Learn How To Role Play (RP)

Yup, big, fancy text was a must here, and so was The Who. Anyways, this is nothing big or drastic; I’m simply taking the old rules, modifying some, and adding a couple new ones in. This probably won’t affect a lot of you, if any, but I will be setting in a real quality standard, to make sure the RPs here stay top notch and enjoyable for all. All members, including mods/admins, will need to follow these rules. Common sense is also a must, and ignorance is no excuse.

* Posting Quality: From now on, all posts in the RP Corner (excluding RP’s OOC) need to have a minimum of 3 lines of text on the Fixed forum skins. If you’re using any of the Fluid forum skins, that’s about 2 and 1/4 lines. Not too hard, especially if you know what you want to do. This is to keep quality up, as short posts are usually not detailed enough. We realize that some people prefer to post in only a few paragraphs and others prefer enormous novel posts.

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o Tip: If you post too quickly one after another, chances are that the quality of your posts will deteriorate. It’s great that you're having fun, but please take your time when it comes to posting so you can make it the best of your ability. If you go on a posting spree the other people in the RP that are not online will get drowned in posts. This often causes the death of RP’s, and it’s a shame to lose an RP that you really like because of a silly reason like that.

* Use the best grammar you have available to you. I’m probably sounding like a broken record here, but this rule will probably be enforced the most in this section. Make a conscious effort to speak in a proper manner, and to spell correctly. It doesn't need to be perfect, but capitalize letters when needed, use punctuation, and avoid chatspeak / 1337 5p34|<. If you do wind up with a habit of pOStiNg l1Ke tHiS, expect someone to say something about it.

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o Tip: If you have a character that doesn’t speak English and you want to make that clear in your post, that’s fine. Just be sure to leave notes on what s/he is saying, so we can respond properly.

* The Scripting Style, again, should not be used. Instead, use paragraph form. Why? Well, for one, you’ll make your posts much clearer than they were if you posted something like:

“Player 1: I'm going to get a burger.”

“Player 2: Cool, I'll come with you.”

In paragraph form, you are capable of describing the situation much better than the scripting format. With scripting, there is a lot of conversation, but no actions. In the long run, scripting is not beneficial to the RPs. Again though, make sure you post at least a decent paragraph’s worth. The more you put in, the more everyone else has to work with.

* Characters, NPCs, and the like may not be controlled without prior permission to their original controllers. This is called Powerplaying. If you post a character other than yours responding to something, without the permission from the original player or GM, that’s powerplaying. Same with other actions you may perform. It’s unfair to the person who was originally in control of that person to have it “stolen” from them in the RP, so try to avoid it.

* Modding: Modding in RPing is when a player takes an action (usually an attack, but not necessarily restricted to those) against an NPC or player character, without giving them a chance to react. An example of modding would be:

“I fire my gun and blow up the alien’s head!!”

As you can see, the alien had no chance to react to being shot at. In contrast to something like…

“I take my gun and aim it at the alien’s head, pulling the trigger.”

See the difference? The latter example allows a reaction from the alien. Modding is boring and defeats the purpose of doing a RP. It should only be done if the player intending to attack the NPC or character received permission from the GM, or in the case of player characters, from their respective players.

* Godmodding: Only I can be godlike~ Seriously though, no godlike, invincible, or overpowered characters. Try and keep things within reasonable boundaries of the RP and your character at all times. Otherwise, what’s the fun? Some examples of godmodding may be:

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o Teleporting: You dodge attacks all the time, which annoys other users because they can obviously never hit. Or, it can be moving great distances (I’ll over exaggerate and put in across the globe, but you get the idea) in a single post, maybe because your name was mentioned, something you want your character to know or give their opinions about, or… well, whatever. Anyways, if you want to move great distances within a single post, take it up with the GM.

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o ·Fountain of Knowledge: Basically, you seem to know everything like you’re an expert on it, even if it’s your character’s first time hearing about it. This can also include asking questions about things you shouldn’t know about, or guessing a lot of things and getting it all correct. It's like you know exactly what's going even though your character has nothing to do with it or never heard of it and you get it right.

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o The All-Seeing Eye: This can also be rather annoying. Sort of related to the Fountain of Knowledge too I suppose, but anyways. This is when your character knows everything that is going on in the world, like you’re god, or taking an Omniscient view on everything. It can also have tied with teleporting, like if an event interests you even though your character should know nothing about it, but you go over there anyways despite not having a reason to. If you don’t have a reason to move your characters over somewhere they’ve no reason to be in, don’t do it. If you want to go to a certain location that badly, again, talk with the GM and check to see if you’re given the OK (seeing smoke in the air somewhere, hearing a closeby explosion, etc).

* Post content should stay PG-13 or below. Violence and cursing amongst characters and the like is expectable here, and of course there will always be the ever-classic tavern scene, and because I like promoting freedom and creativity I’m pretty lax on this one. But this is still a policy that will be enforced, because there are numerous minors on this website. And especially avoid sexual content; implied or no, if a mod can interpret what you are saying without putting much thought into it, you’ll hear from one of us. Depending on the severity of the offense, you may be banned. If you think that the content of your RP may disturb the younger audience, include a warning saying so and why. Let’s try to keep this place safe for work.

* Posts in the threads should contribute to moving the RP forward while in character; no need for OOC here. Sidenotes before/after IC posts are fine, but if it’s strictly OOC, that’s what the OOC thread is for.

* Signing up: Anyone and everyone is free to sign up for any of the RPs here, but it’s probably better if you actually post a profile to show you’re interested in signing up rather than asking if you can. It’ll make your join request more believable. For the GMs, please make it easier for people to sign up and hand out a profile template for everyone to use, or at least make clear what parts of the profile you want written out; Name, Age, Gender, History etc.

* Kicking someone out: Only a GM may kick someone out of a RP, and only if there is a reasonable cause for it. (In other words, “I don’t like how this person RPs/the person in general” isn’t a good enough reason, especially if there is nothing tangibly wrong with the player. However, if a person is not getting the point, not fitting into the genre/setting, not listening, etc., there is a cause for refusing, since that person has been given pointers and still hasn’t made amendments despite it.) If someone is not following the RP rules, anyone can contact the GM for a removal request, or a moderator if necessary. If a mod is being a bad RPer…well, you can contact Greg.

* Colored Text: This is allowed and also encouraged, but please be reasonable; No overly bright/dark fonts, like white, darkslategray, cyan, etc. There are users (like me) who use the white skins, and that makes bright text a pain to read without highlighting. If it gets out of hand I’ll just say no to colors in the future. (refer to other sticky for more details)

Forum Etiquette:

This is very simple.
1) Be respectful. Respect the opinions of others. Debate, but not too loud, or with too much emotion. Don't say things that aren't nice.
2) Forums are not IMs. Speak english please. I won't jump on you for every little thing, but a sentence like "nARUTO IS TEH BEST!!!! iT ROXORS MY SOXORS!!!" just doesn't cut it. Also, try not to post messages with one word, like saying 'lol', and also keep the profanity down.
3) Don't spam.
4) Don't say derogatory things to each other
5) Don't tell SilentBuddhist you don't like Miria
6) Double Posts are okay as long as they're separate thoughts...
7) Stop the fighting: I don't know why it's suddenly came up but don't do it. I do NOT like it.