after survivor

Gameplay Rules


Rules are more about game process than game content. Everything is pretty much fair game to write, but if you're thinking of doing something really extreme, you might want to run it past the mods first. If nothing else, get them on your side for when the screaming erupts. These rules are not necessarily engraved in stone, but have gradually developed over time and from the experience of playing the game. Keeping to them makes things run more smoothly.

Reading The Game

1. The *after_survivor community has been configured to append the comment count to the end of the link for every game thread, and to use different colours for visited (green) and unvisited links (red). You should therefore be able to see at a glance from its entry in the Page Summary in the sidebar whether you've read everything there is to read for a particular game scene or not. If you're scrolling through the whole page, you need to look for [x answers] for a thread that has replies, or [link] for a standalone post.

2. We display 50 posts to a page. But that can include a number of threads that are finished very quickly indeed, as well as a number of slower ones that it takes a while for the players to bring to a conclusion. If you want a quick summary of what's still being worked on, you can click on the "active" link under Tags in the sidebar. Remember that after the final post a thread will get changed from "active" to "complete", so you may also need to visit the "complete" link occasionally in order to catch those concluding posts for older posts that have moved off the front page.

Posting To Character Journals

3. Feel free to use your character journal in any way you want to. You can use it to develop the character in a serious way or just fool around, it's up to you. All we ask is that you either duplicate the posts to *after_survivor, or provide a link from the community to your journal entry, if it's something that you want to be considered part of game-play, one way or another. Otherwise, it might get overlooked altogether.

Posting To *after_survivor

4. Friends-lock and tag as "ooc" all posts that are not in character. If you take a post from locked to public for any reason, delete all traces of OOC-ness and retag it "active" or "complete" as appropriate. Try your best to not include OOC comments in a character post. OOC posting is fine in locked threads or in the watcher's community, *after_watch. In fact, it is encouraged.

5. Any smut in the first post to a thread has to go behind an lj-cut. This is to keep our members' friends lists work-safe and also to keep any minors who inadvertently (yeah, we know) stumble across the community from having their morals corrupted. If a thread becomes smutty, please tag it as "nsfw"; we don't want people losing their jobs if we can avoid it.

6. Right now we are using a post from the Daily Prophet to signal the beginning of a new day. However, there is no hard and fast end to the previous day once the Prophet post goes up, if you still need to post something for it. There has always been some blurring of timelines in this game because there are separate storylines.

There are fast players in the game and slow players - we try to keep to a happy medium and generally end up speeding up then slowing down, over and over. Try to be patient with people whose style of play is different from yours. Don't panic if things go zipping ahead. You can put up a locked placeholder to hold the space till you can write your post. Don't panic if things seem to stop altogether. They will pick up again.

Tagging Posts

7. Since shortly after LJ invented the nifty tag feature, we've been tagging game posts. Please try to use the tags already defined, it makes reading the game a lot easier:

  • active - any game post is "active" by default. As there is no default tagging, this has to be done manually. No worries if you forget, someone will spot it and add the tag.
  • complete - when everything that the initiator of a thread wanted to play out has been done, the thread should be tagged "complete" and the "active" tag removed. Stand-alone posts with no replies will likely be tagged "complete" by the mods after 14 days (which is when they drop off any friends lists), so that the number of currently active threads stays within limits. There is no problem whatsoever with reopening "complete" threads, though - if you want to reply to them, feel free to do so anytime. It might be a good idea to inform everyone of this, though, either in an ooc post or by linking to it from a new post that refers to what took place in the older one. If you want to add more than one comment, you can of course always re-tag to "active".
  • ooc - any ooc posts should get this tag and be friends-locked.
  • placeholder - if you need to put up a placeholder, please tag it accordingly and flock until it becomes an active post.
  • mod - mod posts will be tagged like this and flocked; mock the mods if they forget!
  • nsfw - please tag any thread "not safe for work" as soon as that warning applies.

Playing With Others

8. Each person has their own level for tolerating how much they want you writing for their character. Try to avoid writing reactions or dialogue for someone else, it takes the fun out of it for them. If you aren't sure whether it's okay to write anything for another person, just e-mail or IM them and check. Some people are perfectly happy for you to write bits for them, so just make sure before you do, or be willing to change it if someone objects. It's nothing personal, but every other person's character is theirs to run as they see fit, just as yours is yours.

9. If you are going to be unavailable to post, let the other players who will be affected know ahead of time as much as possible. If you are in the position where you might be holding up action for someone else (and it happens for lots of reasons), consider postponing introducing important information till later or putting an activity off until a later game day. Or post summaries rather than the whole scene. There are lots of ways to work around slowdowns. Just do your part to keep the story moving whenever possible.

If, however, a character (and/or player) is absent and unavailable for more than a week without prior notice, a certain amount of godmodding might become necessary to avoid having other characters get stuck. This will be done with the least possible amount of damage to any characters and plotlines involved.

If one of your characters gets stuck because of unavailability of others, please contact the mods for a brainstorming session about how to continue/work around it.

Check with people playing extras if you're going to involve their characters in something that will take time and multiple threads to play out, just to make sure they have the time available to commit to that thread at that point in time. If they're busy with other characters, you might need to adjust the timing to something that's more mutually convenient.

10. Nobody gets to damage another player's character without both agreeing to it ahead of time. Tonks stunning Bellatrix Lestrange was fine, when they met in a situation where attack seemed inevitable; Tonks AK'ing Bellatrix wouldn't have been, and not just because the Unforgiveables aren't in use by the Aurors. (Our Bellatrix is now dead of course, but mod approval for that plot point was sought in advance.)

In case somebody goes overboard in the heat of the moment, and the players involved can't resolve it between themselves, ask a mod for help. We'll always do our best to mediate outcomes that everyone can live with. If it comes down to it, we'll call a do-over. We can do that. We have the power. At the same time, recognise that reckless and dangerous behaviour on your character's part will probably have some unpleasant consequences sooner or later.

11. E-mail and IM are your friends. Constant communication amongst players makes things run smoothly.

*after_survivor started as an experiment in improvisational writing/role-playing and for some players that remains its most interesting aspect. Other people like planning things out more, developing plots, or even specifying ahead of time what needs to happen in a certain thread. It goes without saying that there can be some degree of tension amongst various schools of play, and what we have to say about it is "Communicate!" If you are an improviser, recognise that others might not like some carefully planned plots upset. If you are a planner, recognise that some people find knowing the outcome ahead of time to be boring and pointless. There is space for everyone here, but understand that you might need to give a little to get a little in return. Mods and other thread referees are available as necessary, if players reach a point where they want a mediator to step in at a thorny point.

12. If you do not want someone else to wander into your thread or to eavesdrop, you need to mark the subject line "{Private to your character and the other guy}". You have to have your characters cast wards to maintain privacy, or speak softly, or something that indicates that they cannot be heard, especially in public. Be careful in public, because you never know where the reporters from the Prophet are lurking! If you don't keep those conversations warded or whispered, they might end up in the gossip pages!

13. Since there is private information that all the players know, you need to be careful that your character doesn't somehow "know" things that they should not. We can't say this enough -- player knowledge and character knowledge are separate. If your character ends up "knowing" something that they shouldn't, another player does have the right to object. And vice versa, of course. If there seems to be too much mind-reading going on, the mods may well say something, either to the group or to the telepathic individuals.

Group Threads

14. Managing threads with more than one person in them can be a pain in the arse. They have a tendency to slow down and get stuck unless everyone is online at more or less the same time, and then they have the tendency to get out of control instead.

When starting a thread that will have more than two or three characters in it (depending on where everyone's level of comfort is), the person to start the thread is designated the default thread moderator. It is that person's job to keep things moving and see that posts are made in a relatively linear fashion. It is also this person's job to be sure that the thread is completed and all loose ends are taken care of. If the group can't get a thread mod organised, contact the mods and one of us will do it for you. If the thread mod needs to bow out for any reason, please do not leave without designating someone else to step in and cover the job.

The thread mod can manage this as seems best with the group involved. It is perfectly okay to run the conversation via IM and post the results as a single narrative of the entire exchange. Not everyone is on IM, or is comfortable dealing with it though, so use e-mail or a locked post on the board to figure out what direction you're going in if you need to. The more of this that's done early in the thread, the easier it is on everyone as it continues.

Plotting

15. We are open to all sorts of player-driven plot developments -- the more the better, in fact! The mods can't dream up plot lines for everyone, though there are several things going on that will affect each player. What we do ask is that you run major plot developments past the mods, just so we know what to expect. This is mainly so we can coordinate with other plot developments that are underway. We don't want too many plot twists bumping into each other if there is a better way to do it. The mods try to act as traffic cops more than people who tell you "you can't do that". What we might say is "you might want to wait", or "have you thought about doing it this way?" We aren't the bosses, and the responsibility for things working smoothly is something we all bear in this game.

Extras

16. Some players introduce NPCs that serve an adjunct position to their own - the house elves, various servants, etc. Sometimes those appear regularly enough that it's convenient for them to have their own account (so that you don't have to log in for the right icon to appear). For more occasional characters where there isn't a person cast in the role though, there is an "unnamed extra" account that anyone can use. There is room to add icons, but please do not delete any. The default is a non-gender-specific one that can be used at any time. There are also blank male and female icons associated with the *unnamed_extra_1 account, if you want to specify gender, and ones for each of the Hogwarts houses if you need a random student.

If you take the time to find someone to play the other character, you may be surprised at how much fun you both have with it.

Other Communities

17. *after_survivor has a watcher's group: *after_watch. This is somewhere for everyone to gossip and be silly, or to cry buckets when something sad happens. There is also a closed group for players to discuss the rules and elements of magic in this world, as well as keep track of what's been used: *after_magic.

In closing we just want to say that the game belongs to everyone in it. If something is happening or not happening and there is something you can do to make the game work better, go for it. Stick your neck out. Post that next post, send someone a heads-up. We won't yell at you for it and we hope nobody else will. If there is any real conflict or hurt feelings that start brewing, please let us know as soon as you start feeling uncomfortable. It's easiest to deal with then. We will deal with whatever we have to and do our best to be sensitive to everyone's needs. We may occasionally have to do something unpopular for the good of the game, but know that it's nothing personal. This is everybody's playground. Love and hug your fellow players and they will do the same for you. Before their character betrays yours, that is.

Love from the mods, *lucie_p and *muridae_x.