MOD Our games and how to play them (New Players START HERE!)

?I am a Jedi!? ? How to play a character in an RPF RPG.

Welcome, new player! In this thread you will find a storehouse of advice on how to make the best of your experience playing in these forums. There is nothing in here in the way of ironclad rules ? only the accumulation of almost ten years? experience in roleplaying on the forums. Read it, be mindful, but above all be inspired.

Also, regardless of anything else in this post, you are also expected to read and abide by the RPF Rules when you play in this forum.

This post is divided up into sections as follows:

BASIC TRAINING:

• Introduction


• Basic Rules of Gaming


• What do GM, CS, PM, IC, OOC, and TAG mean?

INTERMEDIATE TRAINING:

• When Joining an RPG


• Grammar is not your mother?s mother


• How long should my posts be?


• Common Questions and Common Mistakes


• Characters, Players, and Knowledge


• When the Dreaded DRL attacks


• The Importance of Saying Goodbye

ADVANCED TRAINING:

• Small RPG or Large RPG?


• Character Reflections


• Mining your Character


• The Most Important Rule Of All

OTHER USEFUL STUFF:

• Links to Useful Resources


• Credits

BASIC TRAINING:

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Introduction:
When you play in a roleplaying game, you take the role of a character within that game. Since you?ve come here, you probably already understood that.

However, the games here are a little different from games like World of Warcraft or Diablo.

Here, a roleplaying game (or RPG, or RP) is much like a novel. Imagine, for a moment, your name is Timothy Zahn, Michael A Stackpole or Karen Traviss. Pretend there is a large, leatherbound hardcover book with the name of the game written in beautiful gold leaf script on the cover. When you open up this hardcover, a few pages are full, but most of it is blank.

You, my RPing friend, have the pen to complete this masterpiece in the making. Along with others, post by post, you write the story (according to the gamemaster?s rules) of what your character does in the game. He can live, die, love, hate, get into lightsaber duels, blast away at Imperial stormtroopers ? it?s all up to you.

That?s it. That?s what roleplaying here is all about in a nutshell.

Basic Rules of Gaming:
Each RPG has its own rules according to what the GM wants. What?s below are four fundamental rules you?ll come across in virtually every game on the RPF (the Role Playing Forums, or RPF for short). Understanding what these rules mean will help you get into an RPG faster. It?s important to understand the rules of RPGs since if you don?t abide by them a GM does have the right to ask a moderator to intervene, including imposing a ban from the boards if necessary.

1. Obey the TOS.
Obvious, but it has to be said again. The TOS, if you don?t already know, stands for the Terms Of Service, and it sets out what you can and can?t do on the whole board system. Read it, comprehend it, post in accordance with it, and you will prosper. Swear, flame, bait, or spam a thread, and you?ll not only forfeit your place in the game, but you?ll also most likely be banned from the boards altogether.

2. No godmoding.
Godmoding is named for the ?god mode? you often find in a computer game - a cheat mode where you?re invulnerable, have unlimited ammunition, can walk through walls, and so on. In an RPG there are two types of godmoding:

• Creating and using a character with no weaknesses, or a character with limitless or unbelievable resources or abilities at his disposal; and


• Writing your character doing things in the game that your character really has no plausible chance of achieving

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I hate to be the grammar cop, but...

Sentences containing speech are considered one sentence even with the dialogue attribution at the end.

For example: "Where did the lightsaber come from?" she asked.

You don't have to capitalize the "she asked" portion of the sentence because it is still part of the same sentence.

"Where did the lightsaber come from?" She asked.

That's two sentences, and incorrect. It is also slightly jarring.

Most of the time you'll use a comma to end the speech inside the quotation marks. In the case of a question, the question mark acts the same as a comma.

"Hey down there," Fred shouted.

"Is anyone down there?" Fred shouted.

To make it easier to see it all being the same sentence (since Fred is capitalized):

"Is anyone down there?" shouted Fred.

"Hey down there," shouted Fred.

An exclamation mark also acts the same as a comma.

"Stop!" he screamed.

Those are all correct. Treat a sentence where someone speaks as a whole sentence, inside and outside of the quotation marks, if you choose to tag the person speaking. If you choose to omit the tag, then the sentence ends inside the quotation marks and needs to end with a period.