WYRDYSM GAMES

I've spent a lot of my life online, for better or worse, and a good share of my time has been spent in one RP or another. I've picked up a few rules of thumb, and it seems to me that sharing them would be helpful around here.

1. This is the big one. If you read only one rule, read this one. That's why it's at the top. DON'T STEAL OTHER PEOPLE'S CHARACTERS. And by characters, I mean their factions, their ships, their people, anything at all they've created. If you want to use them, ask, but don't just take without consulting the creator.

2. Also important. Don't metagame. What that means is don't steer your character's actions based on solely out-of-character knowledge. If you already know that someone is a villain because their player said so, but your characters haven't learned this yet, don't act on it. They don't know it, they can't do anything about it

2.a There are a few exceptions to rule 2. If you have a story to tell, or you can see certain doom and don't want to fall blindly into it, then it's probably alright to steer your character or faction based on out of game knowledge, but not solely. Make them better prepared for it, suspicious of the new villain, maybe, wary, perhaps, but not perfect. Not instant omniscient judges of character.

3. Don't dictate damage. Don't just declare "Assassins have been deployed! Your leader is dead!". This sorta falls under rule 1, but it bears repeating. RP should be back and forth, not just two people one-upping the damage they do to each other. This rule can, like rule 1, be waived through prior discussion with the other player.

So there you go. Three rules of thumb I've learned in my past several years. Do with them what you will.

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seriously sws. seriously oh my gawd seriously.

Author of [url=http://www.wyrdysm.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=896]DAF[/url] and [url=http://www.wyrdysm.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1155]Sillyness[/url]
Co-founder [url=http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=198445]Homeworld:@[/url]

Rule 4: Proper grammar and spelling.

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good read, maybe this should be stickied and updated so myself and newcomers can reference it.

Rule 5;

Quality always, always beats quantity.

I would rather see
"Yukito dived into the thing's path, snatching Esia, rolling away and bolting out to the side in one smooth motion. "

than

"NubMcNabby divided nd grabbed esia nd rolled away to side then punched enemy in face and chest and kicked their arm off and then cut dem in half wit sword and laffed he turned to other eneemy and jumped up kicking in face wid foot then cut head off in air with knife and won fight laffing at ded man [ I pwn u lul nub nub ]."

(Just examples from a roleplay I was doing recently.)

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<br>Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.<br>

I could fill a book with the things I've learned about roleplay over my time in RP, and DMing.

However, the important things have been said, and most of it's not applicable to your forum ish RP, so...

I'll spare you.

Topic stickied, since I think it has some relevant information to several things going on in the forum.

That and we need moar stickies here.

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　 ／l、
ﾞ（ﾟ､ ｡ ７
　l、ﾞ ~ヽ
　じしf_, )ノ

I say, the people here aren't that bad at roleplaying, are they?

Then again, I don't keep up with the cold war...

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tl;dr-ers will be shot on sight.
BSF Wiki
"I have measured your 'fun', and science has quantitatively rated it a three." ~Lord Tim (Data Realms Fan Forums)

I think is just some of the newer people who don't know how to role play.

Rule 6; if you're prepared to dish out damage, be prepared to take it. If you get into a fight, you (or your ships/soldiers/etc.) cannot dodge anything and everything thrown at them. This goes with Rule 3 kinda.

Rule 7; use common sense. 'nuff said.

Rule 8; before bringing MASSIVE PLOT TWISTS into other people's stuff, please please please PLEASE consult the other players before you introduce something that could potentially cause the game to nosedive and rack up epic amounts of fail. This includes stuff like introducing a mysterious alien menace, and so on.

Rule 9; events can be retconned if necessary. Retconning is the removal of a past event or events in the history of an RP empire/faction, for example retconning the events of the Cold War, so that from a faction-canon point of view, the CW never happened.

These are not RP rules per se, but they apply to RPs in the forum, so please make note of them!

Rule 10; if someone continually causes trouble in an RP thread, especially if asked to leave by the thread's owner, then they can expect action to be taken by the mods.

Rule 11; thread owners are free to request use of any of the moderation tools to assist maintaining their RP or game threads by PMing a mod, such as myself. This includes Locking (closing a thread), Deleting (removing a thread entirely, or deleting specific posts), Splitting (removing unwanted posts from a thread and placing them in their own topic without deleting them) and Moving (moving the thread to another forum).

For example, if your game rules thread has suddenly become full of an interesting discussion on quantum physics and you want it out, but don't want it deleted, the discussion can be split off into it's own thread and allowed to continue without clogging up your official rules thread.

Rule 12; as per above, if you feel your thread has erroneously been locked, a PM is all it takes to discuss unlocking. Note that you cannot request a thread be reopened if it is not your own. I will only accept requests from the thread's owner.

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　 ／l、
ﾞ（ﾟ､ ｡ ７
　l、ﾞ ~ヽ
　じしf_, )ノ

As of this point, I am officially retconning the Midgardians out of existence. (quit while they are ahead). They will be replaced by an as yet unrevealed fleet, but I am doing this as I never designed them to do what they did, and it got taken too far.

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Mjolnir, Hammer of Thor. Id like to see you try to kill me, and why would you want to take my stuff, its all crap anyway.

Awwwww, I liked the crazy religous fanatics, who loved war more than life.

Rule 13;

If you don't like what someone is doing in your thread, you have the right to ignore it or even request that the posts be removed and the person warned if they're a repeat offender. Just note that you must have asked/warned them first!

Also don't go dragging stuff between threads, and respect the other players/people and treat them how you expect to be treated.

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　 ／l、
ﾞ（ﾟ､ ｡ ７
　l、ﾞ ~ヽ
　じしf_, )ノ

Rule 14:

It's always a good idea to copy especially long posts to something like notepad, and check if anything new has happened while you were typing.


Rule 15:

Just because the story has stagnated doesn't mean you have to cliche it to death.

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tl;dr-ers will be shot on sight.
BSF Wiki
"I have measured your 'fun', and science has quantitatively rated it a three." ~Lord Tim (Data Realms Fan Forums)

Rule 16:
Restrict usage of previously unknown facets to a storyline.

http://op-longshot.livejournal.com/73007.html

Daniel Hawking's Personal Guide to the Creation of Original Characters

still incomplete, but you get the point

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