Side tangent from the "bonds" discussion.
I was wondering if we wanted to establish any posting conventions before we kick off the game. I don't feel passionately about these and am certainly happy to have discussion/debate, but I think that establishing conventions can help the story to flow/read better.
1. Events are written about in the past tense. E.g.
quote:
Ilura drew her bow and cleanly placed an arrow through the eye of the lead ork
as opposed to
quote:
Ilura draws her bow and cleanly places an arrow through the eye of the lead ork
Rationale is that that's how most literary works are expressed and we're sort of building an on-the-fly story - a literary work.
2. Use color or formatting conventions to distinguish thought, spoken words and whispered words as well as out-of-character (OOC) information. (In other games, radio transmissions can be relevant too, but probably not here :>). In the past, I've seen each character use a different color for themselves (makes it easy to see who has said/thought what). Thoughts are in italics. Speech is mared with double-quotes. Whispers are double-quoted italics. OOC content is orange. For example:
quote:
One down, 49 to go.... The ranger dropped her bow and pulled her sword. "Hiran, get behind me!" (Defend Hiran, rolled 7+1, 1 hold)
3. Avoid using
unless responding to something much earlier in the thread where context may not be clear, and then only quote the bare minimum needed to establish context. This avoids disrupting the flow of the narrative
4. Limit OOC content to technical actions or simple questions and keep general discussion and OOC planning in the OOC thread
5. If you make an edit to a post, at the bottom in the OOC color, provide a short description of what the edit was. E.g.
quote:
EDIT: fixed spelling
or
quote:
EDIT: revised to be consistent w/ Eryn's actions
Also, if an edit may influence understanding of the story like the last example, call it out in the OOC thread.
6. If you're going to PM, try to provide descriptive comment or some sort of color commentary in the non-hidden text rather than just saying "PM". As a bonus, it helps hide the fact you're having a secret conversation :)
7. Others?
Some additional style questions:
- Is there typically a lot of planning in Dungeon World or is it more seat-of-the-pants of "here's the situation, react now"? If there are situations where planning is in order, do people prefer to do all of that through in-character dialog, or is OOC discussion appropriate? If the latter, should we have a thread for that purpose, distinct from true OOC stuff like "I'm going on vacation next week, try not to kill my character"?
- Who handles rolls? Do we roll for our own actions? For damage we receive from others?
- If we make our own rolls, is it appropriate for us to narrate the results of success or failure or should we leave that to the GM? If it's generally ok for us to narrate but the GM might overrule, do we just edit our previous post to be consistent?
- How much technical stuff (moves chosen, rolls made, etc.) should actually show up in the narrative?