Post by Lorpius Prime on Jun 11, 2006 3:41:55 GMT -5
"They're more like guidelines anyway."
The Pied Piper Disaster will operate in many respects like the story RPGs that the players should be familiar with. Players will participate in and advance the story with posts concerning the thoughts, actions, and conversation of their characters. These posts are formatted such as one might find in an ordinary novel, generally third-person descriptions of a character's adventures. In fact, one might think of the sum total of all posts to be made as a complete novel of itself, one crafted and enjoyed by multiple authors.
But you already knew that. (You did already know that, right?)
Where this game will differ from the standard cooperative effort between players will be in the role of this story's Game Master, me, known to those familiar with my person and my works as "LP the Wise", though you may call me LP for short, if you must, because for some reason you just don't have time for the nine extra keystrokes required to complete the title.
Anyway, I will be acting as your GM. I do not have a character. Rather, I will be responsible for introducing and managing the various NPCs that the main characters will encounter in their adventure, as well as laying out the environments in which said adventure will occur (as managing major environmental interactions if the need should arise).
Understand that, while I have a general outline and structure for the overarching plot of this story, it is the characters (and thus their players) that will be truly responsible for the nature and shape that their journey will take. The players are the heart, mind, and soul of this game. I am merely a collection of other interconnecting organic tissues which protect and support the heart, mind, and soul in their development and philosophical endeavors.
There will be one active story thread at a time. These "Chapters" will be marked with a number and a (brilliantly conceived) title. Once a chapter is finished, its thread will be locked, and the new chapter's thread begun.
As to posting order, for the time being I am not going to impose any rigid structure for which player can post when, to allow players to develop the story in the most natural way, rather than lock things into an awkward permanent four-way conversation. However, if some players seem to be moving too far ahead of others, I may ask the players to slow down or pause until everyone is caught up on the events before proceeding again.
Also, if a player attempts to do too much in a single post (for example: "My character pulls out a sword, leaps across the canyon, and strikes down the evil emperor in a single mighty blow, thus defeating the forces of darkness and bringing eternal peace and happiness to the land. She returns home to a nice cup of tea."), I may have to ask that player to edit her (wow, I was going to put "his or her" there, and then I laughed at myself) post; or even edit it myself, to cut it back down to a level that maintains a good story pace. However, this is an absolute worst case scenario, and I hope I will never need to do this. I believe all of you players are absolutely excellent writers with a good feel for what is the proper post extent in this kind of game. It would be inappropriate for me to leave it out, however. Just keep the game in mind, and if in doubt, don't hesitate to ask.
Which brings me to my next point, this board itself. At the moment, I don't imagine myself posting more than the few pinned guide threads I have up here telling you people what's going on and the Story Chapters. However, that doesn't mean you can't utilize the discussion board features to do other things. Collect ideas about characters, test posts, ask questions, make suggestions, whatever you'd like. Same goes for any observers we might have, this is an open board, feel free to use it.
A note on the story threads themselves. Most of the posts I myself make should look like any other story post, except for the posibility of detailing the actions of multiple minor characters. However, on a few occassions, I will probably end up playing "the environment", such as describing the physical setting that the characters are in, and any more advanced interactions that setting will have with the characters. In these cases, I plan on using BLUE TEXT to offset the environment's description, calling special attention to the players, since you have less control over the setting than you would in other pure-player story RPGs.
As for how you will interact with the environment, I will strive to provide you with the most useful and relevant descriptions that I can. Many details will be up to you, the exact nature of the woodwork on furniture, the color houses are painted, etc. I'm just here to give you a general idea of where you are, and provide boundaries required by the story. If there are locked (or otherwise sealed) doors limiting your movement, I should tell you in advance, so I'm not in the awkward position of having to tell you that you actually couldn't do that (which I should also never do, if I screw up, I'll just have to deal with it... hopefully there won't be many second sets of locked doors created because of this). Occasionally, I may have to make environmental surprises (if your character walks into a trap, for instance), but I should be able to work these into the story without interfering in your own posts. So, be aware of where you are, and have fun with it.
The game has now started, and it will be difficult to add new primary characters, but if you're really interested, feel free to ask me, and we'll talk.
Finally, while I hope these rules are as complete and perfect as they need to be, I recognize that they may not be. If problems arise during the game, we'll deal with them as best we can, and these instructions will change accordingly. But for now, I think they will allow us to have at least a relatively smooth start for the RPG.
The Pied Piper Disaster will operate in many respects like the story RPGs that the players should be familiar with. Players will participate in and advance the story with posts concerning the thoughts, actions, and conversation of their characters. These posts are formatted such as one might find in an ordinary novel, generally third-person descriptions of a character's adventures. In fact, one might think of the sum total of all posts to be made as a complete novel of itself, one crafted and enjoyed by multiple authors.
But you already knew that. (You did already know that, right?)
Where this game will differ from the standard cooperative effort between players will be in the role of this story's Game Master, me, known to those familiar with my person and my works as "LP the Wise", though you may call me LP for short, if you must, because for some reason you just don't have time for the nine extra keystrokes required to complete the title.
Anyway, I will be acting as your GM. I do not have a character. Rather, I will be responsible for introducing and managing the various NPCs that the main characters will encounter in their adventure, as well as laying out the environments in which said adventure will occur (as managing major environmental interactions if the need should arise).
Understand that, while I have a general outline and structure for the overarching plot of this story, it is the characters (and thus their players) that will be truly responsible for the nature and shape that their journey will take. The players are the heart, mind, and soul of this game. I am merely a collection of other interconnecting organic tissues which protect and support the heart, mind, and soul in their development and philosophical endeavors.
There will be one active story thread at a time. These "Chapters" will be marked with a number and a (brilliantly conceived) title. Once a chapter is finished, its thread will be locked, and the new chapter's thread begun.
As to posting order, for the time being I am not going to impose any rigid structure for which player can post when, to allow players to develop the story in the most natural way, rather than lock things into an awkward permanent four-way conversation. However, if some players seem to be moving too far ahead of others, I may ask the players to slow down or pause until everyone is caught up on the events before proceeding again.
Also, if a player attempts to do too much in a single post (for example: "My character pulls out a sword, leaps across the canyon, and strikes down the evil emperor in a single mighty blow, thus defeating the forces of darkness and bringing eternal peace and happiness to the land. She returns home to a nice cup of tea."), I may have to ask that player to edit her (wow, I was going to put "his or her" there, and then I laughed at myself) post; or even edit it myself, to cut it back down to a level that maintains a good story pace. However, this is an absolute worst case scenario, and I hope I will never need to do this. I believe all of you players are absolutely excellent writers with a good feel for what is the proper post extent in this kind of game. It would be inappropriate for me to leave it out, however. Just keep the game in mind, and if in doubt, don't hesitate to ask.
Which brings me to my next point, this board itself. At the moment, I don't imagine myself posting more than the few pinned guide threads I have up here telling you people what's going on and the Story Chapters. However, that doesn't mean you can't utilize the discussion board features to do other things. Collect ideas about characters, test posts, ask questions, make suggestions, whatever you'd like. Same goes for any observers we might have, this is an open board, feel free to use it.
A note on the story threads themselves. Most of the posts I myself make should look like any other story post, except for the posibility of detailing the actions of multiple minor characters. However, on a few occassions, I will probably end up playing "the environment", such as describing the physical setting that the characters are in, and any more advanced interactions that setting will have with the characters. In these cases, I plan on using BLUE TEXT to offset the environment's description, calling special attention to the players, since you have less control over the setting than you would in other pure-player story RPGs.
As for how you will interact with the environment, I will strive to provide you with the most useful and relevant descriptions that I can. Many details will be up to you, the exact nature of the woodwork on furniture, the color houses are painted, etc. I'm just here to give you a general idea of where you are, and provide boundaries required by the story. If there are locked (or otherwise sealed) doors limiting your movement, I should tell you in advance, so I'm not in the awkward position of having to tell you that you actually couldn't do that (which I should also never do, if I screw up, I'll just have to deal with it... hopefully there won't be many second sets of locked doors created because of this). Occasionally, I may have to make environmental surprises (if your character walks into a trap, for instance), but I should be able to work these into the story without interfering in your own posts. So, be aware of where you are, and have fun with it.
The game has now started, and it will be difficult to add new primary characters, but if you're really interested, feel free to ask me, and we'll talk.
Finally, while I hope these rules are as complete and perfect as they need to be, I recognize that they may not be. If problems arise during the game, we'll deal with them as best we can, and these instructions will change accordingly. But for now, I think they will allow us to have at least a relatively smooth start for the RPG.