I'm in the process of archiving and deleting my game (which was an oWoD Dark Ages). However, because my Tome of Guidelines is/was much revered by other people, I thought I'd make it available here. I'd appreciate credit if you borrow chunks of it for your own games (you can just link to this thread), since I did put a lot of work into coming up with it.

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Please read through this thread carefully, thoroughly, and often. I frequently add more items as they come up. Likewise, please do the same for the Character Sheets thread for new items specific to your character type.

These rules apply to everyone equally. No exceptions.

Before You Apply

If you are interested in joining this game, please do the following things before you apply:

• Read the Introduction and Setting notice thread.
• Read this entire Tome of Guidelines. (There is a test.)(No, I'm not kidding.)
• Read the Character Sheets thread for the sheet(s) relevant to the type of character(s) you would like to play.
• At least skim over the IC game threads. Get a feel for my GMing style and the roleplaying style of the other players already in the game. While I won't require you to know all the details of the plot that occurred before your character begins play, having a general grasp of the storylines will help you decide whether you would enjoy playing here, and with this gaming group.

I am always happy to answer any questions you may have, but I do expect you to read the notice threads in their entirety, as many of the common basic questions are already answered in them.

A note: I want players who want to play here because they enjoy the game. Not because they know me (or another player) from elsewhere, or feel inclined/obligated to participated for political reasons. If you have metagame reasons for applying, please consider carefully whether you would truly enjoy being here for the game itself.

General Character Submission Notes

• The order of things to submit in a character submission is as follows:
  
  • State what type of supernatural creature you are interested in playing. If werewolf, state breed, auspice, and tribe. If vampire, state clan and concept. If mage, state concept and describe approximate paradigm. Submit a writing sample (see below).
  • If I like your writing and roleplaying style, the next step is a brief character concept. This should be around 1-2 paragraphs in length.
  • Once we have worked out a character concept that will fit into my game, I will ask for a detailed backstory and full stats. Both of these parts must be submitted before discussion continues.
  • We will then spend some time revising the backstory and tweaking the stats until I am satisfied that you have a realistic character backstory and accurate stats. Except in specific circumstances, I will not add you to the game until I have a final draft of both the backstory and stats.
  
  
• Writing Sample - please list some other games on rpol.net that you are involved with, which demonstrate your ability to roleplay and write. Be sure to include who you play and, if the game is large, recommend some threads where your character(s) appear(s). If you have no posts in Group 0 of another game, please submit something that you have written.
  
• The purpose of a character backstory is to explain who you are, what you do, what motivates you, and how you came to be that way. It should describe the key events of your personal past that have influenced your present activities and shaped your personality and outlook on life. It should not be simply a timeline with dates and events. Character backstories must be at least 250 words and must make sense. All stat backgrounds, merits, and flaws must be explained in detail.
  
• Characters start with a maximum of 50 freebies. Please note that 50 freebies is not as many as you might think. This is not an Elders game; don't get carried away writing up a backstory for an ancient powerful being. The intention is to provide more flexibility in creating an interesting character than is possible with a standard 15-freebie neonate. On the flip side, you are not required to spend all 50 freebies if you want a 15-freebie neonate. Either way, your stats should reflect the character that you have described in your backstory.
  
• No XP will be given. (Spend your freebies wisely.) This game will not have much, if any, character advancement. You are creating a character that is already advanced, and will henceforth remain static (in terms of abilities).
  
  The reason for this is because, in a play-by-post game, it takes a very long time to advance even a single in-game day. RPoL.net average seems to be one in-game day per 6 weeks to 6 months realtime. This game runs slowly enough that it takes at least 6 months to play half a day. Your character's stats are not realistically going to change that much during that time.
  
  If we do play all the way to the end of a plotline, which will probably take years, I might give out XP at that time. Otherwise, any changes to stats (e.g. learning gifts from spirits for werewolves, studying rituals for Tremere, finding teachers and mentors and trainers, etc.) must be earned through roleplay. Excellent roleplay is more likely to result in stat change requests being granted. (Note: if you're playing with stat upgrades in mind, you're already missing the point and are even less likely to get them.)
  
• I do not have easy access to every single White Wolf game book ever published. I have the following core books:
  
  • Werewolf: the Apocalypse (3rd ed.)
  • Werewolf: the Dark Ages
  • Dark Ages: Werewolf
  • Werewolf Players Guide (2nd ed.)
  • Vampire: the Masquerade (3rd ed.)
  • Vampire: the Dark Ages
  • Dark Ages: Vampire
  • Mage: the Ascension (2nd and 3rd ed.)
  • Mage: Sorcerer's Crusade
  • Dark Ages: Mage
  • Book of Shadows
  
  All World of Darkness related setting elements will come from these books and only these books, and whatever I happen to feel like improvising to make for a good story and for the most fun for everyone. Other (mundane) setting elements will be 'inspired by' Real Life history. Basically you can assume that the Dark Ages, for the purposes of this game, have a D&D level of technology and society.
  
  I  do not have the Dark Ages: British Isles sourcebook. I looked through it in a bookstore and decided that I didn't like it, so this game will not include that information.
  
  If you (the player) want me to consider including something obscure in this game, and I do not have the published text to read about it for myself, you will type it out for me verbatim in its entirety. Otherwise it doesn't exist. Note that typing it out does not necessarily mean I will allow it - it still has to fit the game. Also note that, if you assume without asking that you can have something not in a core book, the chances are greater that I will reject it outright.
  
  THIS IS NOT A CANON GAME. Some setting elements may deviate alarmingly from what the books say, especially books that are not cores and/or that I don't personally possess. Similarly, my interpretations of the rules may deviate significantly from any other WoD ST's that you've ever played with, on or off RPoL. I am not them and how they choose to do things is largely irrelevant to this game.

Writing Format Guidelines

• You may use any colors you'd like for dialogue, or none at all, except for brown or orange. Those are reserved for specific purposes (see below). Please put quotation marks (") around dialogue regardless of whether you choose to use color. Please do not use bold as your color of choice.
• Do not use the "quote" feature for IC posts. If you really must quote something from someone else's post, it should be in brown. Example:
  
  Other Character's Name: blankety blankety blank.
  
  
• Any OOC comments should be in orange. Only short OOC comments of direct relevance to the IC activity should be in the IC thread. Extensive OOC comments should be posted in the OOC thread, not in the IC threads.
• Thoughts and telepathy should be in  italics.
• Attempts at mind control should be in bold.
• If you must use <pre> tags within your post, please make certain that there are no more than 80 characters per line (including spaces). I happen to be near blind and require huge font sizes; anything more than 80 characters causes too much horizontal scrolling for me. As an alternative, consider using <tt> tags instead, wherever possible.
• Do not include smileys in any IC post.
• Do not use asterisks to emote things in any IC post.
• Any dice rolls and stat changes should be posted into the IC post as a private line (PL).
  
  • For dice rolls, I need to see the individual dice, so please copy the result line from the top of the dice roller that appears right after your roll, and not the line from the log. Also state the purpose of the roll, and the specific stats used in the roll. Example:
    
    To spot the sniper: perception+alertness - You rolled 1 success using 8d10 with the World of Darkness, Specialised system with a target of 6 ((10(+1),3,4,5,8,1,6,3)).
    
    
  • You are also responsible for keeping a running tally of your health levels, willpower, gnosis, rage, blood pool, etc. within PLs. Stat tallies should be noted whenever something changes. It is helpful to note all of them each time, even if only one thing changes. Include your current number, your permanent number, how many you are adding or subtracting at the time of the tally note, and for what purpose. During combat, my preferred format is:
    
    Health -2/0, WP 6/6, Blood 11/15, Rage 4/5, Gnosis 3/5, Quintessence 3/6, Paradox 2, ... etc.
    
    A note on Health: to me, "0" is healthy, and it goes from -1 to -8 as injuries accumulate. -8 generally means you're dead/destroyed.
• If your entire IC post consists of a PL, either send it to the appropriate person via Private Message (PM) instead, or write at least a sentence for everyone else to read and enjoy. Under no circumstances should there ever be posts where the entire public portion says nothing but "PL" or "PM."
• Please try to re-use old PM threads instead of constantly starting new ones.
• The GM(s) can read and reply to all PMs in their game(s), even ones that are not addressed to them. I do read everything in this game; as the GM, I am responsible for all of the content and I take that seriously. In general I won't interfere in your conversations with each other except under the following circumstances:
  
  • To correct an important error or clarify something pertaining to this game.
  • One of you asks me to answer a question or mediate a dispute (implicitly or explicitly).
  • The conversation violates the RPoL ToU in some way.
  
  Otherwise, feel free to talk amongst yourselves about whatever you'd like. If you do want complete privacy, you will need to take the conversation elsewhere.

I will edit (without notice) any posts that violate these format guidelines. In extreme cases I may delete them, send them back to you in a PM, and ask you to rewrite. Note that I'm not generally offended if people occasionally fail to follow these guidelines, so please don't misconstrue my edits as such. I realize there are a large number of them and I'm the only one likely to be able to remember them all at all times. :)

Writing Quality Standards

Each post should be at least a paragraph in length. A paragraph is at least three sentences. Please put some effort into proper grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure. A blank line should separate each paragraph to make for easier reading.

Some suggestions on what to include, if you are not sure what to write about:

• Descriptions of what your character is doing, where s/he is going, and/or how these actions are being carried out.
• Descriptions of your character's body language, facial expressions, gestures, tone of voice when speaking.
• Reactions to your character's immediate environment and events, things that other characters are doing or saying, things that are happening to your character.
• General emotional state, mood, thoughts.
• Anything about what's happening that reminds your character about something - stuff that's already happened in the game, other people, stuff from your character's backstory, etc.

A consistent failure to meet the minimum will eventually result in you being written out of my game. If you ever write a post that consists of less than three words, I will summarily execute you in an exceptionally devious, unpleasant manner. (There are rare exceptions to this. I've only ever seen one in my three years on rpol.net.) If you are writing badly, I will let you know explicitly and probably in great detail with many ideas on how to improve things.

Please note that the one-paragraph standard is a minimum requirement. Do feel free to write above and beyond the minimum - but please don't feel that you are obligated to do so, even if everyone else in your scene is writing tomes. On the flip side, quantity does not necessarily mean quality - don't write just to have lots of words, either. It is not necessary to include every single thought that occurs to you during the process of writing your post. If you are unsure where you stand with regards to writing at any time, please ask me. Chances are you're doing a lot better than you think.

I allow a lot of creative flexibility for players. If you create a minor NPC or setting element for flavor purposes, you are free to continue developing him/her/it as you'd like. (Try to stay reasonable and realistic - don't start adding in special powers, etc. without discussing it first.) My inclination is to assume that you want creative control unless you tell me otherwise; if I can think of a way to turn them into plot devices, however, I might add on to them without telling you.... Note, however, that if I created the minor NPC or setting element, you are not free to add on to them without asking, because I might have plans for them that you don't know about (yet).

No excessive gratuitous violence, sex, cursing, etc. These types of themes are allowable if there are good plot-related or character-related reasons supporting them (that is, are not gratuitous), and I will raise the "Mature" flag to accommodate if it becomes needed (it hasn't been yet). However, if they are likely to become excessive, we will use a fade-to-black approach.

General Roleplaying Guidelines

• Do not play other people's characters. You may not make them talk, think, feel, move, or act in any way, unless you have their permission to do so.
• Do not assume that other people's characters will NOT talk, move, and/or act in response to things that your character does/says. Do not write past the points where they might reasonably want to react to something without giving them the opportunity to respond.
• Play your character the way s/he was meant to be played. Have him/her say and/or do the things that s/he would actually say or do. Do not play according to what you think the ST wants to see happen, as your guess is probably wrong; if I wanted to plan something in particular I would approach you in PMs about it beforehand, and we would work it all out before it ever appeared IC.
• Remember that actions have consequences. If your character gets careless in front of mortals, or annoys the wrong people, it might come back to haunt you later...
• It should go without saying that cheating in any form will be punishable by eviction from the game, automatic rejection from any future games I might run, and your good name tarnished to any other GMs that ever ask me for my opinion of you. This includes cheating on dice rolls, roleplaying abilities that your character doesn't actually possess, spending blood/gnosis/willpower/etc. that you don't actually have, intentionally misreading other people's posts to your character's advantage, conveniently writing past the places in the story that might hurt your character, conveniently inserting hitherto-unmentioned items to avoid unpleasantness, creative interpretations of rules from the book (or the general rules of reality), and so on.
  
  Yes, sometimes your character will get hurt, or find him/herself at a disadvantage or in a sticky situation, or wallowing in despair. It's part of the fun. If this doesn't sound like fun to you, there are many other games on RPoL and surely a few of them will be much more to your preferred style of roleplay. I'd suggest something other than the Horror category.
  
  I should also mention that begging for rules-manipulation-based ways to get out of sticky situations, while not cheating per se, severely annoys me. Try to dig yourself out by actually roleplaying.
  
  
• Try to post at least once a week. Absences of more than a week should be noted in the "OOC: Leave of Absence" thread.
• Dice roller: We are using the "World of Darkness 1st ed" roller. More 1's than successes = a botch, and all 10s reroll until there are no more.
• Back in first edition WoD, there were secondary abilities instead of specializations. These are subsets of skills that fit within a broader primary ability. To my mind, secondary abilities and specializations are roughly interchangeable, and I am allowing players to choose whether they wish to buy the ability as a secondary (must buy at least one point in the relevant primary ability), or declare it as a specialization (relevant primary ability must be at least 4). Secondaries can be bought at half cost.
• I am also using different rules for specializations than the books state. (These rules copied with permission from link to "WoD: All That Glitters" .) All dice rolls are to be done with the 10s rerolled, not just rolls with specializations. Instead, if you have a specialization, you may choose to do one of the following:
  
  • You can automatically lower your difficulty by 1 point. This is great when you have a low dice pool and/or a high difficulty number. You can still botch, though.
  • You can take one of the dice in your dice pool, don't roll it, and call it an auto success. This is great when you have a really high difficulty number and you don't want to risk botching. You may fail at what you are trying, but with one success, you at least won't botch. You give up the chance to try rerolling a 10 with that one die, though.
  • You can add a die to your dice pool. This is great for physical actions, such as fighting, which are based upon how many successes you get.
  
  Declare your choice before you make your rolls.
  
  
• Lengthy complex combat scenes will be run OOC (over PMs and/or IMs if available, or in a special combat thread), and I will post a summary of what happened in the IC thread, probably for each completed round.
• If there is no other defining start/end to a 'scene', the default length is one hour.
• I will not kill your character or minions (kinfolk, retainers, etc.), or destroy important property, unless we have discussed it OOC in advance. (Or unless you really deserve it.)
• Include the phrase "fancy planet bashing magnet" in your PM (any PM before you start playing) so that I know you've actually read this entire tome of guidelines.
• Remember that roleplaying is a group activity. The other people in this game are real people just like you, not computer-generated text. Please be considerate of their enjoyment as well as your own.

Inactivity and Leaving the Game

A player that does not post for a week (7 days), who has not given notice in the Leave of Absence thread or otherwise notified me of out-of-game difficulties, and who is in an IC thread with other PCs that are waiting for their post, will be assumed to do nothing during that time and I will continue things accordingly. In general, I will not allow any character to hold up a thread for longer than a week.

Players that have left the game due to Real Life reasons, or who do not sign into the game for 30+ days, will have their character(s) recategorized under NPC status. I will also begin writing you out of the game. I have no interest in chasing after errant players. I do not ask more than once for people's whereabouts; if you truly want to play here you will do so all by yourself, without constant reminders.

Players under NPC status may return to the game later if they so choose. If I liked you enough to allow you into the game the first time, and you haven't done anything to severely annoy me since then, you are welcome to return. You might not be able to play your original characters by that point, in which case you will have to undergo the Chargen Gauntlet again.

Sometimes things don't work out, and you want/need to leave the game as a direct result of something you dislike about the game. Please tell me why you did not enjoy the game, and/or what went wrong (tactfully, if possible). I would prefer to work out any problems before things reach a point of no return but I understand and respect your wishes if you don't wish to continue (so long as you tell me so, and don't just wander off never to be seen again, leaving everyone else hanging).


About the ST

Having said all of the above ... I'm really not as mean as I make myself out to be. :) Don't be a dork and I won't thwack you for it, simple as that. If you manage to make it all the way through my thorough chargen process and you follow all the rules, we will probably get along well.

For those familiar with the GNS model of roleplaying, I tend to be very narrativist with a dash of simulationist, and not much gamist. My plots are open plots; basically I establish the general starting premises and setting, and while I may have a vague notion of some overall conclusions in mind, what happens in the game is heavily dependent on what the characters do in it. It's not quite pure plot-directed and not quite pure character-driven either, but somewhere in between. Proactive players tend to do better in my games. And, if the Bad Guys end up winning in the end, it's still a good game if the story was interesting on the way there. :)

I welcome constructive feedback, questions, concerns, suggestions, and criticisms at anytime. I want you to enjoy playing here and will do my best to make that happen - as long as you are willing to meet me halfway. If there is a problem, no matter how small, let me know so we can fix it.

I've been on RPoL since March 2003 and have no intention of leaving. I've played in a great many games here, most of them WoD, and I've run two previous ones. I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing by now. :)