Roleplaying Guide

[Narrator]

The XU game is a freeform, forum based role playing game. Simply put, that means that you weave a story about super heroic mutants on the board in concert with the other players and moderators. The main objective of the game is always to have fun, and as such, there are very few rules. What rules there are will be mostly covered in this post.

The first and most important rule is to respect the characters of other players. Just as you would not like other players to put words or actions into the mouth of your character, give them the same courtesy. When describing an action that affects another player, post only your half of the action. Allow the other player to post the effect the action has on their character, and the reaction their character has to the event.

Example - Wrong:
Tom's Player: Tom shoots a telekinetic blast across the room, hitting James in the shoulder and knocking him down.

Example - Correct:
Tom's Player: Tom shoots a telekinetic blast across the room, focused on James' shoulder, with good but not perfect aim.

From this point, James' player can decide if the blast hits or not, and if so, if it knocks him down or not. He'll also post what James does next, and leave the reaction to, and effect of that up to Tom's player.

As you can see, this means that whenever you're in a contest with some other player's character, your opponent or competitor decides how much your character succeeds. This system works as long as everyone is willing to be honest, and reasonable. Remember, the game exists to create fun. So if you think your character would be unable to block a blow, stop a chess strategy, or chase someone through a rosebush, post that they have failed. If you think the character should succeed, especially in some area of specialty for them, go ahead and post the success.

Remember, no one will want to play with a character who is invulnerable and the best at everything. Give other players the chance to have their character shine, and they will give you the chance for yours to do so as well.



Formatting Posts:

The default way to format a post is to post descriptions and actions in regular text, without any modifications.

Example: Thomas walked into the room and waved to everyone there. Then he stopped and looked up, squinting at a spider on the ceiling.



Spoken words are enclosed in quotes, often with some text explaining who is talking, and how loudly, etc.

Example: Vicky called loudly from across the room, "What do you see up there?"



Thoughts are usually encased in italics. You don't have to post every thought your character has, just ones that you think might be interesting by way of narration, and thoughts that telepaths might pick up.
Thoughts that are projected or read via telepathy are italicized as normal, but also get quotes put around them.

Example: It's another one of those spiders, I've been seeing them everywhere.



Finally, when a player narrates a second character, such as a visiting friend or relative, a voice in their head, or an astral entity, the text is changed in color to indicate the second voice. This can also be used to indicate a character that is under some mind control or otherwise not in control of themselves.

Example: "It's nothing, don't worry about it." The voice came not from Thomas, but rather from somewhere nearby him...

[Narrator]

Here is an (edited) repost of the ramblings of a former player on common roleplaying mistakes and hangups. It’s not required reading but it might help in understanding our particular brand of freeform RP so I put it up here as potentially helpful information for new people.


The Kick the Dog/Pet the Dog Ratio

For those of you haven’t heard this term before, any action you take that other characters wouldn’t look kindly upon is “kicking the dog”. An action with a positive effect is “petting the dog”. For example: If you volunteer to teach illiterate children how to read, you’ve just petted the dog. If you make fun of illiterate children for not being able to read, you’re kicking the dog.

It’s a pretty easy concept.

Characters tend to have varying ratios of kick vs. pet depending on their character concept and that’s fine. But you should always be careful about kicking the dog just a bit too much without giving your characters any pet the dog moments to redeem their behavior. Why? Because in real life, no one likes a jackass. And if someone doesn’t have any redeeming qualities, players may have trouble coming up with reasons why their character just doesn’t avoid your character. And in a game where you have to socialize and talk with characters quite a bit, this means you won’t have very much to do.

And that can get boring pretty quickly.

There’s no hard rule about where the line is on this sort of thing, so just use your best judgment. Ask yourself from an objective viewpoint: “Would anyone actually want to hang out with this guy?”



”Bob Was There Too” posts:

These are posts where you act as if your character has always been in a scene, people just didn’t notice them. Now, these can be useful during big events. None of us can be on the boards 24/7 and if something huge starts it can make sense that your character was there but just in the background.

The trouble starts when you use them in regular scenes, allowing your character to overhear something that people might not have said if they knew your character was around or getting your character involved in a scene where they didn’t actually seem to be in until trouble started.

For example, two characters are sitting in a room talking. One of them makes a rude remark about one of your characters. You post that your character was sitting in a corner the whole time unnoticed and heard the whole thing or walked into the room at just the right time to overhear salient bits.

It can be rude and often cause hurt feelings OOC, especially when it’s done poorly and for selfish reasons. It also forces your own assumptions onto people and is just plain unfair. Don’t do this without asking. PM the people involved with the thread and ask if it’s alright or if they want to work it in somehow.



I Play (freeform RPGs) To Win:

There’s really no way to “win” a freeform RP. It’s more of an exercise in collaborative storytelling than anything else.

But even so you sometimes get players who feel a need to compete in everything. Their character has to “win” in every situation, usually by making anyone who opposes them look worse. They’ll win every fight they get in, always get in the last word in an argument, and constantly do their best to show everyone just how awesome they are at everything. Sometimes they do this through godgaming or metagaming, but often they can do it without breaking any specific rules.

And it makes other players don’t want to keep playing with you. Players should work together, they shouldn’t consider each other rivals or enemies. The whole point of the game isn’t to show off you character’s awesomeness, but to work with everyone to create an interesting and compelling story with nuanced characters and exciting drama. And no character should ever be the best at everything anyway. That’s just boring Mary Sue stuff.



Grand Canyon Separation of Player and Character:

This is the opposite of metagaming, where a player uses out of character knowledge in game. In this case they act as if their character is a wholly separate being that they have no control over.

This can be very annoying.

Your character is controlled by you. And it’s up to you to work within your characters logic to game with other players. Other players shouldn’t have to bend over backwards to accommodate you because you’re sitting there going “My character wouldn’t do that”. If it’s absolutely against your characters values, by all means feel free to RP it. But don’t pointlessly stall or add unneeded drama to a scene just because you’re being stubborn with your character concept.

A good example I heard about this from somewhere is with the Druid class in D&D. Players often would have their druids complain that they have no motivation to participate in the latest quest because it wasn’t about anything their character found important.

But you know, sometimes you just have to take a step back and think of a reason they would participate rather than just derailing the game. Maybe they want to help out their friends and comrades who are involved. Maybe they’re bored. Just think of something.



The Crazy Punch:

The Crazy Punch is when a character creates conflict for absolutely no apparent reason and with no clear motivation. The name comes from a hypothetical scene where a character walks in and punches another character. Why? “Because my character is crazy. Duh.”

I myself have been guilty of this. And it’s really sort of rude. It’s just calling attention to yourself for no reason. Roleplaying should flow organically and your characters actions should have actual thought behind it. Even someone who’s pure balls to the wall insane doesn’t usually get violent for no reason.

It’s often a hallmark of “Chaotic Stupid” characters. Those ones that play Chaotic Neutral and like stabbing random people just to instigate a sudden conflict. It’s just dumb. Avoid it at all costs and actually put some thoughts behind your characters actions.



The Movie Plot:

This is when you come up with an exciting plot that’s supposed to involve other people. However, involving other people can sometimes lead to plots not going the way you planned. So what do you do?

Reduce the participants to the status of viewers. Nothing they do, say, or achieve will possibly have any effect on the outcome.

This is very boring for players since they don’t really feel connected to what’s happening at all and you should try to avoid it. Sometimes it can be necessary to use it a bit, but on the whole you should only do it in very small doses.





Now, note that these aren’t exactly hard and fast rules and most of them are up to a player’s discretion. I’m not saying that if you do any of this you’re a horrible player, in fact almost everyone makes mistakes like these from time to time. But just being aware of them can often help you avoid problems in the game.

I’m sure I’m missing various other things, so feel free to add anything you think I missed or discuss any of this. I’m not the arbiter of what’s right and wrong in the game and there’s nothing wrong with just feeling I’m full of shit. These are just my opinions based on my experience with this sort of game.



Informed Attributes:

It can be hard to play skills you have. Your character might be a master hacker, but you don't know how to get a wireless network working. Your character might have a 12th level intellect, but then why do they keep doing such stupid stuff?

This is normal and comes from the natural gap between you and your character. It's generally considered polite to engage in a little separation of fact and fiction when it comes to stuff like that.

However, there is a form of this that is just downright infuriating. It's when a player claims their character has some sort of special skill, but we never see them actually display it in the game. And when it happens long enough it can get kind of annoying. Not everyone is cut out to play every type of character. There's nothing wrong with having to rethink your character if your original concept isn't working out.