Posting Guidlines

Subject: Posting Guidlines Mon Jul 20, 2009 7:52 am

~*POSTING GUIDELINES*~

Proofread Your Posts
As a player in our RPG, we expect and assume you will do your very best to create a readable text that has a minimum of punctuation, spelling, or grammar errors. This can be accomplished in a number of ways, perhaps most easily by using Microsoft Word’s spell check feature or by proof-reading your writing. These tasks may sound tedious, but go a long way in improving the quality of your posted writing. It’s hard to enjoy someone else’s work when it’s filled with mistakes, especially when it affects our ability to understand what’s going on. If these types of distracting errors persist, your position in the RPG could be jeopardized. Please take the small amount of time necessary to check your posts!

Use Appropriate Fonts, Font Sizes, and Font Colors
Another aspect of posting one must consider is the font, font size, and font color. We prefer members do not change from the default font (Verdana) or font size. Many members, though, elect to use a different font color for their character’s dialogue so that it stands out more than the regular descriptive text. If you’d like to do this as well, please choose a color that stands out and is easily distinguishable from the board’s background colors. Nothing’s worse than choosing a dialogue color that is so dark (ex. black) that it can’t be read by other players! Also, please keep in mind that copying directly from Word into the board text box will change the font, font size, and font color because it will transfer the format from Word with it. In order to avoid this, it’s best to copy and paste your Word text into Notepad and then from Notepad to the board, thus clearing the text formatting. You can also clear text formatting by selecting your entire post in the post box and clicking the Remove Text Formatting button, which is right next to the drop-down Font list.

One Thread at a Time
When posting for your approved character, you may only role-play in one scene (thread) at a time. You as a person can only be in one place at one time, so that goes for your character as well. It's awfully confusing to see the same character in three different scenes, so players need to keep in mind that their characters can only be one place at a time. If you want to enter a different thread, you’ll need to write your character out of the thread he/she is currently in. Occasionally, an administrator or moderator will approve of a character being in two ongoing threads at once for specific plot purposes. But those are the only situations where such double-posting is allowed.

Post Length
The Uncanny X-Men RPG encourages our players to let their creative mind flow, and we all look forward to reading the rich detailed responses you will be writing. Because of that, one-liner or one paragraph posts will not be acceptable. We set a very reasonable bar for players to meet when it comes to post length. When writing an in-character post, the minimum length should be about the size of three solid paragraphs consisting of at least five sentences each. That doesn’t have to be the exact structure, but that should give you an idea of the length we’re looking for. If you want to get even more technical, you should be shooting for 300 words at the very least. However we encourage all players to be as detailed as they want or feel necessary, so long as the minimum has been met. If a player has on more than a few occasions posted writing that does not meet this requirement, we will likely contact that player and alert them of the issue. We don’t take any pleasure in being the post police though, so please do your best in keeping us from having to do that.

Posting Order
Often times, especially during combat scenes, it’s helpful for players in the same thread to agree upon a posting order for their characters. In doing so, the players create a list of characters involved in the scene, and players post based on their spot on the list. This rotation, often set up in a team’s respective out-of-character forum, makes it clear whose turn it is to make a response in a thread.

The Three-Day Rule
After posting your character’s contributions to a thread, you need to wait for the other player in the scene to respond before making an additional post. This helps to cut down on confusion, and gives people more time to reply to what happened before more is happening. If you realize you've left something out of your post that you would have liked to include, editing the first post is preferred over adding another reply. If the other player does not respond after three days, you may make an additional post if you’d like. If you’re in a thread with multiple players and the three-day window has passed, then the next player in the posting order may make a post. But players should give each other at least three days to respond before skipping over them with an additional response.

Exceptions to Multi-Posting
There are instances when posting multiple times in a row is appropriate. These include threads devoted to solo role-plays that include only your character or threads where you as the player are controlling multiple characters interacting with each other.

In-Character (IC) vs. Out-of-Character (OOC)
Within each team’s section of the board are two specific forums – their in-character (IC) forum and their out-of-character (OOC) forum. As touched upon briefly in the Introduction thread, the IC forum is reserved for character development, progressing character relationships, advancing plots, engaging in battles… all of the scenes between characters would be made in IC forums. In contrast, the OOC forum is meant to allow players to discuss various aspects of the team and characters. Players can engage in discussions such as talking about the team itself, plan out their plotlines, or updating others about threads. This is the place for players to talk candidly with other players, whereas the IC forum is meant for the actual role-playing and creative writing. Please try to minimize if not eliminate OOC discussion within IC posts, as they can be distracting and sometimes can get threads off-topic. If you have questions or comments for other players, make a new thread in your team’s respective OOC forum!