LostKnightsRPG.org

So, I propose that we pool our knowledge and eventually establish guidelines for running and playing a game on the boards. Remarkably, it takes vastly less effort and time to run electronically then it does live. Though I won't deny that it does take the same amount of planning, the amount of time available to respond is enough to allow reference and consideration of consequences. Here's a great example I just made up.

Live:
The PCs catch a henchman unexpectedly!
"Tell me everything. You will die if you don't."
"uhmmm....so...we just sorta....hehe."
*I rape his brain*
::GM scratches head, having not planned out this eventuality::
"He doesn't know anything. Yeah. Whoever gave him his orders did so through a....a phone. Anonymously. With a voice muffler."
"what did they tell him to do?"
"they....sent him to kill you. and not get caught."
"that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard I QUIT GAMING YOU FUCKING SUCK I'M GOING TO GET AN MBA NOW FUCK YOU ASSHOLE"

Boards:
The PCs catch a henchman unexpectedly!
"Tell me everything. You will die if you don't."
"You'll never get anything out of me!"
*I rape his brain*
"His name is Andrew Cremaster. He grew up in montana and was raised into a militia group. His fighting skills have been honed over the years by attending various special interest boot camps. A few months ago, he and his militia group detected an intrusion into their territory. they investigated and found nothing remarkable, but when they got back they found that their headquarters had been broken into. they carefully cleared the building, and found that all of the women and children were missing. they searched the entire area, even late into the night. they called the FBI ( a strange move for them) who have yet to find any leads. The group broke up, unable to bear the weight of what had happened. Then, five days ago, Andrew found an unmarked letter in his mail, at his new apartment in seattle. It was a picture of his daughter, and a typed letter. The letter stated, at anxious length, that it was written by a rebellious member of a secret technological group within the government, and that the writer could provide information about the whereabouts of his family. It instructed him to muster six of his militiamen, and to kill [the PCs]. Your pictures are included from security camera footage, and artists renditions (for those of you who won't show up on film). Your approximate wherabouts on todays date were included. That's all he knows."
"Wow, this is so much better than live LOL I'm gonna give up gaming and get an MBA!!!1!"

so with my ad hoc example, you can clearly see that...wait, what was my point again? right. Boards can provide for vastly better gameplay, provided everyone is in character and actually thinks out their moves carefully. Granted, it's not as intense, but it tends to be more suspenseful. Something I plan to capitalize on very soon.

so yes. Let's create rules. I like rules.

I'm with you Rusty. Not on the rules thing, but the giving up on gaming to get my MBA.

But seriously, gaming sucks, er, rules are needed. Simple board etiquette nd posting regs would be good to be able to cut and paste into every live forum. So Cheyne, do your homework then get started on this...

i refuse to be the generator and formulator of new ideas! stop using me for my lameness!


so, i suggest that we use spoilers or some other method of offsetting ooc stuff, use itallics or bold or something to highlight actual conversation, and um... maybe colons to offset purely scenesetting descriptive text

::sitting in his tinkerbell bathrobe, cheyne scratches his neck, then his scrotum, searching for pointlessly for new additions to systems no one gives a fuck about in the first place. sitting in the dim, flourescent blue lighting, he wonders at the purpose of his life, then continues to type long into the night::

I recall that we used quotation marks to distinguish dialogue from non-dialogue for a while. In CHAT gaming it was pretty much any symbol you want to distinguish action from dialog, or we could just let people wantonly post gibberish and attempt to distinguish one thing from another. Using font modifiers is a decent idea, maybe italics for action and bold for die rolls? Meh.

Really my point was organizing where action will take place at all. I liked having a thread for each character and a thread for each location. I think we could even post links from thread to thread to build rooms. We'll have to experiment with it. With reclamation it was important to be able to build more knowledge about a character, but the loss of the boards killed the game right before everyone in the world would have played it endlessly and worshiped me. That's how it always happens. I was looking forward to swahili gamers extolling my virtues too.

So, do we go with "location" threads, or "IC" threads, and also character threads or not?

not sure. personally, the way i planned on doing Knights, was to have location threads, npc threads (detailing the character a bit, and allowing for phone calls and such), and possibly event threads.

I liked having location threds in OKC Knights. It gave more weight to the concept of actually going out and moving throught the world we lived in. It made the characters actually have to go to someeffort to make things happen; ie they had to go to a bar an NPC was known to frequent in order to talk to them.

I also like the idea of character threds, for phones/email/etc.

it was also interesting to see the world fleshed out more as the number of location threds grew.

HH

Well, I'm doing a bit of both with Encounter. I liked NPC threads as well, I hope you guys will make an effort to keep track of information about the NPCs in their threads, and post new NPC threads as desired if I miss one.

well I planned on having a group of threads for personalities (PC and NPC) and one for locations and then make a 3rd area for any lengthy interactions/combats.... And also plan on restricting posts in locations to those they could reasonably reach (there will be much traveling in mine)...

and since combat needs a thread for each one are we going to be running into space concerns anytime soon? 3+ games plus misc other items could mean lots of posting going on

Here's a thought, though it would probably take some time for me to impliment completely:

What about a wiki or something for keeping documentation, character sheets, locational descriptions, house rules, and other miscellenia? The MediaWiki software is publicly available, so I should be able to get my hands on it without much trouble. The only real complication at that point is getting it installed and working.

so that is why everyone and their brother has a wiki site.... That would work really well for static information or infrequently changing details (character background but not necessarily stats)... but again space is a question here...

from what steven told me, we shouldn't be worried about space very soon.

and yes, the wiki sounds good. i wanted kristen to do something like that, but she told me she couldn't, so i just gave up and forgot about it. that would be cool.

We've got like 25GB or something equally largeish. It should be fine. It'll even have space for images provided that no one flips out and uploads the whole intarweb.

i'll get started on that...

I'm down with the Wiki. I'll spend hours and hours updating information on it and no one will care.

i'll care. i always care. i just care silently and in such a manner that now one ever knows.