1. Play by Post games on TSS

1.1   Why and How
In an effort to garner some additional conversation on the board, we've decided to create a generic rule system that will allow for forum members to play in and start Play-by-Post Role Playing Games on TSS.

A Play by Post Role Playing Game is essentially a work of storytelling where, instead of there being one storyteller, multiple people (or players) control the actions of one individual character in a story and interact together through posting what their characters say and do. In some games (held in the Structured Games section) there will be a Game Moderator whose job is to maintain the flow of the game by controlling the world around the characters, and providing characters with goals to accomplish. In other games (held in the Free for All section), games will be unmoderated, and characters can come and go as they please, interacting and writing as the mood strikes them.

Participants fall into two categories: players and Game Moderators. Players are the members of the forum who control a single character in a game; a Game Moderator is essentially everyone else. Game Moderators control the flow of the game, handle all conflict resolution, and uphold the rules to ensure fairness for everyone. A forum member can be both a player and a Game Moderator, but they can’t be both within the same game (as in, if your running a game, you can also play in other games).

In general, when a new game starts, a brief description will be posted in either the Structured Games forum, or the Free for All forum, as well as a call for players.

Here's how you can start playing:

Structured Games: If the type of game presented sounds like one you would be interested in playing, send a private message to the Game Moderator that contains the title of the game you’re looking to become a player in, along with the concept of a character you’d like to play. The concept should be a brief description of what kind of person your character is, strengths and weaknesses and general motivations.

The Game Moderator should then review the concept and either accept or reject the character into their game. If the character is rejected, the Game Moderator should inform the player of why their concept was not accepted, and allow them the opportunity to amend it based on the requirements of the game. Players should not think that their characters will be automatically accepted into every game that they submit a concept to, and should do their best to create a character that fits the Game Moderator’s guidelines.

If a character concept is accepted, then the player should complete the process of creating their character. The Game Moderator should be able to answer questions regarding the process, and if they can’t, send a PM to Lord Monkey and I’ll help out.

Free For All: If you think you'd be interested in what's going on in a Free for All game, just jump right in and post. It's best to stick with the theme that's already going on, but sometimes your character coming out of nowhere might help get everone else's creative juices flowing.

A player can not play the same character in multiple active games.

1.2   Subject Matter

The subject matter of all games should adhere to the guidelines set forth in the rules of the main forum. Swearing, slandering, arguing (out of character) will not be tolerated.

Try to keep all content at the PG level, with possible traces of PG-13. Even if all of the players are over 18, these game forums will remain visible to all members of the forum to encourage interest in Play-by-Post games and as such, children may end up reading them.

While these game forums will be visible to all forum members, only players and the Game Moderator will be able to post on the game forums.

1.3   Posting Mechanics

When posting, there are certain ways of distinguishing elements of your post so that anyone reading them is clear as to what’s happening, the following are examples of types of text within a post and how they should be treated by the poster:

World description:
Whenever a narrative is used, it should be in normal black text. This is normally how the Game Moderator will describe what the characters see. Black text can also be used by players to describe how they look, or how items they possess look. For instance:

"The road before the group forks north and west. It appears as though wagon tracks course in the northern direction. In the distance, you can see smoke pluming up over the treeline to the west."

Character Action:
Character actions should be written in red text to make it obvious that the character is performing an action, and not speaking.

Whenever anyone is describing what their character is doing, it should be done in third person. For instance, if you’re playing a character named Max and he goes to pick up a piece of paper on a table, you should write “Max goes to the table and picks up the piece of paper.” Not: “I go and pick of the piece of paper.” The reason for this is that it’s often difficult for casual readers to know what character you’re playing in a given post. This should help to eliminate some of that confusion.

Character Dialogue:
Anytime a character says something, this should be displayed in blue. Dialogue text can be freely inserted amongst red action text. For instance:

Max looked at the note and read from it, “It says that the Prime Minister has been kidnapped!”

Out of Character Comments:
Out of Character Comments (or OOC) are comments that are made either to the other players or to the Game Moderator that describe mechanically what the character is doing, or to ask a question directly to the Game Moderator for further information. These should be colored in green, and start and end with a pair of colons. For example:

Max pulls out his violin and begins playing a common tavern song to the rowdy crowd before him

::What Max is really trying to do is use his perform skill to try and influence the crowd away from becoming a rowdy mob, he also wouldn’t mind a few extra coins in his purse for the trouble!::

1.4 Taking the game into a chat room

There may come a time when players in a game may want to have events occur faster than what the board will allow. In that case, players are encouraged to use some kind of chat program to play their game in realtime. You're welcome to use #Tamagotchi for this purpose, and if you do so, let Mimitchi or myself know when you're playing and we will copy the chat log into your thread so that your players can reference back to it if necessary.

If you would rather use another method of chat, such as Yahoo Messenger or MSN Messenger, feel free, but the admins here won't be able to take the log and post it (though you're welcome to do so on your own).