This page describes the technical use and conventions of the Castle roleplay chatroom, located at
http://www3.chathouse.com/castle. I'll cover:
Getting Started
People find the Castle through a bunch of different means. Sometimes, experienced
roleplayers are referred here from elsewhere or by friends. Most frequently,
people who have never roleplayed before stumble into the Castle while
surfing the chat areas. These people should browse all the RP tutorial pages
they can get their hands on- and it wouldn't hurt the experienced roleplayers either.
It's good to become familiar with the conventions.
Either way, the first thing you have to do is make a handle. You do that
here- make sure you've already
signed up to the chathouse first.
It's best to start off with your main chatroom handle as the name of the character you're
playing. This lets people know who you are. In my opinion, the best beginner
roleplay handles are those that consist only of a name, because this gives
you flexibility to develop your character as you become more familiar with
the environment (Sara Marie gives you greater flexibility than, say,
Sara Marie, beautiful lost princess and cleric, 18 years old and single. It also
looks better).
Once you have your first handle you can decide what to do with it- i.e give it a character. Again, this
is just my opinion, but I believe that since your first handle is the one you're
going to learn most under, you should keep your character as general as possible.
The temptation to create angelic demon ghouls of the ninth realm of hell is strong,
I know- you've just discovered this great place to let your imagine run wild, after all-
but it isn't going to help you much in learning to roleplay. If you're into the
middle-ages or fantasy theme, try simple archetype characters like
peasant girls, bartenders, travellers, bards or shephards. Read more on character creation.
Simple characters are less likely to get you into trouble, so your first
character will live longer for you to learn with! You should also resist the
urge to give your first character magical powers, at least until you learn
the conventions of the room. Using magical powers badly is a good way to lose
respect, and without respect in a freeform chatroom, it's sad, but you're nobody.
So once you've got a handle, and a very loose idea of what sort of character
you want to play with the handle- let's say, Sara Marie, who in your mind
so far is a wandering gypsy- it's time to go into the chatroom.
Public and Private Messages
Okay, you're in the chatroom, and you want to say something. You have two options,
represented in the Castle by a large text box and the button "Hark", or a small
text box and the button "Whisper". The "Hark" box will put a message into
the public chat so that everyone can see it. To use the "Whisper" button you
need to click on the box beside someone's name on the handle list, then type
into the "Whisper" box.
You should remember some general conventions about what goes into which forum.
Most importantly, most people do not want you to private message them unless
you have a reason, and you've asked first. It's considered very bad manners to
"Whisper" to someone unless you have a good reason. Once you've asked permission,
what should go into private messages is: any role play (using offensive language, etc)
that has been objected to by people in the main room; any role play with overt
pornographic language (NO cyber-sex in the main room!); out of character arguments
or discussions about what's going on in character (i.e arguments about fights)- and
in character things like whispers and telepathy that other characters wouldn't
generally be able to hear.
A lot of people would like to keep the main room free of out of character
discussion, but that's not very likely given that people often come into the Castle
to socialise with out of character friends. Just remember that if you're going to
spend two hours talking out of character about your dog's colostomy bag, you
might prefer to take it to private or invest in ICQ or email to avoid getting
yelled at.
What should certainly go in the main room is any role play
post that is occuring in the "Main Hall" of the imaginary Castle, and any role
play post that is going to affect all the characters currently in the Castle, the
"Main Hall" or the surrounds. Basically anything that other characters will be
able to see, hear or that will affect them should be posted in the main room.
Side Note: "clickety click" if you click people on private messages,
you'll notice extra boxes next to their handle. These can be used to ignore private
or ignore public messages. This is your power- use it, but be aware that other
people could use it against you if you get offensive. The ultimate thing you can do
if someone pisses you off is just to ignore them, and this is the way to do it.
Allowable Message Lengths
A very technical detail- the Chathouse has a limit on how big your messages can
be, but this is not equal to the character limit for the text box.
No-one seems to know what it is; I ran a little experiment and came up with
about 870 characters, or around 130 words. If your text is longer than this,
the text box will not stop you typing so you might not notice until you post and
the end is cut off! Make sure you watch your message length. As well as losing
parts of your message, this is most irritating if your post included
HTML- because the tags won't be closed,
your HTML will "flood" the rest of the chatroom with your formatting.
This will not make people happy! Most people understand getting carried
away with a post and making it a little too long, so you won't be in too much
trouble, just try to avoid it by breaking up long posts into parts.
In Character and Out of Character
I've already referred to characters, and to being out of character. The terms
'in character' and 'out of character' are language conventions used in the Castle
(and in a lot of other roleplay) to specify the 'universe' in which a message
belongs. In character (often abbreviated to IC) means 'in the role play universe'.
So, if you say "In Character" you're referring to your character rather than your
self (a very important distinction!)- or your character's dog, house, question,
dress or nose.
Out of Character (abbreviated to OOC or OoC) is more commonly
used, because all posts made in the Castle are assumed to be IC unless otherwise
specified by brackets () or 'OoC'. If you have a question that you, the player,
would like to ask another player- or a comment, or a conversation, or whatever- that
is happening 'in the real universe' rather than 'in the roleplay universe', designate
it with OoC to avoid confusion.
Action and Drama
In roleplay (and sometimes in general chat) it's important to distinguish between
actions being made by your character and words being said (you might also
choose to have a separate distinguishing sign for telepathy, magic or system stats).
The most common form of this is to bracket the action with stars *, wriggles ~,
square brackets [ or dashes - and leave the speech undefined, like so:
*she hauled herself through the rain, a near-impenetrable wall of
water, the bright beacon of the Castle finally visible in the gloom*
Hallelujah...
*she muttered under her breath, pulling her cloak tighter around her.*
Really you can do this however you want, just make sure you have a good,
easily identified way of keeping action and speech parts of your in character
posts separate.
Who's In Charge
In a word? No-one.
There is no official heirarchy in the Castle, either IC or OOC, and don't
let anyone tell you there is. The ONLY overarching power is that of the
Chathouse, which can ban people
if it has good reason but usually doesn't if you just have a minor gripe with
someone.
Having said that, there is something of an unoffocial heirarchy,
based on the loose collection of reasons we all share for coming here. Respect
is the most valid form of authority and the best currency. If you have respect
you must be doing something right... You should decide for yourself who you
respect and who you look up to, so you know who to listen to when arguments
break out, but essentially this is an anarchistic freeform room and no-one,
no matter how long they've been there, how big their character's stats and powers
are, and how many people say they're cool, can really tell you what to do.
Of course, if a lot of people have a problem with you, you may well have a
problem and it'd be a good idea to solve it- but no-one can make you.