cliché), a property; a tail, an insatiable urge to read books and so on. Then imagine what growing up under those conditions would be like. Imagine how the character's been affected, the choices (s)he's done throughout his/her life and you have a complete person.
The best idea is to compose a character using many original ideas; just because you lost your parents at a young age doesn't mean you don't have really big ears or that you're not scared of eggshells.

So we just join in the Rp or do we still have to put up character sheets or something?

No character sheets needed, since we're not supposed to know each other. Just hop in and do what you feel like.

Could my character have a dream where for example the whole party dies, and then my character would try to prevent that from happening?

It depends on whether the dream is to come true or not. The best thing would be to PM me about it. I'd provide some things that should be included in the dream (minor environment descriptions and stuff like that) and then you'd post the actual dream, preferably in the "I dreamt that..."-form since only you would actually experience the dream.
Or, you could just say that you dreamt something, anything at all, and that dream may or may not come true.


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Syntax

Here's the preferred syntax.

Descriptions from an omniscient third-person perspective is written in italic while spoken lines are written normally.
Quote:
Suddenly, some omnipresent observer takes over the storytelling in third person perspective. Tenebrion gets pissed off.

Now I'm pissed off!


If more than one person is talking in the same post, the current talker's name should be mentioned like this:

Quote:
[Dragon]
I'm gonna eat you all!

[Schoolchildren]
No, please don't!



Talking out-of-character (OOC) should be extremely limited, but if it's really needed to explain something, post like this:
Quote:
[OOC]Green balloons are cool[/OOC]



When moving between threads/areas, post a link in the post in the new thread to the last post in the old thread and a link to the new post in the old post.
This will make it easier for potential readers to follow the story (which is a good thing).
Note that the links should be to posts (example: http://www2.phpbb-host.com/phpbb/viewto ... aven#15530) , not threads. See example in the first page of The Forest and Paths.

Lastly, write in the present tense, e.g. she runs instead of she ran/she will run


Last edited by Tenebrion on 21 Jul 2006 12:39 pm; edited 3 times in total
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Tenebrion
Tenebrion Himself


Joined: 01 Mar 2006
Posts: 1910
Location: Omnipresent

PostPosted: 26 May 2006 08:51 am Reply with quoteEdit/Delete this postDelete this postView IP address of posterBack to top
Battle

In battle, the GM takes care of whether a character hits or not, and the effects. It's the same as when the character for example opens a door or tries a key, only with blood and gore. Also be descriptive about what you do. For example, instead of
Quote:
i beat it with my club like in the matrix and it died lots

, write
Quote:
Tenebrion throws his holy Toothpick Of Efficient Toothpicking towards the horrible green balloon's left ear with all his might.
Take this, you green, inanimate object!

To which the GM would perhaps answer
Quote:
the toothpick hits the monster with immense power in it's one weak point, it's left ear, causing it to blow up and spray everyone with lots of blood and rubber.