Role-Playing Tips, Rules, and Guidelines

Foreword

First and foremost, welcome to the Role-Playing forums. In this thread you'll find some useful tips and a few rules that you'll have to stick to. Don't worry, they're just there to keep things organised and pleasant for everyone.

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Contents

• Tips
  
  
  • Help
  • Subfora
  • Layout
  • PM Icon


• Rules
  
  
  • Thread Rating
  • Joining Methods
  • Post Length


• Guidelines
  
  
  • Backstory
  • General Respect
  • Duplicate Role-Plays
  • Out Of Character posts
  • Thread Rules
  • Character Sheet


• Forum Moderators, past and present
  
  
  • Moderators by promotion date
    
  • Moderator Timeline
    

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Tips

Help

If you need some help, please don't hesitate to jump in on the General Discussion and ask your questions. The same goes if you have any suggestions or feedback for the forum. You can also just jump in to have a chat with the people who hang around there, to share ideas or frustrations. I won't provide a link, since the General Discussion thread changes fairly often, but you can easily find a link to it next to the forum header. If you want my attention specifically for your question, you can either send me a PM or you can grab my attention by adding the following code anywhere in your post:

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Subfora

• Neo-Duelist League
  
  In the Neo Duelist League members take on each other's characters, usually one on one. You can find its rules thread here for more information.


• Interactive Role-Playing
  
  Interactive Role-Playing. This forum is geared especially to interactive games that are more rule-oriented than your typical Role-Play. Head over to their rules thread for a more thorough explanation.


• Role-Playing Gallery
  
  The Role-Playing Gallery is used on one hand for out-of-character discussion of Role-Plays, in order to plan the story, for instance. On the other hand, it is used for Role-Player profiles, where members can post their interests and any memorable characters or stories. You'll find a more thorough explanation here.

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Layout

A while ago I made a thread about how to structure your post so it is easier to read, and a few examples of Neoseeker mark-up tag usage. You can find it here. I especially recommend giving the nTags section a read, you may not know of all those tags, and some are very useful, in my humble opinion.

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PM Icon

It's a small detail, but in order to allow your fellow Role-Players to easily contact you, it's useful to show the PM icon under your avatar. You can do this by going to Edit Profile -> Forum Settings/Prefs -> Display "Send PM" icon (you can find this last one under General Preferences, it's the second option above your timezone).

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Rules

First of all, if you haven't read the Sitewide Rules Of Conduct, you should do so. There's probably nothing surprising in there for you, but it's still best to make sure. Secondly, it's not because you're not doing something explicitly against the rules, that we can't ban you for being a jerk. Not that I've ever had to do that personally, so I guess it's a bit of a moot point.

Rating

There are three possible ratings for Role-Plays, in order to keep things simple. These are:

1. E - Everyone
   This one is used almost never, as the content of these Role-Plays would basically be kid friendly. As such, they'll have no descriptive violence or any sexual content, nor have any depressing topics as their plot.


2. T - Teen
   Role-Plays with this rating will have a content that matches most things you see on television, really. Nothing too violent or sexual, or too morally ambiguous. All those things can be in there, but if you're tearing something limb from limb, the Role-Play should have a Mature rating. Same thing goes for the more depressing plots, it fine to be dark, but if you're really going to deeply go down that road and put a spin on a character's evilness that somehow makes it okay, you should probably consider getting a Mature rating as well.


3. M - Mature
   Most things go. If you see this rating, make sure that you can handle whatever is inside, because it can get dark and gory. You still won't find any pornography, though sexual references are fine (e.g. a character makes a remark on her first night with some other character, things like that).

Please try to be as minimal with your rating as possible: use one rating rather than two (like T-M that you may have seen a few times), and try to take the lowest rating that applies, many people use Mature simply for creative freedom, but if you have a Mature Rating, please also have mature content, so that the ratings remain a representation of what can be found inside.

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Joining Methods

Like with the rating, there are three possibilities of how to allow people to join your Role-Play.

1. No PM
   If you use this joining method, people are basically free to join your Role-Play by posting their character sheet. The idea is not that the creator approves their joining, but only interferes if the new participant did something fundamentally wrong. E.g. he or she misinterpreted the setting of the Role-Play.


2. PM - Private Message
   The new participant must send a Private Message to the creator of the Role-Play, who will then either approve the participant or give some feedback on why he was denied. The Private Message usually contains a character sheet, or sometimes a writing sample.


3. IO - Invitation Only
   Quite rare these days, Role-Plays with this method of joining are not open to the public, but only to those the creator has invited. Very frequently, you have a chance of getting in by talking to the creator and showing interest. If you can't get in, however, don't be too disappointed or offended.

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Post Length

We have decided to give up the Lines rules in favour of a more versatile system. Instead, every Role-Play will need to make a choice from the list below on what size the posts should be.

1. C - Casual
   Posts vary typically from a line to a paragraph. Short and sweet is the general idea. Not that there can't be exceptions.


2. D - Descriptive
   At least a paragraph, usually more than one. Walls of text are rare, if they even occur at all. It can be compared to what the five line rule was before.


3. B - Bookish
   Large posts, with lots of description and multiple actions. It can be compared to one or more pages from a book, so definitely multiple paragraphs, and perhaps even walls of text.

If you want, you can have more than one in your Role-Play to have a range of what is allowed or not. If you want to be more specific, like having a specific minimum of text, you can put that in the first post of your Role-Play.

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Guidelines

General Respect

I could write a dozen more rules at the very least, but most fall under this category. It all comes down to having some respect for your fellow Role-Players.

For instance, don't make your character too powerful compared to the others, as that will make the Role-Play very uninteresting for others, and possibly even for yourself. Another example is not using another participant's character in a big way without their permission. This one may feel very restricting, but is easily solved by making a post and sending it to the other character's creator and letting him correct your mistakes.

The point being, you're trying to create something with others here, not on your own, so be nice to those working with you. And it's best to be nice to those not working with you as well.

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Backstory

When you are creating a Role-Play, you need a backstory, something that tells Role-Players what your Role-Play is about. In the past, you had two write at least two paragraphs to ensure a minimum of backstory. This is no longer the case, but you should still try to give the appropriate amount of information. How much that is, is up to you, but there are some things to consider.

It's mostly intuitive, really. If you want a casual Role-Play, don't write epic amounts of backstory, it might scare people off. If you're more of a bookish Role-Player, you will probably want to make a more filled out first post to attract other Role-Players.

Neither of those are absolutes though, just some general pointers. Do what feels right to you.

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Duplicate Role-Plays

While it's not explicitly forbidden to make two Role-Plays about the same topic, do take a look around the forum first if there already is a Role-Play of the kind you're looking to create. If there is, please seriously consider joining it. Especially if it's a Role-Play about an already existing work of fiction.

Consider this: you're missing out on role-playing with all those people who are in the other Role-Play.

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Out Of Characters Posts

Out Of Character posts tend to not be appreciated in Role-Plays, that is why it is allowed to create OoC-threads in the Role-Play Gallery, so that you can plan and discuss your plans with your fellow participants without giving them the false hope of a real post. So, as a guideline, we don't allow OoC only posts in the Role-Play itself. You can add notes to an actual post though, and the sparse OoC post won't get deleted, but if I find a few of them in a row, they're not staying. Even so, it's best to always have a real post attached to any OoC-messages.

If this "rule" doesn't make sense to you, look around some Role-Plays and it should become clear. If there aren't any OoC's visible, feel free to jump in on the General Discussion thread and someone there will be able to explain this to you.

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Thread Rules

Thread creators have quite a bit of freedom and thus can set the rules for their own threads. Important to know, is that these rules cannot go against the forum rules, nor against the sitewide rules.

Most commonly, there are rules against godmoding and killing of characters, but these really belong under the General Respect rule above, and thus are actually unnecessary.

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Character Sheet

Here is a basic character sheet for you to use, since I know not everyone likes to fool around with the code. Feel free to add, rename, and remove categories as your Role-Play requires.

Generic version:


Explanation:

• Neo-name: Who does this character belong to?
• Name: The character's name
• Gender: Male or female (or something else?)
• Age: Obvious.
• Appearance: What does the character look like?
• Bio: What is this character's history? What did he do before the start of the Role-Play?

You will want to provide a code version of your sheet to those who want to participate. And just to make it easy on yourself as well, ask them to return a code version to you as well. Making a code version is easy, just surround any section of text in which the nTags should not be interpreted with these tags: [code] and [/code].

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TOO COMPLICATED
And that's all folks!
[worst first post ever]