Hi all! I know many are new to this kind of RPG format, so I wanted to provide more examples of how RP Posting goes in a text-RPG, and lay down some best practices. I'm gunna go into a lot of detail here, so remember these aren't requirements, they're guidelines to aid in collaborative play and easy reading, and to help you when you feel lost. I will be expanding on and refining this section as time goes on.
This is building off the basics established in the Introduction and Game Rules thread you all should read before continuing here. If you are looking for details on what the world of Empire's Shadow is like, the Empire's Shadow Gaming Setting is where you can find that information.
REMEMBER: THIS IS A REFERENCE GUIDE. YOU DO NOT NEED TO READ EVERY BIT OF THIS GUIDE, JUST SKIM AND LOOK FOR THINGS THAT ARE RELEVANT TO YOU! THIS PROJECT IS ABOUT HAVING FUN AND WRITING WITH OTHERS. IF YOU HAVE SPECIFIC QUESTIONS THE BEST THING TO DO IS COMMUNICATE WITH OTHERS! PLEASE REACH OUT TO THE GMS OR OTHER PLAYERS TO WORK ON YOUR STORIES!
Making a Post
Once you have submitted your characterApplications and it has been approved, you will be given access to theGame Room. The Game Room is where all RP and in-character content lives. Do not post OOC content to the Game Room. Use our Discord, orThe Cantina for that.
Your stories on the forum are to be shared in "scenes": generally short-timescale narrative blocks that encapsulate one(ish) incident taking place in one(ish) location. Think of a scene like a short chapter, or subchapter in a book - the action, concepts, and dialogue should be cohesive and move your plot forward, but there doesn't need to be definite resolution of the conflict at the end of any one scene. While we are not very restrictive on writing style, the one requirement is that your scenes are in chronological order, as doing otherwise would make the collaboration element of the text-RPG impossible - more on Time is discussed later in this post. The end of one scene should set you up for the subsequent scene.
Each scene takes place in a post - posts can be a new thread, or a reply to existing threads. Thread titles are based on location. You will see there are sub-categories under theGame Room named by region, for exampleThe Core orTrailing Sectors. Each region has a brief description attached to it describing where it is, but more information about them and their relation to the greater narrative can be found in the Game Setting. These are very large subsections of the galaxy with lots and lots of worlds each, and entire stories could easily be contained in one of them.
When getting ready to make a post, begin by clicking the sub-category/region your scene is taking place in. You will see on the sidebar a button that says "Start a Discussion" - clicking this will create a brand new discussion thread, usually just called a thread. As each thread represents a location, check to see if a thread already exists for the specific location you are visiting. If so, you may continue to add to that thread with a reply, which adds your posts to the bottom of the thread, creating a cohesive location where characters are coming and going. If no thread exists for the location you are visiting, create a new thread. Your thread should be named for the specific location you are visiting. Here's an example;
Say your character, Glup Shitto, famed explorer, is arriving on a remote world in the Outer Rim, looking for treasure. Your thread should be titled by the location of your scene as specifically as is reasonable. This way, if multiple characters end up in the same location, the same thread can continue to be used. Now, lets say you figure out the details, and decide this remote planet is Tatooine, and Glup Shitto will be arriving at Mos Eisley Spaceport Hangar 23 on Tatooine, where a scene will play out of him landing, talking to the spaceport dock attendant, and then getting recognized by an old rival as he prepares to leave into the city proper.
So, how do we start our post? Well, Tatooine is in theTrailing Sectors so we know the post will go there. If we were choosing a remote or rarely visited location, maybe titling the thread just by the name of the planet, or a large region on that planet, would be sufficient - IE "Dagobah, Swamplands" in theTrailing Sectors . Despite its rural appearance, Tatooine is actually a very popular location and stopover for travelers, and is expected to have high post traffic, so "Tatooine" alone would be too vague of a title. "Mos Eisley, Tatooine" would probably work better instead.
If you look and there is already so much activity for a specific location that you see thread titles like "Mos Eisley streets, Tatooine" and "Mos Eisley outskirts, Tatooine" etc. etc., but none fit your location, than feel free to go more specific, like "Mos Eisley spaceport, Tatooine". If you can't decide on how specific to go with your title, putting a header at the top your post is a good bridge between the specific and vague: IE, your might start a new thread called "Mos Eisley, Tatooine", but the first line of your post might be "Tatooine, Mos Eisley Spaceport: Hangar 23, entrance to the abandoned Maintenance Shafts" or something like that to really detail where you are. That said, trust your gut, this is a narrative based adventure after all - do what feels right to set the scene.
Often times, narrative dictates a post covers a transition in location. For instance, you might have one scene which encompasses traveling to multiple locations across a city, or even say, boarding your ship, fleeing a planet into orbit, and then jumping to hyperspace, where your characters then have a short discussion, all in one continuous scene, before the post ends. In these cases, the thread you should create/reply to should be named based on either where the majority of the scene takes place, or, where the scene ends. It'll be up to you, the writer, to determine which fits better. You may also try employing headers per location in a scene, if that works for the post style.
Finally, when your story moves from one thread to another entirely, it is a nice touch if you leave links to where your new post is on the old post, and link to the old post in new post, so people reading your story can easily follow it. If that's confusing, check theGame Room for examples.
Post Impact
Your scenes are allowed to have as big an impact as you want, assuming it makes sense for the story you are telling, the actions you are taking and the characters involved. GMs should and will get involved with your large-impact scenes and help them play out. They will do this through primary through private conversation to help inform your subsequent posts, or can even respond as NPCs in your scene. Remember that you do not get to immediately decide the large scale repercussions of a scene within your post; the point of a collaborative story RPG is seeing how such things play out through the group roleplay. If your character, an Imperial Admiral, sends a fleet to crush an entire planet, great! But you need to give it time and allow other players to react before determining your own victory.
NPCs
As you may have noticed, NPCs and PCs are very different in the context of a text-rpg. Unlike in a TTRPG, where PCs are the realm of the player and NPCs are solely under direction of the GM, here, you may dictate the actions of NPCs around you in your posts, especially those NPCs directly tied to your character like close friends, employees, etc. You can also ask other players or GMs to act out these NPCs temporarily in critical moments. GMs may also chose to respond as NPCs when they feel it is necessary, but will inform you before doing so.
If NPCs and PCs can both be under control of the player, what's the difference? PCs are the main character in your narrative thread, and where they go the story follows. NPCs in your story might be as fully-realized as your PC, BUT, when the NPC leaves the scene to do their own thing the figurative "camera" does not follow them. As long as that character's story is only being tracked when interacting with a PC, they are an NPC, and you do not need to write a bio or get an application approved for them. If you decide you want to make an NPC a PC, please go through the application process.
Note: this doesn't mean you can't do cutaways to an NPC in your post - just use the same sort of rules for cutaway you might see in a show or movie. For instance, sometimes we get a scene in a movie of the villains scheming some evil fate for our hero. This same type of scene works with an NPC and a PC, for the same reason it doesn't interrupt the movie - the cutaway might not star the main character, but it is about the main character, and is there to add drama for the audience. If the scene was completely unrelated to the PC's story, it wouldn't work.
Time
In the RP universe, time is a bit wibbly wobbly between characters. Generally speaking, it is assumed that if there is an existing thread where characters are actively at and posting, that is taking place "now", and a character who just arrives at that location will be present for that scene and able to take place in it. This makes sense and encourages collaborative writing. However, if you establish this scene takes place on Galactic Tusdé (Tuesday), but the person joining the scene just established they were across the galaxy last Fursdé (Friday) in their previous scene, we've got time travel and a headache. To avoid constantly having to keep scenes in sync, it is best practice to just not include when exactly something happens. Instead use "how long" something takes. You were on one side of the galaxy, did a week of travel, and arrived to join a scene with others? Well now you were on the other side of the galaxy a week ago compared to this scene! It's self correcting. For a similar reason, be careful with specifying really big time jumps in your scenes - don't accidently catapult yourself far into the future and leave the rest of us behind!
While this is the standard "assumption" about time in the RPG for posting in the same thread/space, feel free to play with it a little. If some players are a little farther ahead of a big scene, and you don't want to skip the fun setup or context on how your character got there, feel free to start with your own thread where things are a little bit behind, until you catch up. As long as it's relatively easy to tell where in the timeline posts are from one another (again, "relative", not absolute time), it's not too big a deal. Just make sure when characters meet up in one place and are using the same thread back and forth, that the scenes are generally consecutive.
Note that when really big and impactful events happen, like a political death, the starting of a war, or the destruction of a planet (be they triggered by player characters or otherwise), the GMs will post a summary "News Update" about what transpired, where, and roughly when, to establish the passage of time in our narrative.
Distance
This is a tangent/subcategory on time, that can be summed up as: traveling takes time! When your characters are travelling, note that a few days to weeks will pass. These small time skips help move the story forward and keep things believable, as otherwise you might be tempted to write and write and write and realize after a few months you've only progressed your narrative a couple of days. When your character travels far on a hyperspace lane, expect at least a few days if not weeks to pass: when traveling across a sector off a hyperspace lane, expect similar travel times - though feel free to not state the time gaps or vary them as your narrative needs. These time skips can easily hide any crimes in the multi-character timeline, and help justify any discrepancies in said timeline that might otherwise be obvious to your readers.
Some brief lore on why hyperspace lanes are the quicker way to travel, that might help you write about it better can be found in the Thing Explainer. The Thing Explainer is here to help consolidated some disjointed lore from Canon and Legends and make it our own, and most importantly, cohesive, to keep up that narrative tension. Use these constraints freely to make interesting conflicts in your story! Fighting against the clock is always dramatic, and with the way hyperspace rules work its always easy to come up with a seemingly realistic obstacle in your path, or an excuse for an exciting shortcut.
Simulation
As a mechanics free narrative system, no simulation (the using of game mechanics, rules, or chance to determine the outcome of an action) is required in a Text-RPG. However, simulation is a powerful tool you can still use to help you write dynamic scenes. This can be as simple as coin toss to see if your character hits their mark, or more complex forms of simulation to navigate a large political scene or battle. You never have to disclose if you use simulation or the method results, though you are welcome to talk about your process in any of our OOC sections. You can also always ask a GM to arbitrate the outcome of an action.
However, remember every player gets to decide for themselves how their characters acts and reacts, and their general level of success at an action - your coin toss doesn't work on others unless they agree to it before hand. GMs are always available to arbitrate the outcome of player vs. player action too.
Dialogue and Collaborative Posts
This is one of the places where Text-RPGs really differ the most from TTRPGs. There are many ways to approach character dialogue and collaborative scenes between multiple player characters (PCs). Whatever you do, make sure you are working with the other writers, not against them.
When you find yourself in a shared scene, I encourage reaching out to the other players, and working the main beats of the scene out with them, determining what each character would say and how they would react, before posting. You can then;
- Split the scene up, and let one player write one half from their perspective, and you write the second half from yours.
- Each write the same scene twice, from each other's characters perspectives.
- Cooperate on one 3rd person perspective scene of the characters talking and acting.
Another option is to schedule a time with the other players, get on the Discord voice chat, and write very short scenes and bit of dialogue back and forth in succession on the forum board directly, and dynamically build the scene that way.
Another answer is to lean entirely into the collaborative process, and grant each writer the opportunity to write entire sections of the scene themselves, including your character's words and actions, and then let all involved review it before posting.
The beauty of the Text-RPG is that it is entirely up to you - the one rule here is that you ensure everyone involved has a say, and you don't act for others without their consent.
Post Length
I've received a lot of questions on post length so I thought I'd add my thoughts to this guide. The primary take away is: there are NO word or character limits to your posts. Well, the forum might have a character limit per post, I'm not sure, but the point is there's no limit to how long in terms of words a post should be!
That said, building on the other points in this guide, you should consider the length of time and scale of events your post covers. If you plan on doing a big story arc that covers a few weeks time and big bombshell events happen slowly over those weeks, maybe break those posts up so others have time to respond and get involved with those events. That's not to say you can't dictate major events alone; just that, if they would take enough time to where others could reasonably intervene, give people the chance to. IE, if your sniper character on some far flung planet noticed a public event and spontaneously decided to assassinate a senator there, that's a fast and impactful event your character reasonably had full control over, and other players couldn't have flown to said planet in time to stop you, so its reasonable if its contained within a single post. However, if you are commanding a major fleet that is slowly but surely demolishing a whole sector of the Outer Rim, it's reasonable others would have the time (and the cause) to go there to interact or intervene, so don't stop that chance for collaboration by having one big post where you just do it - break it up into several posts and give a little time between putting them up. Also, a note to people who see a big event happening and what to get their character involved: message the other players and tell them your intentions! This lets other players know to give you time to write your addition to the story, gives them the opportunity to adjust their story plans, and reduces hurt feelings/frustration. We are doing collaborative writing, not apposed writing, and collaboration requires communication!
I will note, one big exception to the concerns over post length/in-universe time/scope considerations are your opening posts. Everyone needs space and full control to introduce their character properly, so it's only fair you're allowed to show a little longer passage of time (maybe narratively writing part of your backstory, or showing how your character was involved with previous in-game events if you're joining us late) and if there's some big event that introduces your character, yeah, write that (assuming you're not taking control of other people's characters in the process).
To summarize; the only consideration on post length is that you give others the space to collaborate!
THANKS FOR READING! REMEMBER THAT THESE ARE GUIDELINES AND JUST EXIST AS A REFERENCE. THEY ARE NOT GOSPEL. YOU DO NOT NEED TO READ EVERY BIT OF THIS GUIDE, JUST SKIM AND LOOK FOR THINGS THAT ARE RELEVANT TO YOU! THIS PROJECT IS ABOUT HAVING FUN AND WRITING WITH OTHERS. IF YOU HAVE SPECIFIC QUESTIONS THE BEST THING TO DO IS COMMUNICATE WITH OTHERS! PLEASE REACH OUT TO THE GMS OR OTHER PLAYERS TO WORK ON YOUR STORIES!
