Welcome to the Shadows of Collinwood

Here are the Rules/Protocol for the game.  I would like to thank Rosemary Cruz for being so kind as to write these up for us.  Thanks Rosemary

Guidelines for the RPG

Thanks so much, for joining the Shadows of Collinwood RPG@Egroups.  We truly appreciate your choosing to role-play with us. 

 There are no set rules for the RPG, but general protocol has us doing our roles, then leaving empty, what others are to say and do, for the most part.  If you have seen how we have been performing, you will notice one character does and says something, then waits for the person interacting with them to post a response.

For Example:
  (person playing Barnabas)
 Barnabas: Julia, we must find a cure and now!

(Then whoever Julia is will reply)
 Julia:  Yes, I know Barnabas, I am trying.

There are some instances where in the post it seems as if one person is doing everything.  This happens when a person is playing more than one role, and is interacting with themselves, in order to develop the story.  But all in all it is very rewarding and fun to do.

Now another thing you might note is the actions we do are usually separated with  either  (  )  or  <  > And what the action is, inserted between. 

For Example:
Barnabas <walks towards Roxanne, quietly> Hello Roxanne.

Some other guidelines you will want to know are:
1. Try and respond for your character, within 24 hours.  When players stagnate (and often times we do) It stagnates the RPG, and the other player who might be interacting with you at the time.

2. Permission is needed before you can kill off a character, other than your own.  This is pretty easy to understand, but mainly because they might not want to be dead. :)

3. If you take on an extra role, be sure to develop them for all of us, so we will know who they are, and why they might be committing certain actions.  We have had problems in the past, where a role was created, then not be used.

4. Feel free to ask anyone for help.  There are no professional Role Players here, and we all needed assistance when we first joined.

5. Summarize your characters, every two weeks, or once a month.  The game is growing, and this way newbies who want to join, can see who is doing and playing what.

6. Try and review the archives, to see what has occurred on past posts.  This cuts down on confusion, plus it also helps a person be more informed when beginning.

7.  Knowing what's going on:  It really, really helps if you read all the posts, even when your characters aren't involved.  In this way, you know who's doing what where and with whom.  At some point one of your characters may wish to interact with the others.  

For example, if Liz goes to Sheriff George Patterson's office and there are a group of people there, it makes no sense for her to ignore everyone and speak merely to George.

8.  Form:  It helps to separate actions by < > or to make sure they are clearly indicated if in prose format.  Thoughts and such can be indicated in brackets as well.  If you have more than one character speaking, it makes it easier to follow if their dialogue/action is set off with their name and a colon. And then some times there are no parentheses or brackets, but the actions and thoughts are separated with a paragraph. 

Roger:  Liz, have you lost your mind?!?

Liz:  On the contrary, Roger, I think I've finally found it.

At the end of the post, we put down the names of our characters included.  So using this above example, I would write:

Roger and Elizabeth

9. Interacting with characters not our own:  If you are playing more than one character, it is perfectly fine to have them interact.  For instance if you were playing Chris and Amy Jennings, you could write dialogue and actions for both characters.  If though you had Chris talking with Carolyn and someone else was playing Carolyn, you would leave Carolyn's response blank or at the most very vague.

a) Acceptable:
Chris: I can't be involved with you in that way, Carolyn, can't you understand that?

b) Also Acceptable:
Chris: I can't be involved with you in that way, Carolyn, can't you understand that?  <Sees Carolyn looking upset>

c) Not really acceptable:
Chris: I can't be involved with you in that way, Carolyn, can't you understand that?
Carolyn:  No, I can't.  Chris I love you.

In example b. it's perfectly logical to assume that Carolyn would be upset.  The person playing Carolyn though probably has their own ideas of what words she would use and what he/she wants their character to say or do.

Now let's say the person playing Barnabas writes a paragraph long monologue like post.  You are playing Jason McGuire.  You can still respond to this by breaking up the paragraph with Jason's thoughts, movements and actions or even having him interrupt Barnabas with his own remarks.

Barnabas:  You a very mysterious man, Mr. McGuire.  No one seems to know very much about you.  I do however.  Willie has told me quite a lot.  I warn you, Mr. McGuire that my cousin Elizabeth means a very great deal to me.  Should she come to harm. . .<Barnabas gives Jason a chilly evil looking 
smile>  Etc.

The person playing Jason could do the following:

Barnabas:  You a very mysterious man, Mr. McGuire.  No one seems to know very much about you.  I do however.  Willie has told me quite a lot.

Jason:  <Smile fades as he wonders just what Willie has been saying>

I warn you, Mr. McGuire that my cousin Elizabeth means a very great deal to me.

Jason:  She means a very great deal to me as well, Mr. Collins.  I love Elizabeth and I mean to marry her.

Should she come to harm. . .<Barnabas gives Jason a chilly evil looking smile>  Etc.

10. Doing your own thing.  We all have story ideas and plots we want to have our characters do.  But this should be fun.  No one should feel forced to do anything.  It isn't fun when someone railroads the other players into a plot by not giving them some room to breathe. This is often a wonderful creative 
exercise of give and take.  One player takes a story idea and throws it to the next player, who may reshape it and add something to it, throwing it back to the first player or onto the next.  Relax and go with the flow.

11. MOST IMPORTANT 
Taking on roles you can't handle:  Try and be careful in selecting a character--for two reasons.  A character may be too difficult for you to play or more commonly, you may not have enough time to play that character effectively.  This happens because you either have a very busy real life and can't be on-line frequently or because you have too many roles.  If it's the former, try to select a character who is not at the forefront of the action constantly (e.g. Barnabas).  You may also wish to not involve that character in very active plots because it does get very frustrating for the other players who are waiting on you to respond for days or a week at a time.  If you have too many roles and can't keep track of them all, consider giving up one or several of these--again it slows the game if you have no idea as to where everyone is.

This is just a brief background on what has been going on, as far as what we are used to seeing in posts.  We just want you and the rest of us to have a great and fun time in doing this.  We love the RPG list, it makes our day at times.

 These are the basics, but if anything else should come up you need assistance on, please don't hesitate to ask.  We are all here to make this enjoyable for everyone.  We hope you will join us, and partake of a great experience.

Characters are limited to three, unless approved by the moderator