1. Our setting will be called Bay City (City on the Bay!), and is completely fictional. Whenever I need a real place to help with things like distance or streets or whatever, I will be using Detroit as the model (old, economically depressed, heavy manufacturing, social unrest). So feel free to use Detroit landmarks and neighbourhoods and whatnot as touchpoints if you like.

2. I have a complicated and chaotic RL, and so my posting rate is all over the place. I try to manage two or three posts per week. Sometimes I get a little more, often a little less. I'll always try to keep you updated if I think I'll be away for a few days, but I can't always. But I promise I'll always be back.

3. In terms of posting conventions:

• I expect everyone to post with reasonably decent levels of grammar and spelling. I write fast because I have to tuck posts in between RL stuff and I make a lot of typos, so I won't be all up in your business about minutiae, but everyone should cover the basics. Capitalize words, use quotations marks for speech, italics for thoughts, run everything through a spellcheck, no walls of text, that sort of thing.
• I tend to waver back and forth between present and past tense (sometimes in the same post). I don't really care which one you use, or even if you're consistent. Just be comprehensible.
• I don't format my dialogue. Don't, and won't, even if you ask me to. I find the ubiquity of that convention very strange, but I know most people really like doing it. So colour yours if you like, that's cool. Just pick something with good contrast so it doesn't strain anyone's eyes. Please still use quotation marks and such, even if your dialogue is coloured.
• I don't have a post length minimum or maximum. Or a posting rate. Just try to match the energy of whatever's going on. Just try not to post way more often, or way less often, or way longer, or way shorter, than everyone else. I find games settle into a rhythm as they go along.

4. Guiding Principles

• BRING IT. In the same way that mainstream movies have a shape and a form that we all intuitively understand, most PbP games have an identifiable progression that's pervasive to the point of invisibility (start small and quiet at point A, slowly ramp up to point B while carefully seeding the story with clues about a eventual distant Point C). Instead, I want to start halfway to Point B with Point C already breathing down your neck. All those secrets and narrative hooks in your backstory? We're going to dive right into all that right away, with every scene hopefully highlighting a major conflict. It's my job to frame each scene well and give you lots to work with and it's your job to really run with it. If I offer you a complication, take it. If I offer you a hard choice, lean into it. If I offer you a conflict, engage with it, deepen it, complicate it. Whatever you gotta do. But instead of passively reacting to the game world I present, actively engage with it. Knock things down. Call people names. Get mad and break stuff. Tell that old man at the crossroads you don't care about the stupid kidnapped princess and do something else instead (you know he's a wizard or a shapechanged dragon anyway, he's not fooling anyone). Just Bring It.

• More Text less Dice. I find that, in on-line PtbA games, players want to end almost every post with a move. Which makes sense since moves are both fun and how you engage with the system. But the pace of PbP tends to artificially inflate the number of moves per scene, and too many moves can make it hard for a cohesive story to emerge from all the reactions. So keep in mind that it's fine to let a post stand on its own without a roll. If you think your character can reasonably climb a wall or pick a lock, just tell me they did it. I'll believe you. As a general rule, moves should be reserved for tense and and dramatic moments.

• Ask Forgiveness Instead of Permission. Forward momentum is the second most important factor in a successful PbP game and I will always be trying to create and maintain it. And part of that means not slowing down for details. Around a table you can ask me a question ("Is it raining?") and I can answer ("Sure is.") and we can move on, but here that can stop us dead for two days. When it comes to in-world things that require you to ask me a question before proceeding, default to just deciding for yourself based on what's sensible and/or fun, and just go with it (maybe you want rain and there's none, maybe you don't want rain and there it is). Can you lift that dumpster? Can your magic fireballs melt that magic steel? Does the drug lord have a daughter? Is there a phone booth nearby? Don't even ask, just tell me. There's a line there, clearly ("Do I have the Infinity Gauntlet and can I destroy half of all life with a snap?"), but so long as we all stay within scope and genre, we should be fine. And if what you decide messes something else up, there's a variety of ways to fix it. And, further to point #2, that also means not to ask if you should use a move or not. If you think it's right, just go for it. If I think it's out of bounds, I can handle it afterward. Basically, I'd rather move things forward 20 times and have to pull back 5 than stall 15 times while we hash stuff out.

• For PvP Only, Always Ask Permission. Urban Shadows is a game about uneasy alliances, tense truces, strange bedfellows, and simmering conflict that occasionally boils over. It's expected that the PC's will sometimes come into conflict. Sometimes significant conflict. Especially at first, whenever you thing your PC and another PC might have some conflict (argument, disagreement, pushing match, whatever), default to bringing it up OC (either by PM or publicly) and getting the other PC's buy-in. This is true both for general conflicts ("My character mistrusts Wizards, so sometimes she's going to think you're lying when when you're not."), or single scene conflicts ("What if, in this scene, I decide you can't be trusted because you owe so much money to the mafia?") or even whole story-lines ("Maybe my character secretly suspects you're the spy we're all looking for, and grows increasingly certain as we go along?"). This might seem a bit counter-intuitive, but in my experience it makes PvP conflicts 100% more fun and manageable. And, of course, this sort of thing is a 'Two Yesses, one No" kind of deal. If someone pitches you a conflict, and you're not into it, say so (or tell me, and I'll say so). And we'll all find a different way forward.

• Flexibility and Trust. All of the above basically boils down to: this is your story too, so take care of it. Everyone (including me) should be flexible and gracious and offer trust to the other participants. If someone does something that messes up your something, roll with it if you can and bring it up constructively OC if you can't. Maybe we can walk it back, maybe we can retcon, maybe we can find a way for both to work, maybe something else instead. But if we're going to be moving as fast as I'd like to move, we're going to run over some toes. So we need to think of bumped toes as a feature, not a bug, and always assume that toes are run-over with the best possible intentions. I'm looking for people excited about the possibilities of hitting the ground running, rolling with whatever happens, taking everyone else's insanity on-board with their own and making it a part of theirs, and playing to see what happens.

• Basic Human Decency. I won't put up with any racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, queerphobia, ageism, ableism or any other sort of weaponized, systemized prejudice, either implicit or explicit. Not from the players and not from the PC's (except maybe by explicit consent). Everyone is expected to be polite and to resolve conflicts through empathy and de-escalation. I've only ever had to to kick someone out of a game on this forum a couple of times, but if someone is harming the game or the other players, the choice is clear and I have no problem making it.

This message was last edited by the GM at 15:24, Sun 16 May 2021.