How to Play:
This RPG does not use a traditional style of roleplaying games, meaning it does not have items, stats, etc..., it is a "free form" RPG played over e-mails, meaning you write what your character's actions, not limiting you to RPGs like computer program ones where all you do is "left, right, forward, backwards, and jump". This RPG will work best if everyone acknowledges other people's attacks/questions/etc. accordingly.
Styles of Roleplaying:
There are numerous ways to role-play your character(s). I know of two preferable ways, and by preferable, I mean easy to read, write, and understand.
The first style I am going to talk about, is the "story writing style".
This is a good style to use for an e-mail RPG, in which you can take time writing posts.
The style is set up like a normal story. If you open any book, and read a few
paragraphs, you will see an example of this. It is simply the normal book format that all
sane and most insane writers use. Even though there are examples of it everywhere,
here is an example of mine from the RPG, along with some notes. All notes are enclosed
in [ ]s.
[First off, there are always OOC notes you may want to have. Out of Character. That
is basically, you, not any of your characters. All OOC "notes" go in ( )s.
(Hey, who owns this RPG? I have a few suggestions on how to improve the actual
skill of the people RPGing, no offense. My e-mail address is [email protected])
Unitron: [Here is the name of the character(s) you will be using in the e-mail]
Unitron looked around the bridge of the Ramora, his flagship, he saw a dozen
Decepticons at control panels. The Decepticon that resembled Unicron greatly sighed.
"Those blasted Autobots! You," he said, looking to Reroute, a robot at a console,
"have you found the Autobots in that asteroid?" Unitron asked, an angry and annoyed
look on his face.
That is a good RPG post, fairly short, descriptive, and to the point. Notice, it is written
like a book, with the quotaion marks, punctuation, and everything. This is my favorite
style to use, it's not confusing, since most people are used to reading books, therefore
getting through the post rather easily. Some people, in this format, enclose the entire
thing in symbols, or just the action. The symbols I've seen are :: ::, * *, -= =-
It doesn't matter what symbol you use, and it doesn't matter if you do symbols or not
for this style.
The second style is "chatroom style".
This is also a good styel to use. Although a little more confusing, it is not too
hard to read, and it, or at least a similar version of it is used in chatroom RPGs, like
on AOL and such (I know, I basically owned the AOL Beast Wars chatroom RPG
for a while, not being bested, of course I never was, but I lost AOL, hence my rule over).
This is less descriptive, but easier to write. This is the set up:
There are NO quotation marks, just ::s around the action(s)/thought(s). Here is an example of a post using this, with MULTIPLE characters, a kind of interaction with someone's own characters.
Soundwave/Starscream/Megatron: ::Starscream looked around, a little confused at where he was:: Megatron...is that you?
::Megatron raised his fusion cannon, charging his weapon:: Oh, yes, it's me...
::Soundwave activated his shoulder cannon, firing off 20 rapid bursts of laser energy::
::Starscream screamed, falling to the ground dead::
No longer will I have to deal with your treachery! ::Megatron turned to Soundwave, leaving the dead body of Starscream::
This is a perfect post using this style. There are no quotation marks around the speach, and the actions/thoughts are enclosed in ::s. This takes a short time to write, which is why it is used in chatrooms, where you need all the extra speed you can get.
Those two above examples were good. Now, to show bad examples (DO NOT USE THIS TYPE IN THE RPG!)
megatorn
megatn smled waulkin inta the room loking at his minins we will concur the maximals once tarntls reruns megatrn gos to maxi base fiering at every maximal
Problem 1: Bad Spelling. It's kind of irritating and hard to read hordes of badly spelled and organized e-mails, so most people will just delete them.
Problem 2: Bad Punctuation/Grammar. As I'm sure you all can understand, posts with no quotation marks like my example above, no periods or capitalization. All that, especially the lack of quotation marks makes it extremely hard to read, and they will be deleted just to save the time by other players.
Most, if not all, posts like my example will be ignored and most likely deleted. So it's better for everyone if you DO NOT do posts like the above example.
As with anything else, this RPG has it's own rules, maybe different from others. I'm not going to say most, if not any, of them here, that is for the Rules and Regulations section, not "How to Play". But you still need to learn the rules to RPG properly!
Next, we will discuss moding. Moding is basically "cheating". An example of moding is playing out someone else's character (unless given permission by the owner of that character), not posting damage, declaring yourself invincible/super powerful.
By "delcaring yourself invincible/superpowerful I mean you yourself, not your
character. If your character yells "I'm invincible, you can't kill me!", it's ok, as long
as long as the character is just saying that and it isn't true. But if a
character of yours gets attacked and you say "To bad, he's invincible
and can't be harmed." and ignore the damage, that will be considered
moding!
USSR:
USSR rushes into the battlefield, laser rifles raised. "I AM INVINCBLE, PREPARE TO DIE!" he screams, opening fire with a shot from each rifle at USA.
USA:
USA stumbles from the blasts, grunting in pain as he rolled behind a rock taking cover, returning fire at USSR.
Now, here is the crossroad between moding, and not moding in a reply for USA's counter attack.
USSR:
USA's shots hit the USSR, sending him stumbling backwards, though USSR quickly snaps out of a haze of pain, charging forward, opening fire with three bolts at the rock the USA was hiding behind.
USSR:
USA's shots bounce off of USSR's chest, not even scratching USSR's invincible chest plate.
Hopefully, you can see the difference between good and bad in the e-mail examples. The good one will get you more respect (though with a name like the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...you'll probably become a god!), and with the bad...well...when my patience goes, so do you, out of my RPG.
Ok, now onto "Roleplaying other people's character(s)". That is a major violation
of the rules. In this RPG, you are not allowed to use other people's
character(s) without permission. If you don't have permission, you may be kicked out
of the RPG altogether. If you do this, it creates more Hell than it's worth. So just, don't
do it!
Now, I will show a few examples. The story writing style, using multiple characters:
Unitron/Firestarter/Shockwave:
Shockwave looked to Unitron, sighing. "Mighty Unitron, the Autobots have retreated
to Polyhex! We don't have the forces to take it."
Unitron raised his laser rifle, firing a bolt off at Hot Rod, who was retreating in his
fossil fueled alternate mode. It had an unlikely probability of actually hitting the foolish
Autobot. "Raise up arms! We strike in two hours!"
"Yes! We will burn them to the ground! For when we attack, no Autobot shall live!"
Firestarter yelled, firing a burst of flames from his mouth into the air, laughing after the
flames died away.
That's it for now! Hopefully you learned something, or I wasted a good 2 hours (lots of interference when making this) and you wasted a dozen or so minutes. So, if you have any further questions, feel free to e-mail them to me at [email protected].