Rule and Guidelines for Role Playing Games

Started by Blizzard, January 13, 2008, 09:37:13 am

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Blizzard

To maintain the overall "professionality" of this section, I figured out, there should be a few rules about how a game is played, so nobody will go crazy or something like that.

First of all, allow me to explain how it's going to work on this forum. Anybody can start a role-playing game, or story. In the first post of a game, include any special guidelines for players who are interested in joining (what kinds of characters they can be and so on). After you've introduced it, wait for interested players to join.
be sure to create one thread for character creation and discussion and another one for the storyline.

If you are interested in joining a game, it is best to post before the story begins. This will ensure that your character has been accounted for from the beginning, and its place in the story has been determined to a point. Although, everybody is free to throw in surprising twists, as long as they are in character.

So, if you've started a game, and you've got a few interested players, start telling the story. It is your job to make the story go, and their job to contribute the actions of their characters (and ONLY their characters). Keep things going as well as you can, and hopefully your story will be a success.

Now, one tricky problem with these forums is often combat or any other competition between characters. All I have to say is be realistic, balanced, and fair. You only get to decide what your character does (or tries to do), so it may take a while, but eventually better tactics will win.
An example of character VS. non-character: An android battles a huge monster and can't really keep up. If the android keeps up fighting the monster he will eventually get destroyed. Figure out some other way to defeat your opponent.
An example of character VS. character: This depends solely on your own battle skills. If you are clever and can use your skills to your advantage, you will be the winner. If you lose, don't be a bad loser. Nobody can "die" if he doesn't want to. The storytellers will save your ass somehow.

I will also add that the storyteller always always ALWAYS has the final say when it comes to how things unfold. If the storyteller says that a gunshot was fatal, it was fatal. If it grazed the character, it grazed the character. You can debate it to an extent, but the storyteller's final decision is how things happen. Of course, if the storyteller's decision is unbased and unreal, you have the right to argument, please do that in the discussion thread of the RPG.

As a storyteller, remember that you should not set out to just destroy all the characters. It is your job to challenge the players, to make it fun to play and enjoy a good story. You are not allowe dto kill characters just like that. A kill can only be done if the player has commited a serious violation of the rules or allows death. Otherwise you have to save his ass even if he stays in a coma for a couple of days and loses his legs. You get the point. Just don't exagarate it.

One final thing, and I would think this is obvious but I just want to be clear. When posting in a role-playing game, your post MUST be related to the story. Any unrelated posts will be deleted. Simply use the "Report Post to moderator" feature. Spam will not be tolerated.

The storyteller's job is to tell the overall story and voice any actions /events that are not the actions of the characters belonging to players. The storyteller can introduce any character at any point, without having to reveal anything in advance. They do not have to "declare" or "create" their characters the way a player does as they are "NPCs". Also the storyteller can't argue facts that the player has already stated. For example, a player claims that his armor is 100% fireproof, because of blahblahblah, the storyteller cannot change that anymore.

Players on the other hand, must declare their characters when they join a game. This involves following whatever guidelines are posted by the storyteller. This will generally involve a minimum of a background story, description of personality and abilities. Once the story begins, players are responsible for speaking for their character's actions (and ONLY those actions). A player can only control his own character and has very little and neutral control over the environment without his character's influence. For example, you can make people run around and scream while the village is burning down, you can't let the villain burn down the village, though.

Once again:
The storyteller controls every other character and has nearly full control over the environment. The player altough can control only his character and has only little control over the environment.

Also the storyteller has limited control over the environment. e.g. he can't just make an earthquake and let lava spread out of the earth to kill all the characters.

You are allowed to mildly alter those rules for your own game, don't take it too far though. These are rule to help you with your RPG, not to limit it. If you really feel that a rule or guideline is limiting the fun in your RPG, please PM me, we can make an exception for your RPG if your arguments are valid.

Thank you for reading this.

And thanks to "Screamtongue" aka "Joker" for party of this guideline.
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