Roleplay System

Hello and Welcome to the Naruto: Ninja Generation Role play System Guide. We hope that you gain valuable information on how role play is done on this site and hope that you fully understand it. If there are any questions feel free to PM the staff with questions or concerns, or post them in our support forum and we will gladly return any questions.

=The Basics=
 * Welcome to the Basics section of Naruto: NG's Role Play guide. We will begin this section with its topic and central discussion, the basics of Role Play.


 * Text Based Role Playing dates back to the MUD's and MU's of the 70's and 80's created by the early pioneers of Text Based Online Role Playing. Eventually it was surpassed by its Successor, the MMORPG. There are different styles of Roleplaying: MUD/MU, Play-by-Post and PBEM, and Real Time Human Moderated. NG currently uses a mix of Play by Post and Real Time Human Moderated role playing in its game.

Play by Post
Original Article: Play by Post RPG


 * Play-by-post role-playing games or PBP rpgs refer to another type of text-based gaming. Rather than following gameplay in real-time, such as in MUDs, players post messages on such media as bulletin boards, online forums, Chatrooms (such as like AOL and Yahoo chat) and mailing lists to which their fellow players will post role-played responses without a real limit or timeframe. Of late such blogging tools and sites as LiveJournal have been utilized for this purpose. This includes such games as play-by-email (or PBEM) rpgs.


 * The origins of this style of role-playing are unknown, but it most likely originated in some form during the mid to late 1980s when BBS systems began gaining in popularity. Usually it is played through 'Script' and 'Story' format, both styles are interchangeable and work well but it depends on which the player prefers, or which the human administrator insists upon. Script format is a simple stating of what each character is saying, post by post, with little to no mention of said characters' actions, whereas Story format requires that the character's actions be mentioned, including the surroundings and a general description of what is going on.

Real Time Human Moderated

 * Some games rely entirely upon human moderators to dictate events, and physical print books for rules sets. Such games may use code dice-rollers, to generate random results, and may include databases for the purposes of maintaining character records. Interaction between characters is controlled by communication between individual players (with each other) and with moderators (who portray non-player characters). Communication software and database options vary, from the DigiChat front-end / character database back-end pairing pioneered by Conrad Hubbard at White Wolf Publishing, to the numerous AOL and Yahoo chats with hosted character databases. Free-form games may even do away with database integration or dice-rollers entirely and rely upon individual players to keep their own records, with online community reputation dictating how other players react.

=Role Play Guidelines=

Conventions of Roleplaying
The conventions of roleplaying involve working with your fellow RPers on the RP while remembering you are in direct control of only your character, and that your character's knowledge of a situation is different from your own as the character's owner. The following three types of offenses are flagrant instances of flaunting these conventions, but can easily be avioded with OOC conversation between RPers.

God Modding
Godmodding is cheating the system of RP so that your character comes out either without a scratch or with absolute advantage in any situation. This is typically done without conversing with the RP's owner, and ignores their authority to control the situation of their RP. Examples: Unapproved one-shot kills, 'effortless' combat with NPCs, acting with total invulnerability to the actions of NPCs or other Player Characters.

Bunnying
Bunnying is taking control of characters when you do not have the authority to do so, and acting contrary to what their real owners would have them do. Unless you have direct permission from the owner of the character, you cannot control them. This is especially true in combat, where you cannot decide if your attacks hit.

Metagaming
Metagaming involves using applying Out-of-Character knowledge of a situation to your character's benefit. This is not always intended, but does not change the fact that the advantage is noticeabe and generally unfitting with what the character would have done based on in-character knowledge and reactions. If you keep the distinction between what you know and what your character knows, this is easy to avoid.

Post Size
Very small posts consisting of less than five lines often have little to offer in the way of meaningful content. We suggest that you try to avoid making such small posts if at all possible.

Social RP
Social RP occurs when there is little at stake, or at least little that can be accomplished through physical means. General meet and greets, hanging out, socially engaging one another, arguments, diplomacy. All of these things are activities and engagements that don't require stats and thus the mechanics of the site arn't brought directly into play. You still need to keep in mind your characters abilities, however, and RP them at an acceptable level. For instance, if your character isn't particularly agile, you're not going to be RPing free running, regardless of it not being in a combat setting. Should a situation come up in the thread in which combat is required or stats need to be directly refereanced, things switch into combat mode.

Combat RP
In combat mode, things are slightly different. Time frames shift, every second becomes important. While in a RP thread your entire post might be you walking all the way across town, in battle the entire duration of your post is usually handled over the course of a few seconds. As a rule of thumb, unless there's some good in character reason otherwise, each post should cover a time frame of about 6 seconds or so. In battle mode, you need to keep a careful eye on your statistics, track your avalible chakra, ect. The mechanics become 100% important in these situations and must be regarded as closely as the RP actions themselves.

You get one defensive and one offensive move per round, as detailed in the combat mechanics guide. On average, between the two, this should be about a paragraph or two of text.

Grammar & Spelling
Though not mandatory we do ask that all users use proper grammar and spelling at all times when role playing. This is to make sure that everyone properly understands the posts.